John Bejakovic – Page 192

A new way to cook up ads that entice and reward your prospects

July 17, 2021 by John Bejakovic

A few years ago, a friend of my dad went for vacation on a touristy Adriatic island. It was high summer. Ripe fruits and vegetables were drooping off branches and vines everywhere. It smelled and looked wonderful.

So he sat down at a little family-run restaurant. He ordered a meal, hoping for a taste of the local bounty.

His meal came. And sure enough, it had a side dish of mixed vegetables. Except…

The vegetables turned out to be tiny diced carrots, corn, and zucchini… straight from the freezer aisle of the local supermarket.

My dad’s friend called the restaurant owner over to his table. She was a large, lusty woman.

“Excuse me madam,” he asked her, “is this also what you eat at home?”

The restaurant owner looked at the plate of frozen veggies with contempt. “Of course not!” she said.

My dad’s friend stood up. “So why do you think I should eat it?” And he walked out of the restaurant.

A reasonable reaction. And yet, I often find myself in the position of the contemptuous restaurant owner.

After all, a part of my job is to help my clients cook up ads. I get paid well to do it.

But if somebody showed me one of my client’s Facebook or YouTube ads and asked me, “Is this also what you also eat at home,” I’d pull back in disgust. “Of course not!” I’d say.

So let me tell you about a different way to cook up ads. It’s something I heard recently from marketer Maxwell Finn.

Max looks very young. But he has already launched and sold several million-dollar ecommerce companies. He also co-founded a Facebook ad agency with Kevin Harrington of Shark Tank. He’s behind the Facebook ads of big corporations like 3M and sexy products like the Joe Rogan-backed Alpha Brain.

So Max shared his new way to create ads that entice and reward your prospects. Ads that increase engagement, shares, and sales. Ads that, Max says, your prospects enjoy consuming.

Sounds impossible?

It’s really not, as long as you do a bit of research first.

Not competitor research. Not product research. Not prospect research.

In fact, not a type of research I’ve ever done. But I’ll change that going forward. Because as Max says, and I believe him:

Cook up ads like this and your prospects will dive in, spoon in hand… instead of pulling away with suspicion and disgust.

Perhaps you can guess what kind of research I’m talking about. After all, it’s painfully obvious in hindsight, even though I never thought of it myself.

In any case, if you’d like to find out for sure, you can find it in this month’s issue of Steal Our Winners.

As you might know, I plug Steal Our Winners regularly in this newsletter. That’s because:

1) I think it’s an incredible source of great new marketing ideas each month, and

2) Because I bought a lifetime subscription a while ago, so I have a stake in proving that was a wise decision.

In other words, I’m not impartial in recommending Steal Our Winners. The good news is, you don’t have to get as committed as I did.

Because you can test out Steal Our Winners for yourself, and I believe still watch Maxwell Finn’s segment from this month, for a grand fee of one (1) dollar. So if you’ve got a dollar, and you’re curious about a new way of cooking up delicious ads, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/sow

Split-brain persuasion

July 16, 2021 by John Bejakovic

Imagine a table in a science lab. At one end is a man dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, smiling and looking around. At the other end is a scientist in a white coat, holding a clipboard.

“I’ll ask you some yes-no questions,” the scientist says. “But don’t answer me in words. Instead I want you to point to YES or NO on this board here. And for each question, I will tell you which hand I want you to point with. Makes sense?”

The other man nods.

“Let’s start then. Right hand: are you at Caltech right now?”

The man points to YES with his right hand.

“Left hand: are you a woman?”

The man points to NO with his left hand.

“Right hand: is chocolate your favorite ice cream flavor?”

YES.

“Left hand: are you asleep right now?”

NO.

“Ok… here’s a more personal question. Right hand: do you believe in God?”

The right hand points to NO.

“Left hand: do YOU believe in God?”

The man’s left hand flies to point to YES. Because the left side of this man’s body, and the right side of his brain, are believers. But the right side of his body, and the left side of his brain, are atheists.

The crazy thing is, this experiment really happened. And so have many other related experiments.

They were all done on patients who had their corpus callosum cut. That’s the bridge between the two islands of your left and right brain hemispheres.

People with a cut corpus callosum do just fine in normal situations. But in a lab setting, you can tease out that they have two brains… two personalities… and two different consciousnesses inside their skulls and skin.

In a person with a normal corpus callosum, these two parts somehow merge. But my guess is these split-brain conflicts remain in all of us, just hidden beneath the surface.

Anyways, now that I’ve told you about the man who might be going to both heaven and hell, here’s the point of today’s email:

According to split-brain research, the right side of the brain responds to images, humor, surprise, and metaphors…

While the left side of the brain responds to facts, argument, consistency, and logic.

So you’ve got to both SHOW and TELL. Because you don’t want the two sides arguing with each other beneath the surface. It might sink your message.

And here’s another tip:

If you’ve tried and failed to persuade somebody before… even though you have a good point… then you don’t need better logic.

The left side is happy hearing the same sound logic over and over.

But you do need a surprising new presentation. It doesn’t have to be logical. It just has to be dramatic. How dramatic? Ideally, heaven-and-hell-type stuff.

Did you find this post enlightening? If you did, then use your left hand to click here and sign up for more ideas and images like what you just read.

Free sample: Why you are not “bombarded with information”

July 15, 2021 by John Bejakovic

Yesterday, I started reading a book called Metaphorically Selling. It looks promising, but…

The first chapter is all about the NEED for metaphor in sales and marketing. Here’s the gist:

“There is nowhere you can turn to escape the barrage of pitches vying for your attention and your disposable income. Twenty five hundred bids for our attention bombard us daily, from the television, the radio, the newspaper, the …”

How many times have you heard the same “bombarded with information” argument? I guess each marketing book, course, and seminar has to make it at the start, like a doctor putting a stethoscope around his neck to look professional.

I can tell you this:

This argument didn’t make me nod my head in agreement. Instead, it made me think of a talk that copywriter Richard Armstrong gave at AWAI bootcamp. Richard said:

“Nowadays it makes no more sense to say we are bombarded with information than it would be to say that a fish is bombarded with water. No, a fish is swimming in water. He’s living in water. He’s breathing water. To a very large extent, he’s actually made of water. And so it is with human beings and information.”

I probably heard Richard’s talk 3-4 years ago (it’s up on YouTube). I only listened to it once.

And yet, this one idea, that we are like fish swimming in an ocean of information, has stuck with me ever since. It pops up in my mind whenever I hear the cliche claim about being “bombarded by information.”

And if you take a moment to think about what I just said, you will find a recipe for messages that stick with your prospect for years… that pop up in his mind regularly… and that he shares with others, like I just did with you.

But if you don’t want to take the time to figure out the recipe, don’t worry. I’ll write more about it in a book I’m putting together. You can consider the above a free sample of that.

Anyways, the reason I watched Richard’s talk is because I read his own free sample book. And I was so impressed.

Richard is what you might call an A-list copywriter. His free sample book is a collection of his most successful and interesting ads. Along with his funny commentary.

And the best part? Richard’s free sample book is completely different from everything else out there.

Perhaps you don’t believe me. Or perhaps you’re curious. In either case, if you’re the type of person who wants to check things out for yourself, you can take a look at the link below.

But before you go, in case you’d like to take a daily swim in the ocean current that is my email newsletter, you can do that here.

And here’s the link to Richard’s free sample book:

https://www.freesamplebook.com/

They tried to bury this information… but I believe it

July 14, 2021 by John Bejakovic

Here’s a sneaky story about the things they don’t want you to know:

Back in 2013, the European Union wanted proof that online piracy hurts sales of movies, books, and computer games. So they had a big study done.

The 300-page study was complete in 2015. It was then used for a second academic paper by two European Commission members, which came out in 2016.

The conclusion of that second paper was that piracy hurts movie sales by about 4.4%. “Our findings have important implications for copyright policy,” said that second paper.

The thing is, nobody ever saw the original 2013 study. It was never published. Not nowhere. Not until 2017.

That’s when Julia Reda, the Pirate Party member of the EU Parliament, got her hands on the missing study. And she published the results on her blog.

“With the exception of recently released blockbusters,” the 2013 study said, “there is no evidence to support the idea that online copyright infringement displaces sales.”

Hold on a second…

So was the EU hiding this study… so they could cherry pick results that fit their desired “important implications for copyright policy?”

It sure sounds like it. Sneaky governmentses, right?

But here’s the bigger truth in all this:

I found out about this yesterday. An article about it was published in an online tech news site. It then went viral on a news aggregator.

But this story has been public since 2017… and yet we’re talking about it now, in the middle of 2021. There’s something there.

As you probably know, if a bit of information is scarce, we tend to value it more. “Long-lost study from 2013” piques our curiosity. But maybe not all that much, and not for all that long.

However, if that bit of information was suppressed, we tend to value it much more. “Long-lost study from 2013 that the government worked hard to bury.” That’s something worth discussing even years later.

“Fine,” you might say. “But I kind of knew that already. It sounds like the lead of every health VSL ever.”

All right. But let’s see if you knew this:

Bob Cialdini’s Influence lists a bunch of evidence that censorship doesn’t just increase desire for censored info…

But censorship also increases belief in that information. Even if you don’t actually see the information.

For example, I haven’t read the original EU study about piracy. Come on, it’s 300 pages. Who’s got time?

But I believe the conclusions. Why else would the EU try to censor it? I bet a bunch of people on that news aggregator thought the same, and that’s why this story went viral.

My takeaway for you is this:

Desire and belief are really two sides of the same coin.

Whether you’re using specificity… or a new mechanism… or even secrets… if you juice up one side of the coin, the other side gets bigger too.

And I’ve got evidence to prove it. Evidence nobody has seen before. I hope to publish it one day soon… if they don’t get to me first. If you want to read that secret report when it comes out, here’s our underground communication channel.

It was a bright cold day in April…

July 13, 2021 by John Bejakovic

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

I frowned. I bared my teeth. Two hours had passed since I sat down to write.

But I still hadn’t finished the email. All I had was a bunch of research and half-starts.

How much more time would I waste? Suddenly, ice water ran down my back. The deadline, I thought. It’s so soon.

Now I’ll be honest with you:

Writer’s block is not something I ever suffer from.

But I do suffer from writer’s fiddling… writer’s lack of focus… and writer’s doubt, which turns into writer’s backtracking.

I’ve found a few ways to manage these writer’s conditions. They don’t always work.

But thanks to a reader named Lester, I’ve now found a new way also. It works for writer’s block, too.

The technique comes from a marketing guy called Roy Williams. Williams gives it to you in three easy steps:

1. Randomly force upon yourself a dramatic opening statement BEFORE you know what you’re going to write about. [My tip: Google “weird opening sentences in books” and take the first result that comes up.]

2. Look for the defining characteristic of that statement.

3. Think about what you want to sell. Use the defining characteristic of the statement as the angle of approach into your body copy.

That’s it? Yep. I tried it. It works.

But here’s the thing that really gets me:

Williams performs this act on stage. He asks for a bunch of strange or shocking opening sentences. Then he brings a bunch of business owners up. He asks them what they would like to sell more of. And then he uses the process above to come up with cool ads for those business owners, right on the spot.

People think it’s magic. They even accuse Williams of planting stooges in the audience to set up the act.

But then Williams explains how to do this trick. It’s just what I told you above. It’s something anybody can do. But Williams says, nobody ever does it.

That’s the thing that really struck me. Because it reminded me of something I read early on in my marketing education. Fortunately, it came so early that it actually made an impact. Here’s the intro to it:

I’ll tell you something: This issue of my newsletter is going to make a lot of my readers very uncomfortable. Why? Simply because I know the difference between winners and losers and, in this issue, I’m going to put the choice right dead square in your face. I’m going to give you an extraordinarily simple set of instructions and, if you do what I say, your chances of becoming extremely prosperous are going to be magnified by a factor of at least 1,000!

But most of you are not going to follow these simple instructions. I know that already from past experience. And I even know already the reasons you’re going to give for not doing what I suggest. These are the same reasons everybody (including me) nearly always gives for not doing something which will make our lives better.

Does that make you frown or bare your teeth? Well, if you’d like to read more, and find out how to 1000x your chances of becoming extremely prosperous, before the clocks strike thirteen, here’s the rest of that thing:

https://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters/aslz_winners_losers.htm

(And if you want to subscribe to issues of my own newsletter, for free, you can do that here.)

My motivation for writing this blog

July 12, 2021 by John Bejakovic

Interviewer: It’s gotta feel wonderful knowing you’re making a difference in so many people’s lives. Now 20 years of doing this — what is it that keeps you motivated?

Ellen Kreidman: I’ll tell you. I’m motivated by what’s happened in my own life. In 1991, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And then in 1995, I had a reoccurrence and I had to undergo a bone marrow transplant. And I’m here to tell you that when you are hooked up to life support and you have no hair, no eyelashes, no fingernails, no toenails, and you are as close to death as you can be… you know the meaning of life. And it is to love somebody with all your heart and soul and to have them love you back.

That’s from the Light His Fire infomercial. In that program, Dr. Ellen Kreidman teaches women how to fall in love, stay in love, and avoid divorce.

And the best part?

Your husband doesn’t have to join in for it to work… and he doesn’t even have to know you’re using the Light His Fire method on him!

That’s a strong appeal. But it’s not why I’m bringing this up.

Instead, it’s just that bit up top. Because if you’re selling something, there’s a good chance people will wonder what your motivation is.

“If this thing is so good,” they might mutter, “why are you sharing it with me?”

Or, they might get cynical:

“Sure, sure… you want to help me save my marriage. Yeah, right. All you really want is to help your bank account.”

Don’t worry. I’m not going all Simon Sinek on you. I don’t believe that people will buy just because your why is good enough. As I’ve written before, there are plenty of businesses that failed in spite of a noble why.

But if you have a good offer, then it’s smart to talk about why you’re putting it out there. It can help soothe the skepticism and cynicism your prospects feel when they see your ad.

And as the Light His Fire infomercial shows, your reason why doesn’t have to be clever. Pure enthusiasm is often enough.

Should I tell you what my reason why is?

I wouldn’t call it enthusiasm. Rather it’s a kind of obsessive curiosity.

Once upon a time, I used to believe I know myself well. It was hard to face the fact that this is not true.

But on the bright side, it opened up lots of fascinating areas to investigate and explore.

So it’s good I’ve found a job that rewards me for exploring why we think, feel, and behave in often mysterious ways… and it’s good I’ve found a small group of people, like yourself, dear reader, who are also interested in the same.

By the way, I also have a newsletter. My motivations for that are much the same. In fact, the content is much the same as this blog… except the newsletter comes out sooner, and it comes without fail. If you’d like to sign up, here’s where to go.

The future of break-em-down selling?

July 11, 2021 by John Bejakovic

Imagine tomorrow you see an ad for a magical job opportunity:

“$6k a month, only requiring 3-4 hours of work every week.”

The job is with a new video game company. The work is easy. You can do it successfully as long as you have the digital skills of somebody born after 1980.

Plus you can work whenever you like, wherever you like, as much or as little as you like. All you need is your phone. And if you want to work more and make as much as $10k or $15k a month, that’s fine too.

There will be a presentation, the ad tells you, at the local Cheesecake Factory this Friday. Anybody interested can get all the info there.

So on Friday, you show up to the Cheesecake Factory, both hopeful and cautious.

“What’s the worst that can happen,” you tell yourself. “If it’s some sort of scam, I’ll just up and leave. But if it’s for real, it could be life-changing.”

A dozen other people are there with you. Soon enough the presenter arrives. He chats to everyone for a few minutes. Funny enough, it turns out his sister went to the same college you went to.

“But it’s too noisy here,” the guy announces. “We’ll actually go to go to a different location where the presentation will be held.”

So you all load onto a bus. And that’s when the ride really gets going.

If you’re wondering why I’m painting this picture, it’s because situations like this happen for real. Bob Cialdini once told his own personal experience of it.

He got on the bus. And he and the others interested in the opportunity got taken from one town… to another… and back. It took many hours, and they never got a chance to up and leave until it was over.

To help them make the right decision, the bus was covered with inspirational posters. Eye of the Tiger kept playing over and over. Meanwhile, the presenter pitched the amazingness of his pyramid scheme, while the bus bounced and rumbled along the highway at 55 mph.

Result:

Except for Cialdini, who had a little bit of self-defense thanks to his knowledge of persuasion techniques, everybody else signed on for the pyramid scheme.

My point is that a controlled, live selling environment, particularly one that lasts for hours or days, and one where you can’t leave… well… it can sell anything.

So if you are looking to get rich in the pyramid scheme business, it’s time to invest in a bus.

But what if you’re not selling pyramid schemes? And what if you do your business online?

It might seem hopeless. How can you control people’s environment… how can you keep them from leaving… how can you break them down… unless you can physically isolate them?

It might seem hopeless. But social factors are working in your favor. And I’m not even talking about the corona lockdowns, though those certainly help.

The real thing is we all carry our own Eye-Of-The-Tiger bus in our pockets these days. We allow it to create a completely controlled and engrossing environment for us. We take it with us wherever we go, even to small, isolated spaces like the toilet.

And in case you think I’m trying to make a joke, I’m not.

For the past year or so, I’ve been watching Ben Settle promote his build-your-own-mobile-marketing-app business.

I thought it’s stupid. Because I myself refuse to install anything on my phone except Google Maps and this thing that helps you identify trees. And even those have all the notifications turned off.

But I will eventually break down. That’s how the world is moving.

So if you are looking to get rich in any business, it might be time to invest in a mobile app. One with lots of notifications and an inspirational poster background. If I’m right, this is the future of break-em-down selling… and it can help you sell anything.

Meanwhile, the best you can do is get people onto your email newsletter. I’ve got one here. It’s not the same as a bus… so I have to compensate by being entertaining and informative.

Required viewing if you’re interested in persuasion

July 10, 2021 by John Bejakovic

In 2011, an Indian spiritual teacher named Sri Kumare set up a new practice in Phoenix, Arizona.

Kumare had a couple of women in tow — one Indian, who acted as his personal assistant, and the other white, who guided Kumare’s meditation and yoga sessions.

These women helped Kumare build up a following in Phoenix quickly. But it’s not clear he really needed their help.

After all, Kumare looked like the perfect embodiment of an Indian guru.

He was tall, gaunt, and had long black hair and a long black beard. He wore flowing robes, held onto a wooden walking stick, and walked with a strange stumbling gait.

And of course, then you heard him speak.

Kumare had a thick Indian accent when he dropped his mystical wisdom such as, “All this… the world… is an illusion,” and, “The guru is inside YOU.”

Plus he stared really intensely at people when he spoke.

One time, a five-year-old boy who had just met Kumare confessed, “I like to play! All the time!”

Kumare stared at the boy. And then he smiled and said shyly in his thick accent, “I like to play… also!”

One of the women who became Kumare’s disciple was a death penalty attorney named Toby.

She fought for the rights of people who had been sentenced to the death penalty and who had lost all their appeals. It was a very stressful and emotionally draining job.

Kumare stared intensely at Toby. “Why… do you want to help those people?” he asked, with no judgment in his voice.

Toby explained how these death row inmates have lost the support of everybody, including their families. They needed somebody to fight for them.

Kumare nodded while continuing to stare at Toby. Later, Toby explained why she started looking to Kumare as her guru:

“When somebody shows interest in what you’re interested in, it makes you want to get to know them better. It makes you want to learn as much as you can.”

This made me think of something I found in my notes from the past month. “The biggest thing you can do for others,” I wrote, “is to like and accept them.”

Now I don’t know if that’s really true. I think we are all a bundle of different needs. At different times, those different needs take turns being uppermost.

But the need to be liked and accepted is definitely up there, and it’s up there a lot of the time.

Anyways, if you know the story of Kumare, then you know how it ends.

But if you do not know the story of Kumare, then I highly recommend watching a documentary made about the man. And I recommend you do it without reading any reviews first.

Because there’s a lot in this movie, and it’s best if you come to it with an open mind.

In fact, there’s so much in this movie that it should be required viewing for anybody interested in persuasion of any kind.

One day, if I ever create the curriculum for my mythical AIDA School, this movie will be part of the first semester, along with Guthy-Renker’s Personal Power infomercial and Chip and Dan Heath’s Made To Stick.

I bet you can find Kumare the documentary on your favorite streaming service. But if you don’t want to search around for it, or if you just want to watch a couple minutes to see if it’s really worth your time, then here’s a grainy copy that somebody posted to YouTube:

The analogy jackpot

July 8, 2021 by John Bejakovic

For the past few days, I’ve been staying in a horrific neighborhood at the edge of town. It’s a mess of oversized private houses, thoroughfares, cars, fast food restaurants, shopping malls, and construction.

Now I’m in Europe at the moment, so this is not identical to your typical American suburb.

But if you don’t like the suburbs where you live, and you either prefer the country or the urban center, then perhaps you will agree with me that the outskirts of town are the worst.

I bring this up because yesterday, I read an article with the title, The Growth Ponzi Scheme. It was written by a guy who is lobbying against suburbs and for something he calls “Strong Towns.”

I’m sure he’s got his own inner reasons why he doesn’t like the suburbs. But his argument in the article is that the suburbs are a typical Ponzi scheme.

They were created with the promise of economic growth.

But the cost of maintaining the suburb (roads, electrical grid, etc.) is much more than the taxes and economic growth that come out.

So the only way to maintain the illusion of growth is to dump still more money into building out the suburbs today, which will require still more money dumped in tomorrow.

In other words, it’s a typical Ponzi scheme. And all of us become suckers when this scam finally comes crashing down.

I found this argument exciting for my own personal reasons.

It felt right enough. Plus it’s such a simple and clear idea to hold in my head. And it’s new! I couldn’t wait to share it with you.

Perhaps you see where I’m going with this.

Calling the suburbs a Ponzi scheme is an analogy.

If people haven’t heard an analogy before… if the details fit well enough… and if the overall feel is right… then the result is what marketer Travis Sago calls a braingasm (a breakthrough analogy in its own right).

My point is that persuading by analogy is super powerful. And it doesn’t even have to be “true.”

Yeah, I’m sure the “Strong Towns” guy did his research. I’m sure he’s got numbers to back up his analogy.

Even so, he’s cherry picking just a few details of a very complex situation for his own purposes.

Somebody else, with a different agenda, might give a different analogy instead. He might say that suburbs are like the brick house built by the smartest of the three little pigs.

He might say it’s smart to invest in solid, spacious, and yet connected infrastructure, even if its value is not yet obvious.

But when the Big Bad Wolf of the next pandemic comes knocking at the door… we will see where our friends from Straw City and Backwoods Country come running to.

Whatever. I just made that up. Perhaps you found it convincing. Perhaps not.

No worries in that case. Because that’s my takeaway for you.

Persuading by analogy is like a slot machine. It’s cheap to play a game. In fact, you can mint your own coin with just a bit of thinking.

Of course, the odds of winning any given game are small. But if you keep at it long enough, you will win. And the payout can be huge. A jackpot.

Final point:

If you want to watch me play the analogy slot machine a few more times, you can do that here.