Self-serving horror advertorial funnel

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I’m not a natural when it comes to marketing of business. So I have to methodically and consciously do those things that might be obvious to others. As an example of what I mean, here’s a story that Dan Kennedy told about a coaching client who no longer liked Dan’s advice:

This coaching client followed all of Dan’s marketing advice.

​​As a result, the client became booked months ahead of time… he had a steady pipeline of new work… and he couldn’t handle any more business than he already had.

“In other words,” Dan once said in front of a crowded room, “this guy didn’t have a marketing problem any more. He had a capacity problem. So what do you think I told him to do? That’s right! I told him to raise his prices. Drive away some of his current clients. Create a vacuum. Then he would have a marketing problem again, and that’s one I know how to solve!”

Like I said, Dan’s coaching client didn’t like this advice. Maybe it wasn’t what he was hoping for. Or maybe it seemed self-serving.

At least that’s the lesson I got from it:

If you’re in business, then the advice you dole out should be self-serving. In other words, don’t offer advice on problems that you cannot fix.

Obvious, right?​​

For example, maybe your problem is that you don’t have enough front-end sales. So if you like, let me offer a bit of advice.

Write what I call a horror advertorial. This is a first-person story that looks and reads like a blog post… full of misery, drama, and suspense… which ties into your offer.

Run Facebook ads, whether text ads or video ads, to your horror advertorial.

Link the advertorial to an offer page that gives all features and benefits of your offer.

And that’s it. Do this process reasonably well, and you will get more front-end sales than you can handle.

For example, the main clients I worked with for over two years used this model over and over. At the high point, they were doing 2,000 front-end sales a day, just by cloning this same funnel for different offers.

More recently, I helped a supplement company with a squeaky-clean image implement this same horror advertorial funnel. As a result, they went from $2k a day in profitable ad spend… to $12k a day.

What’s that?

You don’t like this advice? You don’t think it will work for you? It seems self-serving?

I can understand. But it’s all I got.

On the other hand, if more front-end sales is something you lust after… and the horror advertorial funnel sounds like something you could profit from… well, then that’s a problem I know how to solve. As a first step, sign up for my email newsletter. And then we can talk.

Business Prediction: Welcome to the Age of Aquarius

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“[In the Age of Aquarius,] the power is turning over to the individual, and giving the freedom for you to choose your own reality based on what aligns with your soul.”
—Adama Sesay, astrologer

I’d like to give you a business prediction/observation that’s as vague and as intriguing as a new astrological age:

Some time in the past, maybe after WWII, we entered Age of Stuff, aka Age of Taurus.

Frigidaires, Cadillacs, and Armani suits is how people spent their money, thinking that it would make them happy.
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Then some time later, perhaps around the end of the ’90s (that’s when I first heard about it), we entered the Age of Sagittarius, aka the Age of Experiences.

Amazing Thai food, swimming with the dolphins, a visit to Ernest Hemingway’s favorite bar in Key West.

I’d like to suggest the next step in the evolution of humanity. It started some time ago, but let’s say 2020, and it will only grow more bold and apparent in the coming years.

It is the Age of Aquarius aka the Age of Transformation.

The Age of Aquarius is not about the stuff you wear or drive… it is not about the stuff you’ve done and can brag about… but it is about who you are and what you can do.

Of course, this is a newsletter about marketing and copywriting. So for our purposes, the Age of Aquarius about stuff we can sell to give people the freedom to choose their own reality of who they are, or at least would like to become.

Hair extensions… personal fitness trainers… sailboat skipper courses… Joe Dispenza hypnotherapy seminars… tattoos… language learning apps… Masterclass subscriptions.

“Umm Bejako,” I hear you saying, “I don’t know if you noticed, but personal trainers and tattoos are nothing new.”

True. Same as Thai restaurants and trips to go diving in Egypt existed even while most people only focused on the stuff they owned… transformation products existed before the Age of Aquarius kicked into high gear.

The difference, if my observation is right, is that personal transformation is now becoming mainstream and the main way we spend our disposable income. So here’s another prediction:

While the Age of Stuff was defined by businesses like Cadillac and Versace… and while the Age of Experiences was defined by companies like MTV and Airbnb… this blooming Age of Transformation will have its own marquee brands.

Maybe Peloton… maybe Mindvalley… or who knows, maybe something you will create, starting today, using the amazingly transformative trainings you will find in future issues of my email newsletter.

The only two (plus one) points of your copy that people really care about

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I spent today sweating… smiling feebly at other people… and making lame jokes and wondering what I’d gotten myself into.

A weeklong sailing course, that’s what. On a boat, the whole seven days. Except today was the first day, so all we did was sit in the harbor and talk theory.

Theory. How to. For an entire day. ​​

That means I shifted around the deck to catch a bit of shade and to minimize the chances of heat stroke…

I nodded while meaningless nautical terms flew in one ear and out the other…

And I stifled a scream of desperation, just as it looked like we were done for the day, when yet another of my fellow students asked yet another question to clear things up and appear smart. And then watched with even more shock and horror as a followup question flew out of my own mouth also.

Tomorrow we’re supposed to go sailing, but I’m not feeling very excited. The theory day killed it for me.

“Why didn’t they take us out for a little tour first?,” I thought to myself. “It’s a lesson for the future. When I create an experience for people, I’ll make sure the first experience an entertaining demonstration.”

Except maybe it doesn’t matter all that much. Because I read in a psychology book that when human beings evaluate an experience, they only look at two points:

The emotional highlight… and the end.

Which means a weeklong cruise gets reduced to that run-in with the topless French twins in that hidden lagoon… and the quality of the lunch on the last day as you’re pulling back into harbor.

But in any case, the point stands:

When you create an experience, whether that’s a sales letter… a newsletter email… or a course… a few points carry an immoderate amount of weight:

1. The end.

2. The emotional highlight.

3. And the beginning. In the special case, that is, that your audience can walk or swim out of the experience you’re crafting.

Hypno-wizards and their willing victims

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Imagine a small, dark cell. There’s a light bulb swinging overhead. One man is seated at a table under the light bulb. Two men are standing over the seated man, and a few more sit in the shadows along the wall, watching the proceedings.

“Who else was involved in planning the robbery?” asks one of the standing men.

“It was me…” stammers the man at the table. “Well, we had talked about it the night before…”

The other standing man leans in. “Who is this ‘we’?”

The seated man looks up into the light and blinks over and over. “It was just me. Bjørn… I…”

“Bjørn was also involved in planning the robbery?”

Suddenly, one of the men sitting in the shadows coughs. He makes a show of crossing his legs in an unusual way. The parts of his legs beneath the knee form a clear letter X.

The man under the light bulb straightens up. “Nobody else was involved. I acted alone. My goal was to support the revolution.”

In 1951, a man named Palle Hardrup robbed a bank in Copenhagen. The robbery wasn’t his first, but it was the first one that went bad, and Hardrup killed two people. Soon after, he was arrested and interrogated.

During the interrogations, it became clear Hardrup might have been acting under the direction of somebody else.

That somebody else turned out to be Bjørn Nielsen, a self-taught hypnotist.

Over the next 10 years, the story slowly unfolded across Danish courthouses, prisons, and hospitals. Eventually, it even made it to the European Court of Human Rights.

The question was who was responsible for the robbery and the murders. Hardrup, who had confessed to the the crimes… Nielsen, who dozens of witnesses claimed had hypnotized Hardrup over the course of two years, and who still seemed to have total control over his hypno-puppet, each time the symbol X appeared in some way… or Hardrup and Nielsen both.

What do you think? I’ll tell you what Dan Kennedy thinks:

Dan thinks if you want to get rich, then be the wizard… and beware other wizards.

What Dan is saying is we all crave to give up responsibility in our lives. It’s a dangerous thing to allow yourself to do… but there is lots of money to be made in providing that service to other people.

And that’s what I think those Copenhagen hypnosis murders illustrate.

Human beings are extremely programmable.

We also have individual agency.

And if you ask me, those are two magnetic poles that cannot be reduced down to one.

This is something you might want to keep in mind… if you too have decided to get rich, the way I’ve finally done recently, for the first time in my life.

And in case you want to get educated about persuasion, marketing, and copywriting to help you in your quest to get rich… you might like my daily email newsletter.

Profit from your prospect’s lack of common sense… even if… you don’t deserve it!

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Here’s how a typical argument goes in the Bejakovic family—

My father [an economist by training and profession]:

“We are living in the best moment in history. We’ve got free education on every topic on Coursera… effective cholesterol-lowering drugs from Pfizer… and a Nespresso machine in every home! The most powerful kings of 500 years ago, or the wealthiest robber barons of 100 years ago, couldn’t dream of riches like these.”

Me [who also studied economics… but found it more heat than light, and dropped it for other pursuits]:

“Yeah, but people don’t seem so happy today. Maybe people were happier before we had Nespresso machines.”

Or maybe they were just the same. For example, here’s a quote by George Orwell, writing about Mein Kampf in 1940, 46 years before the first Nespresso machine was invented:

“Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.”

I’m not arguing for Fascism. But that other stuff, the stuff Orwell says about psychologically sound conceptions of life — that’s inarguable.

And if you’re writing sales copy, then you have to take it into account.

​​You have to tap into the dark, hidden, and often nonsensical parts of the human existence, at least intermittently. Because human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, and Nespresso machines.

History and sales results prove it.

Which is why I put together a list for myself, and for people who go through my Copy Riddles program, which I called The Dirty Dozen. I made this list by looking at successful sales copy, and stripping out the direct self-interest.

Whatever was left — well, my father wouldn’t understand that.

But you can. And you can profit from it.

You don’t even need my Dirty Dozen list. You can make a list like it yourself. It might be a long, lonely road… and you might doubt yourself along the way. But I’m sure you can do it.

Or of course, you can join the Copy Riddles army, when enlistment opens up again in a few weeks’ time (sign up here to hear from the recruiting office). We’ve got flags… loyalty parades… and thanks to some stuff I’ve been working on, we will soon have safety in numbers also.

Evergreen “wireless” fears

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Did you ever hear of “radio face”? It was a curious affliction that swept through households in England in 1925.

​​The background:

Radio had started to spread in the early 1920s. It became more and more popular to have one at home. As a result, radio programming started to explode like corn over a fire.

By 1925, many people found themselves leaning in to the loud speaker… straining to hear each crackling word of the news or the radio drama.

Finally, a companion who was ready to entertain all day long!

Radio seemed perfect. Until, that is, some of the female listeners noticed a worrisome thing. From an article I read:

“The strain of trying to catch every word of wireless broadcast constantly puckers the lines around a woman’s forehead, and draws more lines around the sides of her mouth.”

As a result, many women in England started to live in fear of “wireless wrinkles.”

“Concentration at the Earphones Brings Wrinkles to the Brow.”

Who knows, maybe they were right?

In any case, this made me think how evergreen the fear of “wireless” has been. You could use it in 1925… and also in 2021.

For example, over the past couple of years, I’ve written a lot of copy for a team of ecommerce guys.

One of the longest-running front-end advertorials that we’ve had going is about the fear of “wireless pickpockets.” The offer is an RFID blocking card you put in your wallet, to keep these wireless pickpockets from swiping your money… and giving you wrinkles from all the frowning you would do afterwards.

A few years ago, Stefan Georgi and Justin Goff ran a webinar, offering to critique copy. I submitted the “wireless pickpockets” advertorial.

Stefan and Justin looked at the advertorial tweaking the copy wouldn’t produce much improvement… but Justin had some tested-and-proven advice about the rest of the funnel:

* Add a lot of reason why copy for the first upsell — even though it was just more of the same RFID card.

I passed that golden info on to my clients. But as far as I know, they never implemented it. So maybe it will be useful to you instead, in case you or your clients also run some kind of ecommerce offer.

Anyways, Justin and Stefan put out two more webinars over the past few weeks. If you haven’t watched them yet, I might write more about them in the coming days… and tell you about any golden info that I find inside.

Meanwhile, I want to tell you about a cool newsletter. It’s called The Pessimists Archive. It’s where I found the above story about radio face and wireless wrinkles.

The whole newsletter is really just interesting newspaper cutouts from decades past. It shows you how many things never change… how many fears and appeals stay the same… how predictable human reactions can be, even century after century.

And you know what? This can be valuable if you are the type to track trends and profit from them.

​​So in case you want to check out news from the past that’s still news, here’s the link to the Pessimists Archive:

https://pessimistsarchive.substack.com/

Why adults crave drama so much

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I’m not sure I could do this every day. Or that I would want to.

I spent today maneuvering a tiny little sailboat. Sun sea wind.

I am more physically tired now than that time 10 years ago, when I thought it was a good idea to start going to a boxing gym.

But after three days of supposed “sailing” over the past week, which involved either a complete lack of wind or a complete lack of control, I got both wind and some control today. I even hung my ass out of the boat and lay down almost flat on top of the waves, two thirds of me hanging off the side, to keep the thing from capsizing. It worked.

(I still ended up capsizing a few times. They tell me that’s normal.)

But let me get to the point:

​​I’m glad I’m making progress handling the boat. But I’m not sure I could do this every day. I’m too adult. ​​This craving for speed and the spending of physical energy is a kids’ game. I’d rather read a book or watch a movie.

Which brings me to a valuable quote I want to share with you.

​​It’s from playwright David Mamet, who wrote a book about drama that all copywriters should read. (Itsa called Three Uses of the Knife.)

And in the book, David gives the following bit, which is both a rare explanation for why we adults crave drama so much… as well as a reminder to put it in your copy — or suffer the consequences:

“Children jump around at the end of the day, to expend the last of that day’s energy. The adult equivalent, when the sun goes down, is to create or witness drama — which is to say, to order the universe into a comprehensible form. Our sundown play/film/gossip is the day’s last exercise of that survival mechanism. In it we attempt to discharge any residual perceptive energies in order to sleep. We will have drama in that spot, and if it’s not forthcoming we will cobble it together out of nothing.”

The very first ad to do sex in advertising

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Albert Lasker, known as “the father of modern advertising,” called it one of the greatest and most important ads ever.

Partly, because it looked and sounded classy.

Partly, because it drove up sales.

But most of all, because it was the first ad to feature sex appeal.

I’m talking about the Woodbury’s Soap ad, which you can find below, if you are the curious type.

For me, it’s hard to get aroused by the sex in this ad. Yes, because I grew up with the Internet. But also, because the sex appeal in this ad was mainly targeted at women, and women and I have differing tastes.

Still, I get aroused by this ad for another reason:

The Woodbury’s ad is an example of a class of ads from the early 20th century, which were not really direct response ads the way we know them today… but which still featured a direct response offer.

For example, the Woodbury’s ad features an offer to write in and get a print of the beautiful painting in the ad, without the company logo or the ad copy. Oh, and you get a sample of the soap too, all for just 10¢ worth of coins or stamps.

The thing that’s interesting is that making this sale isn’t really the point of the ad. After all, this ad continued to run for many years after, without the direct response offer.

My guess is that the direct response mechanism initially served to tell J. Walter Thompson, the marketing agency behind this ad, how effective this ad was in terms of capturing readership, interest, and brand recognition.

Which I think is something you can use today as well.

As I’ve written before, we are entering an age where brand advertising and direct marketing blend. Not just for soap companies. For your own personal brand as well.

And if you do some brand awareness work… whether that’s a podcast appearance… or a livestream… or even a daily email in which you don’t have a product to sell…

It can make sense to put in an offer. Not the real thing you’re selling. Something else.

It can be free. It can also be quick and easy, without any back-end setup. And yet, it can help you gauge how effective your spiel was… and how valuable the channel in which you delivered it.

For example:

If you write me an email, I will direct you to a cool resource for learning more about classic ads like the Woodbury’s ad. These ads all hold great ideas that you can apply to your marketing today. And you can get them in a resource that’s available for free, online — and that I’ve never heard anybody talk about.

Like I said, just write me an email, and I’ll tell you what this resource is.

Oh, and here’s a sample of the Woodbury’s ad, all for just 0¢ worth of coins or stamps:

Proven: Change in perspective creates 900% improvement in thinking

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A few months ago, Edward de Bono died. He was somebody meaningful in my life because I read his Lateral Thinking book 15 years ago.

Lateral Thinking got into my head. It influenced how I do stuff like writing these emails. It made me generate more ideas before I commit to one… made me less critical of ideas as they pop up… made me integrate randomness and restrictions into my idea generation.

Anyways, I read an obit for de Bono in The Guardian today. And the following quote from de Bono came up:

“Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception.”

I was very excited when I read this. “Can this be true?” I thought. “If it is, then just imagine how valuable that would make a change of perspective!”

Now I’m no math wiz, but by my calculations it would mean that the right change of perspective would create something like a 900% increase in right thinking.

So for a split second, I thought about tracking down the studies that de Bono referred to. But those are probably as interesting as watching a slug try to cross a six-lane highway.

So instead, let me point you to another kind of proof… which de Bono approved of… which is much more convincing… and which might help you when you try to convince people of your own ideas:

https://bejakovic.com/chickensoup

Free business idea: 9 Chambers of Pain

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Here’s a free business idea for you to run with, if you so choose:

Just a little over a week ago, a new study was published by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh.

They studied over 21,000 patients who came for treatment at pain management clinics around Pittsburgh.

The scientists measured these poor people… probed them… interrogated them… and then fed all this data into a large tube-based computer.

And then they waited.

36 days later, the computer printed out a result:

There are exactly 9 types of chronic pain.

Such as group F (lower back pain radiating below the knee)… and group D (upper and lower back pain).

Each group varied in the location of pain… the severity of pain… as well as in the severity of other problems that went with the pain, like depression and anxiety.

So here’s my business idea for you:

You create a quiz. “Which unique type explains your chronic pain?”

People go through the quiz. You categorize them into one of 9 groups, based on their physical and emotional symptoms. For extra points, you can give it a Wu Tang flavor, and call it the 9 Chambers of Pain.

And then what?

Then you sell them something that helps them. It can be your own offer or an affiliate offer. For example:

Any kind of anti-inflammation supplement…

Or a course on meditation techniques…

Or a visit to a chiropractic clinic or some kind of other physical restructuring.

And here’s the incredible thing:

You can sell the same thing to all 9 groups. Of course, you say something like,

“Based on your unique scientifically-proven pain type… we recommend a free + shipping bottle of our doctor-formulated turmeric dust.”

As I’ve written before, this quiz => same offer funnel works like magic.

Because people like to feel unique… because they want a new understanding of their chronic problem… and because they aren’t very skeptical or critical when they get this new understanding.

Which is why RealDose Nutrition, the first big-name direct response company I ever worked with, built an 8-figure business in record time on the back of exactly the model I’ve just described to you.

And now, if you like, you can start doing the same. You already have the entire marketing concept. All you need is to decide which helpful product you want to sell… and to be quick, so other people don’t swipe this idea from right in front of your nose.

To end:

If you’d like more Wu Tang-flavored business idea, you best protect ya neck and sign up to my email newsletter here.