How to fake exciting discovery stories

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Tony Robbins once shared a stage with a knight’s suit of armor.

At one point during his talk, Tony got close to the knight. Terrible static appeared on his mic. When he walked away, the static stopped.

The next time Tony got close to the knight, terrible static shot up again. He stepped away. The static stopped.

The third time it was about to happen, people in the audience started shouting. “Don’t get close to the knight!”

It turned out later than an ambulance in the neighborhood was somehow messing with Tony’s sound equipment. Once the ambulance left, the sound problems disappeared. It wasn’t the knight at all.

The human brain needs causation like a hot dog needs mustard. “Terrible sound! What’s behind it? It must be the knight!”

This works really well much of the time.

Sometimes it goes wrong, like in the Tony Robbins story above.

And in rare cases of clever persuasion… it can be used to lead people by the nose. For example:

During a webinar last year, Parris Lampropoulos analyzed a sales letter. It was written by his most successful copy cub.

The lead starts off with a true story of a 104-year-old scientist who won the Nobel Prize for her discoveries related to brain stuff.

The gist was this old lady saying, “I feel sharper now than when I was 20!”

The sales letter goes on to talk about the woman’s discoveries… and how the supplement for sale ties into her amazing research.

Now rewind.

Did you catch that?

It’s the same trick as with the knight above, at least for my hypergullible brain.

Because when I read this sales letter, my brain concluded, “Oh, she feels sharper because of her brain stuff discoveries. And this supplement is a way for me to tap into that, and get back what little I had when I was 20.”

But the sales letter doesn’t say that anywhere. The quaint old lady could have been feeling great because of her genetics… or because of her daily regimen of drinking beet juice. We just don’t know.

What we do know is that, when you’re writing copy, it’s best to have a genuine breakthrough coupled with an exciting discovery story.

But if you don’t have that… you can cheat. Just roll your breakthrough onto the stage… and then bring out an exciting story that’s not really about this discovery. Put them next to each other. Your prospect’s brain will do the rest.

Now rewind.

Did you catch that?

This whole article was a way of eliminating people who aren’t interested in persuasion or copywriting. Since you made it to the bottom, maybe this stuff interests you. In that case, you might like to sign up for my email newsletter.

A completed sale: more like a male or a female orgasm?

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A few weeks ago, I opted in on a website for an ebook on buying a sailboat.

I can’t sail, by the way. The only time I’ve ever been on a sailboat was a one-hour episode on a dinghy in Tel Aviv… which ended with my friend and me running the boat onto a crowded beach.

But back to marketing:

I opted in. I then got an email with the ebook. The content was fun, well-researched, and informative. I was ready for more.

But more never came. Until two weeks later, when a second email arrived.

By that point, my sailboat-buying forest fire had cooled to a well-controlled stovetop flame. I couldn’t even remember the sender’s name any more. I barely skimmed the second email and didn’t click any of the links.

You see my point.

In the strange world of direct response marketing, perhaps the strangest thing is the value of recency.

​​The more recently somebody expressed interest in something, the better a prospect they make. So far, that might make sense.

But where it gets strange is this holds even when somebody just bought.

So for example, had I bought a book on getting a first sailboat… that would actually be the ideal time to offer me a second book, on pretty much the same topic.

Maybe this seems strange because marketing has been a male-dominated world. On some Freudian level, maybe we men compare it to our own experiences of satisfaction in another field. Because the male orgasm leaves its owner sated, at least for a while.

But it seems to me a completed sale is more like a female orgasm. From what I’ve seen in my limited sexual experience, that event makes its owner immediately eager for more of the same.

Maybe this is something to keep in mind if you’re scheduling your followup campaign. It might require getting out of your own head a bit.

To help you out, here’s a related, somewhat politically incorrect quote from an ancient book I’m reading:

“I have again and again heard ladies, who come to visit us, say that all other delights in the world are but toys in comparison with that which a woman enjoyeth, whenas she hath to do with a man. […] I have heard say that one cock sufficeth unto half a score hens, but that half a score men can ill or hardly satisfy one woman.”

If you like sexual analogies, you won’t like my daily email newsletter. Otherwise, you can try it out here.

Hard-work positioning

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Three quick positioning stories for good night:

In 1960, Crest toothpaste had a 10% share of the market.

Not bad, but not great either. After all, Crest at that time was the only toothpaste with fluoride, which helped prevent cavities. But nobody cared, or nobody believed Procter & Gamble.

So P&G approached the American Dental Association. They showed the dentists a bunch of science. Crest was suddenly “the only toothpaste with the endorsement of the ADA.”
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​​Within two years, sales of Crest tripled. And Crest became the no. 1 toothpaste brand in The Land of The Fruit Stripe Gum.

Story two I won’t tell in detail. Because if you’ve been in marketing for a bit, you’ve probably heard how Tom Monaghan used smart positioning to create a billion-dollar brand out of a bad product.

The bad product was a low-quality pizza. The smart positioning was to say, “Delivered in 30 minutes or it’s free.” The brand was Domino’s.

Third and final story, also about pizza:

John Schnatter started out making pizza in an oversized closet. The pizza was good and John’s chain grew to 1000 locations across the country. But you ain’t seen nothing yet…

Because in a meeting with positioning guru Jack Trout, Schnatter mentioned offhandedly how he used Dino’s sauce.

“Dino’s sauce?” asked Trout. “But Dino only sells to mom-and-pop shops. He doesn’t sell to chains.”

Trout called up the Dino in question to confirm. It was true.

So Trout said, that’s your story. Papa John’s new positioning became, “Better ingredients, better pizza.” The company grew five-fold in the years following the positioning change.

There’s a common positioning strategy hidden in each of those stories. You probably see it. But in case you don’t, then you might like to get on my daily email newsletter. That’s where I share these kinds of stories — but I also spell out the hard-work lessons hidden within.

Zoolander-safe direct response levers

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Maybe you know the graveyard scene from the absurd comedy Zoolander:

Derek Zoolander, a really really good-looking male model played by Ben Stiller, meets former hand model JP Prewett, played by David Duchovny.

They’re meeting in a graveyard at night. Because Duchovny has a dangerous secret to reveal… male models committed all the biggest assassinations in history! And Derek is next in line.

“But why male models?” Derek asks.

“Because they are perfect,” Duchovny says. Male models are in peak physical condition… they get access to the most exclusive locations… and they don’t think for themselves.

Derek ponders on this for a minute. And then he scrunches up his forehead, pouts out his lips, and asks,

“But why male models?”

Don’t judge.
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Because for years, I was asking one question in the same stupid way. And then earlier this week, I heard a marketing talk by Dan Kennedy.

The subject was segmentation. It’s not a complicated concept:

You have your audience or your space of prospects. But instead of marketing to everybody… you market to only a segment of the whole.

“But why segmentation?”

Lean in Derek. I’ll tell you the explanations I’d heard for years.

Segmentation is the only way to make expensive direct mail work. You only pay to mail to people who are most likely to buy your offer.

“Ok, go on…”​​

Segmentation is also a smart way to avoid pissing off your email subscribers. Don’t send them stuff they don’t care about, and they won’t unsubscribe.

“I see…”

But I didn’t really. I kept pondering on this many times over the years.

And like Derek Zoolander, each time I scrunched up my forehead, pouted out my lips, and asked once again,

“But why segmentation?”

Well, it finally clicked. Or rather, I heard Dan Kennedy explain it, and it pierced my thick male-model skull.

The real reason you segment is to increase response.

Because when you segment your list, you know something extra about the people you are writing to. You can take that extra info and stuff it into your message.

For example:​
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R​ather than mailing out a sales letter with the headline, “How to increase your IQ by 30 points in the next 90 days”…

Your headline can read, “How beautiful but dimwitted male models can get equally beautiful brains before Milan Fashion Week 2021.”

When you segment, your message becomes more targeted. Your copy becomes more specific. And your response becomes more up.

This is just one of the many simple direct response levers that even Zoolander could pull to make an unprofitable campaign profitable… or to make a worthless business worthwhile.

Which brings me to my offer of partnership and investment opportunity from yesterday. In case you didn’t read it, you can read the archived version here.

Cash buyers list

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In the real estate investing space, one common strategy is called wholesaling:

You find a property that looks vacant, with overgrown grass out front, and maybe with notices piling up on the front door.

You somehow track down the owner, who is often living out of state, and thinks this house is a nuisance. So you make him an offer to buy.

If he agrees, you get the property under contract. This means you have the right to buy it.

And then what?

Then you go to your “cash buyers list” — your list of other real estate investors.

You explain the deal you have. And you find an investor who is willing to buy this property from you for more money than what the contract says you have to pay. You then keep the difference.

Yesterday, I talked about going to other industries to find unique ideas that work well. And the first thing that popped into my mind is the cash buyers list.

That’s because I heard a very successful real estate investor talking about it recently. He said that most investors are short-sighted. They only treat their cash buyers list as just that, a list of people who have cash to buy a wholesale contract.

But a cash buyers list, this investor said, is so much more powerful. According to him, it’s actually the no. 1 asset in real estate investing.

Your cash buyers list can provide you with everything you need. More deals… learning and training opportunities… talent if you’re hiring… partnerships if you want ’em… solutions for when you’re in trouble. Whatever you need, tap into your cash buyers list, and results will follow.

So I got to thinking what a cash buyers list would look like outside the real estate space. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much creativity to map real estate investing to the online business world.

The online business world also has dilapidated, vacant properties… it has easy ways to fix those properties and flip them once they’re more valuable… and it also has a range of people who might want to get involved in this process at various stages.

Maybe that sounds abstract. Maybe this will be more concrete:

Over the past five and some years, I’ve learned a lot about copywriting and online marketing. But I’ve mostly used that knowledge to make other people money.

So I had a vision. It involved finding blogs or websites that have something to them — traffic, proof, content — but that are under-performing.

I imagined taking control of such online properties and using everything I’ve learned about direct marketing and copywriting to get them to perform. Then either sitting on that property and collecting rent… or selling it to somebody who wants it, for enough money, and moving on to the next thing.

This sounds great to me. But here’s the trouble:

Doing all this can take a lot of money, time, and work.

I am not interested in supplying all of that myself. That’s why I am starting my own “cash buyers list.”

So here’s my offer to you for tonight:

If you are interested in buying a profitable online business down the line…

Or if you are interested in putting down money ahead of time for a fix-and-flip blog or online store, so you can take a part of the profits it might one day generate…

Or if you have some unique skill — media buying, design, research, technology — and you want to shoulder some of the work of finding and sprucing up various online fixer-uppers…

Then I’d like to talk to you. I mean for real, on the phone or on Skype or Zoom. I want to find out what you’re looking for, and how I can help you get there. Write me an email and we can go from there.

I’ve forgotten dozens of unique and phenomenally effective ideas

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“All great advancements in businesses come from outside the box, not inside the box. I get to do it. What I get to do as a consultant, I get to go over and work with industry A. And because everybody’s myopic, while I’m over there I notice something that’s phenomenally effective. Hardly anybody else outside their business is doing it but could be doing it. I borrow it from industry A and I take it over and I teach it to industry B. And while I’m over there, I notice something they’re doing that hardly anybody else is doing but could be doing. So I borrow it from industry B and I take it back and I teach it to industry A. It’s a disreputable way to make a living, but I’m a high school graduate.”
– Dan Kennedy

A couple weeks ago, I wrote how copywriting has given me a great business education. It’s allowed me to look behind the curtain at dozens of successful enterprises.

Unfortunately, unlike Dan Kennedy, I am much more than a high school graduate. In the 25 years I spent in the school system, I became an expert in passing tests. It never occurred to me to think of how I could apply what I was learning to real life.

This short-sighted behavior has followed me around like a hungry dog. Example:

Since I started writing copy for money, I’ve worked in dozens of different industries. Like I said, it’s been a great education. But I never did anything with the phenomenally effective things that were unique in each industry. I never even wrote them down. And I’m sure I’ve forgotten most of them.

So I’m telling you now, to keep you from wasting opportunities like I did:

Start a list right now. When you come across a good idea in a specific industry, put it on your list. And think about how you could use it in other places.

I started such a list just a few days ago.

​​I kicked my list off with a few profitable things I’ve seen in ecommerce and real estate, two industries I’ve been writing a lot for. And — better never than late – I’ve already got a good business idea out of it. If you like, I will tell you all about it in my post tomorrow.

Or you can get that same post, ahead of time, if you are subscribed to my email newsletter. Here’s the optin page.

Creating your own luck as a copywriter

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Two days ago, it was snowing heavily in the town where I’ve been for the past few weeks.

That’s unusual. The place is at the seaside, and the weather is usually sunny and mild, even in winter.

But the last few days, no. It’s been gray, cold, and ugly.

That’s why this morning, I had trouble getting out the door for my usual “wake me up” walk.

“Look at it,” I told myself. “The wind is blowing the shutters down. Dark clouds are gathering above. I’m sure it will be freezing.”

Somehow, I didn’t listen to this reasoning. I went out.

The first thing I noticed was how warm it was. From last night — around 3 degrees Celsius — the temperature had jumped to about 15. (From high 30s to around 60F, if you only do American.)

There was a strong wind blowing from the south. I guess it brought in the warmth.

But the wind did something else also. I saw it when I got down to the seashore.

The normally calm sea, which never makes waves bigger than a foot or so, was crashing against the shore in big swells. The streets nearest the sea were flooded with water.

And each time a new wave broke against the stone rampart that separates the sea from the town, a 3-4 meter geyser of sea water gushed up into the air, and then collapsed on the other side, onto the road.

I, a person who is rarely impressed or enthused, thought it looked spectacular.

The few other people who were out at 7am on a Saturday seemed to think the same. They were standing spellbound, staring at the water show.

As I was walking home from this, I remembered something I read in William Zinsser’s On Writing Well.

“The nonfiction writer has to create his own luck,” Zinsser wrote. He was talking about traveling to unusual places and following the story wherever it leads you.

I don’t consider myself a writer. But Zinsser’s advice applies even if you do marketing or write sales copy for a living.

Because inspiration for a breakthrough hook (or just a daily email) can come from anywhere. But it’s unlikely to come from the same places everybody else has already milked — the same articles, blogs, and YouPorn comment threads.

So go and create your own luck. Read things other people aren’t reading. Go to places other people aren’t going. Or at the very least, get out the door, even if looks ugly outside.

If you’d like to read something few other people read, you can subscribe to my daily email newsletter.

“… I want to think about it”

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In a private and exclusive Facebook group I am lucky to be a member of, marketer Travis Sago asked the following:

“How do you respond to, ‘I want to think about it?'”

Travis was talking about doing one-on-one sales, rather than persuading the masses.

His question ties in nicely to my post from yesterday. That was about A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga, and the failure he experienced when trying to sell in person.

So ask yourself. How would you respond if a prospect wants time to think about buying whatever you’re selling?

If you know online marketing, you might spike up the urgency.

“Only 72 left in stock!”

“The timer is ticking! Once it runs out, this offer will be taken down!”

“The price will go up after midnight!”

That’s not what Travis recommends. Instead, this is what he says:

“Take all the time you need. What had you considering this at all?”

That’s very clever and nuanced. It sums up, in two sentences, much wisdom that came from negotiation coach Jim Camp. Camp talked about things like going for the no… eliminating your own neediness… and using open-ended questions to get your adversary to paint a vision of his own pain.

Camp’s system was used in big ticket, multi-million dollar negotiations. Travis is using it to sell $5k and $10k and $50k offers. He says this approach has made him millions, and I believe him.

So now you know an effective way to deal with an important objection in one-on-one sales.

But what if you’re doing online mass marketing, or writing sales copy? Can you profit from Travis’s laid-back system? Or would using it be suicide?

After years of slow thinking, I have one or two thoughts on the matter. And maybe, I will share them some time soon, after the timer runs out. If you want to hear what I have to say, you can sign up for my email newsletter.

Bencivenga’s salesmanship mistake

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Master copywriter Gary Bencivenga once shared a personal story of failure:

Back in the day, Gary was working at a small direct response ad agency called Callas, Powell, Rosenthal, and Bloch.

They put out an ad in the Wall Street Journal with the headline,

“Announcing a direct response advertising agency that will guarantee to outpull your best ad.”

If you’ve been reading my writing for a while, you know how well this ad did. It attracted qualified leads like Oregon attracts aging hippies. Suddenly, crowds of qualified business owners wanted to work with CPRB. Of course, most still had to be closed in person.

So Gary went out to meet one such business owner at the guy’s office.

“Thanks for coming out,” said the businessman. “Now, tell me why I should work with you.”

(Pause for a second. And ask yourself, how would you answer this question? Do it for real. You might be ahead of Gary B, because…)

Gary, using everything he’d learned about persuasion in print, gave the businessman a show.

He listed all the proof showing how CPRB produced results… how they had worked out the perfect formula for creating winners… how they were so confident in their results that they would back them up with a creative “Either it succeeds, or you pay nothing” guarantee.

Gary talked for an eternity. He laid out his entire, irrefutable case. And then he dropped back into his seat, short of breath and a little damp from the effort.

“Sounds good,” the businessman said. “Let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you.”

​​He never did contact Gary or Gary’s agency again.

It turns out Gary fell victim to one of the classic blunders of salesmanship and marketing, the most famous of which is, “Never sell ammunition on subscription.”

But only slightly less famous is, well, let me save that for tomorrow. And I’ll tell you what Gary could have done instead, for much better effect.

But let me ask you a question:

What got you interested in reading this post to begin with? Think about that for a second. And maybe you will come up with a reason why you want to read more similar content… and why you would like to subscribe to my daily email newsletter.

How to write “killer copy” in any market… even if… you don’t deserve it!

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Of course you do deserve to write killer copy, right? You read the right books… you hand copy successful sales letters… you listen to what more experienced copywriters have to say.

But let’s say you’re still not getting results. What could be missing?

Here’s a bit of wisdom from the Prince of Print himself, the self-aggrandizing legend, Sir Gary of Halbert.

Gary once wrote a sales letter for a sexy sex guide. A few of the bullets:

* Three sure-fire ways to tell if your spouse or “significant other” has had sex with someone else in the last 24 hours!

* What lesbians know about oral sex which men don’t… and… why more men today are losing their women to other women!

* What (and how) a man can learn about his woman’s masturbation secrets… which will… supercharge HIS sex life!

Intriguing stuff… but the headline is 80% of the sale, right? And that’s what I want to quickly share with you today. Gary’s headline read:

“How To Have “Killer Sex” At Any Age… Even If… You Don’t Deserve It!”

It’s the tail of that headline that caught my eye.

Because if somebody’s a good prospect for your “How to” direct response product… then they’ve almost certainly got feelings of defectiveness and low self-worth. At least as regards that specific problem.

They’ve tried solving the problem before. They haven’t succeeded. They can only take that disgust and frustration in one of two places. Inwards or outwards.

Often it’s inwards.

And if you use that — even just by calling it out, like Gary did in his headline — it could make all the difference. You could be on your way to producing truly killer copy. In any market.

Sounds good?

But maybe you still feel unworthy. Maybe you feel you haven’t done all those things I listed at the top. You can fix that. And quickly. To start, click here and sign up for my daily newsletter, all about copywriting and marketing wisdom.