How to exploit your customers’ compulsion to gamble

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Gambling is much like sex.

It seems to be a fundamental human compulsion.

And it doesn’t require any justification other than its inherent excitement.

The thing is, sex is well-exploited in marketing. Gambling, I haven’t seen as much.

But it can be done.

Here’s one example, from marketing and copywriting legend Joe Sugarman.

In his “HOT” magazine ad, Joe was promoting a membership club called Consumers Hero. Members of the club would get the opportunity to buy refurbished goods at a steep discount.

Most of the stuff wasn’t too impressive — clock radios, microwaves, electric can openers.

But occasionally, Consumers Hero had a really great deal — like a TV for only $39.95 — which was only available in small numbers.

In this case, a segment of Consumers Hero members would be selected in a kind of lottery. These chosen members would be the only ones who got the mailing inviting them to buy the great deal.

My guess is that if anybody got a mailing saying “YOU’VE BEEN CHOSEN TO BUY THIS TV AT A GREAT DISCOUNT,” they would be much more likely to actually buy, just by virtue of knowing they’d “won” the opportunity.

Which is all well and good — if your product inherently allows you to turn it into a lottery.

But what if you’re not in that position?

Fear not. Playing on your customers’ compulsion to gamble can still increase sales.

Here’s another Joe Sugarman story:

Joe once wrote an ad promoting a computer. He ran it around the time of the SuperBowl.

The ad basically said, if the Bears win the SuperBowl, you get this computer at 50% off. If they lose, the price stays as it is. And here’s the outcome, in Joe’s own words:

“There was a lineup of people — we had a retail store — there was a literally a lineup of people all the way around the block waiting to pick up their computer that they were getting for 50% off. The funny part about it was that we were making a nice profit on that as well.”

And there you have it.

Even if you’re not selling collectibles or trading cards or something that has a lottery aspect to it, you can still use gambling simply as a way to run a sale. The fact that the sale might actually not happen will only drive up interest.

The reason why that happens is another topic, for another time.

For now, if you need help writing those ads that announce a lottery-like sale, you might like to take a chance on the following offer:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The positioning lesson of the involuntary Nazi salute

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A few days ago, I rewatched Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

It’s dark and dry comedy set during the Cold War. Much of it happens in the War Room at the Pentagon.

The President and all his advisors are there, trying to prevent an accidentally triggered nuclear disaster that will wipe all life off the surface of the planet.

Among the President’s advisors, there is Dr. Strangelove himself. He’s a wheelchair-bound former Nazi scientist who now works for the US government.

Dr. Strangelove is loyal to his new American overlords.

He tries to serve them well.

But there are things he cannot control.

Like his prosthetic right arm, which fights with him during the entire movie. And in the final climactic scene, while Strangelove is proposing a plan to preserve the United States, his mechanical arm springs up into a Nazi salute of its own will. It even tries to strangle the good doctor when he forces it to stop saluting.

Now, I’m sure this mechanical arm can be a metaphor for many things.

But the one that struck me was simply one of the main rules of positioning, straight out of the original book by Al Ries and Jack Trout. And that rule is:

“If you want to be successful in love or in business, you must appreciate the importance of getting into the mind first.”

In other words, the first cut is the deepest.

That’s true in political ideology…

In actual romance​…

And, as Ries and Trout say, in business as well.

Once you successfully occupy a good position in your customers’ minds, you are probably in for life (unless you really get careless). Even if your customers try to defect…

They own arm will (figuratively) spring up and choke them back into place.

That’s an enviable place to be in. ​​

So how do you get into your prospects’ minds first, so you can create this kind of loyalty?

Well, there are several, equally important ingredients.

And I’m afraid I can only help with one of them, and that’s good sales copy.

If that’s what you’re looking for, then here’s a good way to avoid a real crisis:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

8 tired but effective sales cliches

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A word of warning:

You don’t wanna use too many cliches in your sales copy. (They’ll roll right off, like water off a duck’s back.)

But there are exceptions.

Some phrases are just so powerful that it doesn’t seem to matter how much they’ve been overused.

Here’s a collection of a few such cliches, taken from a couple of winning magalogs written by one of the most successful copywriters working today, Parris Lampropoulos:

1. “But that’s not all”

Once you’ve wowed your readers with an amazing benefit, you don’t want to let them sit and ruminate on it. You gotta keep ’em reading. And that’s what this phrase will do. (Its more proleish cousin, “But wait! There’s more…” might be a little too much these days.)

2. “A whopping 34%”

Is 34% good? Or not? Don’t let the reader wonder or draw his own conclusion. Whop him over the head with the statistic so he knows what the point is.

3. “The truth about X”

This isn’t a cliche that’s used by civilians, but copywriters and Internet marketers use it, and use it a lot. Because it works. People love secrets, and they want to be in on the know.

4. “What they found amazed them”

Back in 1942, when Victor Schwab wrote How to Write a Good Advertisement, he noted that the word “amazing” had long been overused, but it still seemed to have some pulling power. And so it continues, 80 years later.

5. “If you’re sick and tired of X”

I’m sick and tired of people using this phrase. But it’s so compact, and it gets the point across so effectively that it will probably never die.

6. “We’re putting our money where our mouth is”

Where else would you put it?

7. “We’ll refund every penny you paid”

I’m not sure this qualifies as a cliche. But it certainly seems to be a common trope in advertisements. It works because it’s specific and it paints a picture.

8. “The most amazing breakthrough in X ever”

Yep, making the most amazing promise in the history of advertising still works. However, be warned. This appeared in the close of the sales letter, not in the beginning.

And there you have it.

Eight amazingly easy ways to write just like one of the greatest copywriters of all time.

Of course, you might need some meat to connect these cliches if you do decide to use them.

And in case that’s not your core competency, or you’re really looking to improve ROI, you might find a  win-win solution in the following offer:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

An open letter to those bombarded by information

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Here’s a pop quiz for you. What do…

Michelle Obama…

Dave Chappelle…

And Spike Lee…

All have in common?

Take a moment and get past your first gut reaction. No? Nothing else comes to mind? Here’s the answer then:

All three of these cultural figures have publicly complained about being “bombarded with information.”

Of course, it’s not just the three of them.

This information bombardment thing has become a big cultural cliche, and thousands of people are out there right now, on Facebook and Twitter, repeating the same line.

Which ​probably means this idea of being bombarded with information — if if ever was true — is not very accurate any more.

​​In that case, it’s ripe for being replaced by a different, more useful point of view. And just in time, here’s A-list copywriter Richard Armstrong on the matter:

“It makes no more sense to say we are bombarded with information than to say a fish is bombarded with water.”

In Richard’s point of view, we are NOT bombarded with information.

Instead, we’re swimming in it.

We’re living in it.

And to a large extent, we are actually made of it.

The fact is, we’re all adapting very quickly to the increasing quantities of information around us.

Most of us realize on some level that all sources of information — newspapers, personal blogs, online forums, Facebook ads — are biased and are trying to sell us something (even if it’s just a point of view).

The thing is, it doesn’t seem to matter too much.

That’s because we are not independent fortresses trying to protect ourselves from information grenades…

Instead, we are spongy organisms that soak up information all the time, based on what we find tasty.

I’ll stop with this post here, because I am worried it’s getting too abstract.

But this philosophical discussion does have very practical applications. And if you want to know what those are, and how you can use them to communicate more swimmingly with your audience, you might like my upcoming book:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Making money is even easier than achieving nuclear fusion

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How’s this for overachievement?

Little Jackson Oswalt daylights as a normal 12-year-old from Tennessee.

He lives with his parents, goes to school (I presume), and works hard on keeping his moppy hair out of his face.

After hours, however, this pre-adolescent is a bonafide nuclear scientist.

No joke.

The kid converted a playroom in his parents’ home into his own little laboratory.

And using parts off eBay and open source plans from some nuclear scientist website…

He actually seems to have built a working nuclear reactor.

If this is confirmed by the nuclear powers-that-be, Jackson will go down in the record books as the youngest person to ever achieve nuclear fusion.

I bring this story up to illustrate how easy it’s become to do formerly difficult things.

I mean, I’m sure this kid is smart.

But 10 or 20 years ago, the knowledge and parts he needed to build his own working nuclear reactor simply weren’t available publicly.

And 50 years ago, it took teams of the world’s most able scientists — who had access to the most ridiculous resources — to do what this kid did in his playroom.

Of course, this also applies if you’re running a business today.

Many tasks that used to be impossible or unreachably expensive are now free or trivially cheap.

Having your own website.

Making payments online.

Sending additional advertising to your customers at no cost.

Sourcing and delivering your products.

In other words, it’s a great time if you have a business. Much of the technical and ugly stuff has been taken care of for you.

What’s left is the need to build relationships with your customers, and to persuade people to do what you want.

This stuff can be difficult.

Fortunately, not as difficult as achieving nuclear fusion.

Hell, even I can do it. And if you want some of the insights I’ve gained by helping big direct response businesses build relationships and persuade customers, you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

How Trump outsmarted Mueller

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During the last election, I spent a lot of time reading Scott Adams’s blog.

Adams was one of the few people to bet on Trump very early. And as Trump kept winning, first the primaries, then the election itself, Adams often talked about “cognitive dissonance” — that disorienting feeling when external evidence contradicts our mental models of how the world works.

Well, there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance floating around the Internet today, following the release of the Mueller findings over the weekend.

People simply cannot figure out what went wrong, and how it is that Trump isn’t already under indictment or even in jail.

Well, I’ll tell you how.

It’s because Trump outsmarted Mueller. He was ahead of Mueller every step of the way. He had the Democrats by the nose and Mueller looking in all the wrong places.

And you know how Trump outsmarted them all?

It’s straight out of Limitless. He used a new smart drug called Reviva (which he also used during the election). According to Trump, “Your brain deteriorates as you get older, this pill keeps my brain young & sharper than ever.”

Ok, it’s time to take a moment to breathe.

None of the story above is true — well, except for the cognitive dissonance surrounding the Mueller findings.

The rest of it — the bit about Trump gobbling down a designer smart pill — is something I’ve just read in a very successful, currently running advertorial.

And here’s why I bring it up.

An ad like this could never run on TV.

These days, it also cannot run on Facebook or Google.

And yet I’ve seen this same ad a half dozen times over the past few weeks.

No FTC injunction. No White House cease-and-desist order. Nobody to stop whoever is running these ads from making mountains of golden, shiny shekels. How is this possible?

It’s simple:

​​Email drops.

In other words, paying for placement in an email newsletter (in this case, Newsmax).

Email drops still seem to be a kind of Wild West of advertising. They make it possible to reach large numbers of people, often using the kind of copy you want (instead of what Facebook wants). And that’s why they can be a great option for advertisers who are looking for new (or alternate) sources of traffic.

Of course, you don’t have to use email drops to sell shit products.

And you don’t have to tell lies to sell whatever it is you are selling.

You can also use email drops to successfully sell decent products with more-or-less ethical marketing. And if this is something you’re interested in, you might find valuable ideas in my upcoming book:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The bully, the charismatic, and the invisible salesman on Facebook

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“In my experience, there are basically three types of salesmen: the bully, the charismatic, and the invisible man.”
— Mark Ford

Over the past few months, I’ve been writing a lot of copy for a client in the ecommerce space.

Their typical funnel goes like this:

Facebook ad -> advertorial -> product page

I’ve been handling the FB ads and the advertorials for a bunch of this client’s products. And it’s been going well. But I recently got some feedback.

It seems some of our FB ads have been getting rejected. In the client’s own words:

“We’re getting a few disapprovals here and there for calling out the user. I don’t agree with it but seems everytime we mention the word ‘you’ even if it’s not a direct call out some reviewers will disapprove.”

So what’s going on?

In a nutshell, it seems Facebook is trying to prevent copy that acts like the “bully salesman” in Mark Ford’s quote above.

By Mark’s definition, that’s the salesman who “succeeds by pressing you so hard that you make a purchase just to make him go away.”

One trivial way that Facebook seems to be reigning in this type of copy is by singling out the word “you,” like in the ads I’ve been writing.

But according to million-dollar copywriter Justin Goff, Facebook also seems to be rejecting clickbaity, fear-laden, “punch-em-in-the-gut” sales letters.

So is this the end of direct response marketing on Facebook?

Not necessarily.

As Mark Ford says above, there are still two other ways to make sales through a combination of personality (charismatic type), stories (both charismatic and invisible types), and indirect claims (invisible type).

So for example, Justin also told the story of one marketer he knows.

She had a long-running VSL that Facebook had started rejecting.

So she wrote a new VSL.

And instead of the usual doom and gloom, she made it softer, kinder, and gentler — like a friend giving you advice.

Facebook approved, to the extent where the new sales page was performing better than the old one.

Promising.

In my personal case, I’ve done something similar:

I’ve simply focused on that old standby, pure story telling, with little or no obvious selling.

In other words, I’ve removed that offensive word “you” by focusing on the harmless word “I”…

And then telling people to click through if they want to learn more.

It’s working at the moment. Which might interest you in case you’re planning on running offers on cold Facebook traffic.

And if you are running such offers, and you want help with the copy, get in touch with me here and we can talk.

How to extend your tentacles into your customers’ minds

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Earlier today, I was staring in disbelief at my laptop.

It had just finished rebooting, when I realized I had lost a bunch of important files.

The text editor I use, which normally saves all sessions when it’s being shut down, malfunctioned for some reason. And after my laptop restarted, I found the text editor didn’t save about 10 pages’ worth of notes, todos, and ideas, which I had been accumulating over the space of many months.

I wasn’t angry or even surprised when this happened.

But I did feel strangely lightheaded and disoriented.

The question is, why would I have such a reaction?

Well, maybe my laptop experience today is a good illustration of what philosopher Andy Clark calls the “extended mind.”

In Clark’s view, our mind is not just in our heads.

It is also distributed in our laptops, our smart phones, and pieces of paper we use for notes. And if that’s true, then I had a part of my mind amputated today. No wonder I felt light-headed.

But here’s the thing:

If you believe Andy Clark, then it’s not just gadgets and pencils and paper that extend our minds.

It’s also the regular interactions we have with other people.

That’s one reason why it can be so painful to have a romantic breakup, or to lose a close friend or family member. Literally, a part of your own mind has been lobotomized.

Which is kind of sad in these real-life situations…

But we’re not here to mope. Instead, we’re here to talk about marketing and sales and making money.

And if you want to do make money, then you should start getting in touch with your clients or customers regularly.

Over time, you will literally start being a part of their mind as they continue to hear from you.

And if you do a good-enough job, they will actually feel a tiny pang of pain or anxiety in case they don’t hear from you as expected.

So how do you do a good-enough job communicating with clients and customers?

I’m glad you asked, because I’ve got some opinions on this matter. And I’ll share them in my upcoming book on email marketing. Which you can get for free, if you sign up for it in time over here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Where will you be in March 2091?

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Right now, Elon Musk’s cherry red Tesla Roadster is cruising through outer space, somewhere beyond the orbit of Mars. A dummy named Starman is sitting inside the car, wearing a pressure suit and listening to David Bowie.

Musk launched his car into space last year, Starman dummy and all, as part of a test launch of his SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Now, Elon Musk is clearly a smart guy.

But there are lots of other people in the world who are as smart as he is.

And yet, he’s the only one who has managed to make electric cars sexy…

And to then send them into space on a rocket built by his own private company.

In other words, there is something to be said for thinking big.

The more I learn about business, the more I realize many people do not think big enough.

Again, many people out there are smart. Many of them have honed valuable skills or expertise. And many are willing to work hard.

And yes, all of these ingredients are necessary.

But for making a big success, you also have to develop the habit of thinking bigger than you’ve been used to.

This can be surprisingly difficult.

And I feel that, past a certain point, it’s really the only thing that distinguishes people who have enormous success — like Elon Musk — from those who don’t achieve very much.

Now, I’m sure there are lots of psychological strategies you can use to get yourself to think bigger.

But ultimately, I think it comes down to a simple decision.

You can start to think bigger.

So why not start it now?

Anyways, that’s my pep talk for this Friday. In case you decide to start thinking bigger with your business, and you want help with marketing, you might get some good ideas from the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

And one final point before I take off:

The starbound Tesla Roadster is on an elliptical trajectory around the sun.

The next time it gets close to Earth, it will be 2091.

The question is, where are you going to be then?

Severed ear fills a gaping hole for UK landscaper

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It seems Dr. Evil is going to prison.

I’m talking about Brendan McCarthy, aka Dr. Evil, of Dr. Evil’s Body Modification Emporium in Wolverhampton, UK.

His trial just concluded, and it seems he will be off to jail for 40 months.

He pleaded guilty to removing several ears, nipples, and bits of tongue of willing clients, without a surgical license or any skill in treating possible adverse reactions. (In Dr. Evil’s defense, he did stop short of removing toes and fingers, which some clients also requested.)

Now if this story makes you mildly queasy, you might be wondering, why would anybody willingly have their ear removed?

Well, we know the answer, at least in the case of Ezechiel Lott, a landscaper from the West Midlands who had Dr. Evil sever his ear.

“It’s because of one-upmanship,” Ezechiel says. “You see somebody who has something extreme, and want to go one up on it.”

Now, I’ve personally never done any kind of modification to my body (excepting an accidental run in with a butter knife in my final year of college).

But I always thought people were motivated to get tattoos or those loopy earplugs or skin branding as a kind of positive expression of their personality.

I should have known better.

People are frequently much more motivated by a fear or insecurity than by gain or benefit.

So they cut off their ears because they’re afraid of not being unique enough.

Or they buy testosterone supplements — not because they care about improved performance at the gym — but because they’re afraid of not being man enough.

Or they buy get-rich schemes — not because they want to retire to a private island — but because they’re afraid their father will think of them as a failure otherwise.

So what’s the conclusion?

Well, you can draw your own.

Maybe it’s how you should be happy with what you’ve got.

Or maybe it’s how you shouldn’t be happy, because other people have more.

In fact, if you’ve got a business, then it’s a fact other businesses are making more money than yours right now.

And if you don’t want to be left behind, you’ll need good sales copy. Which is something I might be able to help with. In case you’re interested, take a look at the offer on the following page, which might help you fill that gaping hole:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/