The most valuable persuasion tool?

by

It’s a tense moment.

Carrol Shelby is sitting in the wood-paneled lobby of the great man’s office, waiting to be admitted. While waiting, hat in hand, he sees a curious sight:

A courier brings up a Ferrari-red folder and hands it off to one secretary… who hands it off to a second… who gives it to a third… who then takes it behind closed doors.

Eventually, the last secretary comes back out and faces Carrol Shelby.

“Mr. Ford will see you now.”

This is a scene from the new Ford vs. Ferrari movie, which I went to see last night.

And while the movie has lots of hot shots of sexy race cars, I thought this scene, and the one that follows, were the most interesting, particularly from a persuasion standpoint. Because once Shelby is in front of Henry Ford II, he has to explain himself.

Shelby was put in charge of developing a new racing car for Ford, and winning an important race. He failed miserably.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t fire you right now,” Ford barks at him.

Instead of answering, Carroll Shelby clears his throat. And he starts talking about the red folder he just saw… and how it had to change a half dozen hands before it could land on Henry Ford’s desk.

“The Ford Company is too bureaucratic,” Shelby is effectively telling Ford, “and that’s not how you build winning race cars.”

Ford is not pleased, but he’s listening. And a few moments later, he is convinced.

“We’re not just good at pushing paper here,” Ford says to Shelby. “Go to war. And from now on you report only to me.”

Now of course, this is a scene from a movie. But I think it’s a great illustration of a valuable — perhaps most valuable — persuasion tool.

Fact is, if you’re not having success persuading somebody, whether that’s a sales situation or any other kind of negotiation… then odds are good you’re not using this massive hammer of influence.

Because I heard one very successful marketer, Travis Sago, call this the most valuable persuasion tool he knows and uses to regularly enter new markets, and eventually make million-dollar paydays.

Travis even said he’d would rather have this tool than a cool $2.5 million in the bank — because with clever use of this one tool, he could easily make that money back.

According to big T, this tool is the best way to nudge people from cold and disinterested… to trusting you and being willing to do what you ask.

So what exactly is the magical and powerful persuasion tool?

​​It’s right there, hidden behind the story of Carrol Shelby and the red folder.

In a word, it’s insight.

In several words, it’s giving your customer/prospect/adversary deeper insight into his own problem.

The Carroll Shelby story is one illustration of how to do this. But if you start thinking about this topic, and looking out for this simple idea, I bet you will start to find other ways to force new insight into your audience. ​​And if Travis Sago is right, then your persuasive powers will explode, even if you’ve got little else going for you at the moment.

My biggest email mistake of 2019

by

A couple of days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “How is your vagal tone?”

​​It was a dumb subject line. I should have used “Agora’s new health blockbuster” instead.

I say this because that email did worse than average in terms of opens. And yes, I know that sales are a vagillion times more important than opens. But since I’m not selling anything with these emails at the moment, then even open rates are interesting to look at.

And that’s one thing I’ve noticed with email opens throughout 2019 — they tend to be consistently lower with bizarre headlines like “How is your vagal tone?” I’ve also noticed that pure curiosity subject lines underperform as well.

And yet, such subject lines are as common in marketing emails as broken ankles are at the Walmart entrance on Black Friday.

No surprise there — these kinds of subject lines are easy and lazy to write. But I think it’s time to change.

I’m personally throwing out pure curiosity subject lines and  bizarro angles — RIP 2019.

​​In their place, it’s time come up with subject lines that are clearly of interest to people on the list. It’s not rocket surgery, but as my “vagal tone” email shows, it’s still easy to screw up.

Your inner GPS for success

by

Ever wondered how you intuitively find where you parked your car in a mall garage?

Or for that matter, how you automatically drive that car home once you find it?

It turns out there are physical structures in your brain that help you solve these complex problems. I don’t understand the details, but I’ve heard it described as your “inner GPS.” These brain structures tell you where you are now relative to where you were… and which way you’re going.

This is a fairly new discovery, by the way. The biological details weren’t settled until 15 or so years ago. And since this question puzzled philosophers for centuries, it’s no wonder that the trio of scientists who finally unlocked the mystery of your “inner GPS” got the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work.

But here’s a much trickier riddle.

How do you know where you are in life, not physically, but in other ways?

How do you know where you are relative to where you were, say 5 years ago?

And how do you know if you’re moving in the direction you want to go, or away from it?

These Nobel laureates figured out we have an inbuilt system to help us navigate the physical world. It’s not certain we have such a system to help us navigate life more broadly.

And that’s why achieving success can be so mystifying.

So what’s the solution?

Well, my best guess is that you have to consciously build up your systems and maps and checklists for navigating life, and becoming more successful, in a way that doesn’t make you miserable.

It’s kind of how a road trip worked before MapQuest and then Google Maps came on the scene.​

​​​Traveling won’t be as quick or easy as with a real GPS…

You might occasionally go down an abandoned road into the woods…

And maybe your entire map might need to get tossed out or updated.

It’s not very efficient… ​​But what else is there?

Please do not lick your screen

by

Today, I’ve got a sample of “old school cool” for you.

It’s a piece of Madison Ave advertising that 1) looked great and 2) apparently sold tons of product. It ran in magazines all around the country for years, in the 1940s and 50s. And in spite of the prohibition in the headline, parents apparently caught their kids licking the page.

I bring this ad up, not just cuz it’s cool, but because it also illustrates a few important marketing points:

1. When all else fails, just sell the damn thing.

2. You have to “build vision,” and images can often be the best way to do so.

3. Your headline should enter the conversation already going on in your prospects mind. In this case, there’s no point in saying, “These suckers are delicious!” Kids already knew.

Anyways, here’s the ad — just make sure to heed the warning in the headline:

Simplicity itself: Bugs Bunny and copywriting

by

I watched a video just now with Looney Toons director Chuck Jones demonstrating how to draw Bugs Bunny.

“Start with a pear-shaped body,” says Jones. “A circle for the head… a little nose…”

So far so good. I’m following along as Jones draws 2 bubbles on the page and one dark triangle for the nose.

“Then you extend the angle of the nose in a V above the head. That shows you where to put the ears.”

Hold on, how do I draw the ears like that?

“… the eyes go on those same lines as the ears… depending on what our budget is, we can use 2 or 3 whiskers.”

At this point, just about 4-5 seconds after drawing those initial two bubbles, Jones has drawn a cheeky, perfect, live Bugs Bunny. But I have no idea how he did it. So he explains:

“If you’re gonna draw Bugs, the best way is to learn how to draw a carrot. Then you can hook a rabbit onto it. Simplicity itself.”

Fact is, just because somebody is an amazing practitioner, like Chuck Jones, that doesn’t mean they can explain their method well. And even if they can explain their method well, maybe they just don’t want to, not to every Joe Schmoe off the street. The same happens in every field, including marketing and copywriting circles.

Maybe you’re following some expert’s paint-by-numbers, plug-and-play approach to writing sales copy. But if you’re not getting the results you want… if you’re not making sales you expected to make… if you’re not impressing clients…

Then it’s probably not your fault. There’s just a gap in the education. Maybe the expert can’t explain their method well… or maybe they are saving it all up for a higher-priced product.

The long-term answer is to keep searching for other experts to learn from. In the meantime, if you are looking to get better at writing sales copy, here are a few things that are guaranteed to sharpen your chops:

1) Write something every day — even if it’s a short email like this

2) Read some good ads

3) Read one of the proven books about direct response advertising. Most of the secrets in this business were discovered 50 or 60 years ago, and you can get access to almost all this wisdom for a few dollars on Amazon.

I can’t help you with 1). But if you want some pointers for where to track down good ads for 2) or if you want my suggestions for books in 3) write me an email and I will share my recommendations.

2 theories about the turkey and its name

by

There are two theories how the turkey got its name:

Theory one says that confused colonizers thought the turkey, originally a native of Mexico, was a type of guinea fowl, which Turkish merchants were already selling in Europe.

Theory two says that the turkey traveled around the world before making its way to England, where it was imported by Middle Eastern poultry peddlers.

Either way, the beast became known as a turkey cock or turkey hen. Eventually we dropped the cock and the hen, got out the cranberry sauce, and the party started.

I bring this up because today is Thanksgiving, and everybody in the marketing space is sending out emails and writing Facebook posts saying, “I’m grateful for you, dear reader.”

Perhaps they really are grateful. Perhaps it’s just the pilgrim bandwagon everybody has to jump on. “You gotta build a relationship with your subscribers!”

Which reminds me of something I read from Travis Sago. Travis is a very successful marketer and one of the very best at building a relationship online with a bunch of people who don’t really know him. Says Travis,

“You don’t make friends by dropping off Encyclopedia Britannica’s at somebody’s house.”

My gut feeling is that you don’t make friends by sending out emails either, as long as their gist is, “I’m so grateful for you, and here’s a coupon for 10% off.”

But what do I know. Maybe I’m all messed up in the head. Maybe I’m just envious, and irritable because I’m dreaming of the pounds and pounds of turkey cock, the ladles of mashed potatoes, the fat slices of pumpkin pie many people will be eating today.

(Where I live it’s unfortunately not a tradition, although I did develop a Thanksgiving tooth during my long life in the US.)

Anyways, if you are celebrating today, happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your feast. And we will get back to our regular relationship-building program tomorrow.

2020 Prediction: FB ads will get scammier

by

This summer, I wrote a unique piece of sales copy for a client.

​​It was a video ad, telling a story over 3 or 4 minutes, using stock footage and text overlays. The goal was to have this run on Facebook and then link to an advertorial and then an order page.

The product in question was “eco-friendly bags” — basically, reusable produce bags to replace the ones you get at the store. People are crazy about the dangers of plastics these days, so I wrote up an inspirational story about how one brilliant inventor saw the need to help the planet and presto, eco-friendly bags.

Anyways, about a week ago, I remembered this project. And I followed up with the client to see how the video ad performed.

​​Here’s what he wrote back:

“We unfortunately ran into some issues with that product – Facebook now flags and doesn’t allow ads that address political or social issues. Since the ad talked about pollution / the environment it was, unfortunately, flagged.”

Wow. It didn’t even occur to me that talking about pollution or dead seagulls could be a compliance issue. Sure, I heard from many different sides that FB is cracking down on ads. This summer seemed to be the high point. Anything that looks ugly, scary, or is too full of hype couldn’t run. But I guess “social issue” ads became a problem also.

That’s rough. Things are getting really strict out there…

​Or are they?

Because let me tell you a second FB ads story:

A few days ago, I saw an ad, written in English (I live in Croatia), featuring some Croatian celebrity, with a classic clickbait headline along the lines of, “He went on TV to reveal how anyone can make 54,319.44 Croatian Kuna in just minutes — and it’s got the National Bank terrified!” The actual advertorial page promoted some Bitcoin trading platform.

Several other versions of this ad, run by other FB pages, also appeared on my feed that same day, and for several days after. There were dozens of comments on each ad. Some were by people simply talking about the Croatian celebrity (“what does this moron know about making money”) while a few pointed out this is clearly a scam.

And here’s the staggering thing:

​​All of these ads had been running for several weeks. It got so bad that the Croatian celebrity gave a newspaper interview to explain he has nothing to do with this Bitcoin scam. Nonetheless, the ad continues to run, in various iterations, right there on Facebook.
​
I think this is a sign of things to come.

Over the past couple of years, Facebook has made a show at regulating ads. And it will probably continue to censor ads that push certain hot buttons or that target certain markets.

​​But the moment has passed. Nobody expects any integrity or accountability from Facebook any more. And at the same time, scammers as well as more legitimate businesses figured out how to run edgy FB ads, or downright duplicitous FB ads.

As this year wraps up and we enter the glorious 2020’s decade, I expect this will continue and intensify. And if I’m right, this means we’re all in for a wild show.

Murder on the sales page

by

I started reading Murder at the Vicarage a few days ago. It’s written by Agatha Christie, the first of 18 Miss Marple books.

The story starts out with the middle-aged vicar and his much younger, chatterbox wife. They’re having a discussion at breakfast. Then some guests arrive. There’s more talking. There’s a quick location change to the den, and other characters come in. More talking, some gossiping.

This goes on. There’s characters, light dialogue, then more characters. 20 pages in, and there’s still no murder, not even a darkening on the horizon. And yet, I keep reading, like millions before me.

Why?

I guess a couple or three reasons:

1) There’s the promise of a murder mystery. It’s right there on the front page, in the title of the book.

2) It’s all written in an easy, fun, and yet clever way.

3) It’s got something that I, and all other people, want to hear more about. In this case, that’s human faces, and the unique quirks behind them.

Maybe you won’t agree with me, but I think you can apply all 3 of these points to sales copywriting as well. 1) and 2) are pretty obvious, in terms of how you can port them from Agatha Christie to a sales message. Although it might be surprising,  you can also port the tabloid appeal of 3) to a sales message directly.

For example, there’s this giant promotion written by Dan Ferrari. It has the headline,

“The Stars of Silicon Valley and Hollywood are using this ‘Millionaire’s Secret’ to Look, Move, and Feel Like They’re Aging in Reverse”

The lead paints a scene, involving Goldie Hawn, Sergey Brin, and Moby, all lounging around a cliffside Los Angeles mansion, listening with rapt attention to the talk of a mysterious doctor who is revealing the secret of eternal youth.

And you know what? This promotion killed. It literally tripled the response compared to the previous control (and this promo is for Green Valley, an established direct response company, so the previous control was certainly solid). The end result was that the company ran out of inventory and had to stop running the promo until they could restock. I think that qualifies as murder on the sales page.

What’s that?

You want a light and breezy mystery for your Tuesday evening?

​​And you’re tired of Miss Marple?

Say no more. I got you. Check out this million-dollar Dan Ferrari page-turner instead:

https://greenvalleynaturalsolutions.com/GEN/CA/Genesis-B-telos95.php

Halfway-there copywriting and how to fix it

by

Today I want to quickly point out an insidious copywriting mistake which affects newbies — and experienced copywriters alike.

To set it up, let me bring back an email I received yesterday from from Chris Masterjohn, PhD. The subject line read:

“I’m now *giving away* my affiliate commissions… to YOU!”

Huh? When this email first appeared in my inbox, I ignored it. When I finally gave it a skim, this “commissions” idea just left me confused.

That’s because this subject line, and the opening sentences of the email that follow, are a typical example of halfway-there copywriting. Here’s what I mean.

The first thing they will tell you about copywriting is, “Talk benefits. Explain to the reader what’s in it for him.” And that’s what Chris is trying to do with the subject line above.

The background is that Chris has a membership program. One of the perks of the program is that you can get discounts on various health products he recommends.

The trouble is, nobody will ever read Chris’s subject line and say,

“Oh I see where this is going. I buy those products that I want through Chris’s affiliate link. He of course gets an affiliate commission. He then refunds his affiliate commission to me, and I get the product at a discount! That’s great! Where do I sign up?”

Nobody will ever say that, because it’s far from obvious.

The copy is to blame for this. But just so we’re clear, I’m not pointing fingers at Chris. He’s not a pro copywriter. And like I said, this is a mistake that happens even to the pros.

For example, one of the most revealing things I’ve learned since starting to work with my copywriting coach is just how common this issue is even in my own copy.

You think you’re telling the reader what he wants to hear. But you’re still far away from it. You’re too much into the product… into the mechanism… into the brilliant story you’re telling… into your own goals.

The result is that you say something “halfway there”. You’re sure the reader will be able to make the leap and grasp the significance… but you’re wrong.

The reader will be left confused. He’ll walk away. And you’ll lose the sale.

One easy way out from this sad fate is simply to have another person read your copy. A fresh set of eyes can spot these mistakes.

But there’s also a mechanical fix: Just use the phrase “so you can…”

“I’m giving away my affiliate commissions… so you can buy your favorite health products at a discount… so you can save $33 on your next 200 lbs. purchase of grass-fed beef liver.”

I think you get the idea. ​​And of course, if you’re crammed for space, just strip away some of the less compelling stuff at the start. So you can have a crisp and effective subject line. So you can get people to read about your great offer. So you can make filthy heaps of money. So you can come back here and tell me all about it.

A creative way to justify a continuity product

by

I wanna quickly dissect an email I got today from one Chris Masterjohn, PhD. Two reasons why:

1. It describes a creative offer that’s interesting if you’re into marketing

2. It offers a lesson in halfway-there copywriting

First, a tiny spec of background. Over the past 10 years, I’ve spent a lot of time reading alternative medicine sites, both for work and for my own own hypochondriac reasons. I’ve become jaded and skeptical because most of them are junk, and because most of the “doctors” who promote them aren’t doctors at all, but chiropractors, podiatrists, or at best, English literature PhD’s.

But not Chris Masterjohn, PhD.

Chris is not a medical doctor but he has a legit doctorate — in Nutritional Sciences, from the University of Connecticut — and that’s relevant because he mostly talks about the latest science behind nutrition and healthy living. And these days, he’s one of the few people I read and trust when it comes to matters of, which vitamin, which diet, etc.

So Chris Masterjohn, PhD sent out an email today to his list, and he announced an interesting offer:

If you’re part of his $15/month continuity program (monthly Zoom call + other stuff), and you buy any of the products that Chris endorses (supplements, mail-order beef, blue-blocking sunglasses), he will, via PayPal, refund you the affiliate commission he gets.

In other words, his continuity program acts like a discount club for the health-obsessed. If you’re already buying dung heaps of pills and powders and sleep optimization gadgets, you can now get between 5%-50% off their regular price, assuming you buy the ones that Chris recommends (and why wouldn’t you, since he’s smart and he digs through the research for you).

I thought this was a great idea. People love discount clubs to begin with. For the right kind of person, this can easily pay for the monthly subscription fee, even several times over. And even for the non-right type of person, it might be a sufficient reason to justify joining Chris’s continuity program.

In fact, I think that with a bit of massage, this discount club idea could be positioned as a standalone product. That might be something for you to think about, in case you’re looking for a continuity program to add on to your existing business.

But there was a second thing in Chris Masterjohn, PhD’s email, and that’s a copywriting lesson. But my one-track mind can’t handle that different direction today. So let’s talk about it tomorrow.

In the meantime, if you wanna save money on your Wild Salmon Subscription Boxes or your $600 chiliPAD, here’s where you can find Chris and his health-conscious Costo club:

https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/