Objections

937 days’ worth of email ideas, free

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A couple days ago, after I complained that there’s still a reader on my list, Vivian, who hasn’t bought my Most Valuable Email program, another reader on my list, Bridget, who also hasn’t bought my Most Valuable Email program, wrote in to point out where I’m falling short:

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Key point – where you are falling short is you are not answering the questions:

* Where am I going to get interesting ideas every day?

* How am I going to make the ideas I do have interesting enough to send without making 99% of my current subscribers want to unsubscribe?

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Bridget is absolutely right. I don’t make the “where to get interesting ideas” part clear on the MVE sales page.

It actually is there in the course — I have a little section where I list four sources where I regularly find interesting ideas for Most Valuable Emails.

The reason I don’t make a bigger deal out of it is that I feel interesting ideas are cheap. They are everywhere, and it’s more a matter of how freshly and insightfully they are presented. And that’s what MVE is about.

I wrote back to Bridget to tell her that. And she replied:

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You may believe interesting ideas are cheap. They may well be. But Vivian’s afraid she’ll run out, and that’s more important to her buying decision than objective reality.

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Again, Bridget is absolutely right. So now what?

Let it never be said that I am more stubborn than Andrew Jackson.

And that’s why, I’d now like to announce I am adding one more bonus to my Shangri La MVE event. I’m calling this bonus the Shangri La Library Of Rare and Priceless Ideas.

For years now, I’ve been collecting interesting ideas I come across, whether in books, newsletters, podcasts, or courses.

For each such idea, I write it down, along with the source of where I got it. Sometimes I also add in my own observations as well.

I checked just now and so far I have 937 such interesting ideas. Here’s a sample:

* “To build fascination and rapport, keep asking deeper, more enthusiastic questions” (from James Altucher via his podcast)

* “Use the same link text as the subject line to get clicks” (something Ian Stanley said somewhere)

* “Toil shared becomes no toil at all” (from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives)

* “Trialibility is the no. 1 factor affecting adoption of an innovation” (from Jonah Berger’s Catalyst)

* “Pick out a fun and relevant theme for email promotion events” (from Travis Sago, on some ancient podcast appearance)

Rare? Priceless? You decide. In any case, it’s my contention you still have to do something to these ideas to turn them into fresh and insightful emails. MVE shows you what to do, and it even gets you doing it.

But so you can say you will never ever run out of ideas for Most Valuable Emails, I’m making available my entire Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas as part of this Shangri La event.

I collected all these rare and priceless ideas and put them into a type of endless scroll known as a PDF file.

If you have the stamina, you can read through them from beginning to end. If you don’t, you can pick off an idea each day, apply the Most Valuable Trick, and turn that idea into a fresh and insightful email that 1) pulls in readers, 2) builds your authority, 3) makes you just a tiny bit better as a writer and a marketer, 4) maybe even makes a sale or 10.

My Shangri La MVE event ends tonight at 12 midnight PST. If you need a reminder of what it’s about:

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I’m calling this offer the “Shangri La” MVE offer. And that’s because like Shangri La, the two three parts of this offer only appear once every fifty years. Specifically:

1. I normally don’t offer a payment plan for Most Valuable Email. I did offer a payment plan for MVE once, as a joke, for one day only. Well, like Shangri La, the payment plan is back, and not as a joke.

You can get MVE for $99 today and then two more monthly payments of $99. This payment plan is there to make it psychologically easier to get started — in my experience, people take up payment plans not because they cannot afford to pay in full, but simply because it feels like a smaller commitment.

2. I am also offering a bonus, which I’m calling Shangri La Disappearing Secrets.

Over the past years, I have periodically sent out emails where I teased a secret, which I then turned into a disappearing, one-day bonuses for people who took me up on an offer before the deadline.

Inside this Shangri La Disappearing Secrets bonus, I have collected 12 emails that teased 12 secrets — and I have revealed the secrets themselves. These include:

* An email deliverability tip that is so valuable I decided not to share it publicly, but only with buyers of MVE. This tip is something that multiple people have told me I should turn into a standalone course or training — which I most probably will do one day.

* Stage Surprise Success. Step-by-step instructions for creating effective surprise in any kind of performance, whether thieving, magicking, comedy, drama, or simply writing for impact and influence. And no, it’s not just shocking people with something they weren’t expecting. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of that.

* A daring idea to grow your list and build up your authority at the same time. I have not yet had the guts to put it into practice, even though I have lots of reasons to believe it would work great to build my own authority, and get me more high-quality leads than I’m getting now.

* A persuasion strategy used by con men, pick up artists, salesmen, even by legendary copywriters. I ran a little contest in an email to see if anybody could identify this strategy based on a scene from the movie The Sting. Out of 40+ people who tried to identify the strategy, only 2 got it right.

* An incredible free resource, filled with insightful and proven marketing and positioning advice. This resource comes from a man I’ve only written about once in this newsletter, but who has influenced my thinking about marketing and human psychology more deeply than I may let on — maybe more deeply than anybody else over the past few years.

* Magic Box calls-to-action. Use these if you don’t have a product or a service to sell yet, or if you only have a few bum offers, which your list has stopped responding to every day. Result of a “magic box” CTA when used by one of my coaching clients: the first hand-raiser ever for an under-construction $4k offer.

* A new way to apply the Most Valuable email trick, one I wasn’t comfortable doing until recently. Now that I’ve started using it, it’s gotten people paying more attention… leaning in more… even rereading my emails 3x… and reaching out to reopen dropped business conversations.

* Steven Pressfield (the author of the War of Art and the Legend of Bagger Vance) used to write scripts for porn movies. He once shared two porn storytelling rules. I’ll tell you what they are, and how smart marketers, maybe even me on occasion, use one of these rules in their own sales copy and marketing content.

* A list of 14 criteria of truthful stories. I’m not saying to get devious with this — but you could use these criteria to jelly up a made-up story and make it sound absolutely true. More respectably, you can use these criteria to take your true but fluffy story and make it sound 100% gripping and real.

* Why I drafted US patent application 16/573921 to get the U.S. Government to recognize my Most Valuable Email trick as novel, non-obvious, and having concrete, practical applications.

* Two methods for presenting a persuasive argument, as spelled out by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. I illustrate these two methods with a little public debate that Daniel Throssell and I engaged in via our respective email newsletters. Daniel and I each adopted opposing methods, just as described by Kahneman.

* An infotainment secret I stole from Ben Settle. As far as I know, Ben doesn’t teach this secret in his books or newsletters — I found it by tracking Ben’s emails over a 14-day period and spotting Ben using it in 8 of those 14 emails. And no, I’m not talking about teasing, or telling a story, or stirring up conflict. This is something more fundamental, and more broadly useful, even beyond daily emails.

3. The Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas. 937 interesting ideas I’ve collected over the years from books, podcasts, newsletters, courses. Reach into this library to never again run out of ideas for your Most Valuable Emails.

So there you go. My Shangri La MVE offer:

A payment plan for Most Valuable Email that only appears twice in a century… 12 bonus persuasion secrets… and all the email ideas you will ever need.

This offer is good until tonight, Friday Oct 11, at 12 midnight PST.

If you’re at all interested, the time to act is now. That’s because of that simple certainty I wrote about yesterday — there won’t ever be a better time.

I won’t be running big promo events for Most Valuable Email, because it doesn’t fit my policy of treating previous customers with respect.

On the other hand, if you get MVE now, you will also be eligible for any future disappearing bonuses I might offer with it, or any other special offer or real I will make to new buyers also.

If you’d like to take me up on this Shangri La offer, before it disappears:

​​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​​

P.S. And yes, if you have already bought MVE, you also get the Shangri La Disappearing Secrets and the Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas. No need to write me for them. I’ll add them straight inside the MVE course area.

How to deliver a racist rant

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Before we dive into the racism, I’d like to remind you of my Copy Riddles program.

​​Somebody once told me that Copy Riddles is expensive, considering it just teaches you one niche copywriting skill.

I have to agree. But I also have more to say about it at the end of this email.

For now, let me tell you about the late great Patrice O’Neal.

As you might know, Patrice was black — a fact that will be relevant in just a moment.

Patrice was also the favorite comedian of a huge number of top comedians of the past few decades. Bill Burr, Norm Macdonald, Andrew Schulz — those are a just a few top comedians I found after a two-minute Google search, who all said there was nobody as funny as Patrice.

I’m using that to set up a contrast to the following. Because racist rants aren’t funny, are they?

Maybe they are. Or maybe they can be.

Take for example, Patrice’s HBO special, One Night Stand. It aired in 2005.

Patrice opens up without any of the usual, “Good to be back, how are you guys doing” fluff. Instead, he launches straight into his material. He says:

“So how many people are getting sick of the Hindu obstacle course at the airport?”

The audience laughs uncomfortably. They’re sensing this might not be stuff they should be laughing at, and they’re wondering where Patrice is leading them.

In fact, the audience is right to be wary.

Patrice is about to launch into a 5-minute racist comedy rant, mocking and imitating Indian people who work at airport security and who run convenience stores.

“I don’t mind foreigners,” says Patrice at one point, “but don’t be FROM your country.” And after he finishes mocking Indian accents, Patrice moves on to Mexicans.

This is the kind of stuff that wouldn’t fly for white comedians since the days of Don Rickles in the late 60s and early 70s.

And in fact, it wouldn’t fly for Patrice either, not in 2005. Except for one thing.

In between saying “How many people are tired of the Hindu obstacle course” and launching into his racist impressions, Patrice delivers one miraculous, life-saving line.

​​It goes like this:

“So how many people are tired of the Hindu obstacle course at airport? [He pauses while a few nervous laughs acknowledge the inappropriateness of this statement. Then he continues] I mean… I’m a racist, but it’s getting…”

… and here Patrice continues into the rest of his set, with the audience suddenly loose and laughing, and ready to laugh more at the rest of his jokes, racist though they are.

My point is not that you should be racist.

My point is also not that you should laugh along with racists, or condone racist behavior.

My point is simply how much you can get away with, if you correctly anticipate your audience’s objection, and call that objection out ahead of time. Even if you don’t do anything else but call it out.

Now back to my Copy Riddles course.

It’s true that Copy Riddles is expensive. It’s also true it only teaches you one copywriting skill, and a niche one at that.

On the other hand, experts in the field, like Ben Settle, John Carlton, and Gary Halbert, have all said that this one niche skill is what all copywriting comes down to.

All these guys have made millions of dollars from copywriting, and some have specifically credited millions in earnings just to this one skill.

When you look at it that way, maybe Copy Riddles isn’t so expensive after all.

Of course, it’s going to depend on your situation, and what you’re looking to do.

If you’d like to find out more about Copy Riddles, and see if it could be a fit in your quest to write more effectively, and even make good money in the process, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Daily emails for non-creative people in 20 minutes or less

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There’s a famous full-page newspaper ad that ran thousands of times with the headline:

“They Thought I Was Crazy To Ship
LIVE MAINE LOBSTERS
As Far As 1,800 Miles From The Ocean”

The lesson from that famous ad is:

​If there’s a killer objection your prospect will have as soon as he hears your offer (“Lobsters in the mail???”), it can make good sense to call out that objection before your reader has a chance to think it, right in your headline (“Yes!!! Lobsters in the mail!”).

Today, print advertising isn’t what it used to be. Instead, today we have email. And in my experience, email has become the new headlines for your sales message.

And since you’re still reading, let me tell you that last summer, when I was putting together the training that eventually became my Simple Money Emails course, I asked my readers for input.

​​One of them, a business owner with a long-running and successful brick-and-mortar business, wrote me to say:

“I’m told that a sales email should be in a story format that tells the story about the client’s fears, concerns, what keeps them up at night etc. Your product or service should solve your prospect’s problem. My challenge is not being creative enough to produce these emails on a consistent basis with relevant content.”

The fact is, you don’t gotta be creative to write daily emails that pull in sales today, and even keep readers reading tomorrow. That’s really a story that people tell themselves because they are thinking too much.

In reality, you can follow the same formula day in and day out. No creativity required. And people will never notice.

I do it pretty much every day. Nobody ever complains. Sales come in. And people read again tomorrow.

If you’d like to find out how you can do it too, take a look here:

​https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Deadline for MVE before price triples like Amazon in 1999

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Three hours from now is the deadline to get my Most Valuable Email course before the price goes up from $100 to $297.

That will happen tonight, as surely as fortune is a woman, at exactly 8:31pm CET.

If you’ve been on the fence and wondering whether MVE is worth getting, and whether it’s worth the price I ask of it and more, consider the follow testimonial I got a few days ago:

“Just retook your courses mate – so good. V underpriced IMO.”

If that seems like a rather brief testimonial to crow about, let me explain. It came as a throwaway comment, a part of a longer email exchange I recently had w/ Kieran Drew.

As you might know, Kieran is a bit of a star in the creative entrepreneur space:

​​He has something like 182 thousand followers on Twitter. He has a big and growing email newsletter. But perhaps most impressively, he has his own course on writing, High Impact Writing. He launched that this past May, to his own audience, at $297.

Result?

A few halting sales the first day… some more the next day… many more still the day after… still more the day after…

​All in all 487 people bought.

​​Kieran took in a cool $140k with his first product launch over 5 days.

So when Kieran makes a throwaway comment that my courses are so good (he has Most Valuable Email and my recent 9 Deadly Email Sins), I take notice and make a point of telling the world. And when Kieran says my offers are very undepriced, I take notice and take action also.

Which us brings us back to that deadline. It’s almost here. And it really is deadly. If you’d rather be safe, here’s where to get MVE before the price triples:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Chicken soup for the marketer’s, copywriter’s, and salesman’s soul

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“In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.”

The above quote is from David Foster Wallace, from his famous “This is Water” commencement speech at Kenyon College.

At some point in your life, you’ve probably either heard this exact quote on something very much like it. It’s basically cognitive behavioral therapy:

1. You only ever have a few pixels of evidence about what’s “really” going on.

2. Those pixels can fit into multiple consistent pictures.

3. Some of those pictures are more pleasant and useful for you to look at than others.

4. So you might as well focus on the useful and the pleasant pictures.

Pretty good advice, right?

Except, I happen to be professionally warped through my work as a direct response copywriter.

And so, while most people might see a healthy life lesson above, I see a sales technique.

A couple days ago, I talked about Sam Taggart, the door-to-door salesman profiled in a New Yorker article.

I showed you one way that Taggart deals with objections. But here’s another way, from the article:

Usually, once the customer realizes she’s being pitched, she’ll say anything to make the salesman go. When I canvassed with Taggart, I often felt anxious: They really want us to leave! But he interpreted every objection as an appeal for further information. He heard “I can’t afford it” as “Show me how I can afford it,” and “I already have a gun and a mean dog” as “What else do I need to fully protect my family?”

Taggart always takes objections as a request for more info, and questions as a sign of interest.

And why not?

Like DFW says above, it’s not impossible. In fact, in at least some situations, it’s exactly what’s happening.

When a potential customer or client asks you an accusatory question, or when they raise an insurmountable objection, those are just air bubbles on the surface of the ocean. You don’t really know what’s going on underneath the surface to produce those bubbles. So you might as well imagine a colorful and fun underwater party, populated by singing crabs and smiling tropical fish who really want you to succeed. “Darling it’s better down where it’s wetter, take it from meeeee…”

Anyways, the New Yorker profile of Sam Taggart doesn’t paint a very flattering picture of the guy. But that’s mainly New Yorker propaganda. And in any case, there’s a lot of value in that article, if you only, as they say, read between the lines.

I might write about some of that valuable stuff in the future. If you want to catch that when it comes out, sign up to my daily email newsletter.

There will never be a moment as perfect as right now to read this email

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I recently got a print subscription to the New Yorker so I can sit on the balcony in the morning and read a few pages of well-written fluff about something totally random.

I like the New Yorker because it exposes me to topics outside my usual horse-blindered view of copy, marketing, and influence.

Except, the article I’m reading right now is square in the center of my horse blinders. It’s about Sam Taggart, a new prophet of door-to-door sales.

I’ve never done door-to-door selling myself, but the techniques of the work are near and dear to me. For example:

The New Yorker article reports how one day, Taggart went a-selling solar panels in Salt Lake City.

He approached a house, and stood away from the porch as a woman opened the door.

Taggart adopted a matter-of-fact contractor’s tone when talking. For a bit, this made the woman believe he was somehow with the utilities company. Once it became clear Taggart was selling solar panels, the woman locked up:

“My husband won’t do it, because we’re faced the wrong way.”

Taggart had a very clever and calculated response to this. It immediately made me sit up and pay attention, because it sounded very familiar. From the article:

“Here’s the thing,” Taggart said. He leaned against the doorway, and the woman leaned against its opposite side — a signal that she felt more comfortable. “What’s your name?”

“Kay.”

“Every kiss begins with ‘K’!” They both laughed. “So, actually, your house is perfect for it!” He hadn’t even glanced at her roof.

Like I said, this technique was very familiar to me.

It might be used in D2D sales, but it is also used in copywriting and marketing.

I’ve heard Dan Kennedy preach it. And when I was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group, Dan F. even had a very concise name for it which has stuck with me since. In fact, Dan uses this technique not just as a way of handling objections, but more generally, as a way of organizing and structuring his promos.

And now, since it so happens that the Pisuerga flows through Valladolid, I’d like to tell you that I’ve been thinking about podcasts lately.

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about getting onto some podcasts. I got on a couple last year, and gave me a lot of exposure and attention. I also have plans to get on another podcast in a few weeks’ time. But after that, what? I feel podcasts are something I should be doing more regularly, and not just once or twice a year.

So I’ve got an offer for you:

Maybe it’s 100% clear to you what Sam Taggart’s technique above is.

Maybe it’s also 100% clear to you how to use this at the low-level of your copy… or, like Dan Ferrari, even to organize your entire promo.

But if you’re not 100% sure, if you’re more like 98% or 97% sure, or even less, then get onto my email newsletter. When you get my welcome email, hit reply. And let me know the most recent podcast episode you listened to.

Just tell me one. The most recent one.

And if it has nothing to do with copy or marketing, that’s perfectly fine. Don’t lie to me and say you’ve been listening to David Garfinkel if you haven’t. There’s no need to. I want to genuinely know the most recent podcast you listened to, whatever that may be.

And in return:

I will spell out Taggart’s technique above. And I will tell you what Dan Kennedy and Dan Ferrari have to say about the same, and how they use it in their marketing and copy.

Are you game? Then do it now.

It’s the perfect moment while it’s still fresh on your mind. It will only take you a second, and you will avoid the risk that you put it aside for a minute and forget about it among all the distractions of the Internet. Here’s where to get started.

Copywriting defense into offense

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“This is my job, Eddy.”

“You think so? Hm. See, I don’t think so. I think it’s your problem.”

A few emails ago, I referred to the movie The Color of Money. I want to do it again today because there’s a scene that illustrates a powerful copywriting technique — or really, more of an attitude that can turn your copy from a loser to a winner.

It’s right there in that bit of dialogue up top.

In case you haven’t been reading my emails carefully — shame, shame — here’s what this dialogue is about.

Fast Eddie Felson is a former pool shark. He comes across a young and very talented pool shark, Vincent Lauria. Eddie tries to convince Vincent to go on the road together and make a lot of money.

But Vincent isn’t convinced. He has a steady thing going, working at the local Toys R Us. That’s his job.

You already know what Eddie says to Vincent to convince him.

But consider what Eddie doesn’t say.

He doesn’t say, “Oh, come on, Vincent! Please come with me? Please?”

He also doesn’t say, “Can’t you just take unpaid leave for a few weeks? The job will still be here waiting for you.”

Which brings me to that attitude I talked about. ​It’s something I learned from copywriter Dan Ferrari.

​​Dan likes to say there are moments in sales copy to turn defense into offense. To take something that’s basically a problem, a risk, a liability… and to turn it into an asset.

That’s what Fast Eddie did in that scene above. Steady pay and decent work at Toys R Us? That’s not your job. That’s your problem.

But maybe that short clip doesn’t really illustrate how to use this in copy. So let me leave you an with example from one of Dan’s sales letters.

The sales letter sold an anti-aging supplement.

​​The problem was that most people who took this supplement had vague and weak results to report – “I feel better overall.”

​​That’s something you, as the copywriter, could be defensive about. But here’s how Dan goes on the offense with it:

Practically everyone over the age of 50 describes the rejuvenation they experience the same way: “I feel better overall.”

It sounds vague…

Yet if you’re getting older, you know EXACTLY what they mean.

It’s that top-to-bottom, all-over feeling of being in your prime again… and not headed downhill fast.

Of being healthy from head to toe, inside and out.

Of having a body that works wonderfully… instead of struggling to “get by.”

Skunk email with a great and valuable reward

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This email won’t be easy or pleasant to get through.

​​In fact it will take work and it might make you feel queasy along the way. But if you can manage it to the end, the rewards will be great.

Let me start by telling you I’m re-reading Claude Hopkins’s My Life in Advertising. And one story I missed before is this bit from Hopkins’s childhood:

One of the products which father advertised was Vinegar Bitters. I afterward learned its history.

A vinegar-maker spoiled a batch through some queer fermentation. Thus he produced a product weird in its offensiveness.

The people of those days believed that medicine must be horrible to be effective.

We had oils and ointments “for man or beast” which would make either wild. We used “snake oil” and “skunk oil,” presumably because of their names.

Unless the cure was worse than the disease, no one would respect it.

Today we assume that every offer must be fast, easy, and cheap.

But human nature changes like glass flows — so slowly that we will never see it happen.

And a part of the human brain still believes, like it did in Hopkins’s day, that the cure must be worse than the disease. At least along some dimension.

So if your offer is fast and easy, make sure it’s not cheap.

Or if your offer really is all of fast, easy, and cheap… then at least throw a skunk or a snake into it somewhere.

In other words, turn your prospect into a hero. Tell him a story:

He’s somebody who’s willing to do what’s offensive to others… somebody who can swallow what would turn most men or beasts wild. ​​No, it won’t be easy or pleasant. But if he can manage it to the end, the rewards will be great.

Last thing:

Maybe you’d like to know I have an email newsletter. It’s cheap and easy, but it’s very slow. You can sign up for it here.

The urgent opportunity of the “reverse testimonial”

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“I’d like to tell you about a huge opportunity with no downside.” If that sentence got your heart pumping, then take a breath and calm down. And then listen to what I have to tell you, because it’s very much related:

A while back, I read a book called Biz Op. It’s a confessional by a guy named Bruce Easley. Back in the 1970s and 80s, Easley ran business opportunity scams.

I’m not much for scamming people and I don’t suggest you do it either. But it’s undeniable that opportunity marketing works like magic. I’ve seen it first hand a few times when I applied opportunity marketing ideas in this very newsletter.

So all I’m suggesting today is that you occasionally take a look at opportunity marketers like Easley, and see how some of these ideas could be used in what you’re doing. I’ll get you started with an innovative idea I call the reverse testimonial.

You can find an example at the link below. It’s a page taken from a bizopp pamphlet that was one of Easley’s standards. He sent out the pamphlet to all people responding to his classified ads. And you can bet each page, including the reverse testimonial page, has been heavily tested, and heavily proven by results.

So take a look at the link below. You’ll see just how reverse testimonials work, and how you might profitably integrate them in your marketing too.

Or don’t take a look. After all, maybe you’ve got a legitimate reason not to do it right now. Like this zen-monk reader who wrote me in response to an earlier email:

“I’ll take a look later. I only get a few emails in my inbox each day, and I make sure to reread all of them several times before I let them slip away. So there’s no fear I won’t get to this soon.”

Or this second reader, who’s working in a field unrelated to marketing, and who wrote:

“I don’t need this idea right now. But I will come back to it when I will need it. In my experience, links on the internet are eternal. It’s never happened to me that I tried to open a page and got a 404 error.”

Or like this very successful and stretched reader, who once dashed away the following message:

“You don’t understand how busy I am. Sure, clicking on this link would take only a half second, and looking over the page only 3-4 seconds more. But if I kept doing that all day long, it might really add up to a few extra minutes of learning. And who’s got time for that?”

If, like these readers, you’ve got a legit reason not to click below, forget I said anything. On the other hand… huge opportunity… no downside. All you gotta do is click here:

https://bejakovic.com/reverse-testimonial

A transparent but effective marketing ploy (thanks, Jay Abraham)

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Yesterday I heard marketing coach Rich Schefren tell a “How did he get away with that?” story about the first time he bought a Jay Abraham product:

The product was supposed to arrive in a month.

But it didn’t arrive in a month. Or in two months. Or three.

When it eventually did arrive, some six months later, it came with a letter written by Jay. The letter said something like:

“Here is the product that you ordered from me and boy, are you lucky I decided to hold off on releasing it! This extra time allowed me to add in all these extra case studies and valuable modules and colored streamers that will do x, y, and z for you!”

And for the record, today, many years after this first experience, Rich counts Jay as one of his two biggest mentors.

My point being:

Jay’s ploy may have been transparent. And yet, just like canned laughter on a TV sitcom, it still served its purpose.

In fact, what Jay did illustrates one of the essential functions of marketing. So let’s see if I can do it:

You’ve probably heard me mention my book 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters. This book is short, only 40 pages. And if I could have, I would have made it even shorter and even easier to read.

But I needed at least this many pages to cover all 10 of these commandments, the best you-won’t-find-em-on-Facebook copywriting strategies I’ve come across so far.

And since I wanted to make each of the commandments crystal clear, I also included 3 supporting real-world examples to make each comandment stick in your mind. So 40 pages really was the minimum to do all that.

Anyways, if you haven’t yet seen this book, you might find it both valuable and a quick and easy read. In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments