Copywriting

The ABT’s of writing persuasive stories

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“I was sitting in a park today when I spotted a leggy girl in a blue dress, walking with a certain sashay. And so I ran after her. I stopped her, ready to give her a compliment. But once I was there, face to face, I was no longer sure she was a girl. I wasn’t even sure she was a she. She was taller than I was, and stronger in the shoulder and jaw department. When she started to speak, my suspicions deepened. Therefore, I started looking for ways to gracefully exit from this situation — not so easy to do, because my new blue-dress acquaintance seemed pleased with me and ready to talk.”

I did eventually get out of there and get to the apartment I’m staying in, where I started to read about copywriting. Specifically, I started to read about a way of structuring your stories so they keep readers reading. It’s a simple technique called ABT:

AND – that’s your setup of the story

BUT – that’s where the conflict or complication happens

THEREFORE – that’s the outcome or resolution

If you’re a diligent duck, you can go back and see how I ham-fisted those conjunctions into my park story above. Or just take a look at this next short story:

“An immigrant from a developing country arrives to the US, learns basic English, AND decides to become a professional copywriter. BUT his initial results are underwhelming and he doubts whether he can succeed. THEREFORE he develops his own unique copywriting system, which causes his sales jump 10x, making him the most successful copywriter at a major direct marketing publisher.”

Like my blue-dress adventure above, this immigrant story is true. It is the story of Evaldo Albuquerque, who over the past few years has been the most sellful copywriter at Agora Financial.

I read about the ABT technique in Evaldo’s short book, The 16 Word Sales Letter, in which he lays out his unique copywriting system.

​​I haven’t finished the book yet, so I won’t give you my opinion. ​​But Bill Bonner, the founder of Agora, says, “This is the book I’ve been waiting for.” And Mark Ford, a master copywriter who helped grow Agora to the size it is today, says, “I’m going to recommend this as a must-read to all my copywriting proteges.”

And that’s that. But maybe you don’t know where to find Evaldo’s book so you can see if it’s for you. Therefore, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/evaldo

Weird but effective pattern interrupts in current VSLs

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Perhaps you’ve seen those videos of hypnotized sharks.

They usually involve a guy on a boat, reaching like an idiot into the water where a massive great white shark is licking its chops. But the before the shark has a chance to rip off both hand and arm, the man grabs the shark by the nose.

The shark is stunned by this audacity. It won’t bite, it won’t move, in fact it looks entirely focused and absorbed on the tip of its nose.

From then on, the idiot in the boat can do whatever he wants with the shark.

I’ve noticed the same principle at work in a bunch of recent financial and investing VSLs.

Of course, no hand reaches out of the screen to grab you by the nose.

But at the very start of the video, instead of jumping into the promise or the pitch or the proof, all these recent VSLs do something weird. Literally weird.

Like showing a disembodied hand holding a mysterious document.

Or showing a standard deviation curve — “Probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but…”

Or showing $32 million in cash laid out on a table.

As you probably know, in any market, and in particular in markets hardest-hit by heavy advertising (like financial and investing newsletters), people will get jaded. Prospects become like that great white shark — ready to rip apart anything that smells familiar.

So marketers have to keep innovating and inventing.

Right now, these kinds of bizarre pattern interrupts, preceding an otherwise standard sales message, seem to be working very well. That might be something to keep in mind if you too sell in dangerous, shark-infested waters.

On a non-shark note:

I write a daily newsletter. If you’d like to get on it to keep your copywriting teeth sharp, click here.

Super germ ideas for profitable ad formats

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3 years ago, an astronaut on the International Space Station bounced his way outside of the calm and protected interior so he could set up a little experiment in open space.

He left some bacteria on the outside of the station, in the cold, in the dark, only occasionally to be pummeled by murderous space radiation.

It turns out these resilient bacteria survived. I bring this up for two reason:

1) Scientists say this means life COULD have come from somewhere else than Earth, which would certainly explain how the platypus got its beak, and

2) Because I learned about this super bacteria from a stock footage, subtitled video on the BBC site today.

That was interesting to me. I realized this is where the format came from for the Facebook ads I’ve been writing a lot of.

These Facebook ads look and feel the same as the BBC videos. They are made of stock footage, with overlaid subtitles that tell a story. Except the story is not about space-riding bacteria, but about bamboo kitchen towels or silicone freezer bags.

And here’s why this might be relevant to you:

These stock footage video ads are doing very well on Facebook right now. They are outperforming other ad formats my clients are trying (and these guys do a lot of trying and testing).

So if you do any Facebook advertising, it might be worthwhile going on the BBC site and checking out some of these science videos to see what makes them tick, and how you can mimic the same.

And there’s a deeper message I want to leave you with:

If an editorial format is working for a massive site like the BBC, it’s a good idea to try to adapt it into an ad.

Regular articles and these stock footage videos are not the only formats that work for news sites. I can think of other ways that places like CNBC and CNN deliver content, which might be relevant for Facebook advertisers.

The point being, it makes sense to pay attention to your own news consumption. You might find the germ of an idea. That idea can start to spread and multiply… until it forms a colony of money-making ads for your business.

For more biologically inspired marketing ideas, you might like my daily email newsletter. In case you’re interested, put on your space suit, unlock the hatch door, and sign up here.

Getting comfortable copybragging on Facebook

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Speaking on a podcast recently, marketer and copywriter (though not freelance!) Chris Haddad had the following harsh truth to share:

“If I was a freelance copywriter, I would be posting on Facebook about copy all the time. And I would be posting all of my testimonials and all of my successes. Because that’s the gig. And if you can’t do it, you need to go out and do something else.”

Chris was saying how back in the day, what made him successful as a freelance copywriter is he was willing to go out and shout, “Hey I’m Chris Haddad and I’m fucking great.” But that kind of bragging causes a discomfort in his seat these days. It’s also one of the reasons Chris doesn’t offer any copywriting training.

What if you’re the same?

​​What if you have a fear of the spotlight, and you cannot imagine bragging about yourself on Facebook? And what if, unlike Chris, you haven’t yet reached the levels of success that allow you to say, you know what, I’ll do something else instead?

Well, I think you’ve got several options. Such as creating your own product in a non-marketing niche… or writing a daily email newsletter in hopes of establishing your credibility without bragging… or taking a page out of Sasha Fierce’s book.

Yes, Sasha Fierce.

​​Maybe rings a bell. Maybe no? It’s the alter ego that Beyonce created for herself in her early days. Here’s Beyonce:

“Usually when I hear the chords, when I put on my stilettos, like the moment right before when you’re nervous… then Sasha Fierce appears, and my posture and the way I speak and everything is different.”

Psychologists agree. By conducting experiments on children and the weak-willed, they have shown how inventing an alter-ego for yourself (or at least asking yourself, “What would Chris Haddad do?”) works wonders in changing your perspective, your resolve, and your behavior. Search online for the “Batman Effect” if you want to know more about this.

But for now, maybe it’s time to start inventing a braggartly Facebook alterego for your copywriting business. It might not be what you like to hear. But as Chris says, that’s the gig.

Some personal bragging:

I write a daily email newsletter. It’s fucking great. If you want to see what all of my raving readers are swooning over, you can sign up here.

Why don’t people like salesmen?

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I was walking through the streets of an Eastern European capital this morning, when I heard a pleasant melody.

Keep in mind today is Saturday, and this morning at 9:51am there was practically nobody out and about.

But among some sycamores in the center, I heard an accordion playing. An old man had taken a bench by himself in an otherwise empty park, and was playing a nostalgic tune. He wasn’t playing for money. Just for himself.

I found this very pleasing. Better to sit outside in a warm and sunny park than to play your accordion in a tiny apartment with the neighbors banging on the wall to get you to quit.

But here’s the dark thought that occurred to me:

It wouldn’t be so quaint if the guy were playing for money. Then it would be desperate. Right? ​​Sitting in abandoned park, while everyone else is having breakfast at home, playing an accordion in the hope somebody will pass by and like your squeezing and buttoning enough to drop a few coins in your leather case. It’s like a scene from some 1950s Italian melodrama.

So what’s the moral of this story?

I’m not sure. But I think it has something to do with how people see you if you are in the position of selling yourself or your services, and in particular, of appearing needy.

Because selling something and appearing needy are not the same. But for many people and in many cases, they seem identical. That’s why salesmen are often so unpopular.

But you can get rid of the neediness and the stigma of salesmanship, while still continuing to sell.

There are lots of ways to get to this desirable place. The easiest in my opinion is to introduce standards — who you sell to, what you sell, how much you charge — and to not deviate from that. Suddenly the aura of desperation lifts from you, even if you could use a few extra coins in your leather accordion case.

For more tips for selling yourself and your services, you might like my daily email newsletter. It’s free. It’s for freelancers, copywriters, and business owners. And you can sign up for it here.

A VSL lead idea from the Harmon Brothers Agora ad

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I watched the Harmon Brothers Agora video today.

​​You might know what I’m talking about. It’s a humorous, viral-style video by the same people who made the one for Purple Mattress — except this one is selling an Agora stock-picking service.

This video is deadpan because it moves so quickly. I counted 17 jokes — visual, verbal, and physical – in the first 60 seconds alone. That’s a joke every 3.5 seconds, and I might have missed some.

When I first saw this video, I thought it was mostly a ripoff of Will Farrell movies. But I now realize it’s actually inspired by The Simpsons, which had the same rapidfire sequence of jokes.

​​Each joke might not be spectacular in itself. But the jokes are staggered in such quick fashion and edited so tightly that your brain starts to play along.

Unfortunately, the type of humor in the Harmon Brothers video is hard to replicate in writing. Instead, this might be a good way to write a lead, particularly for a VSL in gotta-wow-em markets like bizopp or weight loss. Here’s the recipe:

Take everything you want to say, all your promises, open loops, proof, objections and rebuttals, and write an obnoxiously long lead. Don’t be shy. Then boil it down through merciless editing by at least 10%, preferably much, much more.

The resulting copy will have so much momentum, that even if none of your individual claims or promises is all that unique or impressive or believable, you will simply blitz your reader’s brain into sticking with you through the first few minutes. And that, as they say is, 50% of the battle.

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Sweet inconsistency in copywriting education

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“The most important thing — you can know every copywriting technique in the book, you can read every book — the most important thing is to understand your audience.”
– Parris Lampropoulos

At the start of this year, I got a job to rewrite a VSL for an upsell of a successful offer.

A bit of background:

The offer was in the real estate investing space. It basically showed newbie investors how to get their leads for free using a secret resource.

​​Once people bought the frontend offer, they were shown the upsell. The upsell was about how to hire virtual assistants to automate much of the work involved in the frontend offer… so you can make more money in less time.

The question was how to position this upsell VSL.

My copywriting coach at the time said something like, “This training is the quickest way to become a millionaire real estate investor.”

That might be true. But my feeling was, for this audience, it was not believable. Most of these people had never even completed their first deal. Lots of them were retirees, or people who just wanted to quit their crap jobs and spend more time at home.

If these folks heard “You can be a millionaire,” my gut feeling was they would say, “No, that’s not me.”

And so I wrote that VSL around the promise of, “Get your first deal faster by doing less.” And that positioning turned out to be a winner. It beat out the control by 50%.

Here’s why I bring up this story from my client annals:

Copywriting wisdom is full of sweet inconsistency. Many top copywriters will tell you to make the biggest promise you can — and they will show you million-dollar ads to back up their case. Here’s a famous one from John Carlton:

“Amazing Secret Discovered By One-Legged Golfer Adds 50 Yards To Your Drives, Eliminates Hooks And Slices… And Can Slash Up To 10 Strokes From Your Game Almost Overnight”

But then you have other top copywriters, who will tell you the opposite — to make modest but believable promises. They will also show you successful ads to back up their case. Here’s one from Gary Bencivenga:

“Get Rich Slowly”

So who’s right? The “biggers” or the “modests”?

Neither, of course. Instead, it’s Parris who’s right.

As he says in the quote above, you’ve got to know your audience. Some audiences will believe any promise, so the larger it is, the better for you. Other audiences won’t. So make the biggest promise you can — as long as you’re sure your audience will find it believable.

Want to get better at copywriting slowly? I have a daily email newsletter where I share more information like this. You can sign up here.

Making missed opportunities hurt

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I’m at the seaside for a few days. Last night, after the fortieth glass of aperol, the decision was made to go for an “early-morning swim” today.

Today however, thanks to that same aperol, morning came later than usual. And then there was breakfast and some packing and a bit of standing around on the balcony. The early-morning swim plans turned into mid-day swim plans.

And then it started to rain. There would be no swimming after all.

Typical. At least in my life. Because in my experience, you can screw up in two ways:

You can take action and do something dumb… or you can not take action and miss an opportunity.

I’ve noticed in my own life that I’m much more likely to not take action, just like this morning, than to get overeager and get into trouble.

And I guess I am not the only one.

I read in Daniel Kahmenan’s Thinking Fast and Slow that we humans have a reliable bias in this direction.

It’s not just laziness.

But somewhere deep down in our monkey and lizard brains, we believe we will regret a mistake much more if we actively did something to bring it about… rather than if we just sat by, staring out the window, watching the clouds gather.

If Kahneman is right — and why wouldn’t he be, the guy’s got a Nobel Prize after all — then it’s another notch in favor of writing over-the-top, emotionally supercharged, manipulative sales copy.

Because sales copy, in spite of what many people will tell you, is not just like an ordinary conversation. You can’t just present a sober, reasoned argument and have people jumping out of bed.

Instead, you’ve got to create such desperation and fury in your prospect’s mind not only to overcome his natural laziness… but to overcome his fear of trudging all the way down to the beach, and then getting drenched in ice-cold rain. That’s gonna take some hyperbole. It’s gonna take some drama.

Finally, here’s a vision I want to paint in your mind:

I have an email newsletter. Each day I write a short email about copywriting and marketing lessons I’m learning.

If you like, you can sign up for the newsletter here. Or you can just wait. The opportunity will still be there tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.

The unmasking of a copywriting replicant

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“You remember when you were six, you and your brother snuck into an empty building through a basement window, you were gonna play doctor? He showed you his. When it got to be your turn, you chickened out and then ran. Remember that? Did you ever tell anybody that?”

I had a Blade Runner moment a few days ago.

I was watching an episode of The Copywriters Podcast and vague suspicions started bubbling up in my mind.

I realized many of my own ideas, my memories, the advice I keep peddling to others… I realized they’re not my own.

Instead, the guy on this interview, a successful copywriter, well, somehow his ideas seeped into my mind and had influenced a lot of how I write copy, specifically those cold-traffic advertorials I’ve done a million of for the past few years.

The thing is, this copywriter doesn’t have a book or a course for sale, as least as far as I know.

Instead, all those replicant memories in my head got there after I studied a few of his sales letters, along with snippets of his ideas that appeared online.

To make things worse, The Copywriters Podcast interview wasn’t very insightful. Too much David Garfinkel, too little of this original copywriter.

But I just went online. And I found a presentation this copywriter made about 8 years ago. I watched it. My Blade Runner moment intensified. It’s unsettling. But I wouldn’t undo it if I could, because this presentation (short by the way, only about 20 mins) is so full of valuable copywriting platinum and gold.

Maybe this doesn’t mean anything to you. But maybe, if you write copy, particularly for cold traffic, you want to know who this copywriter is.

But that particular bit of incriminating information is something I only revealed to people who were subscribed to my daily email newsletter. In case you want to get on that newsletter, so you don’t miss out on any of my future unmaskings, click here.

Don’t burden busy business owners with your vague help

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A few weeks ago, a former client named Patrick sent a couple referrals my way. One of those turned into a largish project, the other might turn into something down the line.

So this week, I wrote to Patrick to say thanks. I also wrote that, if he wants, I would write some new headlines for a VSL he’s running that he could test against his control. (I’ve done this before for him as part of a project, and it had a big effect.) I offered to do this for free — just as a way of saying thanks for the referrals.

Patrick said great, and sent me a VSL that’s doing well and that he wanted to test new headlines on. I watched the VSL… wrote up a couple new headlines… sent it back to Patrick… and it’s getting tested now.

“Thanks for this,” Patrick said at the end, “and I’ll keep you in mind for future copywriting work.”

Contrary to what you might think, this email is not about greasing the groove of those client relationships with bottles of wine and fruit baskets.

Instead, I want to point out something else that can help you get work and form better relationships:

Business owners are busy. So when you make a proposal to them, be specific.

That’s why I wrote Patrick and said, “Do you want me to rewrite a headline for you as a way of saying thanks?” I didn’t write him and say, “If there’s anything I can do to say thanks, let me know.”

Don’t count on busy people to spend time and mental effort thinking about how to do business with you. Instead, put in a bit of time and thought yourself, and make a specific proposal to them.

Maybe they will take you up on your proposal… or maybe it will jog another idea in their mind that works better for them. Either way, I think your chances of making a connection jump up about a million-fold, compared to counting on them to do the work.

​​And by the way, I think this same “specific” approach is the way to go when contacting people who could be your personal mentors.

All right, enough traipsing down client lane for today.

If you want more of my ideas for how to deal with copywriting clients, you might like my daily email newsletter.