Copywriting

A close entrepreneurial shave

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I’ve just had the most homoerotic experience, if not of my life, then certainly of the past 14 years.

I paid a man, much younger than me, to massage, caress, and pinch me. He did his job dutifully for almost exactly a half hour.

I won’t lie to you. I was massively relieved at the end of it. And with the transaction over, I couldn’t wait to get away.

So I handed the young man the equivalent of about $7, wrote my name on the obligatory covid-tracking sheet, and ran the hell out of the barber shop.

It never occurred to me to get a professional shave until today, but I’ll try anything once. And to be honest, I was chuffed with myself for going through this experience.

Only thing is, the shave wasn’t very good.

I realized it once I got home and checked in the mirror. I looked like a disheveled computer science professor I once had — smooth cheek on one side, five o’clock shadow on the other, uneven bits of stubble under my nose, tiny blotches of blood everywhere.

There was nothing left to do but get out the trusty Sensor Excel and do the job right myself.

So why is this relevant to you?

Probably no reason. Except in the unlikely case that you are an entrepreneur, or want to become one, but the thought of hiring people and managing them gives you the runs.

In spite of all the outsourcing porn and the advice about focusing on your most valuable 20%, the fact remains that you are still probably the best person to do many jobs around your business.

Sure, that can be a terrible limiting factor. But some business owners go surprisingly far by being a one-man band.

And in any case, if you hate the idea of recruiting, hiring, training, and keeping employees happy, then you might not have any choice.

​​​If this side of your personality is truly ingrained, then better accept it and figure out how to live with it.

​​As business coach Rich Schefren likes to say, “Put your shaving goals ahead of your massage goals.” No, I got that wrong. “Put your business goals ahead of your personal development goals.” That’s right.

But if you want to do things by yourself, you’ll need to get some good advice. I can’t help you with shaving. But for marketing and copywriting advice, you might like my daily email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

Launching offers for the coming crisis

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In Columbus, Ohio, judges have relocated eviction hearings from the courthouse to the city’s convention center. The justice system needs space — more people than usual are about to be thrown out onto the street.

And no wonder.

Corona-era eviction bans are expiring in many places, and federal aid ended last month. As a result, more than 30% of American households expect to miss their rent payments in August.

Come September, 20 million renters will be at risk of evictions. And even if they aren’t evicted, this will cause mass problems further up the food chain.

Small landlords, who are counting on that rent money, will be at risk of defaulting on their mortgages.

When that happens, expect the Grim Banker to swoop in with his scythe, and to heartlessly start cutting down both landlords and renters.

I’m not telling you this to paint an ever-bleaker picture of the current crisis.

Instead, I do it to illustrate a copywriting technique I talked about last week.

That technique is having an occasion to your copy.

Over the past few days, I’ve talked to two business owners. Both guys have popular websites offering info on real estate investing. And both recently launched new entry-level products. Neither product did great.

One reason I can imagine for the many shrugs that met these offers is that neither product had any occasion. In other words, the marketing for the products didn’t answer the question, “Why am I seeing this offer now?”

The thing is, if you’re in the real estate space, there is an incredibly powerful story you can tell right now to answer that question.

That story has high stakes (millions of homeowners betrayed by the system, trillions of dollars up in the air)…

… it’s got villains everybody can rail against (the Grim Banker above, and his minion, the incompetent government bureaucrat)…

… and it’s got an unlikely hero — your prospect — who gets the call, and who rises to the challenge of making himself mounds of money while helping his fellow citizen.

Of course, maybe you are not in the real estate space. In that case, the current moment might not offer such a clear-cut occasion to hitch your sales copy to. But if you look a bit, there’s almost certain to be a reason somewhere in the current mess, and probably a good reason, to give occasion to your specific offer.

I’ll certainly be on the lookout for such occasions, whether for real estate or for other businesses my clients are in. If you want to get updates as I write more about these topics, you can sign up for my daily email newsletter here.

Two multi-millionaire marketers go into a cigar bar…

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Today I was listening to the newest edition of Steal Our Winners, and Internet marketer Rich Schefren told a quick story.

He said that around 10 years ago, he started writing daily, slice-of-life, Matt Furey-style emails, much like what you’re reading now.

And then, at a cigar bar, he ran into Mark Ford. Mark is a big-name copywriter and one of the main guys behind the direct response juggernaut Agora.

“Look, this is the poor man’s Agora,” Rich said to Mark about those daily emails. (Then, as now, Agora was sending out emails every day, real serious editorial stuff.)

“Actually, I like this better than what we do at Agora,” said Mark. “And let me tell you why.”

The gist of it was, Rich’s slice-of-life emails were sometimes short, sometimes long. Sometimes a paragraph, sometimes a page.

That kept the reader guessing.

The reader could never say, “Oh I don’t have the time to read this now.” That meant each time an email hit him, he couldn’t dismiss it.

I think there’s a lot of wisdom in what Mark Ford said. It makes good sense to keep your reader guessing, and not just about the length of your emails.

I could tell you more.

But in the interest of keeping this post short, well… all I can say is, if you want more, you can sign up to my daily email newsletter.

Don’t rape your audience

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Today’s post is on the subject of email marketing, a rather milquetoast topic. The hook, though, is jarring — rape.

I didn’t think of that hook. Instead, it comes from William Goldman, somebody I’ve mentioned often in these emails.

Goldman was first a successful novelist and later a successful Hollywood screenwriter and then again a successful novelist.

Along the way, he also wrote a non-fiction book called Adventures in the Screen Trade. I’m reading it now. It’s a combination of memoir and an insider’s look into Hollywood, specifically as it was in the 60s and 70s of the last century.

Somewhere in the Adventures book, Goldman talks about the most important part of a screenplay — the beginning. And it’s here that he writes the following:

“In narrative writing of any sort, you must eventually seduce your audience. But seduce doesn’t mean rape.”

Specifically, Goldman is contrasting movie writing to TV writing. At the beginning of a movie, Goldman says, you have some time. You can seduce. Things are different in TV land — you gotta be aggressive, right in the first few seconds. Otherwise the viewer will simply change the channel.

I had never thought about this difference. But it makes sense. And it makes me think of…

Sales copy, which is definitely on the TV end of the seduction/rape spectrum. Just think of some famous opening lines of blockbuster VSLs:

“Talk dirty to me”

“We’re going to have to amputate your leg”

What about email copy? Much of it also opens up in the same aggressive way. Here are a few opening lines I just dug up from recent sales emails in my inbox:

“MaryAnne couldn’t take it anymore:”

“In 1981, a dirty magazine published an article that had the potential to make its readers filthy rich.”

I always assumed this is just the way good copy is — VSLs or emails or whatever. Of course, that’s not true.

When I actually look at some of my favorite newsletters (and even some successful sales letters), they don’t have an immediate and aggressive grabber. Instead, they build up and work their way into their point — without rambling, but without aggression either.

The difference comes down to the relationship you have with your list. Some businesses, including some businesses I’ve worked for, have little to no relationship with their list. Each email they send out is like a random infomercial popping up on TV — if it doesn’t capture attention right away, it never will.

But some businesses have a great relationship with their list. They can afford to take the time to light the candles and sip the wine and stare seductively at their reader across the table. In fact, if they didn’t, things would seem off.

Is it possible to go from one style of email marketing to the other?

I believe so. In my experience, people tend to mirror your own emotions and behavior. That means you’ll have to take the first step if you want things to change. Rather than waiting for your list to have a better relationship with you… start seducing, and stop trying to rape.

Now that we’ve warmed up the conversation:

I also have a daily email newsletter. You can subscribe for it here. And if you do subscribe, I promise to… well, I won’t go there.

Doing free work for potential clients

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Perhaps I’m stupid. Or just naive.

I just spent an hour doing free work for a potential client. He hasn’t paid me anything. He might never pay me anything.

And yet, I watched his current VSL (troubled, to be generous). I then wrote up a nice document with the problems I saw and what I would do instead.

This made me think of one hot summer evening three years ago. I couldn’t sleep. So I snuck out of the bedroom (my girlfriend at the time was sleeping, the heat didn’t bother her). In the living room, I put on a Perry Marshall webinar.

The topic of the webinar was “discovery contracts.” The gist of it was this:

Instead of talking to potential clients to see if you are a good fit to work together… instead of spending time analyzing their situation with nothing in return… instead of coming up with valuable recommendations they can get implemented elsewhere…

… you can do a “discovery contract.”

In a nutshell, as they say, you can do all the stuff I just listed, but charge your potential client for it, up front. You say something like:

“I’ve stopped doing discovery calls with potential clients, but here’s what I can do. I’ll dive into your current copy/product/whatever, and give you my best recommendation of how to proceed, presented in a neat document. You can then go ahead and find the best person to implement those recommendations for you, or you can hire me. I charge my hourly/daily/whatever rate for this kind of discovery project. If you decide to hire me after I finish, I’ll subtract that rate out of my final fee.”

Sounds great, right?

But like I said, I’ve never done anything like this. Maybe it’s stupid. But I have no regrets (not yet).

I’ve had lots of good experiences doing some free work up front for potential clients. And I talk with new clients rarely enough these days that, even if they stiff me out of an hour of work, it’s not the end of the whirl.

But maybe you’re not in the same situation as I am. Maybe you’re constantly talking to potential new clients. Maybe some of them take advantage of you. Or maybe you’re just tired of all the wasted time.

In that case, it might be time to try a discovery contract. You’ll weed out the tire kickers. You might get paid. And the clients who do go for it will likely respect you more.

If you want more free articles like this (you tire kicker, you), you might like my daily email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.

Sorry to see you go

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Here’s a Days-Of-Thunder-sized personal confession:

I cant “read” marketing.

I find it too boring. As soon as I suspect an email or a web page or an article is trying to sell me something, a switch gets flipped in my head, my eyes get watery, and I start to gloss over the text in hope of escape.

This is definitely a problem, since I make my living writing sales copy, the exact kind of stuff I can’t stomach reading.

So I’ve found ways of working around this.

For example, one of the main benefits I get from hand-copying ads is that it simply forces me to carefully read those ads.

For a while, I was also having success by seeking out trends for a “3-minute DR news” feature for my email newsletter. That helped me actually pay attention to other marketers’ ads, even if I had no interest in what they were selling or preaching.

As part of this, I subscribed to dozens of email newsletters. But over time, I unsubscribed from almost all of them.

I did the same just now with copywriter Abbey Woodcock’s newsletter.

All I know about Abbey is that 1) she was one of Parris Lampropoulos’s copy cubs, so she’s gotta know about copywriting and 2) she has some kind of program helping newbie freelancers get started.

Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen in Abbey’s emails, she doesn’t talk too much about 1. But she talks aplenty about 2.

So I unsubscribed. But then, I saw an interesting thing on Abbey’s unsubscribe page.

It’s something I haven’t seen anybody else do. Here’s what happens:

When you click unsubscribe in Abbey’s email, you get taken to her site to confirm. “Yes, I really do want to unsubscribe.” Once you click that, you are taken to one final page.

“Sorry to see you go,” the page says.

And then directly below, it goes on: “Here are some other resources that might be a better fit,” followed by two affiliate links (Copy Chief and something called Effic Planning System).

I thought this was great because 1) it could be genuinely helpful to somebody who wasn’t a fit for Abbey’s stuff and 2) it could make some money for Abbey from an otherwise useless ex-lead.

This illustrates a principle I first heard Ben Settle talk about. (I guess he learned it from Dan Kennedy.)

That principle is to always seek out unused capacity.

Abbey’s unsubscribe page is just one small and clear example of this.

But if you have any kind of business — yes, even as a newbie freelancer — you might have unused capacity that you could profitably exploit.

Take for example these blog posts. For most of the time I’ve been writing them, I simply ended each post without including any kind of call to action.

Unused capacity.

So I started including a CTA each and every time. Something simple. Along the lines of,

I’ve got an email newsletter about marketing and persuasion. If you like what you just read, you might like that too. In case you want to give it a try, click here to subscribe.

Enemies, enemies, enemies

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Famed A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga once wrote a promotion called Lies, Lies, Lies. It was about all the scheming swindlers — the lawyers, the politicians, the IRS — working to rip off small investors.

Speaking about this promo in an interview with Clayton Makepeace, Gary said the following:

“Instead of the usual “I’m trying to sell you something,” which sort of sets up immediately in the reader’s mind a you-versus-me mentality, I found a way to shift gears by saying, “it’s you and me against these other guys.” And if you can create an enemy in your copy, that’s what happens. You set up a three-point discussion and you come around from your side of the desk to be on the reader’s side of the desk and then it’s you and the reader against the enemy that you’re railing against.”

Then and now, creating an enemy = power.

But what if you’re a peace-loving hobbit who only has good will, even towards orcs and trolls? Well, in that case, young Frodo, you have to start thinking outside the box.

To help you out, here are 10 categories you can look to for potential enemies, along with a couple of examples I just made up from the copywriting and marketing space.

By the way, I’m not telling you to go out and make war against these specific enemies. Nor am I saying these are enemies of mine. Just use these examples to get your ideas jogging around your head.

Anyways, here are 10 rocks under which you can find gruesome and evergreen enemies, enemies, enemies:

1. Industry insiders. Examples: Successful copywriters boasting about their fees and selling their “secrets.” Copywriting coaches who haven’t written a word of copy in years.

2. Snake oil salesmen. Examples: No-name marketers who have only sold copywriting courses by tricking those less experienced than themselves. Newbies who regurgitate what they’ve read but never tried writing copy themselves.

3. Government institutions. Examples: The FTC, which makes regulations to keep the little marketer down but allows big corporations to get away with murder. The FDA, which will suppress promising products, because it is in the pay of secret interests.

4. Big corporations. Examples: Facebook and Google, who will gladly take your money and sell you fake clicks. Amazon, which will take your successful product and make a clone of it.

5. Price points: Examples: Ridiculously high prices (eg. $10k) for a couple of videos. Ridiculously low prices (a free guide on how to achieve a 7-figure income).

6. Customers and prospects. Examples: Freebie seekers. Serial refunders.

7. Ways of doing business. Examples: Copy hype backed up by low-quality products. Maximizing one-time sales at the cost of long-term business.

8. Ways of leveling up. Examples: Hand-copying old ads. Writing ads for nonexistent products.

9. Ways of working. Examples: Working for an hourly wage. Not working for an hourly wage and getting paid peanuts.

10. Received wisdom. Examples: Making big promises in your headlines. Writing your body copy in choppy sentences…

… with each sentence fragment on its own line.

Still not enough enemies? Come and join my daily email newsletter. I sometimes rail against my enemies there, but these rants are reserved for my subscribers.

The beginnings of empire: How Agora made its first sales

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You look out your window, past your gardener, who is busily pruning the lemon, cherry, and fig trees… amidst the splendor of gardenias, hibiscus, and hollyhocks.

The sky is clear blue. The sea is a deeper blue, sparkling with sunlight.

A gentle breeze comes drifting in from the ocean, clean and refreshing, as your maid brings breakfast in bed.

For a moment, you think you have died and gone to heaven.

But this paradise is real. And affordable. In fact, it costs only half as much to live this dream lifestyle… as it would to stay in your own home!

What you’ve just read is the opening of the International Living sales letter.

Bill Bonner — the founder of Agora, a $1B+ publishing company — used this sales letter to launch his first newsletter over thirty years ago. The letter supposedly brought in $3 for every $1 of advertising spend. Today, it still continues to bring in new paying readers.

I bring it up to illustrate a powerful marketing truth, which I first heard from another famous copywriter, Dan Kennedy:

Sell escape, not improvement

Bonner wasn’t selling people on eking out more from their meager social security. He was selling them escape, to heaven, with nothing more than what they already had. Well, with nothing more but a subscription to International Living.

You too can do the same. ​​Selling people a lighter shade of drab is hard work. Selling them a bright and exciting new color, well, that’s the kind of approach that can help you start a billion-dollar empire.

Speaking of escape:

Imagine checking your email every day, and among the dozens of boring, pushy, or irrelevant messages from God-knows-who, you see it.

It’s a daily email, one that I sent you. It talks about marketing and persuasion, but mostly, it’s a way to escape for a few moments.

For a moment, you think you have died and gone to heaven. But this paradise is real, and surprisingly affordable. In fact, it’s free. You can sign up to make this dream a reality by clicking here.

Tempting your prospect into adultery

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I just read an Atlantic article about why people cheat, even in seemingly happy relationships.

The article describes the case of one Priya, a dutiful woman married to her “dream guy” but cheating with a tattooed truck driver. Priya is torn and miserable about how she is risking it all and how horrified her husband would be if he found out. But she can’t let the affair go.

It seems to me the real reason why people cheat is unknowable, even to those doing the cheating. ​​My theory is that people do these kinds of things from layers upon layers of deep and hidden motivations, which are usually plastered over by a story the cheater tells him or herself (“There’s no more passion in my marriage,” “It just happened”).

But enough about sex. Let’s talk marketing.

Specifically, let’s talk adultery, but within the context of getting people to start cheating on their current solution, and having an affair with your offer instead.

Fact is, if somebody is in a given market, then they have problems and deep motivations that are not being satisfied by the current solution they are using. That’s by definition. If they were perfectly satisfied, they wouldn’t be in your target market.

And there’s a clever way to tell your prospects a story that gets their minds and wallets a-wandering. It’s a combination of something I heard from marketers Stefan Georgi and Rich Schefren. And it’s something I’m writing up in a little book I’m putting together just now.

That book will be out in the next few weeks. If you’d like to get notified when it’s out, so you can read about this little adultery-causing technique, you can sign up for my daily email newsletter.

What boomers and Tik Tokers crave the most

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A while back, I was listening to a coaching call by top-level copywriter Dan Ferrari. And one of the guys on the call — it might have been copywriter Mike Abramov, I’m not sure — was writing a sales promo for some Agora health affiliate.

You might know how these Agora health promos look: a miracle discovery in the jungles of a remote Pacific island… an FDA conspiracy to suppress a powerful natural cure… long-lost scientific gold uncovered again by accident.

Anyways, the Agora copywriter in question said the following insightful thing:

“People are just really bored, and the one email each day with the curiosity-teasing clickbait is the highlight of their day.”

This ties into something Kevin Rogers of Copy Chief wrote in an email several months. Kevin was talking about the shift from selling to entertaining, and how this is indispensable today as direct response markets shift from the boomer generation to whatever generation comes after the boomers (gen X?).

Kevin says, it’s just as important for a copywriter today to study Quentin Tarantino as to study Claude Hopkins.

I agree. And more people becoming aware of it. But as the Agora copywriter above commented, this is not just if you’re selling to millennials or gen X or whatever Tik Tok-enabled crowd today.

In today’s market, whatever and whoever you sell to, odds are, your prospects are bored. And the sales copy you send them — emails, FB ads, advertorials, long-form sales letters — should be the entertaining highlight of their dreary days. Entertain first, and you might have a chance to sell, too.

And if you yourself need an occasional cure from being bored, I write a daily email newsletter than can help with that. Or it might not. But if you want to give it a try, and see if amuses you to read, you can sign up for a test here.