Copywriting

If you’re cold and selfish, there’s always hope for you as a copywriter

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There’s an email in my inbox right now from a successful copywriter. In a nutshell, the email says,

“Don’t take Advil if you’re a marketer. It’ll blunt your empathy!”

(Apparently, Advil reduces not only physical pain, but transferred emotional pain, too.)

This is a common trope in the marketing world. “Empathy! Empathy! How else can you connect with your audience?”

But you don’t need empathy to be a good marketer. Case in point: Sociopaths, who have zero empathy, are very good at all kinds of persuasion, including marketing.

(In fact, I suspect some of the marketers who most vocally preach empathy are themselves sociopaths. If you don’t believe me, check out the Salty Droid blog.)

So if you don’t need empathy, then what?

All you need is something called “theory of mind.” That’s the understanding that other people have unique selves, unique ambitions, unique current thoughts, and unique information.

Once you accept this fact, you just have to truffle out where your prospect’s mind is at the moment. You can get there with cold-hearted, robotic research.

No empathy required.

But what if you do have empathy? Does that make you a better marketer? Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe it just makes you useless.

A while back I read an article about Jo Cameron, a nurse from Scotland. Cameron has a happy-go-lucky disposition and literally never feels pain, including empathetic pain.

Speaking about Cameron, a professor from Yale had this to say:

“Empathy can actually get in the way — if you are in terrible pain and I feel so much empathy for you that, being with you, I feel it, too, I may decide to stay home… [Jo Cameron is] my dream girl. She doesn’t feel the pain of others, so she doesn’t feel empathy per se. But she cares for others.”

So if you’re cold and selfish, there’s hope for you as a marketer. It might even be an advantage, as long as you care. At least about making the sale.

All you have to do is learn how to do research, like I mentioned above. This is something I might cover in more detail in my email newsletter. The way to sign up for it is here.

Spider-Dan stymies the experts and you can too

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On May 25 1981, a man dressed in a Spider-Man suit crossed Franklin Street in Chicago at just the right moment.

He had been scoping out the Sears Tower for several days. He knew the routines of the security guards. Right now, nobody would be there to stop him.

So he got out his two suction cups, stuck them to the black glass wall of the giant skyscraper, and started to climb.

It took him 7 hours, but he made it to the top. 110 floors, 1,450 feet above the ground. All the way to the roof of the world’s tallest building at the time.

The man’s name was Dan Goodwin. For his effort, he was arrested and fined $35. He also earned himself the nickname Spider-Dan.

That doesn’t seem like much of a reward. So what made Spider-Dan do it?

A few months earlier, Goodwin was in Las Vegas where he saw the MGM hotel burn down. In spite of the firefighters on the scene, 86 people died in the blaze.

The next day, Goodwin went to the fire marshal’s office. He had a proposal for how to rescue people from the top floors of burning skyscrapers by climbing on the outside.

“Have you ever climbed a building?” the fire marshal snapped back. “No? Then don’t tell me how to do my job.”

So Goodwin did a bit of thinking… a bit of practicing… and then on May 25th, he accomplished his audacious climb up the Sears Tower. Something most people, including experts like the fire marshal, would have said was impossible.

I’m not saying you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. I don’t believe that’s true, for you or for me.

On the other hand, most experts are full of mashed potatoes. An expert’s number one goal is to protect his own status and self-image.

You only have to go back 50 or 100 years to see how tons of experts in any field – whether scientists or politicians or educators — were dead sure of ideas we would find laughable or offensive today. The same will happen when people look back on today from the perspective of another 30 or 50 years.

Anyways, Dan Goodwin did all right for himself with his Spider-Dan role. But he could have been killed. And he did get fined $35.

In other words, the world can be a risky place. It makes sense to keep that in mind.

But when experts make confident predictions or prohibitions… well, my personal stance is to pay them no mind. Their job is to protect the status quo, and their own interests.

So here’s a suggestion: If you want to attempt something, don’t let adverse expert opinion stop you. You might succeed. And you might even get a cool nickname out of it, just like Spider-Dan.

By the way, I don’t pretend to be an expert. But I write daily emails nonetheless, mostly about persuasion and influence. If you want to get them, click here to subscribe.

Shorthand and shortcut in direct response copywriting

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Imagine the year is 1999. You are a dentist named Kurt, living in a small town in Pennsylvania.

One beautiful Saturday morning in May, you walk out to your mailbox, and you find a letter. You open it up to see a big headline that reads:

“There’s a new railroad across America”

“And it’s making some people very rich…”

Pretty intriguing, right? So you start to read.

The letter tells you how railroads made huge fortunes in the 19th century. But bankers were afraid to invest, so it was small, independent investors who connected America by rail — and got filthy-as-Johnny-Rotten rich in the process.

Finally, the letter explains what it’s selling:

A few companies are laying down a fiber-optic network to connect America by Internet in the 21st century, much like the railroad connected it in the 19th century. People who invest in the right companies have the chance to get rich like 19th-century railroad barons. Do you want to be among these shrewd investors?

Plenty of people did, back in 1999, when Porter Stansberry sent them this letter to launch his newsletter.

But imagine if Porter had written a slightly different letter. Instead of talking about a railroad, imagine he had used the headline:

“There’s a new goldmine in America”

“And it’s making some people very rich…”

This is pretty similar to the original. Another metaphor. Would it work just as well?

It’s unlikely. Here’s a relevant quote by one Linda Berger, a law professsor at UNLV:

“A reader who is asked to interpret a novel metaphor will be engaged in the creation of meaning, while the reader who is confronted with a conventional metaphor will do nothing more than retrieve an abstract metaphoric category.”

Stansberry’s “railroad” is a metaphor for an investing opportunity. Odds are, you’ve never seen this metaphor before.

A “goldmine” is also a metaphor for an investing opportunity. Odds are, you’ve seen that plenty of times before.

And that’s the difference Berger is talking about.

When you give people a novel metaphor, they start turning it around in their brains. They map aspects of the metaphor to their situation. So “railroad” becomes “Internet”… “tracks” become “fiber-optic cable”… “independent 19th-century investor” becomes “me.”

But what if you give a reader a conventional metaphor like “goldmine”? If Berger is right, and I suspect she is, then the reader says, “Oh, they must mean this is a big investment opportunity.” And if that turns your reader on, then he continues to read.

In other words, a novel metaphor is a shortcut between where your reader currently is… and where you want him to go mentally.

A conventional metaphor is shorthand. It can be useful to quickly express a concept in a few words. But it’s not gonna create any new insight.

Remember my post from yesterday? It turns out both Gary Bencivenga and Mark Ford were right. Cliches have their uses, and their limitations. And now you know why — and when to use shorthand, and when to create mental shortcuts.

Speaking of shortcuts, I write a daily email newsletter about persuasion. The way to sign up for it is here.

Cliches: Shooting fish in a barrel? Or yourself in the foot?

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Here’s a tough nut to crack:

Gary Bencivenga was a collossus of direct response copywriting. His sales letters made his clients hundreds of millions of dollars. On the topic of cliches, Gary had the following to say:

“I love clichés, and you should too! They are clichés precisely because everyone already believes them, so using them gives your copy greater credibility.”

Now here is a second quote, this one by Mark Ford. Mark is also an expert copywriter and a very successful marketer. Among his other ventures, Mark helped grow Agora from an $8-million-a-year company to a billion-dollar company. About cliches, Mark once wrote:

“Although everyone can relate to these expressions, they’ve been said so frequently that they’ve been stripped of their power. They no longer communicate profound ideas. And they don’t inspire people intellectually. And that’s why cliches are killers in direct mail. They make your copy seem obvious and predictable. […] Remember, as a copywriter, you’ve always got to keep your prospect from getting ahead of you. If he can anticipate what you’re going to say, he’ll assume he knows what’s coming — and you’ll lose him.”

So who’s right?

The most successful direct response copywriter of all time?

Or the direct response marketer who has overseen more promotions than probably anybody else?

Not to beat a dead horse… but like most things in the universe, the question of cliches is not simple or one-sided. Cliches have their place. But they also have their limitations.

I know that’s clear as mud. So I’ll give you the latest research on what cliches can do — and cannot do — in my email tomorrow. If you want to get that info before anybody else, click here and subscribe to my email newsletter.

The hottest girl on an empty beach and other ways to sidestep competition

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I went for a walk this morning next to the sea, and I saw the most amazing girl.

Let me set this up by saying the tourist season hasn’t started yet. The town I’m in is empty except for the locals. There were a few people walking dogs in the morning, but there was nobody, absolutely nobody, on the beach.

Except her.

The early morning sun lit her up from the side. She was in a bikini, standing in the water up to her ankles. She seemed to be testing out the temperature and questioning her resolve to dive in.

I walked by, spellbound. A man coming towards me seemed equally absorbed — he was staring and his jaw was hanging open.

Now if you asked me what this girl looked like, I’d have to say she was between 15 and 35 years of age. She had hair on her head. She was not visibly obese.

Beyond that, I can’t say much. For one thing, I couldn’t see her all that well. For another, I was so blinded by the fact that she was the one and only girl for a mile up and down the beach, and probably, in the entire town.

The point of this is the value of being in a marketplace of one.

Of course, one way to be in that lucky position is to find a group of people who aren’t being served by anybody else — the equivalent of an empty beach town before the season starts. That definitely works, but there might be drawbacks. There’s a good chance your prospects will be slack-jawed oglers. And there will be inevitable competition as the season heats up.

But there’s an alternative. It allows you to create a marketplace of one for yourself, even in the face of ostensible “competition.”

I’ve talked about this already a few times. It’s a trick known as helping your prospects experience a moment of insight.

There’s a lot more to be said about this topic. So I won’t do that here. But I am putting together a book about it. If you want to get notified when it comes out, click here and subscribe to my email newsletter.

Making more money without adding a single thing

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A couple days ago, an on-and-off client contacted me with a possible new job.

He’d hired another copywriter first (big mistake). No surprise, he wasn’t happy with the outcome. So he wanted me to rewrite the worst parts of the other guy’s work. How much would it cost?

It would cost a lot. But let’s take a moment and imagine a hypothetical scenario:

You go to a friend’s house. He offers you some ice cream and he says, “I forgot it out in the sun last week. It melted to shit. But after a few hours, I remembered it and put it back in the freezer. It’s all yours if you want it!”

I don’t know about you, but I’d find a way to politely refuse. Eating refrozen ice cream doesn’t sound appealing. And it could cause serious digestive regrets.

That’s how I felt about the rewrite offer. But there was something else clanging around my brain-pan, too:

“You can make a lot more money if you stop doing the things you’re doing now, without adding a single thing.”

I heard a guy named James Schramko say this in a presentation a few months back. James’s advice was to look at your current clients and get rid of the least profitable ones. Somehow, James promised, you’d make more money this way.

This might sound like “law of attraction” fluff. It’s not. It’s specific business advice.

James laid out much of his system in the presentation I listened to. This is stuff that allows James to surf most of the day while making several million dollars a year. It’s also worked for his coaching clients — guys like Ryan Levesque and Kevin Rogers.

In short, this presentation was real valuable. If you’re a copywriter and you want to work less but somehow make more money, it’s worth your time. Here’s the link:

https://copychief.com/ep-164-james-schramko/

Limitless persuasion value inside this blog post

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The first time Eddie Morra sees the magic pill, he is sitting in a bar, across from his ex brother-in-law.

“You know how we only use 20% of our brain?” the brother-in-law says as he points to the pill. “This lets you access the other 80%.”

The brother-in-law used to deal drugs. Now, he promotes this secret new nootropic, which gives users a superhuman IQ. He’s offering a sample to Eddie for free.

But Eddie shrugs. He doesn’t want the magic pill.

“Don’t be ungrateful,” says the brother-in-law. “Do you know how much this costs? $800. A pop.”

So Eddie takes a second look. And he scoops up the pill and puts it in his jacket.

The above is a scene from the 2011 movie Limitless. And it illustrates a sad fact of a persuader’s life. Many times, people won’t listen to you. Even when you clearly lay out the benefits your offer will provide them.

So it makes sense to do what Eddie’s brother-in-law did. Present a good offer… and then tell people the value of what they are looking at.

But let me tell you something even more valuable. This isn’t just a useful trick to grow the number of prospects who take up your offer.

Nope. This is also an instance of a fundamental pattern of persuasion.

Persuading people is often a two-step process. Show AND tell. Story AND lesson. Benefits AND the benefits of those benefits.

Phew. Do you know how much value I’ve just given you? Such much value. You could even say… limitless.

I’m not sure I can keep delivering value at this break-neck rate. So if you want to see me fail, click here and subscribe to my daily newsletter.

My brief and curious career as a stock analyst

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Back in 2014, I quit the one and only proper job I’ve ever had, as a buzzing little drone in a software company. I then started something I was completely unqualified for:

I became a stock analyst.

To be fair, all I was really doing was writing front-end content for The Motley Fool. But the very fact anybody would pay me to write about stocks was outrageous.

Not only did I know nothing about finance, or stocks, or business… but I also didn’t care.

There was nothing less interesting to me than how the price of Apple stock is moving, and whether NVIDIA would be a good buy at $19.

But here’s the kink in this story:

I spent each day reading about a new company, and writing up a 500-word blog post. “Yes, it’s a good buy.” “No, it won’t succeed in a new market.”

I had no idea what I was talking about. But a funny thing started to happen.

I was becoming interested in these companies. And by extension, in their stock prices. And yes, I even became interested in finance, and what all the different accounting numbers meant.

This, of course, has a very powerful implication for copywriting. The technical term for it is a “curiosity gap.”

Of course, people don’t get curious about a question they know the answer to. But they also don’t get curious about a question where their knowledge is non-existent.

The sweet spot is somewhere between these two extremes. Actually, it’s much closer to the “I know this answer” extreme.

In other words, if you want people to be curious about what you have to say, they must already know a lot about your topic.

But what if they don’t? Well, then it’s your job to tell them all about NVIDIA, in such a way that even a 2014 version of me would listen.

Finally, here’s a hot stock tip for you:

Click here and subscribe to my daily email newsletter. There’s actually nothing about finance in my emails. But if you’re interested in marketing and copywriting, I can fill in the occasional curiosity gap on those topics.

The naked blog post

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I’m writing this blog post because I want you to click on the link at the bottom.

If you’re reading my blog, I imagine you’ve got some interest in writing, and maybe you even write professionally. If so, you’ve probably found yourself, at least now and then, struggling to get started, or taking too long to finish a solid first draft.

And that’s what the other side of the link at the bottom can help with. It’s a method to quickly produce a first draft, and not just a “shitty first draft,” either. Use this method and you can get going with your writing without procrastination… and produce something that’s 50% of the way you need to go.

Now, if I had to imagine what objections you might have at this point, I would think it’s something like:

* You don’t have time to read another stupid blog post right now

* You don’t really struggle with writer’s block

* You’re dubious about “speed writing” systems

Reasonable objections all. Let me give you my thoughts on them:

* If you really don’t have time, then don’t click the link. But this blog post, which won’t take more than a few minutes to read, could save you hours or days of struggle and frustration in the coming months.

* On writer’s block: I also used to think it doesn’t affect me. I never find myself staring at an empty page. But writer’s block can be insidious. It can transform itself into excess time spent researching… or outlining… or doing other seemingly productive things which really are not. In other words, if you ever took longer to finish a writing project than you wanted, odds are that a sneaky form of writer’s block was part of it.

* You don’t have to be a fan of speed reading, speed writing, or speed chess to use this system. It’s not a matter of getting hyped up, writing at a furious pace, or being sloppy. It’s simply a process to get past the inhibitions in your brain and to start selling your offer.

Like I said, the link below will take you to a simple blog post. There’s nothing for sale and no cost to you except the actual effort of clicking. If you do click but don’t like the blog post, don’t read it. If you do read but don’t like what you’ve read, then don’t apply it.

So there’s no risk. That’s why it makes sense to at least click on the link and see for yourself.

You can even skip the intro of the blog post and jump straight into the how-to highlighted points. That will save you some reading, and you’ll get the gist of this method in just a minute or two.

By the way, it makes sense to read this now if you can. This blog post was originally based on a popular forum entry, which disappeared a while back. I searched for information on this method earlier in the year, and I couldn’t find any. In other words, it’s not certain this blog post will be there if you decide to come back to it in a year or in a month’s time.

Finally, if you need any more encouragement, let me tell you this is a technique that was recommended by copywriter Dan Ferrari. Dan said it helped him write more on a sales letter in an afternoon than he had done in the week previous. If you know Dan, you know he’s very smart and successful, and his recommendations count for something. So in case you’re ready, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/naked

“My service is so valuable… but so few companies value it”

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In the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, a banker named Greg Lippman went a-selling on Wall Street.

He wanted to get institutional investors to buy “credit default swaps.” These instruments would pay out big if the market crashed, and Lippman would get a fat fee off the deal.

Lippman had unquestionable proof the market would crash. He had a great sales pitch. And he had a killer offer — to make his investors a ton of money, with great odds, at a low price.

And yet, these stupid investors wouldn’t buy. “If it’s such a great deal,” they would say, “why are you offering it to me?” Others said, “I couldn’t explain this to my investors.” And the most common objection? “I’m convinced. You’re right. But it’s not my job to short the subprime market.”

In the end, Lippman managed to get some buyers. But these investors were already determined to short the subprime market… and were just looking for the best way to do so. Thanks to Lippman’s advice, they made out like bandits when the market came crashing down.

But don’t worry. I’m not getting enamored with investing. And this newsletter is still about copywriting. In fact, that’s why I bring up the story above.

I was reading a thread today on a copywriting forum. People were frustrated that copywriting is so powerful… and yet, most companies don’t value copywriting.

It sounded like the struggle of Greg Lippman above.

Your copywriting services might be powerful. But most businesses still won’t want in. So why waste energy approaching businesses that should see the value you’re bringing… and then getting frustrated when they fail to do so?

Instead, approach businesses that already do see the value of copywriting, and are just looking for the best way to get it. These are the businesses that will make out like bandits from your winning copy. And they won’t mind when you get a fat fee off the deal.