Copywriting

The other way to persuade

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Let me ask you a personal question or three:

Are you very politically conservative?

Do you care passionately about the fate of the planet and about climate change?

Were you out in the streets last night, partying after the Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship?

If you said “yes” to any of the above questions, then I believe you’ve got a leg up in the copywriting, marketing, and persuasion game.

Here’s why.

Dan Kennedy, possibly the most influential educator when it comes to direct marketing, once shared his four guiding principles for writing direct response copy. The one that’s relevant for us right now is:

“Great direct response copy makes people identify themselves as one or the other.”

In this way of looking at the world, there are two ways to persuade. One is based on self-interest — that’s 95% of “How to write copy” guides will tell you. But there’s another way. And it’s to appeal to somebody’s identity.

As Dan puts it, “they tell you the identification, and you tell them the behavior.”

This can be overt, such as, “If you’re politically conservative, then you should be outraged at the state of illegal immigration in this country.”

It can also be more subtle. Such as, “Choosy moms choose JIF.”

Now, I hope if you dig around in your brain right now, you will find at least one or two strong “self-identifications.”

Maybe that’s an alignment with an outside group, like a party or a cause or a team.

But it might also be the kind of person you strongly feel that you are (for example, a good mom).

Once you find this self-identification in yourself, start observing your own feelings, your own behaviors and attitudes when it comes to protecting and cherishing that identity.

Bottle all that up.

And use that insight and experience to become a superhuman marketer, persuader, or copywriter, by talking to other people’s self-identifications.

You will have a new and powerful arrow in your quiver — which the majority of your competition won’t even know about.

And you don’t even have to do much to attain it besides what you already love to do.

As for me, I’ve been working lately with some choosy owners of online businesses. They’re trying to build up a stockpile of copy assets that get their prospects to buy, and their customers to buy more.

I’ve also heard from other business owners who are in the same position, but who aren’t working with me yet. And you know what they did? They wrote me an email to talk to me and see if I could also help them grow their business.

7 Batman rogues for evil sales bullets

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Ken McCarthy has said that the fundamental, no. 1, can’t-do-without-it skill for being an effective copywriter…

Is the ability to write a good bullet.

And Ken should know what he’s talking about.

He was a successful direct mail guy, before becoming a successful internet marketing guy, before running some very big and expensive copywriting and marketing seminars and influencing generations of millionaire marketers.

All right, so let’s say Ken’s right and bullets are important. So how then do you write a good, or rather evil, bullet?

Well, lots of different ways.

Below I’m giving you 7 different templates, which, for my own enlightenment, I paired up with top villains from Batman comic books (some of the connections are obvious, some less so):

[#1 The Riddler]
Are you younger than 34? Here’s why you are at a disadvantage when it comes to writing bullets… Plus, the 5-minute daily habit that will help you write bullets on command. Page 79.

[#2 Ra’s Al Ghul]
The one element every bullet must have (besides a benefit or a warning). Used correctly, this activates the most powerful motivation for buying, according to legendary copywriter Gary Halbert. Page 10.

[#3 Two-Face]
The popular NPR show that doubles as a school for writing killer bullets. Page 108.

[#4 Poison Ivy]
How to write twice as many bullets in one-third the time. No stress or swipe files required. Just a simple shift in preparation — inspired by a jungle plant, and recommended by marketing genius Perry Marshall. Page 70.

[#5 The Joker]
How to write a killer bullet without having access to the product. A secret technique, used by irrational, violent psychopaths, that can also help ethical copywriters. Page 25.

[#6 Scarecrow]
When putting a big benefit in a bullet can backfire. This one mistake can ruin your whole sales letter. Page 44.

[#7 Catwoman]
Why you should never start your bullet off with a number. Plus a better way to get readers hooked when your product offers a 9-item list. Page 78.

And there you go. A rogue’s gallery of 7 evil yet effective bullet formats.

What, that’s not enough?

Quite hungry you are.

Here’s a bonus one for you then:

All successful sales letters need bullets, right? Wrong. Here are the cases when bullets can actually hurt conversions. Send me an email for details.

Nobel-winning scientist cuts brakes on “most powerful killing system in the world”

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How’s that for a sensationalist headline? But before you turn away in disgust, here’s the story that pays it off:

Back in the 1890s, a surgeon named William Coley was searching for information on sarcoma, a type of bone cancer that killed one of his patients. He came across the record of a house painter with sarcoma, who had had four surgeries to remove the cancer.

Each time, the sarcoma came back. And then…

The house painter developed a severe streptococcus infection, which was close to killing him. He somehow recovered from the infection.

And when he recovered, his sarcoma — which no surgery could eliminate — was also gone.

Coley concluded that the infection killed the cancer. So he went around the country, preaching the new cancer-killing gospel, and purposefully infecting many cancer patients with streptococcus.

​​All the infected cancer patients got very sick. Some of those who didn’t die wound up cancer-free, just like the house painter.

As a result, Coley’s ideas and methods became popular in the early 20th century. But eventually, they were forgotten as radiation and chemotherapy started to develop.

It was only in the 1970s that Coley’s ideas resurfaced again. Scientists realized it wasn’t the streptococcus infection that killed the cancer. Instead, it was the body’s own immune system.

Long story sh-, scientists started trying to figure out how to activate the immune system to attack cancer cells, even without infecting the patient with a dangerous disease like streptococcus.

It would be a kind of holy grail. Because as one scientist working in the field put it, “the immune system is the most specific and powerful killing system in the world.”

Anyways, one big breakthrough came in 1996, when a harmonica-playing immunologist from Texas named James Allison located a “checkpoint” on a specific type of immune cell known as a T cell.

This checkpoint acts as a kind of brake, stopping the T cell from going on a rampage against foreign invaders and local slubberdegullions such as cancer cells.

Allison figured out a way to “cut the brake lines” of this checkpoint, activating the T cells, and killing the cancer.

Fast forward a few more years, and this new approach, known as immunotherapy, started becoming a standard cancer treatment.

That’s a giant breakthrough, because until now, there were only three major ways to get rid of cancer cells — cutting (surgery), burning (radiation), and poisoning (chemotherapy).

Immunotherapy is a fourth way, and it seems to work well in some otherwise hopeless cases. (A famous instance was former president Jimmy Carter, who had advanced melanoma successfully treated with a immunotherapy drug in 2015.)

So yeah.

It’s kindofa big deal.

And it was all cemented last year, when James Allison and another scientist, Tasuku Honjo, received the Nobel Prize in medicine for their discoveries of mechanisms related to immunotherapy.

The end.

What, you’re wondering what this has to do with copywriting?

Well, not much. And also quite a lot.

There’s no direct lesson from immunotherapy itself that I can spot right now.

But there is a general rule of copywriting that says you want to present convincing and credible proof to buttress your sale and to make the close.

And if you’re doing anything related to health (the way I often am), then there are few better pieces of proof than being able to say:

“Based on a Nobel-Prize-winning discovery”

This is something I’ve spotted often in top health sales letters, and I’ve also had it confirmed, in a throwaway comment during a webinar, by Parris Lampropoulos, who is the equivalent of a Nobel-Prize winner when it comes to copywriting.

And that’s why I’ve decided to regularly go back in the annals of Nobel Prizes, and see exactly what those folks did to win.

Anyways, now we’re really at the end.

Or as the brothers Grimm might say, my tale is done, there goes a goose; whosoever catches it, may make himself a pillow out of it. In other words, if you need more guidance on how to write effective sales copy, including strong proof elements, you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Ask a silly question, you get a dopey look

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A few weeks back, in a moment of weakness, I answered a question in an online copywriting forum.

In my answer, I mentioned negotiation coach Jim Camp, the guy who (among his other accomplishments) revamped the FBI’s negotiation strategy.

Now here’s the thing. Even though full access to Jim Camp’s methods and coaching (while he was alive) cost thousands of dollars in fees, the man also wrote a book called Start With No, which covers about 95% of his negotiation system and costs around $15.

Anyhow, all of this is just setup for what I want to talk about today. Because when I wrote up my response and when I mentioned Jim Camp, another commenter slid in with a new question:

“Where to study Jim Camp? Looking for his education pieces but everything is paid (and expensive). I’m aware of Start With No.”

If this guy were sitting in front of me when he asked this question, I think I’d have to scrunch up my eyebrows, smile a dopey smile, and shrug my shoulders.“I know, buddy. It’s tough.” After all, what else could I tell him?

I bring this up because top direct-response copywriter Roy Furr just shared a very simple, very effective method of getting work with premier copywriting clients.

This method is something I’ve done in the past. It has been responsible for some of the longest-running and most profitable client relationships I’ve had to date.

It’s also something I’m going to start doing again, beginning this week. That’s because I want to pad out my schedule for the coming few months, and increase my rates once again.

And here’s how this ties into studying Jim Camp:

Roy says wannabe copywriters often ask how they can get clients…

And then when they get a valuable, proven suggestion, they do nothing with the information.

Instead, they spin on their heels, face forward once again, and ask, “But how can I land a copywriting client?”

To which the only response can be a dopey look.

Anyways, I’m sure that’s not how you operate.

So in case you want to read Roy’s advice so you can apply it in your copywriting business, here’s where to start:

https://www.breakthroughmarketingsecrets.com/blog/i-was-right-did-you-listen/

Fezzik is a giant and that explains it

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I recently re-read the Princess Bride, the original 1973 novel that William Goldman wrote and later pared down to make the screenplay for the popular 1987 movie.

I love both the movie, which has the perfect cast, and the book, which has more background material.

Such as, for example, the history of Fezzik the Giant (played by Andre the Giant in the movie).

In the book, Fezzik was Turkish, born to normal-sized parents, and was always huge. In fact, when he was born, he already weighed 15 lbs, but the doctors weren’t worried because Fezzik was born two weeks early.

“That explains it,” they told Fezzik’s mother. But as Goldman points out:

“Actually, of course, it didn’t explain anything, but whenever doctors are confused about something, which is really more frequently than any of us would do well to think about, they always snatch at something in the vicinity of the case and add, ‘That explains it.'”

It’s not just doctors, of course. All of us look for a coherent story in order to make sense of our worlds. We will run and leap at the chance for a coherent story much sooner than we will absorb a complex but drearily true explanation.

This is because of evolution. The hypothalamus, the pea-sized complex of neurons which sits directly behind the right and left eyes and is therefore the first part of the brain to process incoming information, is also, according to Harvard Medical School, the part responsible for interpreting stories (and that’s probably why it’s considered to be the seat of the story chakra).

Anyways, if you’re in the business of selling things to people, this information might be useful to you in some form.

And if you want another thing that’s useful, in the form of sales emails that snatch at something in the vicinity of the case, then you might like the following offer because it is valuable:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Sticky gotcha for socialist students

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A guy named Cabot Phillips recently went onto the campus of Florida International University and asked students:

“What is your opinion of socialism?”

Many students, at least in the edited video I saw, were all for it:

“I support it.”

“Socialism is more geared toward helping the governed.”

“I have family in Europe, they go to college for free. Their health care is paid for, they don’t have to worry about it at all.”

Next, Cabot Phillips asked those same students:

“So if there’s a GPA disparity on campus, would you support a policy where people at the top spread the wealth and give some of their GPA to people at the bottom?”

Uh.

Hem.

Haw.

The same people now said:

“Give? Like help them? I’m all for helping. I’m not about giving.”

“No one’s gonna work for it.”

“I sacrificed a lot to get my GPA, and I wouldn’t want to help people who didn’t make those same sacrifices.”

Now, I’m not here to poke at pro-socialist college students.

And I’m not even sure this anti-socialist “gotcha” really changed anybody’s mind.

But I thought it was a great illustration of a sticky message, as defined in Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick.

By my count, this “socialist GPA” idea satisfies all but 1 of the 6 SUCCES principles that the Heaths say lie behind most sticky messages.

I won’t spell those SUCCES principles out here. I recommend Made to Stick for that.

However, if you want some concrete examples of how to write sticky, SUCCES-ful sales emails, check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

How big is your…?

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I saw the following size-measuring question today:

“How big is your confidence in copywriting? I know this is the softest metric of one’s success, but I wonder greatly. How confident are you in your job and what’s your confidence based on?”

This is honestly not a question I’ve thought about ever.

I don’t worry about confidence. Instead, I think about having a system for moving forward, and about following that system. As long as I do that, I feel I’m safe.

(Or maybe I’ve been influenced too much by dating coach Tom Torero, who said something like, “Confidence is just when you’ve seen the same situation many times over.”)

But if you’re looking to start out as a copywriter, maybe this doesn’t help you.

So let me give you another quote, this one by Claude Hopkins, the great-grandfather of modern direct response marketing.

(About a century ago, Claude wrote a book called Scientific Advertising, which the famous David Ogilvy, the “King of Madison Avenue,” said is so important that “nobody, at any level, should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times.”)

Anyways, back when Claude was just a wet-behind-the-ears lad working for peanuts at the “Felt Boot Company,” he got to talking to a successful businessman in his town.

The businessman was impressed when he heard that Claude would work from 8 in the morning until after midnight, and be back the next morning for more of the same.

So the big businessman offered Claude a new, higher paying job. And here’s what Claude concluded from this:

“In the early stages of our careers none can judge us by results. The shallow men judge us by likings, but they are not men to tie to. The real men judge us by our love of work, the basis of their success. They employ us for work, and our capacity for work counts above all else.”

Maybe this will help you if you are agonizing about where you are on the copywriting totem pole.

And in case you want to grab a free copy of that “must-read” Claude Hopkins advertising Bible, so you can add a bit of length or girth to your copywriting confidence, then here’s where to go:

https://www.scientificadvertising.com/ScientificAdvertising.pdf

For those who are less successful than they will be

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Several years ago, I was at a bar with a friend and we started talking to two Welsh sisters.

After a few minutes, one of the sisters stopped and turned to me. “Wait a minute,” she asked, “how old are you?

I had just turned 36 and I told her so.

“No way! I would have said you are 26, not 36!”

I shrugged it off. But it was cowin’ lush of her to say. However, if she had  instead told me,

“Pack it in! You are so much older than you look!”

… even though the content is basically the same, I probably wouldn’t have been as pleased. And I guess it’s not just me. Case in point:

In Victor Schwab’s How to Write a Good Advertisement, Vic goes over 100 successful headlines. One of these is,

“For The Woman Who Is Older Than She Looks”

This, says Vic, stopped thousands of women and got them to read the ad.

On the other hand, the more straightforward (though equivalent) “For The Woman Who Looks Younger Than She Is” didn’t perform nearly as well.

And there’s a fundamental rule of copywriting embedded in that short example. In case you don’t see it yet, let me give you a few more examples:

“71-Year-Old Man Has Sexual Congress Five Times a Day!”
“The Unique World of Gay Rodeo”
“Get Rich Slowly”

Of course, each of these headlines has multiple things going on. But I think you’ll agree they also have something in common.

I’ll spell this out another day in another post. (If you have a guess and you want to see if it’s what I have in mind, write me and I can confirm it for you.)

For now, if you have a business, and you want to be more successful with it by ramping up your sales copy, then you might get some value from the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Copywriting and creativity lessons from a B.S. photographer

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I took a 6-hour bus ride today, and sitting in front of me was a very alert Argentinian male.

He had a little digital camera with him — my guess is it was 15 years old — and he took dozens or possibly hundreds of pictures during our trip together.

Most of these photos were of the side of the highway — a blur of bushes and trees.

Occasionally, he would hold the camera above his head and take a picture of the inside of the bus.

And at one point, a rival bus pulled up to us, and he took multiple shots of the sleeping Chinese tourists inside it.

The entire ride was hot and long and I was irritated.

So each time the Argentinian man took another B.S. photo, I wondered what he will do with all these uninteresting, blurry, low-resolution photos.

But what do I know?

Perhaps he is a designer or a movie editor or a cartoonist.

And maybe when he needs graphical inspiration, he opens up a random blurry photo he took while traveling through eastern Europe, and this stimulates a creative new idea for him.

After all, I do something very similar, only with words and ideas. I keep lots of lists:

Of marketing lessons (“Put your strongest proof first”)…

Of entertaining stories (“Man-tax cafe set to close”)…

Of unique phrases (“Hit the sawdust trail”)…

Of memorable characters from books, movies, and TV shows (“Majikthise and Vroomfondel”)…

And of interesting facts (“Color blindness was only noticed in 1794”).

Then, when I sit down to write one of these emails — or any other piece of copy — I have a ton of material to jog my lazy creative mechanism.

This process also naturally makes my own voice and opinions come through — because these are my own bizarre stories and observations, or facts that caught my own jaded attention.

It might work for you as well if you start collecting your own lists today. And if you’re looking for more ways to come up with good sales copy — specifically emails — check out the following:

Last chance to send $1

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Legend says that, once upon a time, in various Midwestern states, an enterprising carny pitchman took out ads in local newspapers that read:

LAST CHANCE TO SEND $1
to PO Box 210, 60611 Chicago, IL

There was no reason given why the reader should send in $1 or whether he would get anything for it.

And yet, the ad supposedly drew in many dollar bills before the postal service guys caught on and put a stop to it.

The great 20th-century copywriter Vic Schwab called this ad an example of how effrontery can be successful in advertising. Other people claim it simply shows how gullible and sheep-like the masses are.

I personally like this little ad because it’s got so much going on in it. In just a few words, it conveys:

1. Urgency
2. Specificity
3. A clear call to action

And these three ingredients were enough to draw money in. A success that many other ads don’t achieve.

Which makes me think that, often, all the stuff copywriters agonize over is only giving people reasons not to buy.

And it reminds me of an important truth I read today, from another great 20th-century copywriter, Robert Collier:

“It is not the copy that counts so much as the scheme back of it.”

Speaking of the scheme back of this post:

I am officially done with my 3-week trip around the US and I’m back to work.

Only, what with continuing projects, with work that built up while I was traveling, and with a few new clients coming in, I’m almost booked up for the month of June.

Which means that, if you want me to write sales copy for you in June, now is your last chance to get in touch and see if I would indeed be good to write for you (I most likely won’t be).

To find out, simply send me a postcard to PO Box 210, 60611 Chicago, IL. Or alternately, write me an email at john@bejakovic.com.