Copywriting

5 out of 6 copywriting tricks are worthless

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In 2009, back when Twitter was blowing up, a friend of mine had an idea for a website.

It was called 5 Out Of 6, and it was a kind of “Hot or Not” for ironic fake statistics, all starting with “5 out of 6…” Here are a few examples:

“5 out of 6 bananas aren’t slippery”

“5 out of 6 Elvis songs contain the word ‘well'”

“5 out of 6 U-turns are illegal”

People could vote on which fake statistics they found funny, and they could submit their own fake statistics into the mix.

The plan was to make this website go viral, then take the best fake statistics, put them into a coffee table book, and get Oprah to endorse it. Millions of dollars would follow easily.

Alas. It did not work out.

But there was sound psychology behind the idea.

It turns out that people understand statements such as “5 out of 6 bananas” much better than “83% of bananas.”

I found out about this from Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Here’s the relevant passage from his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow:

“Why is the question ‘How many of the 100 participants…’ so much easier than ‘What percentage…’? […] The solution to the puzzle appears to be that a question phrased as ‘How many?’ makes you think of individuals, but the same question phrased as ‘What percentage?’ does not.”

In short, this is just one of those quirks of the human brain. Our brains like stories, individual people, and human-scale ideas. We don’t do well with statistics, large numbers, or abstractions.

That’s something to remember the next time you have to present numbers in a sales message.

The thing is, in 5 out of 6 pieces of sales copy, it won’t matter whether you use “how many” or “what percentage.”

It won’t matter if you use “but” instead of “and.”

And it won’t matter whether you call your offer “swoon-worthy” or “dazzling.”

That’s because in 5 out of 6 cases, what you say matters much more than how you say it.

I’ll talk more about this tomorrow. For now, if you want some swoon-worthy copy for your business, then act now, don’t risk delaying, and take me up on this free offer:

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

The absolute cheapest köttbullar in a 30-mile radius

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Back in 1958, Ingvar Kamprad had a bold idea.

He was opening a furniture store — and he decided to tack on a cafe as well.

The reasoning was straightforward:

Customers with full bellies might buy more furniture.

This furniture store + cafe business became quite the success. It’s called IKEA (the “IK” in the name being Kamprad’s initials) and it does about $40 billion in sales each year.

The IKEA restaurant alone does about $2 billion. But that’s not what the company cares about.

In fact, the guiding principle of the IKEA restaurant is to offer the absolute lowest price on a food item within a 30-mile radius.

IKEA doesn’t mind if it loses money here — because its köttbullar (AKA Swedish meatballs) are known as the “best sofa seller.”

Makes sense.

People wouldn’t stay in the store as long if they get nervous or hungry…

On the other hand, if they come expressly for the Swedish meatballs or cheap hot dogs (30% of IKEA customers come just for the food), they might wind up buying some throw pillows or stuffed rats or even a new lamp.

And the point of all of this is NOT that you should offer a loss leader.

Instead, it’s a simple lesson about copywriting.

In writing copy, as when selling furniture, you need a hook.

A hook is a way of sucking people in, so you can buy yourself time to do a proper selling job.

This is important when you’ve got a huge offer — thousands of separate products — like IKEA does.

But it’s just as important when you’ve got a single product, say a supplement, with multiple ingredients or benefits.

Or when your audience doesn’t know your brand as well as they know Ingvar Kamprad’s Furniture + Meatball Emporium.

So how do you write a good hook?

The basic principle is there in the story of the IKEA restaurant. If it’s not yet clear to you, don’t worry. You’ll be able to get more info on it if you take me up on the following free offer:

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

Killing your babies for you

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I’m not talking about killing your actual children, you beast. Instead, consider the following:

“Writing is rewriting.”

That’s from William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well, a popular guide to writing decent non-fiction.

I’m reading this book right now, and it makes it seem that Zinsser was a man who suffered deeply while writing.

He didn’t put much stock into his first drafts. Instead, he considered writing to be a labor of rearranging, clarifying, and tightening.

And of course, cutting out the flab. Which brings me to today’s second quote:

“2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%.”

This second bit of writing wisdom is from Stephen King.

That’s the guy who wrote Cujo and about 99 other massive best-sellers.

So when Stephen gives writing advice, it makes sense to listen. But which 10% to cut out?

For that we get to the final quote of the day, and that’s to “kill your babies.”

This phrase is apparently stock journalism slang. It goes back, in one form or another, through William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, all the way back to a series of lectures given in 1914 by one Arthur Quiller-Couch:

“If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

There is an exception, however, to all this advice:

Don’t do excessive editing or trimming of your daily emails.

In part, this is for yourself. Excessive rewriting of your daily emails will weigh you down, take too long, and sap you of energy for writing tomorrow.

But there’s another equally good reason.

Rewriting your emails will take away quirks that make you sound more conversational.

Which will eliminate much of the human-level interest why people respond to daily emails in the first place.

It’s a balancing act.

You want your emails to be spontaneous.

As well as on point.

Of course, if this is not a balancing act you feel confident about… Then you might like my upcoming book, which you can get for free here:

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

The trouble with living in the most beautiful apartment

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I spent the past few days visiting friends in Budapest. And this time, I rented an apartment with a VIEW.

The apartment is on the fifth floor of a narrow and classical building. One side of it looks to the Danube, about 20 meters away. The Chain Bridge, the central and perhaps most iconic of Budapest’s bridges, stretches across both bedroom windows and lights up the apartment at night.

The other side of the apartment has a large terrace, which is directly beneath the Castle District of Budapest. During the day, the terrace has a pleasant view of the green Castle hill. At night, the impressive Buda Castle dominates the hill and provides all-evening entertainment if you simply want to sit on the terrace and stare at it.

Now, I used to live in Budapest for over 10 years before moving away about a year ago.

So during this visit a friend asked me whether I would ever consider moving back.

And I started to say, “Well, if I had an apartment like this to live in full-time…”

But then I stopped myself.

You see, the actual apartment I live in full-time is also beautiful. When I moved into it a year ago, it would surprise me each time I walked through the door.

However, over the course of the past year, I’ve stopped noticing how beautiful my apartment is. It now takes a conscious effort to appreciate it at all.

So I realized that, even if I lived in this beautiful Budapest apartment with THE VIEW, soon enough, I wouldn’t notice how great it is any more.

And as it is with real estate, so it is with copy.

People will soon get habituated to your marketing message. And when they do, you will lose them. That’s because, unlike with real estate, your prospects will never make any kind of conscious effort to appreciate what you are doing.

This applies to parts of an individual sales message (ie. a sales letter). And it applies equally to ongoing communications (ie. daily emails to your prospects).

In other words, if you keep communicating with the same people over and over, you will need to keep coming up with fresh ideas to keep them stimulated and engaged.

If you’re looking for some help in coming up with such fresh ideas, you can get my suggestions in the following free book:

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

List segmentation advice from Jojo the idiot circus boy

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A while back, I got hired to write a doomed sequence of emails.

This was for a kit to help with fermenting your own vegetables at home.

The client who was selling these fermenting kits had done a survey of his customers. He found that some of them cared about the health benefits of fermented foods. Others cared about the tradition of fermenting (eg, “My grandma used to make dill pickles”).

And so I got hired me to write a bunch of emails for the two segments. One focusing on the health benefits of fermented foods, and the other on the tradition of fermenting.

I did as the client asked.

And the resulting emails bombed.

No sales.

So what went wrong?

My feeling is it was like the famous scene from the movie Tommy Boy.

You know, the one where Chris Farley plays Tommy Callahan, a fat party animal who tries to become a successful salesman.

After failing over and over to close even one sale, Tommy Boy takes a good honest look at himself.

“I’m like Jojo the idiot circus boy with a pretty new pet,” Tommy says while holding a muffin.

The muffin represents the sale.

“Oh my pretty little pet… I love you,” Tommy says to the muffin.

And he strokes the muffin.

And he massages it.

Harder.

And harder.

Until he rips the poor muffin apart, while screaming, “I KILLED IT, I KILLED MY SALE!”

And that’s basically what happened with these fermentation emails.

The people on this list had signed up for fermentation recipes. And here they were, getting email after email about autoimmune health and the history of sauerkraut.

In other words, the emails were trying too hard to be clever.

And in doing that, they scared and repulsed the customers, who really just needed a simpler, more direct sales message.

At least that’s the conclusion I drew from this fiasco. Along with the fact that segmenting your list, while it might sound sexy, can backfire unless you know what you’re doing.

Anyways, maybe you’ll find this info useful.

And if you want help with your sales copy, then put on your little coat, twirl around until it rips apart, and take a look at the following offer:

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

How to exploit your customers’ compulsion to gamble

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Gambling is much like sex.

It seems to be a fundamental human compulsion.

And it doesn’t require any justification other than its inherent excitement.

The thing is, sex is well-exploited in marketing. Gambling, I haven’t seen as much.

But it can be done.

Here’s one example, from marketing and copywriting legend Joe Sugarman.

In his “HOT” magazine ad, Joe was promoting a membership club called Consumers Hero. Members of the club would get the opportunity to buy refurbished goods at a steep discount.

Most of the stuff wasn’t too impressive — clock radios, microwaves, electric can openers.

But occasionally, Consumers Hero had a really great deal — like a TV for only $39.95 — which was only available in small numbers.

In this case, a segment of Consumers Hero members would be selected in a kind of lottery. These chosen members would be the only ones who got the mailing inviting them to buy the great deal.

My guess is that if anybody got a mailing saying “YOU’VE BEEN CHOSEN TO BUY THIS TV AT A GREAT DISCOUNT,” they would be much more likely to actually buy, just by virtue of knowing they’d “won” the opportunity.

Which is all well and good — if your product inherently allows you to turn it into a lottery.

But what if you’re not in that position?

Fear not. Playing on your customers’ compulsion to gamble can still increase sales.

Here’s another Joe Sugarman story:

Joe once wrote an ad promoting a computer. He ran it around the time of the SuperBowl.

The ad basically said, if the Bears win the SuperBowl, you get this computer at 50% off. If they lose, the price stays as it is. And here’s the outcome, in Joe’s own words:

“There was a lineup of people — we had a retail store — there was a literally a lineup of people all the way around the block waiting to pick up their computer that they were getting for 50% off. The funny part about it was that we were making a nice profit on that as well.”

And there you have it.

Even if you’re not selling collectibles or trading cards or something that has a lottery aspect to it, you can still use gambling simply as a way to run a sale. The fact that the sale might actually not happen will only drive up interest.

The reason why that happens is another topic, for another time.

For now, if you need help writing those ads that announce a lottery-like sale, you might like to take a chance on the following offer:

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

The positioning lesson of the involuntary Nazi salute

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A few days ago, I rewatched Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

It’s dark and dry comedy set during the Cold War. Much of it happens in the War Room at the Pentagon.

The President and all his advisors are there, trying to prevent an accidentally triggered nuclear disaster that will wipe all life off the surface of the planet.

Among the President’s advisors, there is Dr. Strangelove himself. He’s a wheelchair-bound former Nazi scientist who now works for the US government.

Dr. Strangelove is loyal to his new American overlords.

He tries to serve them well.

But there are things he cannot control.

Like his prosthetic right arm, which fights with him during the entire movie. And in the final climactic scene, while Strangelove is proposing a plan to preserve the United States, his mechanical arm springs up into a Nazi salute of its own will. It even tries to strangle the good doctor when he forces it to stop saluting.

Now, I’m sure this mechanical arm can be a metaphor for many things.

But the one that struck me was simply one of the main rules of positioning, straight out of the original book by Al Ries and Jack Trout. And that rule is:

“If you want to be successful in love or in business, you must appreciate the importance of getting into the mind first.”

In other words, the first cut is the deepest.

That’s true in political ideology…

In actual romance​…

And, as Ries and Trout say, in business as well.

Once you successfully occupy a good position in your customers’ minds, you are probably in for life (unless you really get careless). Even if your customers try to defect…

They own arm will (figuratively) spring up and choke them back into place.

That’s an enviable place to be in. ​​

So how do you get into your prospects’ minds first, so you can create this kind of loyalty?

Well, there are several, equally important ingredients.

And I’m afraid I can only help with one of them, and that’s good sales copy.

If that’s what you’re looking for, then here’s a good way to avoid a real crisis:

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

8 tired but effective sales cliches

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A word of warning:

You don’t wanna use too many cliches in your sales copy. (They’ll roll right off, like water off a duck’s back.)

But there are exceptions.

Some phrases are just so powerful that it doesn’t seem to matter how much they’ve been overused.

Here’s a collection of a few such cliches, taken from a couple of winning magalogs written by one of the most successful copywriters working today, Parris Lampropoulos:

1. “But that’s not all”

Once you’ve wowed your readers with an amazing benefit, you don’t want to let them sit and ruminate on it. You gotta keep ’em reading. And that’s what this phrase will do. (Its more proleish cousin, “But wait! There’s more…” might be a little too much these days.)

2. “A whopping 34%”

Is 34% good? Or not? Don’t let the reader wonder or draw his own conclusion. Whop him over the head with the statistic so he knows what the point is.

3. “The truth about X”

This isn’t a cliche that’s used by civilians, but copywriters and Internet marketers use it, and use it a lot. Because it works. People love secrets, and they want to be in on the know.

4. “What they found amazed them”

Back in 1942, when Victor Schwab wrote How to Write a Good Advertisement, he noted that the word “amazing” had long been overused, but it still seemed to have some pulling power. And so it continues, 80 years later.

5. “If you’re sick and tired of X”

I’m sick and tired of people using this phrase. But it’s so compact, and it gets the point across so effectively that it will probably never die.

6. “We’re putting our money where our mouth is”

Where else would you put it?

7. “We’ll refund every penny you paid”

I’m not sure this qualifies as a cliche. But it certainly seems to be a common trope in advertisements. It works because it’s specific and it paints a picture.

8. “The most amazing breakthrough in X ever”

Yep, making the most amazing promise in the history of advertising still works. However, be warned. This appeared in the close of the sales letter, not in the beginning.

And there you have it.

Eight amazingly easy ways to write just like one of the greatest copywriters of all time.

Of course, you might need some meat to connect these cliches if you do decide to use them.

And in case that’s not your core competency, or you’re really looking to improve ROI, you might find a  win-win solution in the following offer:

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

An open letter to those bombarded by information

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Here’s a pop quiz for you. What do…

Michelle Obama…

Dave Chappelle…

And Spike Lee…

All have in common?

Take a moment and get past your first gut reaction. No? Nothing else comes to mind? Here’s the answer then:

All three of these cultural figures have publicly complained about being “bombarded with information.”

Of course, it’s not just the three of them.

This information bombardment thing has become a big cultural cliche, and thousands of people are out there right now, on Facebook and Twitter, repeating the same line.

Which ​probably means this idea of being bombarded with information — if if ever was true — is not very accurate any more.

​​In that case, it’s ripe for being replaced by a different, more useful point of view. And just in time, here’s A-list copywriter Richard Armstrong on the matter:

“It makes no more sense to say we are bombarded with information than to say a fish is bombarded with water.”

In Richard’s point of view, we are NOT bombarded with information.

Instead, we’re swimming in it.

We’re living in it.

And to a large extent, we are actually made of it.

The fact is, we’re all adapting very quickly to the increasing quantities of information around us.

Most of us realize on some level that all sources of information — newspapers, personal blogs, online forums, Facebook ads — are biased and are trying to sell us something (even if it’s just a point of view).

The thing is, it doesn’t seem to matter too much.

That’s because we are not independent fortresses trying to protect ourselves from information grenades…

Instead, we are spongy organisms that soak up information all the time, based on what we find tasty.

I’ll stop with this post here, because I am worried it’s getting too abstract.

But this philosophical discussion does have very practical applications. And if you want to know what those are, and how you can use them to communicate more swimmingly with your audience, you might like my upcoming book:

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

The bully, the charismatic, and the invisible salesman on Facebook

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“In my experience, there are basically three types of salesmen: the bully, the charismatic, and the invisible man.”
— Mark Ford

Over the past few months, I’ve been writing a lot of copy for a client in the ecommerce space.

Their typical funnel goes like this:

Facebook ad -> advertorial -> product page

I’ve been handling the FB ads and the advertorials for a bunch of this client’s products. And it’s been going well. But I recently got some feedback.

It seems some of our FB ads have been getting rejected. In the client’s own words:

“We’re getting a few disapprovals here and there for calling out the user. I don’t agree with it but seems everytime we mention the word ‘you’ even if it’s not a direct call out some reviewers will disapprove.”

So what’s going on?

In a nutshell, it seems Facebook is trying to prevent copy that acts like the “bully salesman” in Mark Ford’s quote above.

By Mark’s definition, that’s the salesman who “succeeds by pressing you so hard that you make a purchase just to make him go away.”

One trivial way that Facebook seems to be reigning in this type of copy is by singling out the word “you,” like in the ads I’ve been writing.

But according to million-dollar copywriter Justin Goff, Facebook also seems to be rejecting clickbaity, fear-laden, “punch-em-in-the-gut” sales letters.

So is this the end of direct response marketing on Facebook?

Not necessarily.

As Mark Ford says above, there are still two other ways to make sales through a combination of personality (charismatic type), stories (both charismatic and invisible types), and indirect claims (invisible type).

So for example, Justin also told the story of one marketer he knows.

She had a long-running VSL that Facebook had started rejecting.

So she wrote a new VSL.

And instead of the usual doom and gloom, she made it softer, kinder, and gentler — like a friend giving you advice.

Facebook approved, to the extent where the new sales page was performing better than the old one.

Promising.

In my personal case, I’ve done something similar:

I’ve simply focused on that old standby, pure story telling, with little or no obvious selling.

In other words, I’ve removed that offensive word “you” by focusing on the harmless word “I”…

And then telling people to click through if they want to learn more.

It’s working at the moment. Which might interest you in case you’re planning on running offers on cold Facebook traffic.

And if you are running such offers, and you want help with the copy, get in touch with me here and we can talk.