Copywriting

The yellow balloon sales principle

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I saw a tense dog-man standoff at a park near my house.

The dog, a German boxer, was on top of a little hill. The man, the dog’s owner, was at the bottom of the hill, calling to the dog to come down.

The dog stared and didn’t move. The man called again. The dog continued to stare.

Eventually, the man started to walk away. The dog still kept his spot on top of the hill, and didn’t budge.

And then, as the man was walking away, he slowly took out a bright yellow object from his pocket. The dog started charging full speed down the hill. The man put the yellow object to his lips and started to blow. (It turned out to be a balloon.)

The dog was there in a second, bouncing up and down as the man held the balloon just above the height that the dog could reach.

Now for the past few days, I’ve been writing about alternatives to asking yes-seeking questions. So far, I talked about vision-building questions and no-seeking questions — both of them based on what negotiation expert Jim Camp used to teach.

Well, today I have something out of the playbook of email marketing guru Ben Settle. In fact, it’s something I’ve talked about in this blog already. It’s what I called Ben’s “sink-or-swim” close. That’s when you tell your prospect something like:

“If you don’t believe this technology/service/information can help you be more competitive, then simply don’t buy it.”

And then you wait and allow them to make a decision.

Of course, you have to do a good job painting a vision before you do this. And as Ben likes to say, you have to do it on principle, rather than as a tactic. In other words, you have to be confident you’ve got a good offer, and you have to accept that even so, some people still won’t buy.

Not everyone is right for your offer and that’s ok. Because when you find a prospect who’s right for your offer, you’ll see something like I saw at the park.

They’ll think. They’ll stare. And they’ll start to move. Next thing you know, they’ll be charging down the hill towards that big yellow balloon you’ve put in front of their face, and you will soon have a sale.

At least, that’s how it worked with me in the case of the sales letter that Ben sent.

Anyways, if you don’t need sales emails like this written for your business, then, you know, that’s ok. Otherwise, you can get an idea of how to write them yourself, with a free copy of my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. More info here:

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

Good Will Camping

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Yesterday, I ragged on yes-seeking questions.

Today, I want to offer up an alternative — one of four I’ll be covering over the next few days. And to do that, let’s talk Good Will Hunting.

That’s the flick that put Matt Damon on the map in the role of Will Hunting, the supernaturally talented math genius from the slums of Boston who literally mops the floors at MIT.

The relevant scene for us is when Will is sitting opposite a shrink named Sean Maguire (played by Robin Williams).

Shrink Maguire is trying to draw Will out of his shell. “You can do anything,” the shrink seems to be saying, “so take advantage of your opportunities.”

Will gets defensive about this. He says how there’s nothing wrong with doing manual labor or with mopping floors — there’s even honor in it.

Shrink Maguire doesn’t argue with this. He doesn’t say, “Yeah, but…” He also doesn’t ask, “Isn’t there more honor in being a world-renowned scientist?”

Instead, he simply asks,

“You could be a janitor anywhere. Why did you choose to work in the most prestigious technical college in the whole fucking world?”

This causes Will to pause. And it slowly but surely sets off something in his head, which leads to the movie’s eventual happy ending.

So what happened?

Well, the point of asking that question was not to one-up Will’s smarts, or to trap him in a lie. At least not if you listen to master negotiation coach Jim Camp, whose playbook this question comes straight out of.

Camp advocated asking open-ended questions. The point of this was to “build vision” — to make the other side clearly see their own dire situation in their own minds.

It’s the only way to convince people of anything, Camp believed. And with his track record of successful billion-dollar negotiations in some of the most competitive business markets in the world, Camp probably knew what he was talking about.

Anyways, this idea of creating vision applies to in-person sales, and it applies to sales copywriting as well. Not necessarily in the form of asking open-ended questions. But creating a vision — such as by retelling a scene from a movie — is a very powerful way to drive home a point and to make the sale.

Speaking of which, if you need help with sales copy, you might like the ideas in my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. This lays out the techniques I’ve used to triple (yep, 3x) sales from an email sales funnel for an 8-figure supplement company. To get notified when this book is out, sign up below:

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

The questionable hazing of “The Temp”

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“Michael always says K.I.S.S. — keep it simple, stupid. Great advice. Hurts my feelings every time.”
— Dwight Schrute, Dunder Mifflin Inc.

There’s an episode of The Office where Dwight, the top salesman for the Scranton branch of the failing paper company Dunder Mifflin, takes out Ryan “The Temp” for his first sales call.

Except, they don’t go to straight to the sales call. Instead, Dwight takes Ryan to a beet farm for a kind of bizarre hazing ritual, involving a beet seed, a wheelchair, and a wrestling match with Dwight’s cousin Mose.

Not very useful.

And neither is the sales advice that Dwight gives to Ryan when the hazing is over:

“Ask a lot of questions that all have positive answers.”

Sure enough, Ryan takes this advice and bombs during the sales call. The clients even personally tell him they don’t like him. The only thing that’s left for the two Dunder Mifflin salesmen to do is to throw eggs at the client’s corporate headquarters and go get drunk. ​

So what’s a better alternative to asking yes-seeking questions such as “Couldn’t your company use a stronger, lighter, cheaper stock of paper?”

I can personally think of four different strategies, each of which would probably work better than the questionable yes-seeking sales advice that Ryan got.

I’ll go over each of these four approaches in separate posts over the next few days.

For now, just a quick public service announcement:

I’m almost finished with my “How to become a $150/hr, top-rated sales copywriter on Upwork” book. Once it’s done, it will go up on Amazon, and will even be available for free during a short promo period. If you want to get notified when this happens, head over to the page below and plant your beet seed over there:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

Dog runs half marathon by accident, finishes seventh

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Two years ago, a Canadian bloodhound by the name of Ludivine successfully completed a half marathon.

He was let out in the morning to pee. He saw a mass of runners about to start up. And he decided to join in.

Despite a lack of proper warmup and even with a couple of detours (one to investigate a dead rabbit, one to deal with a herd of cows), Ludivine managed to complete the race. In fact, he was at the top of the pack, and came in seventh. The organizers rewarded him with a finisher medal before his embarrassed owner came to pick him up.

So why am I bringing this up?

Because it’s funny and interesting. And if you are selling information products, then you’ve got to have novel ideas to pique readers’ interest. In other words, benefits alone won’t do it.

So for example, today I had my first paid webinar for my aromatherapy website.

Basically I went on YouTube and talked for an hour about how to use essential oils safely.

When I was promoting this event, I could have come out with benefits blazing: this webinar will teach you safe use, where to buy quality oils, how to dilute them to avoid skin reactions.

Instead, I wrote a bunch of bullets like the following:

What zebra stripes can teach you about diluting essential oils safely. An English mathematician cracked the code of how zebras get their stripes some 70 years ago. Surprisingly, this has a bearing on everyday essential oil safety that we’ll cover in Part I of the webinar.

Does this approach really work? Well, people signed up for the webinar, and in bigger numbers than I expected.

Would the same approach work for you? I’m not sure. But if you want to find out more about how I write these kind of copy — whether in the form of bullets or emails or blog posts — you might like my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. The book is not out yet, but if you want to get a free copy when I finish it, here’s where to go:

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

Why you should personally care about Michael Dell’s net worth

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I’ve been reading a bit about Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computers.

Dell was quite a precocious kid.

For example, in a bid to get into business early, he applied to take the high school equivalency exam at age 8.

In his teens, he invested his earnings from part-time jobs in stocks and precious metals.

He then started a business selling upgrade kits for personal computers. In May 1984, he incorporated this business as “Dell Computer Corporation.”

In July of that same year, the company’s first financial statement showed a profit of $200,000. Dell used this statement to convince his parents it was ok for him to drop out of college. He was 19 at the time.

Over the years, Dell kept growing Dell Computers, getting it to the position of the largest manufacturer of PC’s in the world.

He also started MSD Capital (MSD being his initials), an investment firm to manage his own wealth.

As of today, after taking Dell (the company) private and then public again, Michael Dell’s net worth is estimated at $27 billion, $17 billion of which comes from his stake in Dell Computers and the rest from his other investments.

All of which raises the question, what have you been doing with your life?

After all, Michael Dell was just a kid from Houston, born to a solidly middle-class family. And look at what he’s done.

Seriously though, I hope all this talk of the hyper-competent Michael Dell has managed to depress you a bit.

After all, I wanted to illustrate an important point. It’s something I read in Maxwell Maltz’s self-help tome Psycho-Cybernetics. Says Dr. Maltz:

“An inferiority complex can be made to order. All you need to do is set up a norm or average, then convince your subject he does not measure up.”

And you know, once you’ve got somebody feeling inferior, you can then sell them your product as a cure for that lousy feeling they have.

You might think this is a terribly cynical way of doing marketing.

You might also decide it’s not for you.

And that’s a perfectly legit stance. On the other hand, you could take the attitude of Brian Kurtz, former VP at the direct marketing behemoth Boardroom. It’s something Brian calls “congruent marketing”:

“Think about how valuable the product or service you are selling is to your audience and how much you believe that getting it into as many hands as possible is a game changer for them… and that you have almost a moral responsibility on your part to get it to them.”

In this view, it can be ok to disturb, shock, or hype up people with your marketing, as long as what you’re selling is worth it to them. Speaking of which:

If you need help growing your business through some seemingly interesting, emotionally disturbing copy, you might find some good ideas inside of my upcoming book on email marketing. The book isn’t out yet — but if you sign up, you can get a free copy when I do finish it. Here’s where to do that:

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

Headline secrets of gay rodeo

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Last October, the World Gay Rodeo Finals happened in Mesquite, Texas.

​​This is the culmination of a season of rodeo events, specifically welcoming gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender participants.

I gotta say, I didn’t even know gay rodeo was a thing.

But I found out about it this morning, thanks to an article with the headline,

“The Unique World of Gay Rodeo”

I had to click on this thing and read more. The question is why.

After all, if the headline had read “The Unique World of Gay Gardening,” I doubt I would have clicked on it.

And if instead it had read, “The Unique World of Texas Rodeo,” I would have found something better to do with my time.

So what’s going on? Perhaps it’s best expressed by Wade Earp, a gay rodeo contestant with possibly the most cowboy name ever. Says Wade:

“It’s kind of like an oxymoron. Gay and ‘rough, tough cowboy’ doesn’t go together.”

The fact is, “gay rodeo” is a great illustration of the power of contrast, paradox, or oxymoron in headlines. But smart marketers have been on this for a while. Here are a few classic headlines using the same principle:

“How a Bald-Headed Barber Saved My Hair”

“The Amazing Secret of a One-Legged Golfer”

“Marketing Heresy from the World’s Greatest Copywriter”

All right, the last one isn’t a classic, it’s just something from my blog.

But you get the idea: Using a paradox is like sticking a branch between the spokes of a fast-moving bike. Except, instead of a bike, it’s your customer’s brain that’s racing across dozens or hundreds of different headlines and bits of information. The paradox jams their brain up, and it forces them to resolve the mystery before they can move on with their life.

Of course, as with all good headline templates, paradox is not something you want to do every day. But it’s surprisingly useful and versatile, and now that you’re aware of it, you’ll probably start seeing it all over the place.

Anyways, back to business. If you want some help getting started as a copywriter on Upwork, then pardner, you’re in luck. I’m wrapping up my guide on just that topic, and I’ll publish it soon.

If you wanna get notified when this steer’s out the gate (and on free promotion for a few days), simply click the link below, and sign up for my email newsletter:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

How to get readers to drool like fifth-grade schoolgirls with Bieberfever

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I follow tennis closely, and I spend a lot of time reading the latest news and gossip on the r/tennis subreddit.

Every time a grand slam starts up (like the Australian Open right now), one particular redditor pipes up.

His handle is -Rainman500.

And he always writes the same kind of fictional joke post (AKA “shitpost”). They always feature a cast of current tennis stars, with lots of cryptic references to recent tennis news, and they always end the same way: Rafael Nadal gets demolished/decimated/decapitated.

Now here’s why I bring this up.

Whenever Rainman does one of these posts, it shoots up to the top of this active subreddit, with hundreds of upvotes and dozens or hundreds of comments.

This happens in spite of the fact that the posts aren’t very funny. Or particularly valuable in any other way.

In fact, one other redditor complained that the community drools over Rainman like fifth-grade schoolgirls with Bieberfever.

So what gives?

Why is Rainman so popular?

And is there a lesson here to help you inspire Bieberfever in your audience?

There might just be.

And if you look at how I described Rainman’s posts, you’ll probably guess what I have in mind.

In case you don’t get it right away, here’s another example to help you out.

It’s from my current best friend, Joe Sugarman, who made hundreds of millions of dollars selling BluBlocker sunglasses.

Joe did pretty well before BluBlockers, too.

For example, he once sold some kind of physical spell checker with an ad in the Wall Street Journal (this was back in the 1980’s I believe).

There was a clever gimmick in this ad:


Joe purposefully misspelled some words in the copy. And when you put in your order, you could also add in a list of misspelled words you found. For each misspelled word you found correctly, you got 2 bucks off the spell checker.

The promotion was successful. The spell checkers sold well.

But more impressive was that Joe kept getting calls and letters from people who didn’t even want the stupid spell checker. They just wanted to make sure they had gotten all the misspelled words from the ad. Some of them had even spent hours poring over the ad over and over.

By now, I think it should be obvious why Rainman generates Bieberfever.

And like I said, this is something you can easily apply to your copy as well. If you want to see how, you’ll want to get a copy (free, if you sign up now) of my upcoming book on email marketing in the health space. And if you want, you can even use this book to confirm that you’ve identified Rainman’s secret correctly. Here’s the link to sign up for a free copy:

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

 

5 marketing lessons from the most boring writer who ever lived

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I advise you not to read this post.

It’s long, and it deals with a very boring topic. And that’s the poet Kenneth Goldsmith.

Goldsmith practices something called “uncreative writing.”

For example, he’s written a book called “Day.” This is a typed-out edition of the New York Times from September 1, 2000. “Day” is 836 pages long, and it took Goldsmith a year to type.

Goldsmith then wrote “Weather,” a transcript of a year’s worth of weather reports from a New York City local radio station.

After that, “Traffic” followed. And then “Sports.” You get the idea.

So is Goldsmith just a boring crank?

Maybe so.

But he’s definitely a successful, well-paid crank.

He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. He read to Obama at the White House. He gets paid $500 for 30-minute readings of his works. And in 2013, he became the first poet laureate of the Museum of Modern Art.

But who cares about all that?

Instead, it turns out there are a bunch of instructive parallels between what Goldsmith does and what marketers and copywriters should do. Let me tell you about the top 5:

#1 Format rules

Speaking of his book “Day,” Goldsmith wrote:

“When you take a newspaper and reframe it as a book, you get pathos and tragedy and stories of love.”

Very true, in poetry as in direct-response copy. That’s because changing the format of your sales message — a sales letter vs. a video vs. a book — tends to have a much bigger impact on conversions than changing your headline, your offer, or any other aspect of your copy.

#2 Repulsion marketing

Goldsmith calls himself “the most boring writer who ever lived.”

He honed his boring chops working as a disk jockey for a radio show called Unpopular Music. That’s where he learned that challenging someone not to listen (or read) makes the person pay closer attention. And then your content either drives them away, or drives them more closely towards you.

Nothing new, you might say. This is a well-honed positioning strategy in the marketing world as well — email marketing guru Ben Settle being one well-known proponent.

#3 Branding done right

Goldsmith makes a personal spectacle out of himself. He wears paisley-patterned suits, sometimes with a long flowing skirt over his pants. “Every time I’m in public, I’m a persona, and people really hate that.”

Mind you, this isn’t traditional branding.

But exaggerating his natural tastes makes Goldsmith noticeable and memorable, and it’s something anybody (including internet entrepreneurs) can use as well.

#4 Troll management

The article I read about Goldsmith was full of comments by detractors, who were complaining about various aspects of his work.

Meantime, Goldsmith was off somewhere, busily devising the agenda for his upcoming projects — which will no doubt draw more criticism and negative reactions.

And there’s more.

When he was widely condemned of misappropriating racially sensitive material (the autopsy report of Michael Brown) for one of his readings, Goldsmith responded with his own thoughts — but didn’t apologize.

What better way to deal with online trolls as well?

#5 Moving information

Goldsmith says about his work:

“Moving information is a literary act, in and of itself […] How I make my way through this thicket of information — how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize it and distribute it — is what distinguishes my writing from yours.”

Well, moving information is a sales act as well. In fact, Goldsmith’s attitude above echoes something copywriting genius Gene Schwartz said:

“Copy is not written. Copy is assembled.”

In essence, Gene was saying that sales copy is simply a collection of good sales arguments. And those sales arguments don’t come from introspection. Instead, they come from research, deep into your market. In other words, much of your copy can come straight from forum posts, Facebook comments, and testimonials written by your target audience.

And on that note, I’m signing off from today’s episode of Unpopular Copywriting.

If you want more unpopular ideas, sign up for my newsletter by using the page below. I’ll even send you a link to a free promo of my upcoming Upwork book (ETA 1 week):

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Mystery PUA offers product marketing advice

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Once upon a time, “pick up artist” Mystery made a rather objectifying comment about women:

“Treat a six like a ten, and a ten like a six. You won’t go wrong.”

What does this have to do with copywriting?

Nothing probably.

Except it mirrors very closely the product marketing advice of direct response genius Joe Sugarman. Says Joe:

“A rule of thumb is to explain a complicated product in a very simple way and explain a simple product in a very complex way.”

For example:

When Joe was selling the first electronic blood pressure unit back in 1980, many people were still intimidated by computers. So Joe didn’t harp on the circuits inside or the assembly code that made this gadget work.

Instead, in a one-page ad, he devoted a total of 3 sentences to how the electronic beast works (wrap it around your arm, inflate it, listen for the beep).

No technical jiggery-pokery, no intimidation through jargon.

But sometimes, jargon is just what you want.

For example, a student of Joe Sugarman, named Frank Lewis, was selling grapefruit through direct mail.

Grapefruit. A pretty simple product.

So in a one-page ad, Lewis devoted five paragraphs to describing the unique features of his “Royal Ruby Reds” — everything from their color (“rich red”), taste (“natural sugar”), acid balance (“low”), juiciness (“high”), meatiness (also “high”), smoothness (can’t be “wind scarred”), and shape (can’t have a “sheep nose”).

​​He really sold this thing.​

Mystery would be proud.

Anyways, this advice can be directly applied in case you’re a freelance copywriter, offering your services on online platforms such as Upwork.

For example, it influences how you structure your description of the services you offer — and how you convince clients that you’re worth hiring.

I lay out all the details of this in my upcoming book on how to become a highly paid, top-rated sales copywriter on Upwork.

If you’d like to get notified when this book goes live on Amazon (and when there will be a short free promo period), sign up below:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

Honeymoons on Hog Island

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There’s a tense scene early on in the James Bond film Casino Royale.

Jimmy, dressed in khakis and a black button-down shirt, sits down at a high-stakes poker game.

He keeps winning. By the end of the night, he even wins himself the keys to the bad guy’s Aston Martin, and indirectly, to the bad guy’s sexy wife.

Exciting stuff.

And set in a beautiful location, on an unnamed tropical island.

The real-life location of this scene is a private island in the Bahamas, currently worth about $2 billion. The island features exclusive casinos and some of the world’s most expensive hotels (including the The Atlantis, which offers a room for $25,000 a night).

Merv Griffin owned the island at one point, and reality-TV star Donald Trump was a major investor. All of which begs the question:

What’s the name of this magical place?

Why, I’m surprised you don’t know it. It’s none other than…

Hog Island.

Ok, it’s officially Paradise Island now, since around 1959.

But it certainly was Hog Island originally, until big tourist development started up, and the then-owner decided it was time for a rebranding.

Come to Hog Island — your wife is already here

The point being that names matter.

It’s hard to imagine James Bond paying a trip to Hog Island, even if it were packed with dangerous women and beautiful cars. It’s equally unlikely that even with the fanciest hotels and most romantic beaches, Hog Island would ever seem like an acceptable destination for a honeymoon.

But here’s something else to notice:

“Paradise Island” isn’t a terribly creative name. Yes, it’s good enough to sell an island in the Bahamas. But it wouldn’t do much to promote a rocky, rainy, wind-swept isle off the coast of Scotland.

All of which, I think, has some practical applications.

For example, if you are starting out as a freelancer on Upwork, you may be tempted to spend a lot of time on your profile page. Which title should you give yourself? What should you say in the description?

Sure, those things matter, just like the name “Paradise Island” matters. But they are only one part of the total picture of Upwork success and they won’t win you jobs by themselves.

So what to do?

I’ve got lots of advice on the “positioning” part of getting on Upwork. But I can also tell you about the entire process of becoming a $150/hr freelance copywriter. In fact, I’m putting together an entire book on the topic right now.

It will be out in another couple of weeks. And then I will put it up on Amazon.

If you want to sign up to get notified when it’s out, mix yourself up a Vesper martini, unholster your Beretta, and take aim at the deadly link below:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/