Copywriting

Marketing heresy from the world’s greatest living copywriter

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A while back, I was writing a sales letter for a probiotic and I was stuck for a headline.

The unique thing about this probiotic was that the strains it contained were proven effective in clinical studies (unlike just about every other supplement out there).

But that’s a really ugly, non-benefit-oriented feature to highlight in a headline.

So I borrowed a technique that I’d heard of in copywriting legend Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar. The resulting headline went something like this:

“Announcing a doctor-formulated probiotic that’s been clinically proven in controlled human studies to…”

And then it went on to list the 7 or 8 separate proven benefits that this probiotic was actually proven to deliver.

When I first heard of this headline technique, it seemed weak to me. After all, isn’t all good copywriting focused on a single, overriding idea? It certainly seems to be the conventional wisdom, and even I’ve done my part in propagating this.

And yet, here we have Gary Bencivenga, widely acknowledged as the greatest living copywriter, somebody who’s won control after control, and who’s been privy to the results of tens of millions of dollars worth of advertising tests, saying that you can have a headline that’s effectively trumpeting a half dozen separate benefits.

“Our *three* benefits are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency”

And Gary doesn’t stop there. I was just re-reading an interview he’s done with another famous copywriter, Clayton Makepeace, and I came across the following:

“I know this sounds like heresy, but I’d much rather have in a good direct mail package three or four or 10 good reasons to buy, than to have to sacrifice nine of them in favor of the one USP. The USP really can be misapplied to direct marketing where you have the luxury of closing the sale on the spot and can give one dominant reason to buy but also seven or eight other reasons. You don’t have to abide so religiously to a single Unique Selling Proposition.”

So what to make of all of this?

Maybe Gary understands copywriting at such a deep level that he can afford to break rules that apply to the rest of us.

Maybe he’s just stating in a slightly stronger form what many copywriters already do (“give one dominant reason to buy but also seven or eight other reasons”).

But maybe, just maybe, the current emphasis on “The One Big Idea” is a bit of a fad, and maybe there are other effective ways to create a successful direct marketing promotion.

Stressing out at exam time in Copywriting High

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Imagine you’re back in high school and you have an important exam coming up.

You know that if you don’t get at least a B, your parents will beat you, your dog will leave you, and nobody will go with you to prom.

So what do you do? Naturally, you refuse to study for your exam. Or rather, you put off studying until you only have time to cover about 30% of the material that’s likely to show up on the test.

Of course, on exam day, you’re panicking. Your mind races forward and sees how horrible life will be when you get an F: the beatings, the dog breakup, the lonely nights.

Your mind then jolts back to the past, and to all the time you could have spent studying. Anger mixed with guilt boil up inside of you.

As you’re cursing yourself, the teacher appears and hands out the exams. You look at the first question with disgust and find…

You know the answer.

Then the second question. It’s also something you studied.

And so on with the third and the fourth questions. Before you know it, you’ve finished the exam. The nightmare is over, and somehow you survived.

When the grades come out, it turns out you got an A. The parents put the bat away. Your dog doesn’t leave. And you find somebody nice to go to prom with.

So what’s the lesson?

Well personally, I think the lesson is you still should have studied, and you should study in the future. For one thing, you might not be so lucky next time. For another, all the stress and worry outweighed the joy of procrastination.

And here’s why I’m inventing this little allegory.

Since I’ve been working as a copywriter, I’ve gradually developed certain criteria for the kinds of clients I take on.

For example, I don’t accept rush jobs. I don’t enjoy the stress they bring. Plus, rush jobs tend to signal bad things about the client.

I also don’t work with clients who aren’t likely to get value out of my copy, regardless of how good I make it. That could be because they have a bad offer, or because they don’t have any traffic, or because they don’t know what they’re doing and they won’t even use my copy.

Well, recently I took on a client who failed to meet both of those common-sense criteria. The fault was mine — I accepted the job before I got the full information about the client and their situation. And because the promised pay was good, I refused to call off the project once I figured out what was going on.

Inevitably, the project caused me a lot of stress. All along the way, I was cursing myself for ever having accepted it. What’s more, the big money I was promised also became uncertain.

Long story short, the project finished. I managed to do a good job with the copy in spite of the rush. I delivered my work, the client paid me as agreed, it appears they are satisfied with the result, and they might even get their money’s worth, in spite of fundamental problems with their marketing efforts.

So what’s the lesson?

Well, just like in the allegory above, it would have been better to do the right thing and stick to my principles. It seems I got lucky this time, and the project worked out well. I might not be so lucky next time. And in retrospect, I don’t think the stress was worth it anyhow.

A classic Hollywood trick for stronger sales letter leads

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Frank Capra was desperate.

He reached for a lighter, struck up a flame, and set fire to his new film.

The year was 1937, and Capra had just finished shooting a new movie, called Lost Horizon. At the time, Capra was already a huge Hollywood success, having won the Academy Award for best director twice. However, this new film was long (three and a half hours), confusing, and test audiences hated it.

The legend goes as follows:

After the first sneak preview, which was a complete failure, Capra started agonizing. How to fix this monster of a film?

In a moment of inspiration, he hit upon the shocking solution. Even though it was dangerous and possibly crazy, he burned the first two reels of his film. This eliminated the dull intro scenes, and put the audience smack in the middle of the action.

Problem solved.

I thought of this Hollywood legend because I’m currently writing a new sales letter. It’s for sun-protective clothing, and the angle for the sales letter is skin cancer. So I decided to open with a story of a wife whose husband has been diagnosed with melanoma.

While I was planning this, I kept hearing Chris Haddad’s “Talk dirty to me” VSL in my head. It literally opens up with the words “Talk dirty to me,” and then goes to tell the story of a woman whose boyfriend made that request.

That’s some Frank Capra stuff.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet been able to sum up my audience’s fears in such a clear and powerful phrase.

But I do start the story immediately, with the husband in the hospital bed, his wife at his side, and the doctor delivering a horrible verdict. It’s much better than beginning with a sermon about how skin cancer is the most prevalent type of cancer.

So in short, if you want a stronger sales letter lead, look to cut out some filler. Make sure to get to the dramatic stuff right away, and capture your audiences attention in the very first sentence.

Talk dirty to me…

How to nail a wise old doctor’s voice

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I’m currently working on an email sequence for a memory enhancement supplement.

The spokesperson for this supplement is a doctor — male, white, I estimate in his mid-60s, with a pleasant Southern drawl and a wise grandfatherly demeanor.

“I’ve always had a love of nature and natural remedies”

I wrote up the first batch of emails and delivered them to my client (the supplement company owner, not the doctor).

“The angles and topics are all good,” the client said, “but can you work on adopting the good doctor’s voice a little more?”

Honestly, I was a bit miffed at this, because I already had tried to adopt his voice (as I do with all copy that I write). I had gone through the transcripts of an interview I had with the doctor, as well as several videos he had done on YouTube where he talked about health and supplements.

The trouble was, while the doctor did have a characteristic “voice” while speaking, when written down, there wasn’t nearly as much there. He wasn’t really using any unique slang, or technical terms, or telling lots of personal stories.

What to do? I swallowed my pride and rewrote parts of the emails.  Here’s what I did:

1. Use some generic conversational patter

I always try to write in a conversational way. In this case, I amped it up even more using generic conversational fluff, such as:

“You know”
“Well, what I’m talking about here is”
“Now I’ve got to warn you”

2. Search more closely for stories and phrases

I went through all the transcripts a second time, and I did find some phrases that were subtly unique. I wrote them all down, and one by one, I made sure to find a place in the copy to add each of them in. Here are a few examples:

“I’ve had an awful lot of success”
“Boatloads of medicines”
“It’s a jewel” [when describing something valuable]

3. Add parenthetical remarks

These are simply moments to step back from a story, an explanation, or a pitch, and you talk one-on-one, give an opinion, a personal comment, or insert a tiny other story.

For example, when talking about one of the ingredients in this supplement, I took a step back to have the doctor say, “You see, since I was a youngster, I’ve always had a love for nature and natural remedies. That’s why…”

4. Insert consistent stories and illustrations

This is perhaps the most impactful of all of these techniques.

I decided to simply add in stories and illustrations and images that are consistent with the persona of the doctor, even if it’s stuff I never really heard him say, and even if it’s stuff he might not actually ever say.

For example, I told the story of a “beautiful and stately old tree” down the street from where the doctor lives, which happens to be a ginkgo tree, one of the ingredients in the supplement. And I used grandfatherly images like the following:

“His anger issues started disappearing like mist in the morning sun”
“She had a vice-like grip on her intelligence again”

So did all this work? Who knows. But the client was happy, and he wrote back right away to say I had nailed the doctor’s voice perfectly.

A clever persuasion tactic from a 1970s racist lackey

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Here’s a bit of movie trivia:

Woody Allen has won the Academy Award for best original screenplay three times. Twice, he did it alone. Once, in collaboration with Marshall Brickman.

Francis Ford Coppola has also won the same award three times, as have Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. Each of them has shared at least one of those awards.

Only one guy has ever won the Academy Award for the best screenplay three times, working entirely by himself.

That guy is Paddy Chayefsky.

Right now, I’m rewatching my favorite Paddy Chayefsky Academy-Award-winning movie. It’s called Network, and it deals with the network TV business in the 1970s.

Halfway through the movie, Diana Christiansen, a heartless new breed of TV exec, meets with a representative of the Communist Party of the United States, Laureen Hobbs, in order to discuss making a program based on live recordings of acts of political terrorism. This is how the introduction goes:

Diana Christensen: Hi. I’m Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.

Laureen Hobbs: I’m Laureen Hobbs, a badass commie nigger.

Diana Christensen: Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship.

Clever, right?

“Allow me to disarm you with my honesty”

This introduction does a few things well. For one thing, Diana agrees with what Laureen already believes (the Marxist idea of “class for itself”). At the same time, the introduction is entirely and brutally honest, almost self-dismissing. It’s also very different from what is expected, immediately stirring curiosity and buying a bit of time.

This kind of strategy is what negotiation coach Jim Camp called a “negative stripline.” A negative stripline is when you go fully negative on some sensitive point, to the extent that the other side feels a bit bad and wants to reel you back in towards more middle ground.

So how can you use negative striplining in marketing?

Well, if you’re sending out cold emails to prospect for new customers, you could try opening with something like:

“Hello, my name is John Bejakovic and all I really want is some of your money. However, since I don’t have the skills to rob you, I have to offer you something you’d value in exchange. In my case, the only thing I know well is sales copywriting.”

If you’re selling an ebook about aromatherapy (as I plan to do soon), you could start off the sales letter by saying:

“There’s been a lot of hype about essential oils, and most of it has zero basis in reality. In fact, essential oils have on occasion hurt people who tried using them. And yet, there are cases when essential oils are not completely worthless, and can even be used safely.”

If you’re selling a probiotic:

“The human gut is enormously complex. Scientists know only a little about the myriad interactions between gut bacteria, other species of gut bacteria, and our own bodies. Odds are, they won’t have a good idea about it for another 100 years, and there’s no way to make any firm recommendations right now. However, if you want to self-experiment as a way of fixing your digestive issues, then this probiotic might be worth a look. Here’s why.”

I’ve never written anything this extreme for any of my clients. I don’t know if it would work. But if you want me to write something brutally honest (and possibly disarming) for your business, here’s where to go.

6 ways to stir up curiosity (cont.)

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Onwards and upwards. Continuing from my post yesterday, here are 3 more ways to create and amplify curiosity:

4 Flaunt the velvet pouch

When it comes to copywriting, the method of the velvet pouch is possibly the sexiest, most effective, and most profitable way to create curiosity. It certainly seems to be very prevalent on the Internet today, particularly in long-form sales letters and VSLs.

In many ways, the velvet pouch idea is a combination of several of the techniques from yesterday’s post. But I also feel like this method is tapping into human psychology on some unique, fundamental level, and that’s why I decided to include it on its own.

I found out about the velvet pouch technique from Michael Masterson’s and John Forde’s Great Leads. Here is the relevant section from the book, which is talking about lesson from a door-to-door salesman named Harry:

After gaining admittance to the apartment, Harry would start his pitch about the quality of our cookware, taking out the pots and pans individually from the case. But they were each encased in plush, royal blue velvet pouches. As Harry described the features and benefits of the cookware, he would gently massage the pots, first from outside over the velvet pouches, and then by slipping his hands inside them but still keeping them hidden from the prospect.

“Just keep your eye on the customer,” he told me. “In the beginning they’ll be looking at you. But as you go on, you’ll notice that they will shift their focus to the pots and pans. That lets you know they are getting interested. Keep hitting them with the benefits while they stare at what you’re doing. And never, ever tkae the pots out until you know they have the prospects’ full attention.”

Masterson and Forde use this story to kick off their chapter on what they call the secret lead. In other words, the velvet pouch is all about the mystery and intrigue that builds up when a secret is hovering around in the air.

In some ways, this is similar to a combination of the open loop and the teasing from yesterday. But like I said, there also seems to be a fundamental human hunger for secrets, even if they aren’t clearly associated with any benefits. I think that also explains why “secret” and “mystery” are marketing power words that can in many ways make a headline on their own.

By the way, I think trying to disqualify yourself (or what you’re offering) can sometimes work in the same way as a secret. Once something is taken off the table, people suddenly become more intrigued by it. That’s why I think the start of my post from two days ago is in some ways also a secret lead:

Fair warning: the following post contains some sexual, politically incorrect references. It might offend some people.

It’s ok to click away. But if you insist on reading, here goes:

5 Be different

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 Be new/Share news

The new kid on the block

When Gary Halbert died, Gary Bencivenga wrote a post explaining why Gary H.’s newsletters were so interesting. The number one thing, according to Gary B.?

1. Gary shared news. Sometimes he was the news, sometimes it was a dramatic turn of events in his tumultuous life, but often enough, he shared news of a technique or strategy that would make your response and profits soar. You couldn’t afford to miss even one of these gems, so you had to open every issue.

Many times, being new is sufficient unto itself, even if there’s no implied benefit, and not even anything clearly different. Novelty seems to directly tap into human psychology. Remember being in elementary school when a new kid appeared in class? Like in the photo above, that new kid was automatically interesting, at least for a while.

About number 5 above…

I tried to be different with the “be different” section above, so I didn’t expand on it at all. Maybe I should have just left it at that, because being different can be pretty straightforward. Still, here are a few examples:

First off, there’s the picture from yesterday’s post: “WORLD’S ONLY FEATURE DANCER WITH 3 BOOBS.” Is it a benefit? Hardly. A secret? Not at all. Just morbid fascination and curiosity with something different.

Second, there’s the story I started with two days ago, about a guy named Yad sleeping with a girl only a few hours after meeting her — just because he was different enough from other guys to make her very curious.

Finally, a copywriting example from my own essential oils list. At one point, I was promoting an online video series about longevity. The promise of the series was “How to live to a happy and healthy old age.”

That’s a fine benefit, but everyone is already pushing the same. So I simply switched it around to be different. I retold an ancient Greek myth about a Trojan prince who gets eternal life but not eternal youth, and how it turns out to be a curse rather than a blessing. The subject line for this inspiring email: “How to reach a frail and unhappy old age.” It worked pretty well.

6 ways to stir up (and blow up) curiosity

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Local business successfully employs curiosity

No time to dilly-dally today. Straight into the meat of this post, which is about how to create and amplify curiosity:

1 Use an open loop

I know of a fantastic way to stir up curiosity. It works particularly well with skeptical prospects, because it can be go completely under the radar.

But before I talk more about that, let me tell you about a guy named Andre Chaperon. Andre is famous in the copywriting world for a course called Autoresponder Madness, which teaches people how to write successful, story-based autoresponder sequences.

Some big Internet publishing companies, such as Mindvalley and Velocity House, have based much of their sales funnels on Andre’s teachings in Autoresponder Madness.

(Andre’s email methodology was the first I was exposed to when I started to learn about email marketing. I thought it was great then, and I think it’s great still — only surpassed, or rather complemented by,  the stuff that Ben Settle teaches.)

Anyways, one clever trick that Andre uses throughout his email copy, and that he teaches people in Autoresponder Madness, is called the “open loop.” You just saw an example of it four paragraphs back. It’s when you announce something intriguing, and then you completely drop it to talk about other things.

In my example above, the effect was probably not great, because you knew the suspense would be relieved after only a few paragraphs. But Andre frequently uses it across emails that will be sent days or even weeks apart.

Of course, the open loop is a standard technique in any story-telling medium. An extreme example is a cliffhanger in old comics or TV shows (more on this at the end of this post).

2 Tease/Intensify

Do you know why teasing is so great? It’s simply this: it will make your readers itch with curiosity, to the point where they’ll do anything to get the answer from you. And the thing about teasing is that it’s simple to do. Many people have used even without knowing anything about persuasion.

I’ll tell you all about how to do it, in just a second. Or maybe two. All right, here goes:

Teasing, by my definition, is simply dragging things out without actually giving anything away. The section above is one example.

You might find my teasing above annoying and transparent. But teasing can and should be part of good copy, both to build up anticipation and to “intensify” whatever is being talked about.

Here’s a less hokey example from my post yesterday:

But I believe there is another big pillar of influence that Cialdini left out. It’s in the story above. My guess is that it also drives about 90% of Internet traffic today. And according to famous copywriter Gary Halbert, it might even be the #1 reason that people buy stuff from advertisements.

I’m not really giving anything away here. I’m just restating and intesifying the benefits, and buying a bit of time in the process.

3 Tighten the knowledge gap

Here’s a puzzle for you. Why would a headline such as:

“Battery technology may emerge as a trillion-dollar threat to credit markets”

stir up more curiosity than a headline such as:

“Battery technology may emerge as a huge threat to other sectors”

After all, the second headline actually withholds much more information (Which sectors? How huge?) than the first. Shouldn’t that cause more curiosity as well?

The answer to this lies in the concept of a “knowledge gap,” a term I first read in Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick. A knowledge gap is what ultimately creates curiosity — it’s the bit of knowledge we don’t have and we want to have so we can complete the picture.

The thing is, if the amount of information that’s withheld is too great, you don’t create curiosity. You create indifference. That’s what’s going on in the second headline above.

The way to create curiosity is to tighten the knowledge gap as much as possible without giving the farm away. Some well-known copywriter (Ben Settle? David Deutsch?) talked about good bullet points as giving away nine-tenths of what you need to know, but keeping that last bit so people have to buy your product to find out. That’s the right attitude to have with the knowledge gap.

Tightening the knowledge gap isn’t just about combatting general disinterest. It can also be used to hook skeptical, jaded prospects. Compare a subject line such as:

“The forbidden food you should be eating”

(which, by the way, is a real subject line from an email I got yesterday, and did not open) to a more specific subject line:

“The forbidden breakfast food you should be eating after workouts”

To me, it seems that the second subject line (which I just made up) might get me to wonder, “which breakfast food” and “why after workouts,” which might be enough to overcome my skepticism of reading yet another sensationalist health blog post.

4 Flaunt the velvet pouch

This blog post has run on longer than expected. And I’m getting sleepy. I’ll pick it all up tomorrow — starting with the secret of the velvet pouch.

“Until tomorrow — same time — same channel!”

Stuck on the emotional rollercoaster with nowhere to go

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On May 28 of this year, many visitors to the Cedar Point amusement park, “The Rollercoaster Capital of the World,” got a special thrill.

They boarded the Millennium Force “giga coaster” — the biggest rollercoaster in the world at the time of its debut in 2000 — expecting a fast and gut-wrenching ride. Full of expectation, they started climbing the initial 300-foot ascent, and were preparing themselves to rush down the other side at 93 miles an hour.

Instead, what they got was a long wait. Halfway up the climb, the power went out. A car somewhere hit a utility pole, knocking out one third of the rides at Cedar Point. The folks on the Millennium Force sat up there in the air for two hours, cooking in the 90-degree heat.

Now a few days ago, I made a case against indoctrination emails, meaning emails that aim to build good will without trying to sell anything. My argument in that post was that people don’t read all your emails, so when they do actually read your emails, it makes financial sense to give them a chance to buy from you.

Today, I have a second argument against indoctrination emails (and other emails that don’t sell). This second argument has to do with the situation of being stuck on a rollercoaster, ready to scream and laugh — but not actually going anywhere.

“WOOHOOO!!! A way to resolve emotional tension!!!”

The rollercoaster I’m talking about is an emotional rollercoaster. In my experience, the best emails stir emotion. This emotion can be curiosity, frustration, anger, disgust, fear, greed, outrage, inspired benevolence, whatever.

Why emotion in emails? If you want people to open your emails day after day and to read them, you have to give them an emotional jolt, and do so frequently. I don’t have a much better way of explaining it than saying it’s simply what people want. I guess emotion gives color to an otherwise drab day.

(Interesting and useful information is great once or twice. But without a little emotional color mixed in, useful information quickly becomes a burden rather than a gift.)

Of course, emotion also makes sense from a different perspective. That’s because when people get emotional about something, it’s much easier to get them to take action. Meaning it’s much easier to get them to buy.

And here’s the thing. Getting people to buy when they are emotional isn’t just good for you. It’s good for them. The act of buying resolves the tension that the emotion stirred up. And it replaces it with a sense of purpose, hope, and resolution.

If you don’t believe me, think about the feeling you yourself had the last time you made a sizeable purchase online. I know I’m usually relieved that the indecision of shopping has been resolved, and I’m optimistic about what my new purchase will alow me to do.

So emotion + selling = good. But emotion without selling is like being stuck high up on a rollercoaster, not moving and not being able to finish the ride. At first it might just be puzzling, after that it becomes annoying.

What’s the alternative? Well, one option is to send out bland and boring emails that don’t stir anybody up. A better option, in my opinion, is to get people a little emotional, and to then give them a chance to buy a product or service that allows them to complete their rollercoaster ride.

The “Rule of One” applied to email copywriting

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In the 2006 version of Casino Royale, there’s a classic James Bond pickup scene.

Bond is talking to the beautiful wife of one of the bad guys. After a bit of flirty banter, Bond looks her straight in the eye and says, “What about a drink at my place?”

He stares at her. She stares at him. The tension builds.

“Your place,” she says breathlessly, “is it close?”

“Very,” says Bond.

Now imagine if Bond couldn’t play so cool. Instead of throwing out that one proposal, imagine if he threw out three:

“What about a drink at my place? Or maybe some nachos? How about breakfast tomorrow in case you’re busy now?”

Even with his ice-cold stare, odds are he wouldn’t get the same response.

“Bond. James Bond. You can call me Jim. Or James. Whichever is easier.”

A while ago, I was reading “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. This is the best book I’ve come across  on how to present ideas clearly and in a way that people will remember. One of the things the Heaths say is, “Say one thing. If you say three things, you end up saying nothing at all.”

Michael Masterson and John Forde’s “Great Leads” emphasizes the same concept, which they call “The Rule of One – One Big Idea.”

In fact, the book opens up with the story of two speeches that were given by two Agora copywriters. One speech focused on one idea, the importance of clarity in writing. The other was something like “12 rules I follow when writing copy.”

The audience thought both speeches were terrific. But at the end of the night, people were only talking about the single idea in the first speech.

I’ve recently been working on some emails for a cool product. The product helps people make their own fermented food. And the emails I’m writing are specifically for people who’ve stated that they want to ferment for health reasons.

I’ve been going around in circles writing these emails. I need to get across a few ideas. One is that fermented foods are important for your health. The second is that fermenting can be a hassle. A third is that store-bought fermented foods aren’t a great choice compared to fermenting food yourself.

The problem is I’ve been trying to do this in the same email. This breaks the “Rule of One.” No wonder I’ve been re-reading the emails and thinking they are somehow weak and unconvincing.

The fix is simple. Pick one idea. Develop it in detail. Present it clearly. And then do the same for the other ideas, but in separate emails.

The parable of the marketing apprentice

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Do you know the parable of the sorceror’s apprentice?

The sorcerer leaves the tower for a bit, and his apprentice uses what magic he’s learned to get the broom to come alive and start fetching pails of water. Except the stupid broom, once it has gotten the command, won’t stop. The apprentice hasn’t learned this magic incantation yet.

So more and more water keeps being sloshed into the tower. The apprentice starts to panic and decides to chop the broom in half. Not smart. His problems are now doubled — two brooms are bringing twice the water.

This is akin to what happens when people start learning about marketing and copywriting. For example, the very first bit of marketing advice you’ll hear is to focus on how your offer benefits the prospect.

“Don’t make it about you, make it about them!”

It’s a solid piece of advice. And it should be used, when and where it’s needed. But is it the only incantation a marketer needs to know?

I thought of this a few months back when I got a promotional email from a health coach named Ari Whitten. Ari runs a very popular online course called the Energy Blueprint, and he was sending an email to his list to promote his new book. The subject line? “My New Book is HERE!”

Who cares, right? Where’s the benefit? What’s in it for me, Ari?

Well, apparently, much of Ari’s list cares. Through motivating his own loyal followers — and probably with a lot of affiliate help — Ari’s book shot up to the #2 spot in the health category on Amazon, and within the top 40 of all books on Amazon.

In a way, this is reminiscent of what Gene Schwartz calls the “most aware” state of customer awareness. From Gene’s Breakthrough Advertising:

The customer knows of your product — knows what it does — knows he wants it. At this point, he just hasn’t gotten around to buying it yet. Your headline — in fact, your entire ad — need state little more except the name of your product and a bargain price.

At the same time, this isn’t really about awareness of the product. Instead, the awareness is about Ari himself. People know him and want what he has to offer, without taking too much care of what his offer actually is.

But let’s tie this back to the sorcerer’s apprentice.

Wouldn’t Ari have been more successful if he had pitched the benefits of his new book right in the subject line? Maybe, at least for selling this one book. That’s like telling your broom to go fetch the water.

However, for the long term, always shouting benefits might not be the best strategy. If you keep writing to the same people, and all you do is talk benefits, without doing other things to build a bond with your readers (like entertaining them, teasing them with curiosity, or relating to them on a personal level), then you eventually lose their attention and you make your job harder — or impossible — for the long term.

That’s when you try chopping the axe in two. In the marketing world, that usually means making more and more extreme promises and claims. When that doesn’t seem to work, you chop again and again, making still more extreme claims.

That is, until the sorcerer comes back from his afternoon walk. He surveys the mess, throws the sleeves of his robe back, and  finally casts the magic spell (called “relationship”) to drive all these marketing problems away.

“My new book is HERE!”