Direct Marketing

Selling “male enhancement” with one easy, simple trick

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A few years back, I paid $500 for an online course called The Energy Blueprint.

This is offered by a guy called Ari Whitten, and it deals with increasing your energy levels and reducing fatigue.

The reason I actually plopped down the $500 was instructive. You see, out of the flood of marketing that Ari was putting out to promote his course, only one tiny bit caught my attention.

In one of his lead magnets, Ari gave a practical tip for increasing your energy. Says Ari,

“Drink a glass of water the first thing when you get up.”

“That’s it? How lame,” you might think.

I certainly did. After all, I do a ton of reading about health, and “drink water” is neither new nor exciting advice. And yet, Ari managed to sell it in such a way that this one small, not very impressive tip got me to buy a $500 course.

So what’s going on?

I thought about this in a lot of detail today.

That’s because I’ve been talking to a potential client.

He sells information in the “male enhancement” space and he wanted my thoughts on the lead magnet to use for a new product launch. (By the way, a lead magnet is the video or PDF that you give away to get potential leads onto your email list.)

So I thought about Ari Whitten’s easy, simple water trick, and how it worked on me. I broke it down into 3 crucial parts, all of which operated in tandem to convince me to actually buy his course.

Anyways, I shared the structure of Ari’s “water lead magnet” with this potential client.

And I’ll also be sharing it in my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space.  In fact, I think this kind of lead magnet works best for health offers — “male enhancement” included.

I’m planning on selling this book when it’s out. But if you sign up for it now, you can secure yourself a free copy. To do so, here’s where to go:

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

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/

Male chauvinist customer pigs

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Those darned male chauvinists. It seems you never can get rid of them. Here’s what I mean.

For the past few months, I’ve been working a lot with one client. They sell pain relief, in the form of shoe insoles and neck traction devices and back braces that straighten you up after years of slouchy posture.

Anyways, I’ve been writing most of this client’s copy lately. Which typically includes a front-end video ad, which runs on Facebook, followed by an advertorial.

These ads and advertorials are often written in a first-person, let-me-tell-you-what-I-found style. And depending on who the product is most likely to appeal to, sometimes that first-person is a woman, sometimes a man.

Or rather, I should say, sometimes it used to be a woman. Because today, I got some sexy feedback on this topic from the client:

“It seems men won’t purchase something on the recommendation of a woman’s review, but the opposite is less the case (women still heavily purchased the insoles from the male review). I think for the future it would be good to stick with things from the male perspective – but still write with both men and women in mind so we can go as broad as we can with these things.”

After reading this, all I can say is, I’m glad I work in direct response marketing.

Not because I encourage male chauvinism. Or because I have an interest in suppressing female-narrated advertorials.

But because direct response caters to the world as it is, rather than the way the dogma-of-the-day wants it to be.

Which means a lot less hand-wringing and head-shaking. And a lot more profitable sales.

Anyways, I’m sure that the conclusion above — women listen to men but not the other way around — doesn’t apply to all markets and all marketing situations.

But it is an interesting insight to keep in mind.

Now on a completely unrelated and unchauvinist note:

I’m wrapping up my book on how to succeed as a sales copywriter on Upwork.

When I’m done with this little piggy, I’ll put it up on Amazon.

If you want to get notified when that happens so you can grab your own copy (I’ve even heard rumors of a free promo period), then sign up below and I’ll send you an email once it’s out:

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

The salutary effect of paying for traffic

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Right now, I’m running a paid Facebook ad campaign.

It’s promoting a lead magnet for my aromatherapy website, titled The Little Black Book of Essential Oil Scams.

I don’t know much about running ads on Facebook, but it seems like I’m getting leads for pretty cheap. On the other hand, they don’t seem to be the highest-quality leads — many people who opt in never even download the lead magnet.

But that’s ok.

Because the very fact of paying for traffic is having a salutary effect on me.

I got that phrase from negotiation master Jim Camp, who talked about “the salutary effect of cold calling.” When you cold call, Camp used to say, you have no expectations, and you have a great opportunity to eliminate all your neediness (one of the main pillars of Camp’s negotiation system).

Well, paying for traffic doesn’t have the same salutary effect.

But it does make me want to write emails every day to these leads. What’s more, it makes me want to write emails that get read and get people stirred up. In other words, I’m no longer just writing for the sake of being able to say I’ve done it. Instead, I’m writing to make sales.

That’s both because I’m spending money on traffic now (rather than counting on an indefinite stream of leads from Google)…

And it’s also because it becomes a game — can I make back the money that I will spend on ads, so I can do this all over again on a bigger scale?

Speaking of games, I’m running another ad campaign, and that’s on Amazon.

I’m promoting the aromatherapy books I have .

And once I finish up my new book, about being a successful freelancer on Upwork, I’ll put it up on Amazon, and promote it through ads as well.

However, before I do that, I will probably take advantage of Amazon’s free promotion period. This means, for a few days, once the book is published, it will be available to download for free.

In case you want to get notified when this happens, sign up below, and I’ll keep you in the loop:

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

The night of the yellow ad

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On the evening of December 5th of this year, websites across the Internet started displaying an unusual ad.

There was no text on the ad.

No image.

Nothing was being advertised.

It was just a plain, 300×250 yellow square.

And to make things weirder, the revenues from these ads were huge. Some websites saw an 800% increase in their ad revenue. Altogether, this little yellow square, running for less than an hour, was responsible for somewhere between $1.6 million and $10 million in ad spend.

Was it all a brilliant marketing campaign?

Or some behemoth company that could afford to throw away millions of dollars on a bizarre stunt?

Neither, actually. The company behind the yellow ad was a small Australian ecommerce fashion brand called The Iconic. And the whole thing was a mistake, made by an ad team at Google, which helps companies learn how to use its ad platform.

(The Iconic apparently won’t be billed for Google’s mistake, and publishers will still be paid, I guess out of Google’s deep pockets.)

Now I’ve recently been dabbling with pay-per-click.

Not on Google, but on Facebook and, more recently, on Amazon.

So the story above is pretty relevant to me.

You see, any of these companies will gladly tell you how you should run your ad campaigns. They will give you advice. They will even offer to automate away much of the work.

The trouble is, even if they don’t make a nasty technical snafu like the “night of the yellow ad,” they aren’t really experts in marketing.

And I don’t think their advice really has my best interests in mind.

So instead, when I make my PPC campaigns, I keep it simple.

Instead of relying on the fancy advice of companies like Facebook and Google, I apply 100-year-old principles from Claude Hopkins’s Scientific Advertising, and go from there.

Does this apply to you?

Probably not. But it might be something to keep in mind in case you run (or are planning to run) paid ads.

On a related note:

If you are getting started as a freelancer on Upwork, I would also not go with the recommendations of that particular company for how to become successful.

Instead, I would recommend another resource.

It’s not 100 years old.

In fact, it’s not even published yet.

It’s an ebook I’m putting together right now, called How to Become a $150/hr, Top-Rated Sales Copywriter on Upwork.

If you want to get notified when I’m finished with this book and it becomes available, sign up below and I’ll keep you in the loop:

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

A lesson from Widows: How to tell you’re winning a negotiation

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I just saw the surprisingly good Widows.

There are many scenes in this movie that would make for good email — or blog — fodder.

One that sticks out is the following:

Jamal Manning is a former crime boss who’s looking to get respectable, so he’s running for alderman in Chicago’s 16th district.

And in this scene, he visits the reverend of the largest congregation in his district, trying to get support.

The reverend speaks first:

“Election’s in less than a month. If I was a doctor, I’d be telling you to get your affairs in order. Three weeks from now, you won’t need a doctor. You’ll be asking someone like me to give you last rites.”

Manning is getting impatient. He thinks the reverend has already decided to endorse his opponent.

“I didn’t say that,” says the good reverend.

He then suggests he’s still keeping his options open.

Finally, Manning can’t take any more. He blurts out:

“I’m gonna cut to the chase here, reverend. I’m in the driver’s seat. I just don’t have a set of wheels. All I need is your endorsement and your contribution to help me get across the finish line.”

And there it is.

The phrase that tells you you’ve been negotiating right, and are near to crossing the finish line.

Did you catch it?

“I’m gonna cut to the chase.”

That’s not my wisdom.

Instead, it’s straight from the late negotiation expert Jim Camp, who said his students always love to hear that phrase. “Cut to the chase” means the other side is getting worn out and they are ready to agree to just about anything.

So how do you get to that point?

Well, you do what the good reverend did.

Which is something that doesn’t just apply to local politics or crime movies.

In fact, it’s another tenet of Camp’s negotiating method.

And it’s even something that’s been adapted to writing more effective sales emails by that devoted Camp disciple, Ben Settle.

You can try to glean what I’m talking about by closely reading the script above.

Or you can get a copy of my upcoming book when it comes out, where I will cover this topic in much more detail, and give several examples of emails where I’ve used this same strategy.

The choice is yours. If you want the second option, here’s the link:

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

The Trojan horse of lead generation

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“And armed hosts, an unexpected force,
Break from the bowels of the fatal horse.”
— The Aenid by Virgil

How do you overthrow a city defended by impenetrable walls?

You build a wooden horse and you get the Trojans to do your work for you.

How do you get paid for advertising your own product to other people’s customers?

You write a short book and you get the Amazons to do your work for you.

At least, that’s what one very successful Internet marketer had to say a few years back.

I’m thinking specifically of Hollis Carter, who ran (or still runs) a publishing company called Velocity House.

I remember watching a talk that Hollis gave at Mindvalley a long time ago — it was one of the first things that that got me excited about internet marketing.

The basic message was this:

Whatever you want to do — build a reputation, get leads, rank for a competitive keyword on Google — then writing a book and putting it on Amazon can do that for you.

Instead of paying for advertising, Hollis was saying, Amazon will actually pay you to deliver your ad (in the form of a book) to your target audience.

Well, I’m on this horse.

I’m putting together a Kindle book right now that will serve only for lead generation.

The best part is, it’s easy to do, since I’m just repurposing emails I’ve already sent to my email list.

But there’s a little twist to making sure this book unleashes the armed hosts and unexpected force of lead generation.

It’s a small principle that I learned from Ben Settle, who I suppose learned it from Matt Furey. Outside of these two guys, I don’t hear anybody else talking about it.

If you want to find out what this special principle is, I’ll tell you. All you have to do is sign up by the end of today (midnight PST, Tuesday, December 4) for my upcoming book on email marketing, and I will send you an email explaining the rest of this Amazon Trojan horse lead gen approach.

Here’s the link to sign up:

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

The Dwight Schrute school of email marketing

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“I like the people I work with, generally, with four exceptions. But someone committed a crime, and I did not become a Lackawanna County volunteer sheriff’s deputy to make friends. And by the way, I haven’t.”
— Dwight Schrute, The Office

This morning I concluded the launch weekend of my new aromatherapy book.

Spoiler alert: everything went according to plan.

I sent out a lot of emails.

I sold quite a few books — in fact, more than I had anticipated.

And I also got some unsubscribes.

It’s this last bit that I want to talk about.

Before I started this promotional launch (which spanned 4 days and involved 9 promo emails), I sent out an “email avalanche warning” to my subscribers.

I told them what the email forecast was for the weekend, and I also told them that, in case they don’t want to hear me pitching my book, they have two options:

1. They can ignore my emails until next week

2. They can unsubscribe

And sure enough, a few people (though not very many) did unsubscribe at that point.

However, once the email launch actually kicked off last Thursday, more people unsubscribed, including a few who had been faithful readers of my blog and email newsletter for several years.

And my reaction, without any bitterness or sarcasm, was Schrute-like. (In case you don’t know, Dwight Schrute is the jackhammering, hard-working, merciless alpha male assistant to the regional manager from the TV show The Office.)

You see, with a few exceptions, I generally like the people who are subscribed to my email newsletter.

But I’m selling a book and trying to make a solid business out of my Unusual Health website.

And I did not become a low-level aromatherapy expert to make friends.

In other words, when people who would never buy anything from me unsubscribe from my emails, I actually feel glad to see them go.

Anyways, if you want more details about my ebook launch strategy, including the reasoning behind the emails I sent and the schedule I used, you’ll want to get a copy of my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space.

Fact: It’s not out yet, but you can get a free copy when I do finish it.

Here’s where you can find out more:

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

The worst aromatherapy book Broadway has ever seen

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“Tonight, essential oils. Tomorrow…”

The Producers — a brave and brilliant comedy from back in 1968.

The basic plot goes as follows:

A Broadway producer named Max Bialystock meets an accountant named Leo Bloom.

Together, they realize that a play that flops could earn more money than a big hit.

So they set out to produce the worst play in the history of Broadway. It’s titled:

“Springtime for Hitler”

It’s shocking, it’s campy, it’s offensive, and it’s guaranteed to fail. Except, against all odds, it becomes a hit.

Well, I am currently having my “Springtime for Hitler” moment.

You see, once upon a time, I got into the aromatherapy niche. This was mostly a marketing exercise, and the main reason I chose aromatherapy was the big interest I saw among Amazon best selling books on the topic.

In other words, I expected it to be a quick cash grab or more likely a flop.

Fast forward a few years, and I am genuinely interested in essential oils (I use them myself), I’ve spent hours upon hours researching and writing about the topic, and I’ve even become a low-level expert on the matter.

And now, I have my very own book to prove it.

As of today, my first book about essential oils, Essential Oil Quick Start Guide, is live for sale.

And while it’s not a Broadway hit yet, I do have my first sales trickling in.

Anyways, you can see the sales page at the link below.

If you have zero interest in reading about essential oils, it probably won’t make you buy. Still, it might be worth looking at just to see how I weave in valuable information (suggestion: Gary Bencivenga) with a non-stop barrage of bullets (suggestion: Gene Schwartz). Here’s the link:

http://www.unusualhealth.com/quick-start-guide/

What’s the frequency, Brian?

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Did you know a group of ladybugs is called a “loveliness”?

Entomologists might not use this term, but it is what former CBS anchorman Dan Rather seems to call a ladybug congress. I found this out from a Tweet that Dan posted today.

He seems very chipper these days, does old Dan, enjoying being retired and spending time with his grandson. But it wasn’t always so.

As you probably know, poor Dan got beat up on the streets of New York back in ’86 by a guy who kept yelling, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?”

The “Kenneth” phrase became a kind of 80’s meme and inspired the big R.E.M. hit, “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”

The song’s lyrics are opaque and also include the line, “Richard said, ‘Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy.'” This in turn comes from a scene in the movie Slacker, directed by Richard Linklater, in which one of the characters offers Oblique Strategy cards to a passerby, and the “Whithdrawal in disgust” card is what the guy picks.

Oblique Strategies, by the way, are cards designed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. They hold short, cryptic instructions to help with creative work.

This links back to the R.E.M. song, which slows down at the end. Apparently, the bass player had appendicitis as the song was being recorded, and they had to stop playing and rush him to the hospital. They never finished the recording properly. I don’t think this was one of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, but it runs in the same vein.

You may think this is aimless rambling. And it is — but there is a point to it as well.

A while back, Ben Settle linked to a video that he said was very influential in how he wrote emails. The video is titled “Admiralty Law: Word Controlled Humans & The Law of Money” and it’s the recording of a presentation of one Jordan Maxwell, a world-famous conspiracy theorist.

The video is kind of mind-bending to watch, and the email marketing lesson I drew from it is the power of stringing two ideas together in surprising ways. Each idea has to be somewhat interesting on its own, at least to you. The way you string them together is also up to you — it doesn’t have to make too much sense.

Why do this?

Well, one reason is that surprising people is always a good thing. It wakes them up and makes them pay attention.

But there’s a second, and possibly more important reason. And that is:

Because these are your curious associations between different facts and ideas, they give your unique flavor to what you write. It’s this unique voice that helps you build a relationship with your readers. And ultimately, building a relationship is the highest level of email marketing.

So developing your own voice can be done consciously, like I did with the “Kenneth” stuff above.

The thing is, this association game is not the only way to develop a unique voice for your copywriting.

There are several other strategies. I’ll go over them in similar detail in my upcoming book on email marketing. If you want to get a free copy when it comes out, sign up here:

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