Persuasion

Constant scarcity loses to recent scarcity

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Yesterday, a copywriter who reads my email newsletter wrote me with a job offer.

The offer sounds great. I’m planning to get on a call with the copywriter and the COO of the company to talk about it, hopefully later today.

It took over two years of everyday mailing to get to this point.

For the longest time, nobody read my newsletter. But gradually, a few people found me, and then a few more.

And now, even though I still have a small list, opportunities are coming my way out of unexpected corners.

I’m telling you about this for two reasons:

First, if you’re getting started in any kind of service business, then writing daily emails is a great way to get in front of high-quality, high-paying clients, very slowly.

Maybe you can do it faster than I did, if you work hard on growing your list and if you push your services in your emails. Both things I never did much of.

Which brings me to the second reason I’m telling you about this, and the real point of today’s post.

Several copywriting influencers claim you should reach out to your email list whenever you’re looking for work. They advise saying something like:

“I just wrapped up a big project… I currently have an opening in my schedule… if you’re interested, reply and we can talk.”

I always had a bad feeling about this advice.

I’m sure it works, if you have a big enough reputation and a big enough list.

But if you have a small enough list or a small enough reputation… then the message above smells of need, at least to me.

​​I figured there must be a better way.

My suspicions were confirmed when I read Bob Cialdini’s book Pre-suasion. Cialdini cites laboratory research showing that constant scarcity is less motivating than recent scarcity. From the research:

If there are always a few cookies in a jar, you want them more than if there are a lot of cookies. But…

You don’t want them nearly as much as when there were always a lot of cookies… and now suddenly there are only a few.

“Pfff, lab persuasion!” you might say. “What does that have to do with the real world?”

I don’t know. Let’s find out.

As I mentioned at the start, I have a new job offer. That’s in addition to my ongoing clients in the ecommerce space… plus a real estate business I’ve recently joined… plus my own books and courses, which I’m building up and selling.

And like I said, new opportunities are popping up, more and more often, as my little newsletter picks up steam.

In other words, I’m really not looking for more work. But I am still open to it.

So if you would like to work with me in some form… before I get so entangled in other projects that it becomes impossible to say yes to anything new… then get on my newsletter, get in touch with me, and we can talk.

Virtue selling

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Because you are an independent thinker, I believe you will appreciate the following:

​​A few nights ago, I was walking along the riverside when a series of loud explosions went off all around me.

I didn’t flinch. Not because I’m so brave. But because I knew what was going on.

The explosions were firecrackers, fireworks, or possibly cannon fire, set off in celebration. They were followed by mass cheering that broke out from balconies, bars, and cafes all over the city.

Because it’s the Euro Cup now. And the national soccer team had just scored a goal.

I say national team, but that’s not what they are called. Not officially.

Instead, government officials, TV pundits, and newspaper editors now use the terms “we,” or more commonly, “Croatia.”

“Croatia was magnificent”

“Croatia needs to try harder”

“Croatia rises from the ashes”

My point is that soccer here is a kind of new state religion.

I’m not kidding about that.

Once upon a time in this part of the world, belonging to the official church and being a good citizen were two sides of the same personal identity coin.

Today, the church has lost much of its pull.

But soccer has gained where the church has lost.

So today, billboards, TV, and newspapers all repeat a hundred versions of the same two-sided message:

“Croatia is soccer! And soccer is Croatia!”

But let me step off my 1984 pulpit. And let me get to the money-making shot at the open goal.

This official push for soccer fandom brought to mind something I’ve heard from two successful marketers.

The marketers in question are Chris Haddad and Ben Settle. And independent of each other, they both said the same thing:

You want to make buying from you a virtue.

Sure, people want to get rich, get laid, and get swole.

But maybe not as much as you think. Maybe not enough to pull out their wallets, to overcome their fears, and to set aside the bad memories of previous purchases that went nowhere. Maybe not enough to buy.

So you link buying from you to a virtue:

Your prospect is a rebel. Or a patriot. Or a visionary.

And by virtue of buying from you… he is making the world a better place… and reaffirming that he is in fact a deserving person.

And when your prospect starts wondering if that’s really something he wants, you remind him:

He still gets rich/laid/swole as part of the bargain. A good deal, no? 1-0 for your business.

And now the pitch:

Since you are an independent-thinking person, you might want to sign up to my email newsletter. By signing up to my email newsletter, you will be exposed to novel ideas, making you an even more independent-thinking person. Plus you might make some money in the process.

49-year-old secret to creating big changes in awaren

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In 1972, two psychologists split a bunch of guinea pigs, I mean students, into separate groups and played one of two audio tapes for them.

Both tapes contained the audio of a regular 30 min TV show. Squeezed in between were commercials for cigarettes and chewing gum and mouthwash and a headache pill.

At the end of the show, the students were asked a barrage of questions. Including a few about the commercials.

“Can you recall the type of product in the commercials? What about the brand name?”

The psychologists also followed up. Two days later. A week later.

“Can you still recall the type of product in the commercials? What about the brand name?”

The results:

One group of guinea pigs did as you might expect. They remembered the commercials pretty well right after the show… but less so two days later… and much less so a week later.

The second group was more interesting though, at least if you’re in the business of persuading.

This second group could remember the commercials better than group one right after the show… and the recall stayed at that same high level. Two days later. A week later. No drop off.

So what was the difference between the two groups?

​​Simple.

Group one heard the commercials in their original, unedited form.

Group two heard the same commercials, but with the last 5-6 seconds cut off.

You might recognize this as an example of the Ziegarnik effect.

​​In a nutshell, there’s a part of our brain that’s in charge of alertly waiting for the other shoe to drop. When the other shoe does drop, that part of the brain relaxes, and its alert attention slips away. But if the other shoe never drops…

By the way, the above study is not the only confirmation of the power of the Ziegarnik effect. That has been replicated in various settings in hundreds of different studies. The conclusion is clear:

“Waiting for the other shoe to drop” increases attention, improves memory, and raises active participation.

You might be wondering what I’m getting at. After all, direct response copywriters aren’t in the business of boosting recall, not two days later, not a week later.

 

 

 

How to become an opportunity specialist

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Back in 2019, while I was writing my first-ever real estate investing promo, I faced a bit of a conflict.

My copywriting coach at the time told me to talk about the mechanism. Basically, HOW you’re going to get rich in real estate.

But he told me something else also. “Go on YouTube,” he said, “and check out old infomercials in the REI space. See what they do.”

So I did. And each 80s and 90s infomercial basically looked like this:

1. You’re gonna get so rich.

2. You don’t need no cash, credit, experience, skills, charm, nothin’!

3. Look at all these people who done it. $10k for this guy. $20k for that guy. $30k for that third guy, and he was totally broke before!

And that’s all the infomercials were. Over and over and over, for 28 minutes. No mention of “how” anywhere.

“Yeah, but that was then,” my copywriting coach told me. “The market has matured. You need a mechanism today to stand out.”

I took his advice and worked the mechanism into the promo. ​​But I’m not sure any more that he was right. ​(The VSL never got produced, so we can’t say either way.)

But I’ve got my doubts, because I’ve been going through a Dan Kennedy course called Opportunity Concepts.

One of the things Dan says is that “Get rich in real estate” has been selling, using the same appeals, since the Civil War.

Have things changed in last 20 years?

Maybe… but probably not.

Instead, Dan says that as marketers, we underestimate how perennially conflicted, confused, self-doubting, inert, and entitled our prospects really are. In all markets. Even in markets that consist of successful, proactive people.

That’s why Dan’s advice is to sell whatever you’re selling as an opportunity. Or as close to it as you can get.

Opportunity? What does that mean?

Well, I tracked down a successful opportunity ad from 100 years ago so you can see. Variants of it ran for years in Popular Mechanics and other magazines in the late 1920s.

Frankly, it could have worked in the 1980s or today just as well. Nothing has changed.

If you sell real estate investing advice, this ad is worth a look. If you don’t sell real estate investing advice, this ad is worth a look. So take a look:

https://bejakovic.com/opportunity-ad

My Airbnb pre-suasion ticket

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I moved into a new Airbnb a few days ago. The host met me there to let me in. Fine. But then he wouldn’t leave.

He pointed out where the bedroom is. He showed me where he keeps the ironing board. He mimed how to press the button that turns on the hot water heater.

And then he walked to the front door and said apologetically, “Well… I guess there’s nothing else…”

But there was. Three more times he started to leave… and three more times he went off on another tour of the apartment.

He highlighted the lacquered kitchen counter.

He explained the quirks of the TV to me, even though I told him I don’t watch TV.

And when he was finally leaving for real, he said:

“People tell me there’s something about this apartment. A good vibe. I don’t really get it. But a few people who stayed here made me an offer to buy it outright. They say it just makes them feel good to be here.”

I told him I’d keep my antenna out for the special vibe.

And the craziest thing happened.

I think the guy was right.

I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s the quirky mix of decor. Maybe it’s the shady maple trees in front that reach right up to the windows. Maybe it’s because I’m sleeping like a bear in the cool and dark bedroom.

Anyways, I probably would have let all this slip into oblivion. Except I’ve been reading Robert Cialdini’s Pre-suasion over the past few days.

And that book got me thinking. Because the first few chapters are all about the power of attention.

Draw somebody’s attention to a fact, says Cialdini, and that fact gains in importance. (“Good vibe, huh? Well, we’ll see.”)

Not only does a highlighted fact gain in importance, but other facts lose in importance. (It took me days to notice the apartment is very dark. Must be the maple trees.)

And there’s more:

Attention can create causality. Even where there is none. (“The kitchen counter really is nice. Could that be why I like this place?”)

Well… I guess there’s nothing else I want to tell you today.

​​(1… 2… 3…)

​​Except let me just add one last thing:

You probably already knew how important it is to manage the attention of people you want to persuade.

You probably even knew that you want to draw attention to things that help your case… and to keep attention away from things that hurt your case.

Whatever. I thought it was still worth pointing all this out to you.

Because now that the power of attention has been pointed out, maybe you will start to see its importance in a way you hadn’t seen before.

​​Maybe you will see how it’s being used on you to guide your own decision making.

​​​​And when that happens, maybe you will become more effective at persuading others… with a creative light show, which highlights just what you want, at just the right moment.

I guess there’s really nothing else. Except just one more thing:

I write an email newsletter. I’ve had a few people who subscribe to it say it’s surprisingly fun and valuable. I don’t really get it. But if you want to try it out, here’s where to sign up.

I wanted your advice

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Today I was planning on writing about an undercover method to persuade people, or to actually let them persuade themselves.

This method is sweet because it does double duty. It gives people good reasons to believe what you want them to believe… while at the same time sweeping under the rug any reasons they might have to object.

But then something unexpected jumped out at me in real life, like a tiger out of the dark. And so I won’t have the chance to give this topic its proper treatment today.

Instead, I sent out a very special email to my newsletter subscribers, asking for help and advice. Unfortunately, since you’re not on my newsletter, you didn’t get that email.

If you’d like to join my newsletter, you can sign up here. An extra reason to do so is that tomorrow, I’ll write and send out an email with that promised marketing lesson, which I didn’t get to today.

Prophet positioning

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“Let me explain something to you right now,” the goofy looking guy said to the camera. “Here’s a $10 bill.”

And he started to tear the bill up into small pieces in front of the interviewer’s face.

“This is garbage. This is going to zero. Euros are going to zero. The yen’s going to zero. All going to zero… against bitcoin!”

The Bitcoin prophet got louder and his voice started to crack.

“If you don’t understand this, you’re going to be impoverished! You’re going to be out on the street! You’re gonna be begging! You’re gonna be out of business!”

That’s from a little clip I saw today. It went viral so even somebody like me, who doesn’t follow crypto news, got to see it.

The question is why.

It might be because the Bitcoin prophet looked like a kook. He was dressed like Elton John. Even the interviewer was giggling at him. Maybe people who shared the video just wanted to make fun.

But I’ve got my own theory.

Which is that making strong predictions, saying X is dead, Y is the future, is a great way to grab attention and carve out a position for yourself in the mass mind.

Now the clip I saw had a tongue-in-cheek element to it. It seemed even the Bitcoin prophet was about to crack a smile as his performance built up.

But if you don’t hedge your bets like that…

If instead you have the conviction (or connivance) to paint the future black and white… and you do it in a way where people can believe you really mean it…

Then that’s the road to being seen as an authority. A leader. A prophet.

And that’s something all of us crave.

Because few things are scarier and more motivating than the uncertainty and lack of control that come from looking at the frosted glass window that is the future.

Which is why it doesn’t matter if your predictions are right or wrong. People will follow you, or at least some will. Even if you’re wrong. And even if the rest of the world thinks you look like a goof or a kook.

But perhaps pretending to be a prophet doesn’t suit you. Maye you think that’s garbage.

What’s not garbage is your need for positioning in the market. If you don’t understand this, you’re gonna be out of business, begging, out on the streets.

I write about positioning on occasion. I have many ideas about it. If you want to read about them as I write about them, sign up to my email newsletter.

GROHMO trumps FOMO?

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Painful personal confession:

I went to high school right up the street from the offices of various Agora companies.

Unfortunately, this was long ago, at a time when I had never heard of copywriting. So when school would get out, I’d spend my afternoons identifying local trees and kicking cans around the abandoned cement factory.

Had I been smarter, I would have gotten a job cleaning ashtrays at Agora HQ. And bit by bit, I probably would have learned enough about copywriting to be a multimillionaire today.

I bring this up because I recently applied for a copywriting job. Not a freelance project. A proper job.

I tell myself there are lots of good reasons why I applied.

My reasons are all the stuff you can put in a cover letter:

​​I could learn a lot. It could be a step forward in my career. I like the people I might be working with.

In other words, it’s a great opportunity. And I don’t wanna miss out. Except…

Would any of this really count had I not missed out already, in a much bigger way, back in high school?

I recently heard Dan Kennedy talk about writing for the opportunity market. You know, business opportunities and get rich quick stuff. Like copywriting.

And Dan said something that matches my experience above:

Lots of times, the real motivator is not the opportunity in front of us now, which we don’t want to miss.

Rather, it’s the opportunities dead and gone, which we have missed already.

The guilt and regret over having missed out yesterday (GROHMO) is really the underlying cause that makes us susceptible to FOMO today.

And if you’re a smart marketer or copywriter, you can exploit this. You can put up a bunch of pictures of smiling and satisfied men and women and say,

“Look at them. That could’ve been you. These men and women acted when you didn’t. And look at them now. Look at how happy they are. And as for you… well… don’t feel too bad. Because I have some good news. A new opportunity just opened up…”

And it’s true:

I’ve been promoting my email newsletter for a long while. Over time, I’ve had many people sign up. They have been amused and sometimes moved along the way.

More importantly, they’ve learned a lot and they’ve been exposed to copywriting and marketing ideas, like the one above.

These ideas I share have helped my subscribers make more money, enjoy their businesses more, all while working much less.

In other words, my email newsletter is quite the opportunity. Not to be missed out on. Especially since it’s not clear how long it will go for, in case I get a proper job.

In case you want to join before the opportunity disappears, here’s where to go.

Mating and marketing pandemonium

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In case you ever wondered how African elephants mate:

A female elephant runs around the savanna while a bunch of horny male elephants chase her.

As she’s getting chased, the female emits a noise known as an estrous roar. This roar is meant to get the attention and interest of even more males, who join in the chase.

Eventually, one of the males, if he can get out of the way of his own enormous erection which is hindering his jogging, manages to catch up to the female and slows her down by putting his trunk on her back.

If all goes well, the female stops.

The male elephant then mounts the female and after an immensely satisfying three to four seconds, the act is over. And that’s when all the elephants, male and female, who were alerted by the roaring and the chasing and the sexing, enter a state known as:

Mating pandemonium.

This is the elephant equivalent of all your friends and family bursting into your bedroom immediately after climax and shouting, “Oh my god, I can’t believe you just had sex! That’s great!”

Except elephants do it by making loud pandemonium roars and pandemonium trumpets, flapping their ears rapidly, and maybe urinating or defecating in excitement.

If you’re wondering how I know so much about elephant mating behavior, the answer is I’ve spent the morning on the Elephant Ethogram site.

This is an online video collection of 404 individual elephant behaviors (rapid ear flapping, estrous roar), 109 constellations of behaviors (mating pandemonium) and 23 contexts in which those behaviors are triggered (attraction and mating).

It seems to me that studying elephants in the wild is fun work and needs no further justification. But the elephant scientists who created this site make the following justification anyways:

“African savanna elephants are among the most socially complex non-human species on our planet.”

And that’s my point for you today.

Elephants exhibit hundreds of behaviors, triggered by dozens of complex social contexts. Humans are the same. Probably more so.

As people who want to influence those behaviors, we often try to reduce it all to a single universal principle, such as “acts in self interest” or “makes decisions based on emotions.”

The fact is, there is no central principle, at least as far as I can see.

Instead our lives are a mishmash of different behaviors, which get triggered in different contexts.

Sometimes we’re trying to impress others. Sometimes we’re trying to run away from pain. Sometimes we’re just moving along with the herd, so we don’t have to spend any energy thinking or deciding. Sometimes we’re measured and logical. Sometimes overwhelming greed kicks in.

On and on and on. Hundreds of individual demons all living in each of our heads.

And if you want to eventually produce the simple behavior of a button click followed by a credit card whip-out…

Then you have to catalogue all of those demons… create checklists of the contexts in which they appear… and then practice and test how to summon them, because sometimes the demons are sleeping, and other times they interfere with each other.

One thing is for sure:

If you don’t do this, you’re gonna miss out on a lot of sales.

​​But if you do it, and you’re successful, then marketing pandemonium erupts. Roaring, trumpeting, cash register ringing. Possibly followed by urinating or defecating in excitement.

And then when the noise settles:

If you want more advice on making the cash register ring, you might like the Human Ethogram available inside my daily email newsletter. Available here, for free.

Green Valley must fire its warehouse manager

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Last week, supplement company Green Valley, which was founded by A-list copywriter Lee Euler, sent out a panicked email that started with:

Dear John,

We discovered somewhat of a sticky situation last week…

So I’m hoping maybe we can help each other out…

You see, late last week our warehouse manager called to let me know that we have NO room for a large shipment that’s already on its way to our fulfillment facility here in Virginia…

That means I now have to get rid of a few pallets worth of one of our top sellers…

So, I’m knocking 70% off Gluco-Secure—a natural breakthrough shown to…

I don’t know who’s at fault here. But I find the warehouse manager’s “not my circus, not my monkeys” attitude contemptible. ​​Particularly since he allowed a similar situation to happen last September. That’s when Green Valley sent out an email that started:

Dear John,

I never do this.

But I have a small problem and I think maybe we can help each other out.

Yesterday afternoon the Green Valley warehouse manager let me know that they have NO room in the warehouse for a truckload shipment of product that’s scheduled for delivery next week.

Somehow wires got crossed but it turns out we have 4 pallets of our top-selling joint pain formula that we need to clear out FAST to make room quickly for new inventory.

So, I’m doing something I never do…

I’m knocking 70% off a powerful joint-healing discovery…

Somehow wires got crossed?

Twice in under one year?

I don’t know what this warehouse manager is doing all day long. He’s clearly not doing his job. That’s why I say Green Valley must fire him, and must do it now.

But one person they shouldn’t fire is their email copywriter. Because that guy obviously knows about the power of reason why marketing.

Reason why is the most widespread and effective click, whirr mechanism in advertising.

​​Click, whirr, by the way, is the useful but somewhat-dated analogy Robert Cialdini used in his book Influence. You press the tape player button click, and whirr goes the automated behavior tape.

The incredible thing is that, just as with canned laughter and obvious flattery, reason why is effective even when it’s blatantly untrue.

I’m not saying you should lie… but you might choose to stretch the truth, until it turns into a reason why.

Because reason why works on you too. So if you ever need to justify why stretching the truth is ok, you can always say, for your own peace of mind and your customer’s,

“I never do this. But I have a small problem and I think maybe we can help each other out…”

Speaking of sticky situations:

I recently had an influx of new subscribers to my email newsletter. And I’m getting really close to a big round number of subscribers that I’ve always coveted.

So I’m going to do something I never do, in the hopes of quickly filling up those extra few newsletter subscriber spots.

For today only, I’m opening up my email newsletter to anybody to subscribe, for free, right here on this page. This opportunity might not come again for a long time. If you’re the type to grab a great opportunity when you see it, click here to subscribe now.