Persuasion

The quick and easy marketing lesson hiding under Harry Potter’s robes

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A few days ago, I watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for the first time.

Odds are, you know all about Harry Potter.

But just in case, let me summarize the first 20 minutes of the movie for you:

Harry is an unloved and unlovable dork. He’s 12 years old and the most distinctive features about him are his John Lennon glasses and his Ringo Starr haircut. In other words, this kid ain’t going nowhere.

And then he gets a letter in the mail.

“You are a wizard, Harry Potter”

Within a whirlwind few days, Harry suddenly comes into talent, money, connections, plus he’s famous and good at sports. Oh — and he gets to wear some snazzy black robes.

So what’s the lesson hiding under all this?

Well, this Harry Potter fantasy is the human condition.

We are all unloved and unlovable in different ways.

We trudge on through life, smiling and putting on a brave face. But deep down, we all keep a bit of hope that we too will get a letter in the mail saying:

“All your problems have been solved, starting NOW! By a magical accident, you are now beautiful and talented and admired and by the way all your money problems have been solved from here to eternity!”

Admit it.

That would be a sweet letter to get, if you could at all believe that it’s true.

Trouble is, Hogwarts is full up for the year.

And probably next year too.

And that’s where direct marketers come in.

Because the best direct marketers will send you just such a letter, promising to take away your biggest problems, starting now — and in a perfectly quick and easy way.

So if you’re trying to sell something, think of poor bespectacled Harry Potter living under the dusty stairs in his aunt’s house, and imagine him receiving your sales pitch.

Will it transform the little dweeb into a magical wizard overnight?

Will it get him excited enough to scrape together his meager allowance so he can send for your “From Weirdo to Wizard” course?

Because if not, you’ve got some work to do, fashioning a better offer or some better marketing.

I can’t help with the offer. But if you want help with the marketing, then I’ve got a quick and easy solution for you:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Don’t try to be as smart as I am

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I’m not all that smart, and the little smartness I have tends to get me in trouble. Case in point:

Some time last year, I went out with a bunch of successful doctor bros.

One of them had a fancy new coat that looked like it was made out of albino lamb skin. Another doctor bro complimented the coat and asked where it came from.

“I got it in Milan. I went there for a trip last month.”

“Oh yeah, how was it?” somebody asked.

“Really interesting,” the lambskin coat owner said. “Lots of cool architecture. Lots of famous art.”

“Did you go to see The Last Supper?” I chimed in.

Silence.

“No,” the coat eventually said. “Is that in Milan?”

I tried to waffle and hedge a bit. But it was too late. I could see the hatred of a hundred dead lambs staring at me.

And that’s exactly what I mean. You try to seem smart — “Oh yeah, I know something about Milan!” — and you end up kicking yourself in the shin.

Maybe you think I’m reading too much into this little interaction.

Maybe so​.

But there seems to be a lot of agreement among many experts of persuasion that the most fundamental, most central, most core human motivation…

Is the need to be OKAY. To seem smart. To feel important. Call it what you will.

The thing is, this need is relative.

In other words, I can only feel as OKAY and as smart and as important as you are NOT.

And so, if you try to be smart, like I tend to do — stupid, stupid! — you end up alienating people and making it harder to achieve your goals.

At least that’s what I’m discovering.

And that’s why I’m struggling and striving to beat smartness and the need for OKAYness out of all of my communication.

If you want to see some examples of how that works, check out the link below. I promise it will be the least intellectually impressive thing you will read all day:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

The 4 pillars of a pee-worthy relationship

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Tony was happy to see me back.

I had just returned to Baltimore to stay at my friend’s house for a few days.

My friend’s large German shepherd, Tony, was so excited to see me back that he ran to my room, jumped in my lap, jumped out of my lap, and then peed on the hardwood floor.

That’s excitement.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you too could create a similar reaction in your customers or clients?

Well, it might be possible.

To show you how, let me refer to an interview that I listened to recently. It was with multi-millionaire Internet marketer Travis Sago.

Travis has been in the marketing and copywriting business for close to 20 years. He has sold everything from Little Giant Ladders to business coaching.

But his first really big success came from selling relationship advice — specifically, “how to get your ex back” guides for suddenly single women.

So when a guy like Travis talks about creating a bond that lasts, it makes sense to listen.

​​According to Travis, it ain’t hard to do. A strong bond requires just 4 ingredients:

#1. Frequency of interaction. Think of your closest friends, most of whom you’ve probably known since high school or college.

#2. Depth of shared emotional experience. Think of the attachment that kidnappees form for their kidnappers.

#3. Vulnerability. Think of Tony and me. He almost tore my head off the first time I met him.

#4. Proximity. Think of Jim and Pam in The Office.

Maybe it’s not immediately obvious, but all of these real-life relationship pillars can be imitated in the cold world of  digital marketing.

And if you want to see just how to use principles #2 and #3 above to make your front-end marketing pee-worthy, then check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Getting slapped under the table by consistency and commitment

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A few days ago, email marketer Josh Earl went on a rant against “consistency and commitment.”

As you might know, this is one of the principles from Robert Cialdini’s book Influence. According to Cialdini, people will act in ways that are consistent with their previous actions and beliefs.

Many marketers get an involuntary hardon as soon as Cialdini’s name is mentioned.

So it’s no surprise that “consistency and commitment” have been used to sell lots of marketing gimmicks. And that’s what Josh is complaining about:

“Marketers have glommed onto this idea big time. So you’ll hear them geeking out about how you can double your optin rate by hiding your signup form behind a faux survey question, or improve your sales by getting people to reply to an email, because ‘consistency and commitment, man!'”

Josh goes on to say that consistency and commitment mostly don’t work. What’s worse, they can even lead you astray. “Time to kick ‘consistency and commitment’ to the curb,” he concludes.

This argument made me think of a video I’d seen a few weeks back.

A young, skinny guy challenges the Russian slap champion.

(You haven’t seen this sport? Basically, two guys take turns slapping each other until one of them breaks down and goes crying to his mom.)

The young challenger is super confident and cocky, because he’s injected synthol into his biceps to make them look huge.

He thinks his Popeye arms will somehow let him slap harder. So he takes a swing and slaps the champion right on the ear. The champion just shakes it off.

And then it’s the slap champion’s turn.

He carefully measures his swing… pulls his giant arm back… and slaps the synthol challeger clean under the table, so three guys have to help him up.

To my mind, synthol guy is the two-step optin form that Josh is complaining about.

Consistency and commitment are more like the slap champion.

They really are powerful, just like Cialdini says. And they have made many direct marketers rich.

In other words, I don’t agree with Josh. But if you want to read his entire post, so you can make up your own mind, here’s where you can find it:

https://joshuaearl.com/bacon-petition

The power of negative thinking

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“Just go talk to her!”

I was walking on the street a few days ago. The sun was shining, there was a cool breeze, and lots of good-looking women were out and about.

Each time one of these monsters passed by, wrapped up in her headphones, masked with her sunglasses, I would tell myself to go talk to her.

Of course, all that happened is that I tensed up.

These women on parade were too intimidating.

​​Or too busy.

​​Or too something.

In the past, I’d tried hyping myself up.

“What’s the big deal?” I would say. “She’d probably be super happy to get a compliment. And maybe you will hit it off. It could be a win-win!”

That would always get me excited. And that was all.

Because more good-looking women would pass by…

And I still wouldn’t go talk to any of them.

So a few days ago, I did the opposite. I told myself the ugly truth:

“Why not just go home? You probably won’t talk to any of these women. It’s too hard. Or maybe you’re just too weak. Or not good enough at problem solving. Whatever the reason, odds are you’re wasting your time. You should probably just head home.”

If you’ve ever read Jim Camp’s Start With No, you might recognize this as a “negative stripline.”

That’s when you’re in a negotiation, and your adversary is having doubts, concerns, or vague bad feelings.

At this point, according to Camp, the worst thing you can do is to paint a sunny and bright picture.

Instead, you want to be honest. Brutally honest.

“You’re probably right,” Camp would say to such an adversary. “This probably won’t work out. It’s probably best if we just cut off this negotiation right now and stop wasting your time.”

What happens when you do this?

Well, all I can say is what happened to me. I finally got to talking to some beautiful, intimidating women. Because the negative stripline works even when your negotiating adversary is yourself.

So if you’re not seeing real results from the power of positive thinking, whether in social situations, or in business…

Then try negative thinking.

And whatever you do, don’t let me know how it works out for you.

Perry Marshall’s “symptom numero uno of everything we don’t like in our life”

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One time, when I was around 24 or 25, I was standing in a checkout lane at a Safeyway.

This was in Baltimore, where I had gone to high school, and where I had just moved back after going to college out of state.

Anyways, I was in line. The cashier rang me up. The guy bagging the stuff bagged it all up, looked at me and said,

“Excuse me, is your name John?”

I stared at him for a second.

“I’m Chris,” he tried to explain. “I think we went to high school together.”

Sure enough, we did, for one semester in 9th grade. And we were good friends for that one semester.

I didn’t recognize him. He had grown about 5 inches, put on about 50lbs, and lost about all of his hair.

“Oh hi,” I finally said. And I smiled an eyeless smile, nodded, and walked out with my groceries.

Silence.

It’s been about 15 years since this happened. And I still wince each time I remember this interaction. Literally. I winced just now.

Why was I so awkward?

Why didn’t I stay and talk to the guy?

Why did I freeze up instead of clapping him on the shoulder and saying, “Jesus, you’ve grown man. I didn’t recognize you. And where did the hair go?”

I just winced again. But here’s the point.

Marketing genius Perry Marshall once gave a talk. And about an hour into this talk, he brought up his “symptom numero uno of the human condition and everything we don’t like in our life.” Says Perry, this something is the bottom layer of everything that plagues us. And it’s all pervasive — it’s the water that we swim in.

So what is this nasty, all-present, suffocating thing that Perry is talking about?

It’s shame. Shame about things we’ve done. About things we haven’t done. About how we look. About our place in life. About our mistakes, omissions, shortcomings, defects, desires, needs, vulnerabilities, deep and dark secrets, failures. Shame.

If you believe Perry, then shame is something you have to be aware of whenever you’re communicating with anybody about anything.

And of course, when you’re trying to persuade. Such as in your copy and in your marketing efforts.

But shame is kind of like live dynamite. You need to use it wisely.

And responsibly.

If you want to see some examples of using shame, in what I think were wise and responsible ways, take a look at the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Cialdini and the art of laptop maintenance

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I crossed a Rubicon of sorts yesterday.

I was helping my mom set up her new laptop. She just got the same Macbook as I have.

“My God,” I thought to myself, “it’s so clean.”

I’ve had my laptop for years and I’ve never once bothered cleaning the keyboard or screen. It was gross. So last night, when I got home, I took some wet wipes and spent 15 mins wiping down the screen, polishing the trackpad, getting in between the keys to get the accumulated grime and dust.

That was in the evening, in the dark.

This morning, I got up and saw the laptop in the light of day.

And no, all the scrubbing hadn’t ruined it or scratched it or corroded it.

But I did see it wasn’t perfectly clean still. So I got more wipes, and revisited all the same goddamn keys and the little strip above the keyboard and why won’t this foggy area on right side get polished?

Mind you, I had lived with a filthy laptop for years.

So why get obsessive now?

And why not be happy that my laptop is simply good enough, much cleaner, although not perfect?

I believe there’s a fundamental law of human nature at work here. It underlies my obsessive laptop cleaning… the massive success of companies like the Franklin Mint… and even the behavior of defecting American GI’s in Korean POW camps.

You’ve probably heard of this fundamental rule. It’s one of Robert Cialdini’s 6 pillars of INFLUENCE.

I’m talking about psychological consistency and the need for completeness.

It’s one of the reasons why people who have bought your product are the absolute best prospects for buying even more of your product.

Or buying a very similar, highly substitutable product.

Odds are, even if they don’t absolutely need it… they will want it, in order to be psychologically consistent with themselves.

That’s why, if you’re only selling one product to your customers one time, you’re missing out on a big opportunity.

But here’s some potentially good news.

If you want to find out about a risk-free, guaranteed way to make more sales to such customers at zero cost, you’ll want to read the third and final part of my upcoming book. More info here:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

The other way to persuade

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Let me ask you a personal question or three:

Are you very politically conservative?

Do you care passionately about the fate of the planet and about climate change?

Were you out in the streets last night, partying after the Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship?

If you said “yes” to any of the above questions, then I believe you’ve got a leg up in the copywriting, marketing, and persuasion game.

Here’s why.

Dan Kennedy, possibly the most influential educator when it comes to direct marketing, once shared his four guiding principles for writing direct response copy. The one that’s relevant for us right now is:

“Great direct response copy makes people identify themselves as one or the other.”

In this way of looking at the world, there are two ways to persuade. One is based on self-interest — that’s 95% of “How to write copy” guides will tell you. But there’s another way. And it’s to appeal to somebody’s identity.

As Dan puts it, “they tell you the identification, and you tell them the behavior.”

This can be overt, such as, “If you’re politically conservative, then you should be outraged at the state of illegal immigration in this country.”

It can also be more subtle. Such as, “Choosy moms choose JIF.”

Now, I hope if you dig around in your brain right now, you will find at least one or two strong “self-identifications.”

Maybe that’s an alignment with an outside group, like a party or a cause or a team.

But it might also be the kind of person you strongly feel that you are (for example, a good mom).

Once you find this self-identification in yourself, start observing your own feelings, your own behaviors and attitudes when it comes to protecting and cherishing that identity.

Bottle all that up.

And use that insight and experience to become a superhuman marketer, persuader, or copywriter, by talking to other people’s self-identifications.

You will have a new and powerful arrow in your quiver — which the majority of your competition won’t even know about.

And you don’t even have to do much to attain it besides what you already love to do.

As for me, I’ve been working lately with some choosy owners of online businesses. They’re trying to build up a stockpile of copy assets that get their prospects to buy, and their customers to buy more.

I’ve also heard from other business owners who are in the same position, but who aren’t working with me yet. And you know what they did? They wrote me an email to talk to me and see if I could also help them grow their business.

One half of “mad genius”

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On the morning of February 4, 1912, a mustachioed Austrian by the name of Franz Reichelt climbed up to the first stage of the Eiffel Tower.

Reichelt was a tailor by trade, but he was up there on the viewing platform as a groundbreaking inventor.

In fact, he wore his invention — a large padded suit, which contained a parachute.

Reichelt’s initial tests with dummies had been successful. However, he was unable to reproduce those early successes.

As a result, he became convinced that he needed a greater height for his parachute to open.

So he got permission from the Paris authorities for a test from the Eiffel Tower, claiming that he would only drop a dummy or two.

Reichelt’s real plan, however, was to toss himself off the tower to dramatically prove his invention was sound.

The morning was of February 4 was cold, with temperatures around freezing. A short film taken of the event showed Reichelt’s breath in a fog as he climbed up on a table and a stool, and put his foot on the railing of the viewing deck.

He stood there rigidly, leaning forward bit by bit, apparently willing himself to take the decisive leap. This hesitation went on for about 40 seconds.

And then he did it.

He pushed off from the railing, stepped into empty space, and jumped down from the tower.

A second film, shot from ground level, showed the parachute wrapping around Reichelt as he fell for a few seconds, before hitting the ground in what appeared to be a cloud of dust.

Reichelt’s parachute design did not prove successful.

He did not survive the drop from the Eiffel Tower.

In fact, he made a 6-inch dent in the turf below as he slammed to his death. He was gathered up, taken to the hospital, and pronounced a fatality, an inventor killed by his own invention.

It’s a morbid story.

But I don’t bring it up to illustrate the folly of chasing your dreams at any price (though I think that’s a good lesson in today’s go-go society).

Instead, I want to point out why somebody would basically wrap himself in a bunch of bed sheets and jump to his death, even though small, safe tests with dummies didn’t give him much reason to believe he would survive.

The Paris newspaper Le Gaulois claimed that it was because only half the term “mad genius” applied to Reichelt.

But maybe it wasn’t even one half.

Because according to his friends, Reichelt felt pressured to make a dramatic demonstration.

This, he believed, would be the only way to attract sponsors and make a profit before his patent expired.

So he convinced himself his invention was sound, he decided it was now or never, and he took the decisive step.

So much for the story of the unlucky Franz Reichelt.

At least people know his name 100 years after his death.

But if that’s not the kind of success you aspire to, then perhaps you can take Reichelt’s story as the illustration of the power of urgency. Which, incidentally, might just be the most powerful appeal in any kind of persuasion.

I don’t have any urgency in the form of a deadline for you today, but I will have one soon. In the meantime, if you want to talk about having me write sales copy for you, just send me an email and we can talk about more mundane, but cheerier things, such as growing your business.

You’re okay, I’m about to stew in Old Bay

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I got myself in a bit of a pickle today.

That’s because yesterday, I wrote about smart and effective ways that marketers can use reciprocity to get their prospects’ trust.

I didn’t spell out what those ways were, so I invited people to write in if they wanted to know what I had in mind.

And a few people did exactly that.

Only one problem.

While I had vague ideas of effective reciprocity that I’ve seen in marketing, I hadn’t really thought deeply about this issue.

And I certainly didn’t have a list of such strategies prepared and ready to share.

This was weighing on me earlier today.

I was starting to get more nervous than a crab next to a pot of boiling water and a can of Old Bay Seasoning.

So to take my mind off this troubling situation, I put on a lesson from a course by negotiation expert Jim Camp.

This lesson talked about one of the pillars of Jim Camp’s negotiation philosophy:

The idea that everybody wants to “be okay.”

This means feeling comfortable.

And the main way we humans do this is by being a little more okay than the other person.

So if you want to make people feel okay, you can do so by being “unokay” — by revealing your mistakes, uncertainties, or foibles.

Once you trust your adversaries — or prospects — in this way, they will begin to let their guard down…

Start to trust you a little more in turn…

And look for ways to help you out.

This is powerful stuff. And in my experience, it works very well.

Unfortunately, it’s also something I have to constantly remind myself of.

Because my first instinct is to try to impress everyone with my smarts, my preparedness, or my skills.

Anyways, perhaps you can see where I’m going with this. And maybe you will get some use out of it.

For now, if you want to get some copy written, and you’re not too bothered by my occasional unpreparedness, then write me an email and we can talk.