Persuasion

Mother Theresa’s emotional manipulation advice

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“If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”
— Mother Theresa

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in the early years of my copywriting education came from Andre Chaperon’s Autoresponder Madness.

It didn’t have to do with autoresponders. It didn’t have to do with email. In fact, it was (and is) completely applicable to any kind of sales copywriting, and more broadly, to any kind of mass persuasion.

So what was the lesson?

It was how to understand your prospects on a deep level, and how develop empathy for the people you’re writing to.

I won’t give away Andre’s exact tactics for doing this, but his general approach is simply a ton of research. All of which culminates in a customer avatar.

This is not a demographic description. Instead, it’s a detailed story about a specific person who is facing the problems that you’re looking to solve.

I’ve found that creating such an avatar isn’t just a matter of getting better insight into the audience. There seems to be some kind of chemical switch in the brain that gets flipped when I’m writing to a specific person with a name and a face — versus to a vague, shapeless, and nameless mass.

It’s something I’ve also heard A-list copywriter David Deutsch describe as the “Hey Mitch” method. In other words, when David is writing copy, he (either literally or in his mind) says “Hey Mitch, here’s how to…” and then he goes into his sales pitch.

This process of calling out a specific name has the effect of exposing fine sounding but unconvincing phrases, which seemed fine just a minute ago. And it replaces them with natural words and ideas which are relevant to your audience.

Anyways, this name/face/avatar concreteness isn’t just for hypnotizing yourself into writing better copy.

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath tell a story of hospital staff who were subtly manipulated into caring about improving workflow. This is normally not a topic that staff would be enthusiastic about, but in this case they were shown a video from the perspective of a patient — coming into the hospital, being laid down on a gurney, waiting around, etc.

This concrete illustration got the hospital staff much more responsive and committed to helping improve the situation than if they had been barraged by statistics or facts about nameless patients.

This idea is summed up nicely in the quote by Mother Theresa up top (which I also first read in Made to Stick).

To wrap up: Concreteness, and looking at the individual, is powerful persuasion stuff on multiple levels. It helps you empathize with your audience, and therefore makes you more persuasive. At the same time, the same principle of being specific and concrete makes your audience more receptive to your ideas — again making you more persuasive.

The right way to respond when you hear “no”

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“The easy part of playing negotiation is knowing when not to flinch”

Once upon a time, I threw a party and met a girl who came with some of my friends.

Throughout the evening, I circled around, talking to my various guests.

And each time I came across the girl, I could sense a growing interest from her side.  Which was great, because I was interested in her as well.

At some point, the party moved to a nearby club, where I found myself dancing with the girl. We started kissing, and eventually, I said, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Ok.”

So we got our coats and were about to walk out of the club. Just as we were at the door, she took a step back, furrowed up her eyebrows, and said: “Don’t think for a minute you’re taking me back to your place tonight.”

Thanks to being tired and a bit buzzed, I didn’t flinch at this. Instead, I looked her in the eye and said, “No problem. We’ll go to your place instead.”

She thought about this for a moment, and concluded that it was perfectly satisfactory. So we went to her place, and spent the first of many nights together.

I’ve just started re-reading Jim Camp’s “No: The Only Negotiating System You Need for Work and Home.” And here’s a relevant passage I just came across:

“If you’re a parent, you know that every child hears ‘no’ as the start of a negotiation, not the end of it. As adults, however, we’ve been conditioned and trained to fear the word.” 

I think that learning not to over-react to hearing “no” is not just good negotiation, but also one of the fundamentals of persuasion.

And just so we’re clear: I’m not talking about being pushy, insensitive, or “not taking ‘no’ for an answer”.

Instead, I’m talking about managing your own internal, emotional state, and keeping your sights on your goal in spite of the decoys being launched in front of you.

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!”

The 7th pillar of influence

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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:

A hairy English man named Yad once shared the story of an out-of-body experience. It wasn’t his experience, actually. Rather, it was the girl he was with who had this strange thing happen to her.

Now in case you don’t know, Yad is one of the world’s great masters of stopping a girl on the street, in broad daylight, completely sober, to chat for a minute and ask for her phone number.

Well, most of the time, Yad asks for the number. Sometimes, he pushes it, and asks the girl on a mini-date right away.

That’s what happened in this case. Except, the mini-date went well, and turned into a maxi-date. In fact, even though they had just met on the street a few hours earlier, Yad and this girl wound up back home in the evening, and found themselves in bed together. And that’s when the out-of-body experience supposedly happened.

You see, the girl was amazed by Yad’s seemingly irresistable confidence at every step of the way, from approaching her on the street, to asking her out, to moving her from bar to bar, and now getting her naked and in bed.

She was wondering how much further this would go, and whether she was really willing to sleep with a guy she had just met on the street only hours earlier.

In the end, she said something like, “We were having sex, but at the same time I felt like I was just having this out-of-body experience, floating around above the bed, watching all this unfold and asking myself, ‘Who is this guy and how is he so relaxed about this whole thing?'”

Well, I’m not here to plug Yad or his pickup skills today. Instead, I want to talk about the 7th pillar of influence.

You might already know something about the first 6 pillars. They were identified and written up by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence. These are the 6 golden rules that  persuaders of all stripes supposedly use — stuff like reciprocity, liking, social proof, etc.

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.

Have you got it yet? Here’s a hint. It’s the common thread in all of the following headlines:

“Grains puffed to 8 times normal size”

“Its reputation and its odor precede it”

“The amazing money-making secret of a desperate nerd from Ohio”

“Why whales got so big”

I’m sure by now you have it so I’ll stop teasing. That 7th (and possibly most important) pillar is plain old, tried and true…

Curiosity.

Yep, curiosity. Curiosity can drive clicks. It can sell products. And as you can read in the story above, it can even get a girl to sleep with a hairy English man only hours after he’s met her.

Yad on a good day

Which is all good, but how do you go about creating curiosity? Good question. And it’s something that I plan to answer in detail. But not today. If you want to get my take on it, you might want to sign up to my daily email newsletter.

Prematurely moving out of Maslow’s basement

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Just coz it’s science don’t mean it’s true.

I’m currently reading Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick. This brotherly tome teaches you how to present your ideas in a way that sticks in people’s minds — long after you’ve made your pitch.

Overall, I am digging this book.

But there’s one section that irked me when I read it. Somewhere along chapter 4 or so, the Heaths talk about how to make people really “hear” your message. How to get them emotionally invested. How to get them to care.

Of course, you can appeal to their self-interest, which is what direct response copywriters like myself love to do.

But no, say the Heaths.

That’s short sighted, and there’s science to prove it. So they cite research where people are asked to explain what would motivate them to take a new job:

Option 1: more security because the new position is so important

Option 2: more visibility because the new position is so important

Option 3: the great learning opportunity this important new position would provide

Apparently, most people choose 3 when explaining why they themselves would choose a new job. But when asked what they think other people would be motivated by, they choose options 1 or 2. (Short-sighted buggers, those other people.)

So the Heath brothers draw this conclusion, referring to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

In other words, a lot of us think everyone else is living in Maslow’s basement — we may have a penthouse apartment, but everyone else is living below. The result of spending too much time in Maslow’s basement is that we may overlook lots of opportunities to motivate people.

To which I’d say, “Interesting… But do you prefer going to the movies or to the theater?” It’s a question the grandpapa of modern-day direct marketing, Gary Halbert, asked once:

Once I asked at class at USC how many of them preferred to go to plays more than movies.

Lots of people raised their hands.

“Bull!” I said to them. “You are all fooling yourselves and I’m going to prove it.” I then asked for a show of hands of those people who had seen a play in the last week or so.

No hands.

I then asked to see the hands of people who had seen a movie in the last week or so.

Many hands.

Does this mean you always have to appeal to brute self-interest when trying to convince people? Not necessarily. This ad certainly doesn’t seem to:

MEN WANTED
for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.

This was an ad put out by Sir Ernest Shackleton, a polar explorer, and it supposedly drew an enormous response of men interested in accompanying Shackleton into the penguin-infested waters of Antarctica.

The point of all this?

Maslow’s basement can work.

So can Maslow’s penthouse.

But talk is cheap, and what people say is not necessarily what they will do. Even if they themselves wholeheartedly believe it.

So when choosing which appeal to go with in an advertisement, look at what people actually do, rather than what they say they want.