Psychology Behind Advertising

You’re funny and smart, and I’ll tell you why

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Here’s a personal story I think you will appreciate (I’ll explain why in a second):

Today I walked up the hill to the local tourist attraction. A couple was dragging behind me.

When I got to the entrance, a guard popped out, blocking my way.

“Where are you from?” he asked with a scowl.

I told him — a neighboring country.

“And where are they from?” He nodded towards the couple.

“Russians, I guess.”

“All right,” he said, “hold on a moment.”

The upshot is, the Russians got in first, paying 5 euro each for the privilege. I had to wait a minute while the guard talked to me about the political and economic crisis in his country. And then he let me in for free.

I was chuffed by this experience. I kept replaying it as I climbed up to the fortress at top of the hill… and then all the way back down.

“I got in for free,” I chuckled to myself, “while the Russians had to pay!”

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

It’s not just that I managed to save 5 euro. That part is nice, but the fact is, I can afford 5 euro. Instead, I was pleased because I was somehow chosen, selected, and approved.

Jay Abraham and Tony Robbins do this in their programs.

“You are very special,” they effectively say. “How do I know? Because you bought this course… which tells me you care more about success than most of your peers. Because you listened this far… which shows you’ve got the determination to improve and succeed.”

You can use this same approach in your sales copy as well. And I’m not just talking about the lazy argument you’ll often hear at the end of a VSL. (“You’ve watched this far, so you must want this product… so click the Buy Now button.”)

No, I’m talking about everything you can conclude about your prospect. Bring these things up, and use them to explicitly compliment or flatter. Make your prospect feel special, as though these reasons are what make him or her perfect for your offer.

For example, what do I know about you?

I know you’re not satisfied with surface-level ideas, and you want something deeper. Otherwise you wouldn’t have done the research needed to dig up my blog.

I also know you’re a reader. This gives you a big advantage in today’s world, where most everyone needs information served up in fluffy, less dense formats.

Finally, I imagine you resonate with the stories and examples I use to illustrate these marketing lessons. This tells me you’ve got a great sense of humor and a refined taste.

And for all of these reasons, I think maybe you will like to subscribe to my email newsletter. It’s where I talk about marketing and persuasion, and sometimes even give demonstrations of the techniques I talk about. In case you are interested, here’s where to go.

Bump your order form bump 15% without changing the offer

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Two days ago, I watched an interview with a successful marketer who currently has several million-dollar funnels. He broke down his most recent success and shared some tricks and tips. Here’s one that got me, about an order form bump.

You probably know what an order form bump is. It’s an impulse buy you can tack onto your order form that doesn’t need a lot of explaining. If you haven’t seen one of these before, you can think of it as asking, “Do you want fries with that?” This can often substantially increase your average order value.

So this marketer discovered (by accident) how to increase his order form bump take rate by 15%, even for order form bumps that cost as much as the front-end offer. The breakdown:

1. The customer goes on the order page

2. He sees an initial two-sentence description of the oder form bump, along with a checkbox that says “Yes, add this to my order!”

3. If the customer clicks the checkbox, the 2-sentence description expands into a slightly more detailed description, which also includes the price.

This marketer’s accidental discovery was leaving out the price out of the initial two-sentence description. All his offers used to show the price there… but he forgot to put it in one time. The take on that no-price order form bump was 15% higher. And once he took out the price out of the initial description in other funnels, he saw similar increases.

Just in case you’re wondering about the legality or ethics of this:

The price is perfectly revealed once you click the checkbox. And for anybody who decides he doesn’t want the order form bump, another click on the same checkbox will remove the order form bump from your offer.

In other words, this is just of one of those human quirks. You might attribute it to the endowment effect or consistency or whatever you like. The fact is some portion of those extra 15% of people find it easier to convince themselves they actually want something they don’t really want… than to click on the checkbox a second time.

And that’s my point for you for today.

Because I don’t normally share these kinds of funnel hacks (though this one is worthwhile). Rather, I’m more interested in fundamental human traits and how we can use them for influence and persuasion.

Well, the trait here is how even tiny obstacles, particularly phyiscal obstacles, can have big effects on human behavior. Like in the example above, you can use tiny obstacles to reinforce the behavior you want. And vice versa.

Because right now, there are sure to be tiny obstacles that are hindering the behavior you want from people. It makes sense to hunt down those obstacles and terminate them with extreme prejudice. As Jonah Berger wrote in his book The Catalyst:

“Instead of asking what would encourage change, ask why things haven’t changed already.”

For example, I have an email newsletter. I could probably help get my optins up by offering some small gift for signing up, besides the pleasure of hearing from me each day.

I should work out what would make a good gift… but in the meantime, I can offer you the following, a special report called Copywriters Hero. It’s my collection of the best free and paid resources for discovering the world of copywriting and direct marketing. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/copywriters-hero/

Why piling on the benefits can weaken your bullets

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File this one away under “psychology behind advertising.” Let’s start with an example bullet:

“Why adding improvements to your home can lower its value!”

This is a bullet written by Gary Halbert for a book on selling your home in a buyer’s market. The following is the relevant passage in the actual book:

“If your interior designer has used your home to make a personal artistic statement, that’s great while you’re living there but don’t expect it to translate well when you’re trying to sell. Rather than overdecorating or overrenovating, try to create a neutral canvas onto which a potential buyer can project his tastes.”

So what’s the psychology here? Well, I covered it all in today’s lesson in the bullet. The point is that Gary could have gone lots of different ways twisting the above source material… but he chose the one above.

There’s a fundamental rule of human nature hidden behind that decision. And it’s something you don’t want to ignore if you’re writing sales copy, and you’re judged on results.

Anyways, today’s lesson of the bullet course is out and done. To get future lessons before they also disappear, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

The primacy of feeling

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Imagine you wake up tomorrow, lying in bed.

Your family is around you, looking both relieved and concerned.

“What’s the matter?” you ask.

A doctor steps forward from somewhere.

“You’ve just come out of a coma,” he says, “and I have some bad news. You’ve suffered severe head trauma resulting in total paralysis.”

“No, come on,” you say with a chuckle. “I feel fine.”

You try to sit up to show everyone how fine you are. But nothing happens. Your body doesn’t respond. Still, you don’t feel any sense of panic.

“Ok,” you say, “so I can’t move right now. But I’m not paralyzed. I feel fine.”

Now imagine this goes on week after week. You cannot move. But you don’t get upset over it.

​​And when your family and doctors try to confront you with the fact that you’re paralyzed… you insist there is nothing wrong. Soon you even forget that you tried to move and couldn’t.

This might sound like a bizarre scene to paint. But the fact is, it’s something that does happen in real life.

It’s a condition known as anosognosia. It’s caused by just the right kind of brain damage. And it makes people who suffer from it unaware of their disease or disability — even paralysis or blindness.

I read about anosognosia in a book called Descartes’ Error, by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio.

​​Damasio’s book is all about the role of emotions in normal human functioning.Because anosognosia isn’t just about thinking you’re fine when you’re not.

This condition also comes with a strange emotional bluntness. ​​You don’t get upset about the whole situation.

​​And while you can be forced to accept through logical means that something isn’t right — “just try to sit up — see?” — the realization that something is wrong soon disappears.

​​Because the same neural circuitry that gets damaged in anosognosia is also involved in experiencing normal emotions.

And as Damasio says:

“Somehow, what does not come naturally and automatically through the primacy of feeling cannot be maintained in the mind.”

That’s why a person with anosognosia can be forced to face the fact something is wrong with his body… but that awareness soon disappears.

So what’s my point?

Well, my own mental image of myself is as a very logical, unemotional person.

And when I first heard the advertising mantra that people make decisions based on emotions first, and only then justify them using logic, my own logical mind rebelled.

​”Ok,” I would say, “so I made an impulsive decision once. But I’m not emotional. I make decisions based on logic.”​

Maybe you are the same.

So let me tell you, the truth is out there.

Damasio’s book is full of stories of people who have their emotional processing damaged in some way. Their brain goes haywire in all kinds of weird ways.

It turns out having no emotions can even make it impossible to make any kind of a decision. And what we think of as being logical decisions were mostly made long before… by the emotional parts of our brains.

​​In other words, all those advertising and persuasion gurus are right. Emotions trump logic all the way. And there’s science to prove it. If you’re ever trying to persuade, that tells you where to focus your efforts.

But that doesn’t mean you only have basic emotions like fear and greed to appeal to. Surprise is also a good emotion to stimulate. If you tell people something new, odds are good they will be moved later to do what you ask them to do.

Speaking of which:

I write an email un-newsletter about marketing and persuasion. “Un-newsletter” because most of this knowledge has been around for decades or centuries. Still, it might be news to you. So if you’d like get those emails I send, here’s where to go.

WIIFM and other powerful persuasion frequencies

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Two days ago I was in Barajas, an outskirt of Madrid where the airport lies.

Next to my hotel, on a wall separating the parking lot from a dirt field, was a very fancy mural.

It showed a life-sized football player dribbling a ball… and the logo of the local club, Club Deportivo Barajas.

Here’s what got to me:

CD Barajas is not a major Spanish football club. They are not very good at all, and they would probabaly lose if they had to play with the under-16 squad of a La Liga team.

And yet, some patriotic Barajas resident was willing to put in the time and effort to make this mural on an ugly and dirty wall next to an airport hotel.

This connects to an idea that weaves through much of persuasion… but that few places talk about explicitly.

You’ve probably heard of WIIFM, what’s in it for me. That’s the mental radio station that’s playing whenever your prospects hear your sales pitch.

But WIIFM is part of a broader ownership instinct we all have. Because we all have a special receiver that’s tuned into frequencies that report on things that belong to us.

Victor Schwab wrote that given a fountain pen, 96% of college women wrote their own names. Shown a map of the USA, 447 men out of 500 looked first for the location of their home towns.

Think about the music you listened to as a teenager… towns you lived in in the past… the breed of dog you had as a kid… your own birthday… the year you were born.

If you hear these mentioned somewhere, odds are your ears perk up, and you tune in your mental receiver to hear more.

The same is true for your prospect. So start broadcasting on a frequency where your prospect feels some ownership. He will listen, and pay attention. Which is a huge part of what you need to sell him anything.

By the way, were you born in 1980? Or any time after? In that case, you might like to subscribe to my daily email newsletter.

When authority and urgency fail…

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Yesterday, I wrote about a remarkable piece of persuasion:

Assassination survivor Alexei Navalny cold called one of the secret service officers behind the assassination attempt.

Navalny used some standard persuasion tricks to get the secret service officer to reveal all sorts of behind-the-curtain info during a 50-minute call.

So how about those persuasion tricks?

There were some obvious things. First, there were the trappings of authority.

Navalny called from a spoofed phone number, which made it seem he was inside the secret service headquarters. He claimed to be an aide to a high-ranking security official. And he seemed to have a lot of insider knowledge — such as names of people possibly involved in the assassination attempt.

So that’s one thing.

The second thing was urgency. Navalny, in his assumed alter ego, insisted this needed to be done here and now, because the big boss was waiting.

But that wasn’t enough. The guy on the other end of the line didn’t budge in spite of the authority or the urgency.

If you read the transcript — available online — you can hear the secret service officer dodging Navalny’s questions. “I don’t have this information… why don’t you call this other guy… I am at home with coronavirus.”

So how did Navalny finally get the secret service guy to break down?

Simple. He said the following:

“Let me help you. On a scale from 1 to 10, how do you assess Alexandrov’s work? I understand that he is your colleague, but nevertheless…”

The secret service guy said, “I assess him positively.”

Navalny then asked a few more 1-10 questions.

​​The secret service guy answered.

And then Navalny started asking more probing questions. As I told you, he finished some 50 minutes later, having squeezed the secret service guy for a lot of classified, inside information.

The technical term for what happened to the secret service agent is commitment.

You get somebody to commit to a small thing… and they will be more likely to commit to a big thing after.

It’s like a big and heavy chain sitting on a massive ship. The chain is way to heavy for you to lift and toss overboard. But if you start just one or two links down the side of the ship… then the whole thing might uncoil and come hurtling down into the water.

That’s commitment. It’s how you can persuade people to do crazy things.

The Navalny story is one example of it. But there are plenty more, all around you. It’s why the headline and the lead of a sales letter are so important… it’s why a customer who paid you $5 will be more likely to buy a $1000 course than somebody who never gave you any money… and it’s why people who have been burned on a get-rich-quick scheme will get burned on a second and a third.

​So what’s my takeaway for you?

Nothing. I’m just glad you read this email all the way to the end. By the way, would you like to subscribe to my email newsletter for more content like this? If yes, here’s where to go.

Wounded children walking

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“Every man you’ve ever known, loved, and trusted has lied to you.”

That was the sentence that Chris Haddad tacked on at the front of one of his VSLs in the relationship niche. Chris says this one sentence doubled conversions.

So what’s going on?

Well, the sentence is shocking. And shocking pattern interrupts work well at the start of a VSL to attract attention. But there’s more to it than that.

I heard a successful copywriter say that if you take a product’s features, you can ask “So what?” to get to the benefit of that feature.

And you can ask “So what?” again, to get to the benefit of that benefit.

And you can keep asking the same “So what?” question… until you get to the end. And the end is always the same:

“So I can feel better about myself.”

This same copywriter summed it up with a self-help quote. “We are all wounded children walking around in adult bodies.”

For somebody who’s in the direct response relationship market, that wound might be a broken promise or rejection or harm early on in life… which has trailed this person like a hungry shadow ever since.

In other parts of the direct response world, the wound might be something different.

But everybody — at least everybody who’s of interest to you if you write copy — has such a wound. And if you can address it right at the start of your message, like Chris did with his VSL… then the right people will listen.

Listen:

I have an email newsletter where I write about persuasion and copywriting. If you consider yourself to be a smart, ambitious person, and you have uncomfortably high standards for yourself… then you might find it valuable. You can subscribe here.

How to fake exciting discovery stories

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Tony Robbins once shared a stage with a knight’s suit of armor.

At one point during his talk, Tony got close to the knight. Terrible static appeared on his mic. When he walked away, the static stopped.

The next time Tony got close to the knight, terrible static shot up again. He stepped away. The static stopped.

The third time it was about to happen, people in the audience started shouting. “Don’t get close to the knight!”

It turned out later than an ambulance in the neighborhood was somehow messing with Tony’s sound equipment. Once the ambulance left, the sound problems disappeared. It wasn’t the knight at all.

The human brain needs causation like a hot dog needs mustard. “Terrible sound! What’s behind it? It must be the knight!”

This works really well much of the time.

Sometimes it goes wrong, like in the Tony Robbins story above.

And in rare cases of clever persuasion… it can be used to lead people by the nose. For example:

During a webinar last year, Parris Lampropoulos analyzed a sales letter. It was written by his most successful copy cub.

The lead starts off with a true story of a 104-year-old scientist who won the Nobel Prize for her discoveries related to brain stuff.

The gist was this old lady saying, “I feel sharper now than when I was 20!”

The sales letter goes on to talk about the woman’s discoveries… and how the supplement for sale ties into her amazing research.

Now rewind.

Did you catch that?

It’s the same trick as with the knight above, at least for my hypergullible brain.

Because when I read this sales letter, my brain concluded, “Oh, she feels sharper because of her brain stuff discoveries. And this supplement is a way for me to tap into that, and get back what little I had when I was 20.”

But the sales letter doesn’t say that anywhere. The quaint old lady could have been feeling great because of her genetics… or because of her daily regimen of drinking beet juice. We just don’t know.

What we do know is that, when you’re writing copy, it’s best to have a genuine breakthrough coupled with an exciting discovery story.

But if you don’t have that… you can cheat. Just roll your breakthrough onto the stage… and then bring out an exciting story that’s not really about this discovery. Put them next to each other. Your prospect’s brain will do the rest.

Now rewind.

Did you catch that?

This whole article was a way of eliminating people who aren’t interested in persuasion or copywriting. Since you made it to the bottom, maybe this stuff interests you. In that case, you might like to sign up for my email newsletter.

How to write “killer copy” in any market… even if… you don’t deserve it!

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Of course you do deserve to write killer copy, right? You read the right books… you hand copy successful sales letters… you listen to what more experienced copywriters have to say.

But let’s say you’re still not getting results. What could be missing?

Here’s a bit of wisdom from the Prince of Print himself, the self-aggrandizing legend, Sir Gary of Halbert.

Gary once wrote a sales letter for a sexy sex guide. A few of the bullets:

* Three sure-fire ways to tell if your spouse or “significant other” has had sex with someone else in the last 24 hours!

* What lesbians know about oral sex which men don’t… and… why more men today are losing their women to other women!

* What (and how) a man can learn about his woman’s masturbation secrets… which will… supercharge HIS sex life!

Intriguing stuff… but the headline is 80% of the sale, right? And that’s what I want to quickly share with you today. Gary’s headline read:

“How To Have “Killer Sex” At Any Age… Even If… You Don’t Deserve It!”

It’s the tail of that headline that caught my eye.

Because if somebody’s a good prospect for your “How to” direct response product… then they’ve almost certainly got feelings of defectiveness and low self-worth. At least as regards that specific problem.

They’ve tried solving the problem before. They haven’t succeeded. They can only take that disgust and frustration in one of two places. Inwards or outwards.

Often it’s inwards.

And if you use that — even just by calling it out, like Gary did in his headline — it could make all the difference. You could be on your way to producing truly killer copy. In any market.

Sounds good?

But maybe you still feel unworthy. Maybe you feel you haven’t done all those things I listed at the top. You can fix that. And quickly. To start, click here and sign up for my daily newsletter, all about copywriting and marketing wisdom.

Nobel scientists stunned to produce must-read news

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“It will change everything,” said Andrei Lupas, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute.

“Stunning,” said Professor Venki Ramakrishnan, Nobel Laureate and President of the Royal Society. “It has occurred decades before many people in the field would have predicted.”

You may have heard the news published yesterday. DeepMind, an AI project within Google, “solved” the 50-year-old problem of protein folding. (I say “solved” because DeepMind does a good job, much better than anybody else. But it’s not perfect.)

This is a big deal. It will help scientists unravel the many mysteries still hidden in the human genome. It also means that the singularity is near. If you haven’t yet started building your anti-Skynet bunker, the time is nigh.

But let’s talk persuasion.

My point today is that the human brain looooves shortcuts.

We are giant shortcut-seeking machines.

For example, we rarely try to figure out things ourselves. Instead we look around. “What’s that guy doing? Eh, I bet that’s good enough. I’ll do the same.”

Another shortcut we take is to only look at extremes. So The World’s 50 Best Restaurants wields more clout than the Michelin guide. Why? Because it’s easier. There’s only one no. 1 restaurant among the 50 Best. But there are 135 restaurants with the highest 3-star Michelin rating.

You see my point. As Gene Schwartz said, “there is nothing so astounding as the astonishment of experts.” Particularly if those experts are the very top experts, the ones who got a Nobel Prize.

Because when you 1) take experts and 2) make them amazed, you create must-read news. And news is another shortcut that the brain loves to take, right on down to the order page. But that’s another story, for another time.

If you’d like to read that story when it comes out, you can subscribe to my daily email newsletter. It will appear there first.