Gary Bencivenga’s ultra secret A-list offer tactic

Today I want to share with you an ultra secret A-list tactic I spotted legendary copywriter Gary Bencivenga using.

This tactic is not about copy. It’s in the offer.

I found it many years ago, back when I was learning copywriting by hand-copying ads. I spotted the following:

Gary once ran an ad to sell report A.

He also offered a free bonus, report B, which he said was “selling nationally” for the same price that report A was selling for.

Ok, so far, so standard.

But because I’m a bit of a direct response sleuth, I found that Gary was also running a second ad.

This second ad sold report B.

In that ad, Gary also offered a free bonus, report A, which he said was “selling nationally” for the same price that report B was selling for.

With this one tactic, Gary doubled his front-end offers. Plus, his bonuses were perceived as more valuable because he could say “selling nationally for $19.99” rather than “valued at $19.99, by my mother.”

So the offer tactic is to do like Gary, and sell your free bonuses in addition to your main front-end offer. It will force you to make a better, more attractive bonus, which will have higher perceived value than a bonus that you never officially sold. Plus you might actually make sales and get more customers.

“YAAAAWN,” I hear you say. “Bejako, you might not realize this, but I am an extremely loyal reader of your newsletter. That’s how I know that you already shared this ‘ultra secret A-list tactic’… let me check my notes… aha, yes, you shared it back on February 21, 2021. Don’t you have anything NEW for me today?”

Fine. I do have a NEW corollary to Gary Bencivenga’s ultra secret A-list offer tactic.

It is this:

If you do ever offer free stuff, for whatever reason, then sell it afterwards.

What? Yes. That’s it. It’s pretty basic, but powerful. The principles and reasons why are the same. I just want to highlight that:

1. Just because you offered something for free once, that doesn’t mean you cannot sell it later.

2. You probably have a ton of stuff that you’ve given away for free in the past, and are dismissing the real value of that.

Anyways, that’s my NEW marketing tip for today. It’s a marketing tip I myself am going to apply. Because tomorrow, I am putting on a FREE Core Promise Workshop and Q&A Call.

Free Free Free…

… if you decide to be there live tomorrow.

Not so free immediately afterwards, for all the reasons I listed above.

If you need a reminder of what this is all about, here are the details:

Tomorrow, Tuesday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I will hold a Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call.

It’s free & you can ​Register Here​.

I’ll share the most important parts of:

* What makes a good promise

* The importance of being clear over clever

* Choosing a promise that sounds credible

And we’ll end with a Q&A session to answer your Core Promise questions.

Don’t forget to register so I can send you the details.

See you there.