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: