Al Trout

Plan Horse: Text-based opportunities

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News item one:

A few days ago, I got a text message that said, “You’re off the waitlist! You can now download Artifact.” So I did.

As you might know:

Artifact is a new service built by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, who founded Instagram before selling it to Facebook for $715 million. Their new project, Artifact, is something like TikTok, except not with video, but with text content.

News item two:

Just this morning I read that Meta, aka Mark Zuckerberg, is developing a new decentralized social network. Details are scarce, but what is known is that the new network will also be text-based.

Not-a-news item:​​

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for more than a few days, then you know I am wary of late-breaking internet opportunities. I like to get my late-breaking opportunities from books, preferably books that have been aged and cured for at least a few hundred years.

At the same time, even I find it undeniable that tectonic plates have been shifting for the past few years, with surface effects becoming visible maybe today, and for sure tomorrow.

Facebook is aging. Google search is terrible. AI now produces filler content better than 90% of professional content writers.

That’s what’s been rumbling underground for years. What will the surface effects be?

“Sovereign Man” Simon Black has this concept of a “Plan B” — a strategy for when shit hits the fan, which also benefits you if things just keep inching along as they always have.

I’d like to suggest to you a kind of inverse of Simon Black’s Plan B. We can call it Bejakovic’s “Plan Horse.”

Plan Horse is to find a new opportunity to latch onto, but in a way that you will come out ahead whether the opportunity drops dead or delivers as hoped.

Because you will eventually get to the inn if you just keep taking step after step along the highway. But you will get to the inn much faster and easier if somewhere along the way, while you’re walking, you “find yourself a horse to ride,” as Jack Ries and Al Trout put it in their book Positioning.

So keep reading this newsletter, because if I come across any interesting text-based opportunities, I might let you know about them.

Meanwhile, I continue to promote my Most Valuable Email. This course is really about taking those step-by-steps along the highway, while keeping an eye out for the galloping horse you can jump on the back of, Legolas-style.

Most Valuable Email is based on a fundamental of human communication and persuasion, one that’s been around for millennia. And yet, to many people in the Internet world, Most Valuable Email is a revelation. As freelance copywriter Van Chow said after going through MVE:

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I love this course, I bet some money to see if it still talks about boring stuff like AIDA or PAS. But I was surprised, I had never heard of this concept before.

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For a persuasion technique that will work both today and tomorrow, check out MVE here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

One roadway to success as a copywriter and marketer

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This morning I found out that Active Campaign has this spreadsheet view of campaign results.

It allows you to sort and compare previous campaigns rather than just looking at the results for each campaign individually.

So I looked at the past three months of my emails. I was curious to see my most unsubscribed-from email over that time.

It turns out I sent this toxic email only last week. The subject line read, “The secret spider web of money and love opportunities.” It had more unsubscribers — both in actual number and as a percentage of the people who got the email — than the other 90+ emails I sent over that period.

Why was this email so reviled?

Maybe the subject line was too good, and it sucked in people who wouldn’t normally open.

Maybe the content was truly awful.

Maybe my unsubscribed readers didn’t like my tone. Maybe they felt I didn’t deliver on promise of love opportunities (all the unsubscribers were women, judging by names). Or maybe they just realized my list is not for them (several came from a classified ad I ran a few days prior).

So what’s my point?

I’m not sure. I don’t really have a smart conclusion to draw from this experiment.

Instead, let me share an interesting idea with you that I read in Jack Trout’s and Al Ries’s book Positioning:

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For many people or products today, one roadway to success is to look at what your competitors are doing and then subtract the poetry or creativity which has become a barrier to getting the message into the mind. With a purified and simplified message, you can then penetrate the prospect’s mind.

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Maybe I should take Ries & Trout’s advice. Let me try it right now:

If you want one roadway to success as a copywriter and marketer, then you can find that inside my Copy Riddles program.

Copy Riddles is based on an exercise devised by legendary copywriter Gary Halbert. Top marketers and copywriters, including Ben Settle and Parris Lampropoulos, have praised this exercise and said it’s how they got good at the craft and how they started writing winning ads and making lots of money.

If you’d like to find out what this exercise is, or even start practicing it yourself, click on the link below and start reading the page that opens up:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Hard-work positioning

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Three quick positioning stories for good night:

In 1960, Crest toothpaste had a 10% share of the market.

Not bad, but not great either. After all, Crest at that time was the only toothpaste with fluoride, which helped prevent cavities. But nobody cared, or nobody believed Procter & Gamble.

So P&G approached the American Dental Association. They showed the dentists a bunch of science. Crest was suddenly “the only toothpaste with the endorsement of the ADA.”
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​​Within two years, sales of Crest tripled. And Crest became the no. 1 toothpaste brand in The Land of The Fruit Stripe Gum.

Story two I won’t tell in detail. Because if you’ve been in marketing for a bit, you’ve probably heard how Tom Monaghan used smart positioning to create a billion-dollar brand out of a bad product.

The bad product was a low-quality pizza. The smart positioning was to say, “Delivered in 30 minutes or it’s free.” The brand was Domino’s.

Third and final story, also about pizza:

John Schnatter started out making pizza in an oversized closet. The pizza was good and John’s chain grew to 1000 locations across the country. But you ain’t seen nothing yet…

Because in a meeting with positioning guru Jack Trout, Schnatter mentioned offhandedly how he used Dino’s sauce.

“Dino’s sauce?” asked Trout. “But Dino only sells to mom-and-pop shops. He doesn’t sell to chains.”

Trout called up the Dino in question to confirm. It was true.

So Trout said, that’s your story. Papa John’s new positioning became, “Better ingredients, better pizza.” The company grew five-fold in the years following the positioning change.

There’s a common positioning strategy hidden in each of those stories. You probably see it. But in case you don’t, then you might like to get on my daily email newsletter. That’s where I share these kinds of stories — but I also spell out the hard-work lessons hidden within.