Gary Bencivenga

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.

The best kind of proof

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I want to give you a demonstration of spooky action at a distance
For this to work, all you have to do is read the instructions below, and then when you get to the part that says “GO” carry them out. Once you’re done, simply keep reading this article.

So here are the instructions of my spooky-action-at-a-distance:
(Read through them once before you try them out)

1. Clasp your hands together with your fingers interlocked, thumb over thumb, index finger over index finger, etc.
2. Now, stick your index fingers out straight, but keep them apart.
3. And then, simply look at the space between your index fingers until something spooky happens. It might take as long as 10-15 seconds, but it might happen sooner as well.

Ready?
GO
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.
.
.
.
.
.

Are you done?
That means my spooky-action-at-a-distance must have come through across time and space and pushed your two index fingers together until they were touching.

At least, that’s the idea
Hopefully it worked. And in any case, the point is not really to convince you of action-at-a-distance, but simply to illustrate the most powerful kind of proof. And that’s demonstration.

Product demonstrations work very well
You can take a car for a test-drive. You can try a shirt on at the store. You can walk around a home before buying it.

Then there are performance demonstrations
In his farewell seminar, Gary Bencivenga told the story of Elisha Otis, who invented the first safe elevator. Otis got in an open elevator in front of a crowd, while his assistant first cut one and then the other cable holding the elevator in place. Otis’s safety mechanism kicked in, saving Otis and the elevator, and finally convincing people that elevators are safe to use (hello skyscrapers).

This still works today
A while back, a video for the Purple mattress company went viral. The core of the video was a clever demonstration — the raw egg test:

Sometimes though, the demonstration doesn’t even have to be of the product
Like in this post that you’re reading. Or in this Bill Jayme add for Smithsonian Magazine:

This clever demonstration seems to be about engagement

So what’s the conclusion?
Always try for a demonstration. There are many creative ways to do this, and it’s worth putting in some thought to come up with one that works for you.

How to sell in paid products without alienating customers

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Uh oh.

My post from yesterday gave a bunch of examples of infotainment I plan to put into my upcoming book on essential oils.

But the examples I used were often taken from sales materials, rather than info products themselves.

Is this a giant screw-up on my part?

Let’s see.

Copywriting all-star Gary Bencivenga once said that sales material should be valuable enough to read on its own.

On the other hand, prolific marketer Dan Kennedy embodies the idea that paid products should also sell. (They can sell other products, or at least you as an expert.)

In other words, paid and free content can and should be quite similar. Here are a few other points to think about:

Also, former Boardroom exec Brian Kurtz talked about the kinds of premiums (aka bonuses) that Boardroom would give away with their books. What they found is that when somebody buys something, the best thing is to sell or give them more of the same. So if they are buying a health book, offer them 3 more health books as a bonus.

Finally, supplement marketer Justin Goff does something similar in the world of supplements: simply offer the buyer more bottles of the same supplement as an upsell.

And here’s how this ties back to info products or sales pages (or sales emails) that promote those products:

If somebody is “buying” your free promotional products…

In other words, if they tune in regularly to hear your personality and stories and lame jokes and whatever else you use to spice up your free promotional content, whether that’s emails, or blog posts, or speeches behind a podium….

Then it makes no sense to turn off that tap when you charge them money for an info product.

Of course, the paid product should be valuable and should close some of those loops that the free content opens. But it should continue to be entertaining (and even to sell) in the same way as your free stuff — or you will have some sore and disappointed customers.

And that in a nutshell, is why infotainment examples from sales letters — as well as more direct sales techniques — can go straight behind the paywalled curtain as well.

7 types of infotainment to stuff into your information product

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Right now, I am writing a book that I will sell through my essential oils site.

I know the subject matter very well, and I could drone on about it even if somebody slapped me awake in the dead of night.

But it’s boring to just hear lots of facts and warnings and instructions, and I worry that my book will turn out dull. Since I want people to actually read this book and to get something out of it, I have to make it fun as well as informative.

Enter infotainment: entertainment combined with information. It’s something I first heard about from email marketing headmaster Ben Settle. So for your benefit as well as mine, here are 7 different types of infotainment you can stuff to make your dry-as-dust information product more exciting:

1. Cartoons

Cartoons. Every few pages. They can be used to add some color, to lighten the mood, and to reinforce a point.

New Zealand marketing guru Sean D’Souza is a master of this. Here’s an example from one of Sean’s articles on infotainment:

2. Vignettes

The New Yroker magazine does this.

Vignettes are like cartoons, but they are smaller, spread over multiple pages, and not directly connected to the surrounding text. Here’s a couple of examples from the Aug. 22, 2016 issue:

3. Stories

Stories stick. They make otherwise boring content interesting. Plus they are fun to read.

I kick off my essential oils book by telling the true story of a 2-year-old boy who got burned in a fire, how his mom used essential oils to help his wounds heal more quickly, and how the surgeons marveled and approved from the sidelines. It’s a great story, and it illustrates the power of essential oils way better than arguing with statistics or hand-waving about anti-inflammatory molecules.

4. Fun break

If you read some of the sales letters by Gary “greatest living copywriter” Bencivenga, you will frequently come across sidebars.

Just like in a magazine, these sidebars serve as a fun break, a chance to talk about something interesting, and to draw attention to it.

For example, in the book I’m writing, while talking about different proven health benefits of lavender essential oil, I have a sidebar that talks about four entirely different locations around the world where lavender is grown.

And I include some local color. One of the places has a mysterious monument that a crusader supposedly set up. Another is a kind of Shangri-La, with perfect weather on an otherwise rainy and cold mountain. A third served as a prison for the last monarch of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

5. Images

Like cartoons. Images are best when they are both relevant and surprising, beautiful and informative. Kind of like the vignettes I included above.

6. Word fun

This is an area where Ben Settle shines. His emails are fun to read, and one of the big reasons why is all the creative and colorful and unexpected language he uses.

Plus they sound super-conversational. In fact, they are more conversational than real conversation.

Poet Anthony Madrid, who writes for the Paris Review, is also a past master at this. Here’s an example:

We take the phrase “once upon a time” for granted, but if you think about it, it’s quite oddball English. Upon a time—? That’s just a strange construction. It would be pleasant to know its history: When, more or less, does it get up on its legs? Around when does it become standard procedure? My researches into this question, however, have yielded nothing conclusive.

7. Analogies

Analogies are like stories: they make boring or preachy content palatable.

A few weeks back, I was working on a probiotics sales page, and I compared probiotics you can buy at the store to mystery meat in a rusty can. For the essential oils book, I’m planning on doing something similar, I just haven’t figured out yet what dangerous-but-familiar image to compare mommy blogs to.

So there you go. 7 ways to infotain. They are formulaic. They are mercenary. And they workses.

Why paid health info products may never die

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About 18 months ago, I took up an ancient copywriting ritual.

Each day, I started devoting exactly 20 minutes to writing out an old, successful ad by hand.

This tedious strategy was first advocated by Gary Halbert, who claimed the process will neurally imprint good copywriting into anyone who actually does the work. I’m not sure about the neural imprinting, but this practice has paid dividends for me, by forcing me to read good promos more carefully, and by exposing me to ads I would never have read otherwise.

Right now, I am making my way through a magalog by Gary Bencivenga, which he wrote for Rodale back in the early 90’s.

The offer they were selling was a new book, a massive collection of 1,800 alternative health recipes, called New Choices in Natural Healing.

It offered natural cures such as “Beat PMS — with nutrition!” and “Fight yeast infections — with yogurt!” This offer probably killed it back when Gary B.’s promotion ran. But I’m not sure whether such a general alternative-health book could be profitable today.

The trouble is that much of that information is free online on popular, well-established health sites. As a result, all of Gary’s fascinating bullets are just a quick Google search away from being unmasked.

So does this mean that paid info products in the health space are on their way to the graveyard?

I’m banking on the opposite being true.

I’m currently writing a starter guide for using essential oils. When that’s done and published, I’m planning on putting together a related video course in the aromatherapy niche.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I’m not concerned that there will be demand for either of these info products when they comes out (it helps that I have an engaged email list of people who are interested in the topic).

The fact is, science keeps advancing every day, and most of us have trouble keeping up with the new research.

New alternative medicine approaches keep appearing, and it’s hard to tell what’s legit and what’s not.

This opens up the door to anybody who is willing to filter out the garbage, synthesize all the good knowledge, and package it up in a better, more entertaining way than you can find for free online.

And that’s why I think paid health info products may never die.

John Bejakovic

P.S. When it comes time to putting together the video course I mentioned, I’m planning to take another piece of advice from Gary Halbert, and to write the sales letter before designing the course.

After all, what better way to come up with a great course than to make it sales-worthy?

I mention this because I also do copywriting for clients in the health space. For anyone who’s interested, here’s how to contact me:

https://bejakovic.com/contact