Gary Halbert

Avoiding the Facebook ban hammer through Personal Power

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This summer, one of my clients ran into some trouble with a Facebook ads campaign.

The product they were advertising was a plastic ball, filled with ceramic beads, which you’re supposed to throw into the washing machine and use instead of detergent.

I was in charge of writing the advertorial, so I wrote a first-person confessional with the headline:

“How I wash blood stains out of my clothes WITHOUT laundry detergent”

Facebook didn’t have a problem with my blood-stained headline. They also didn’t have a problem with the questionable product (I still don’t understand how or if it works). But they did have an issue with little things like:

* The use of words like “magic,” “crazy,” and “trick”

* Specific claims such as “it saves me hundreds on laundry detergent”

* Before-and-after pictures of clothes washed with this breakthrough technology…​​

In short, Facebook didn’t like anything that gave this ad the unpleasant but familiar odor of an old-school infomercial.

But wait a minute.

Maybe that comparison is not really fair.

Because right now, I’m hand-copying a very old and very successful infomercial.

It’s for Tony Robbins’s Personal Power tapes.

This infomercial looks like a segment from 60 Minutes. It opens with Tony and Fran Tarkenton, a Hall of Fame NFL quarterback, boarding a helicopter, and then flying around Southern California.

Once they land, Tony and Fran go inside a fancy house, smile and nod at each other, and chat about the good results people are getting from Personal Power.

The rest of the infomercial is punctuated by lots of testimonials, most of which are saying, “This system works really well, and it’s helped me.”

When you get the chance to buy the tapes, there’s no massive price anchoring, and there’s no “But wait, there’s more!”

If all this is starting to bore you, that’s kind of the point.

Because this infomercial was pretty classy, really not sensationalistic, and would have fit in perfectly into a Facebook advertising campaign today.

(And like I said, this infomercial was immensely effective. It helped launch Guthy-Renker Corporation, which at that time was just an experiment between a couple of guys, and now has revenues of over $2 billion a year.)

The point of all this?

Maybe these Facebook compliance requirements don’t have to hamstring sales…

Maybe direct response copywriters have just gotten into too much of a Gary Halbert and John Carlton groove…

And maybe there are plenty of other effective ways to sell stuff without !!! and crazy/amazing/jaw-dropping before-and-after.

Or maybe not.

But if you get the Facebook ban hammer, it’s something to keep in mind, and maybe something to comfort yourself with.

Anyways, if you need help with writing Facebook-compliant advertorials that still make sales, you might get some ideas here:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

The copywriting commandment that top copywriters all violate

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Q: You go back to the same actors frequently?
A: I have to. It’s a tax thing.
— Christopher Guest on the Charlie Rose Show, 2003

In my opinion, Christopher Guest is one of the most talented entertainers in history.

You know who I’m talking about.

He acted, sang, and played guitar as Nigel Tufnel in This Is Spinal Tap (“This one goes to 11”). He also directed and wrote Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman. He even had a role in The Princess Bride, as the soft-spoken but sadistic Count Rugen.

In spite of all these achievements, Christopher Guest is even more impressive in real life.

For example, he was interviewed on Charlie Rose some 15 years ago.

He was subtle and funny in almost every second of the live interview.

That’s rare.

Because most comedians, even the ones I love the best, are a big disappointment when they have to improvise.

They don’t have the same delivery.

They don’t have good punchlines.

They are simply not very funny, especially when compared to their stage or movie persona.

And this is yet another connection between the world of comedy and the world of sales copywriting. Because one of the biggest and most sacred sales copy commandments is:

“Write like you talk!”

Sure, this is good advice for people who are terrified of writing.

Or for those who are used to writing in a nonsense, corporate tone (“Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion…”)

But “write like you talk” is not something that top copywriters actually do themselves.

Don’t believe me?

Go on YouTube and find some video of Gary Halbert speaking.

See how slow and ponderous the man was. It’s nothing like the crisp, funny, energetic writing in his newsletter.

And that’s not a coincidence.

Top copywriters make their copy more than “just how they talk.”

I won’t give away the secrets of the trade here.

Suffice to say that most copywriters, just like most comedians, simply aren’t that persuasive or funny in real life.

We’re not all Christopher Guest, unfortunately.

Fortunately, there is a simple fix.

It’s called hard work and unrelenting toil.

In other words, if you’re not naturally an incredible storyteller or an irresistible salesman, you can still write top-level copy.

And all it will take are dozens of passes over what you’ve written the first time around, until you revise it into something that really pulls.

Of course, there are checklists and shortcuts that can make your job easier. And if that’s what you’re looking for, then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Claude Hopkins and Gary Halbert meet over a barrel of whiskey

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Back in a village in 19th-century Michigan, there lived an influential man.

He was the leader of his community.

Head of the school board.

Couldn’t read or write.

Here’s his secret to achieving influence in spite his handicap:

Following a ship wreck some years earlier, a large barrel of whiskey washed ashore Lake Michigan.

This man found the barrel, and he put it in the corner of his living room.

He was generous with the whiskey. Folks started dropping by his house. They would sit on soap boxes next to the barrel and discuss local gossip.

In time, his house became the headquarters of the local community. And he became the leader.

I read this story in My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

It made me think of something I’d heard in a long-lost recording of another influential marketer, Gary Halbert.

Says Gary: marketing is a process, not an event.

In other words, when businesses buy (or luck upon) a big barrel of whiskey…

They often use it to throw a one-day party for the whole village.

The next day, everybody’s groggy, but a few villagers say, “Bro, that was awesome.”

A week later, however, nobody remembers or cares who threw the big party. And all the whiskey’s gone.

It’s better to keep the drip of whiskey coming, evening after evening…

All the while listening to what folks are saying as they sit around your living room…

While gradually gaining their respect and trust, and nudging them towards seeing you as the village elder.

That’s a process.

Of course, you need to start somewhere. Such as by sending out invitations to your whiskey barrel that get the attention of whiskey lovers within a country mile of your living room. And if you want to see one effective way of doing this, check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

The “1-2 punch in the gut” and other proven sales letter ideas

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Here’s a bit of a copywriting history lesson:

The great Gary Halbert was famous for a lot of things, including his “grabber” letters.

That’s when he would include a physical tchotchke — a dollar bill, a coin, a little bag of sand — at the top of his sales letter.

It seems old Gary got this idea from a much older master of direct marketing named Robert Collier.

I’ve mentioned Robert Collier before for his insight that “it is not the copy that counts so much as the scheme back of it.” In other words, the idea behind the letter is more important than the words you use.

The “grabber” is one example of that. Here are a few more, taken from the Robert Collier Letter Book, a classic on effective direct response and sales copywriting:

#1. The one-two punch in the gut

This is when you simply hit readers with benefits. For example, when selling shirts through the mail, Collier would emphasize that his shirts were 1) cheaper and 2) fit better and were of higher quality, because he could cut out the middleman and stock more designs and sizes.

#2. A common infomercial appeal, made more convincing

Every infomercial ever barks at you to buy “while supplies last.” Collier used this same scarcity appeal, except he would make it more convincing — by giving a legitimate reason why he had only limited stock. Example: “We’ve only got 1000 of these books because that’s all the estate of the author would allow us to print.”

#3. “The most effective appeal ever”

According to Collier, the most effective sales appeal was telling buyers that the price is going up. This could also be tied into “while supplies last.” And of course, it’s all the more effective if you can give people legitimate reasons for why the price is going up, rather than simply claiming it.

#4. The fire sale

​With various offers and various letters, Collier would explain a super-duper discount by saying he was selling slightly damaged goods, or leftover inventory that didn’t justify a full marketing effort. In other words, he’d give people a legitimate reason WHY a sale is happening, rather than just discounting the price.

#5. The Ben Franklin

Simple: ask buyers for a favor. “Would you mind looking at this new bag we’re considering selling? And could you let me know what you think before the season starts so we know whether to sell it or not? And if you like it, I’ll let you keep it for a special, low, introductory price.”

#6. The grabber

That’s the idea Gary Halbert swiped from Collier. Collier himself attached dollar bills, but he also included samples of cloth (when selling socks or coats) or even samples of the product itself (when selling fake pearls).

#7. The Kaiser Wilhelm lead

This is a simple current affairs tie-in. Collier used these extensively to sell books. For example, talking about the fate of Kaiser Wilhelm at the the end of WWI in order to sell world history books. Today, the equivalent might be to use the latest Trump outrage to sell earnest textbooks about psychology.

So that’s 7 Robert Collier “schemes back of the copy.” Of course, Collier had a bunch more of these.

In case you want to find them all, his book is definitely worth a read-through.

The only issue is that many of the copies of his book (including Kindle versions) are shoddy OCR scans with terrible spelling mistakes and horrendous formatting. They almost make it impossible to read the great content inside.

Occasionally, quality used copies become available, and they can sell for $100 or more.

But I just checked on Amazon, and 4 used copies of the paperback version of the Robert Collier Letter Book are available right now for around $20 each.

They probably won’t last long at this price… so better act while supplies last. If you want to grab one for yourself, here’s the link:

https://amzn.to/2JrYzs6

John Bejakovic

7 Batman rogues for evil sales bullets

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Ken McCarthy has said that the fundamental, no. 1, can’t-do-without-it skill for being an effective copywriter…

Is the ability to write a good bullet.

And Ken should know what he’s talking about.

He was a successful direct mail guy, before becoming a successful internet marketing guy, before running some very big and expensive copywriting and marketing seminars and influencing generations of millionaire marketers.

All right, so let’s say Ken’s right and bullets are important. So how then do you write a good, or rather evil, bullet?

Well, lots of different ways.

Below I’m giving you 7 different templates, which, for my own enlightenment, I paired up with top villains from Batman comic books (some of the connections are obvious, some less so):

[#1 The Riddler]
Are you younger than 34? Here’s why you are at a disadvantage when it comes to writing bullets… Plus, the 5-minute daily habit that will help you write bullets on command. Page 79.

[#2 Ra’s Al Ghul]
The one element every bullet must have (besides a benefit or a warning). Used correctly, this activates the most powerful motivation for buying, according to legendary copywriter Gary Halbert. Page 10.

[#3 Two-Face]
The popular NPR show that doubles as a school for writing killer bullets. Page 108.

[#4 Poison Ivy]
How to write twice as many bullets in one-third the time. No stress or swipe files required. Just a simple shift in preparation — inspired by a jungle plant, and recommended by marketing genius Perry Marshall. Page 70.

[#5 The Joker]
How to write a killer bullet without having access to the product. A secret technique, used by irrational, violent psychopaths, that can also help ethical copywriters. Page 25.

[#6 Scarecrow]
When putting a big benefit in a bullet can backfire. This one mistake can ruin your whole sales letter. Page 44.

[#7 Catwoman]
Why you should never start your bullet off with a number. Plus a better way to get readers hooked when your product offers a 9-item list. Page 78.

And there you go. A rogue’s gallery of 7 evil yet effective bullet formats.

What, that’s not enough?

Quite hungry you are.

Here’s a bonus one for you then:

All successful sales letters need bullets, right? Wrong. Here are the cases when bullets can actually hurt conversions. Send me an email for details.

6 sneaky ways to use reciprocity in marketing, part 1

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A few weeks back, I wrote about the essence of the con game:

“It’s called a confidence game not because the con man gains your confidence in order to cheat you. Instead, it’s because he gives you his confidence.”

Today, I want to share some stories of big-name marketers who have used this simple idea in sneaky and subtle ways:

#1 Ask ’em for advice

Claude Hopkins came to a bakery and asked to talk to the owner. Hopkins was selling Cotosuet, a kind of early margarine. The price of Cotosuet was higher than the competition. The baker knew this, and he was raring for a fight.

But Hopkins didn’t say anything about Cotosuet. Instead he took out a drawing of a pie, which his company was planning on using in advertising. He asked the baker for his opinion of the pie drawing.

As the baker started giving feedback, Hopkins kept putting his own drawing down. The baker went on to praise the drawing, and eventually got convinced this is the perfect drawing of a pie. He said how his business would prosper if only he had these pie cards as his advertisement. Hopkins offered to give him a bunch of cards with the pie drawing if he would only make an order of Cotosuet. Which the baker did.

#2 Ask ’em for a favor

Robert Collier was selling coats by mail. After a time, the usual appeals became exhausted. So Collier sent out out a new letter, along the following lines, which again pulled in heavy sales:

“Will you do me a favor? We have these new coat designs. We want to gauge demand for them. As one of our best customers, would you try it out and let me know what you think? I’ll send it to you right now for free if you just send me your size. And if you decide you want to keep the coat, you can have it at a special low price.”

#3 Make damaging admissions

Gary Halbert ran ads selling his book How to Make Maximum Money in Minimum Time. But he didn’t kick off the ad by talking about his sparkling Rolls Royce or his cliff-side Malibu mansion. Instead, he wrote:

“My name is Gary Halbert and, some time ago, I was dead broke. My business was almost bankrupt and I couldn’t even pay the rent. Actually, I wasn’t just broke, I was desperate. [He then had a money making idea, and…] I was living in Ohio at the time and my friends laughed at the idea. They thought it was a big joke. They said I was a dreamer and that I had no ‘common sense.’ In fact, one guy said I was just a nerd and that my idea was so silly, he felt sorry for me.”

This ad apparently did very well for Gary, and it launched an entire industry of “amazing secret” headlines.

I’ve got three more of these reciprocity examples, but this message is already as long as a bushy tail on an old fox.

So I’ll continue tomorrow, along with some conclusions and warnings if you do decide to use any of these ideas.

Successful, in-demand copywriter wants to find a profitable, sexy business that sucks at marketing

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“Are you the founder or owner of a profitable business that could explode if you had constant access to a great copywriter? If so, read on.”

The sentence you’ve just read was supposed to be the lead of an ad. It’s an ad​​ I started to write — to sell myself. Here’s the background:

Earlier this month, I got my copy of the April issue of Ben Settle’s Email Players.

As you may know, Email Players is Ben’s paid print newsletter. It comes out each month and it sells for $97 a month.

In this month’s issue, Ben revealed some big news:

He is starting to sell ad space — one page of it — on the back cover of his 16-page newsletter.

The price?

A low and introductory $5,000.

Whoa, you might say. That seems like an awful lot. But since my goal for this year is to become a top-paid sales copywriter who’s booked months in advance, my “red shirt” detector went off.

In other words, I realized this might be an opportunity I should take seriously.

After all, if I get just one good client out of this promotion…

I would easily make back my $5k investment.

And if I got two or more such clients, I’d be on my way to reaching that goal of becoming booked months in advance.

In the end, I decided not to run the ad — for reasons I might talk about another time, but not today.

But the whole thing popped up in my mind again last night because I re-read a famous classic ad, from another copywriter looking to sell himself.

The copywriter in question is the Prince of Print, old Gary Halbert.

Thing is, Gary wasn’t fishing for copywriting clients in his ad. Instead, he was looking for love, or at least sex and adventure with the right woman.

So he wrote a three-page ad and ran it in the Los Angeles Times. And he got hundreds of responses, and (I believe) a long-term relationship out of the deal.

If you’re a copywriter and you’re thinking of writing an ad to promote yourself, you should check out Gary’s ad. After all, it’s not easy to write a personal ad (or a “looking for clients” ad) and not seem desperate. ​​

And yet it can be done. If you want to see how, here’s the link:

​​https://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/13Ad%20PDF.pdf

4 lessons from the ongoing Parris bonanza

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Earlier today, I contributed $297 to help a guy named Taki beat cancer.

I’ve never met Taki. I have no special connection to him. I’m also not naturally the type to contribute to charitable causes. So what gives?

Well, as the GoFundMe page says,

“If you donate $297 or more, Parris Lampropoulos will send you a thank-you gift. Just email him your donation receipt.”

Let me explain what this is all about.

1. Name recognition

I’d first heard of Parris Lampropoulos through an interview on Clayton Makepeace’s site.

Clayton is (or was?) a super successful copywriter.

And he regularly interviewed other super successful copywriters, including Parris.

After reading the interview, I was curious to see whether Parris had a blog, or a newsletter, or a book, or a copywriting course…

And he didn’t. He seemed to be a secretive, off-line kind of guy. A shame, I thought, and I filed the name Parris Lampropoulus away for later.

That’s an important point — I knew the name. Because then…

2. Touch-point barrage

About a week ago, it started to trickle in.

First, I read an email from Ben Settle.

Parris Lampropoulus is finally making available his copywriting wisdom! And for ridiculously cheap! And all in an effort to help his cousin Taki beat cancer!

Ben was the first, but certainly not the last, to make this announcement.

Over the next few days, I saw David Garfinkel, Brian Kurtz, Abbey Woodcock, David Deutsch, and probably somebody else I’m forgetting also promoting Parris’s offer. Here’s why this barrage mattered:

3. Sell to buyers

After I first heard of the Parris offer, I got excited. I then told myself to cool off.

“You’ve got enough copywriting books and courses to last you the next five years,” I said to myself. “Why buy more?”

But the thing is, over the past year or two, I’ve started freely spending money on good information. And I’ve found I never regret it.

In other words, I always get more out of the info I bought than what I paid for it. Maybe through winning new client work, or through being able to charge more, or through some mysterious opportunities opening up.

So in many ways, I was an ideal prospect for this offer. And when I got a second reminder about Parris’s offer — and a third, and a fourth, all from independent quarters — my initial resistance wore down quickly.

And there was one last thing that helped.

4. The charitable opportunity

Some people probably took up Parris on his offer specifically because they wanted to help Taki. But like I said, I’m not the type to contribute to charitable causes (yet — maybe this first experience will be a crack in the floodgates).

Still, the charitable offer did help to convince me to pony up $297. I realized this when I considered the alternative.

If this had simply been a new course launch, I probably would have held off.

A part of why is urgency — Parris will take this offer down once the funding goal is reached, and that probably wouldn’t have been true with a regular course.

But another part of it is the fire sale element of all this.

People rush to a fire sale because they feel they must be getting a steal. Because they think they are taking advantage of somebody else’s time of need.

I’m not proud of it, but I realize that, somewhere not very deep down, there was an element of this in my motivation to seize this opportunity.

So there you have it.

My analysis of an easy, enjoyable $297 sale, or rather purchase.

I think Gary Halbert once wrote that, if you want to do direct mail, you should buy stuff through mail, and allow yourself to enjoy the process. That way, you can understand what the process is like for one of your customers — to have doubts, to make the decision, to be excited about the purchase.

That’s what I did today. Besides, of course, helping a guy named Taki and getting a valuable and rare item for my copywriting library.

Anyways, if you’re selling something online, I believe you should be able to use any of the four points above to sell a little more of whatever it is you’re selling.

And if you’re interested in taking Parris up on his offer, before the fundraising target is met, here’s the link to the page that describes everything you get:

http://o.copychief.com/parris-lampropoulos

Gary Halbert’s first and most important lesson

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A long time ago, in a beautiful city far, far away…

I worked as an IT office drudge, and I decided I had had enough.

Fortunately, I knew a guy who was doing freelance copywriting.

I thought I could do the same, so I took a week off my regular IT job to sit at home and try it out.

I wanted to see if I could do the writing, and what it would be like to work by myself.

The writing part was fine, and I decided that I would give the freelance life a shot.

However, there was one problem.

Two days after starting my stay-at-home work experiment, I started to get depressed.

Not sad.

Not hopeless.

Just my nervous system seemed to be slowly shutting down, and I found it hard to concentrate or feel very motivated about achieving anything.

And again, this happened just two days after trying to work from home by myself.

The good thing was, I had a suspicion of what the problem was.

And I had a quick fix for it.

In fact, it’s an idea I got from the Prince of Print, old Gary Halbert himself.

It’s something that Gary once called his first and most important lesson.

And it’s something I continue to apply to this day, and that I consider to be vital in making me a successful freelance copywriter.

The thing is, this has nothing to do with writing.

Nothing to do with persuasion.

And yet, without it, I could never have succeeded in making a comfortable career, working a couple of hours a day, usually in my pajamas.

Anyways, if you want to know what this important lesson is, you can rifle through the thousands of pages of content that Gary Halbert has left online as his legacy. It won’t be a waste of your time.

However, if for any reason you don’t want to go that route, there is a second option.

You can also consult my upcoming book,  which covers freelance copywriting on Upwork.

I’m making my way through all the sections I’ve planned out for this book, and I should be finished with it by the end of the month.

If you want to get notified once it’s out, simply sign up below, and I’ll send you an email to let you know when I finish. And then, you’ll have Gary’s secret lesson all to yourself. Here’s the link to get notified:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

How to spoil an almost-closed sale

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“When the locomotive starts to chug from a standing start, it really works hard. The amount of commitment and energy that the train must exert is monumental. But once the train starts to move, the next few feet become easier and the next few even easier. So it is with copy.”
Joe Sugarman, The Adweek Copywriting Handbook

I’ve been writing a lot of advertorials lately.

This is for a client based out of Bangkok, who sells physical products online.

Their funnel works as follows:

Prospects first see a video ad on Facebook which demonstrates the product.

They then click through, and are taken to an advertorial (that’s where I come in).

If they like what they read, they click through once more to the sales page, where they get a chance to buy.

And here’s one recent lesson from this project:

It has to do with a first-person, story-based, blog-style advertorial I wrote for a neck brace.

The first version of the advertorial was profitable, though barely so. The client asked me to come up with another version, to see whether we could increase conversions. I told him to simply test out two small changes:

1. Swap out the current headline for a Gary Halbert-style classic along the lines of “The Amazing Direct Mail Secret Of A Desperate Nerd From Ohio”

2. Insert a new lead that immediately offers a discount, with a link to the sales page (only then followed by the current story lead)

My client tested these two things out.

The new headline seems to have made quite an improvement, and is beating the old control by about 30%.

The new lead however, is underperforming the old control.

It seems that, even though prospects already know what the product is all about (thanks to the long video ad on Facebook) and are largely sold on it, they still need to read copy, and a lot of it, to get fully convinced to buy.

It was worth testing.

Now that the results are in, however, it’s really a reiteration of some old-school copywriting principles.

Very much along the lines of what Joe Sugarman, who ran a direct marketing empire that included such classics as BluBlockers, talks about in the quote up top.

You’ve got to get people reading.

You’ve got to get the train moving.

And only once it’s full steam ahead can you break through the last bit of buying resistance that’s holding prospects back.

Anyways, enough about advertorials.

Onwards and upwards to sales emails.

If you haven’t yet signed up to get a free copy of my upcoming book on email marketing, perhaps this post has stoked the old steam engine enough to get you interested.

If that’s the case, here’s where you can sign up:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/