Goldie Hawn

Murder on the sales page

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I started reading Murder at the Vicarage a few days ago. It’s written by Agatha Christie, the first of 18 Miss Marple books.

The story starts out with the middle-aged vicar and his much younger, chatterbox wife. They’re having a discussion at breakfast. Then some guests arrive. There’s more talking. There’s a quick location change to the den, and other characters come in. More talking, some gossiping.

This goes on. There’s characters, light dialogue, then more characters. 20 pages in, and there’s still no murder, not even a darkening on the horizon. And yet, I keep reading, like millions before me.

Why?

I guess a couple or three reasons:

1) There’s the promise of a murder mystery. It’s right there on the front page, in the title of the book.

2) It’s all written in an easy, fun, and yet clever way.

3) It’s got something that I, and all other people, want to hear more about. In this case, that’s human faces, and the unique quirks behind them.

Maybe you won’t agree with me, but I think you can apply all 3 of these points to sales copywriting as well. 1) and 2) are pretty obvious, in terms of how you can port them from Agatha Christie to a sales message. Although it might be surprising,  you can also port the tabloid appeal of 3) to a sales message directly.

For example, there’s this giant promotion written by Dan Ferrari. It has the headline,

“The Stars of Silicon Valley and Hollywood are using this ‘Millionaire’s Secret’ to Look, Move, and Feel Like They’re Aging in Reverse”

The lead paints a scene, involving Goldie Hawn, Sergey Brin, and Moby, all lounging around a cliffside Los Angeles mansion, listening with rapt attention to the talk of a mysterious doctor who is revealing the secret of eternal youth.

And you know what? This promotion killed. It literally tripled the response compared to the previous control (and this promo is for Green Valley, an established direct response company, so the previous control was certainly solid). The end result was that the company ran out of inventory and had to stop running the promo until they could restock. I think that qualifies as murder on the sales page.

What’s that?

You want a light and breezy mystery for your Tuesday evening?

​​And you’re tired of Miss Marple?

Say no more. I got you. Check out this million-dollar Dan Ferrari page-turner instead:

https://greenvalleynaturalsolutions.com/GEN/CA/Genesis-B-telos95.php

The Warren Beatty strategy for seducing copywriting clients

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“Women are like a jar of olives. You can eat one, close it up. Or you can eat them all.”
— Warren Beatty

I recently read some statistics about the sex life of Warren Beatty.

The man lost his virginity at age 20.

And then, he became a Hollywood star.

Over the next 35 years, he supposedly slept with almost 13,000 women, according to the best estimates of his biographer, Peter Biskind.

That averages to a new woman every day.

Almost certainly not true. Even Beatty himself has denied the claim.

However, he has over the decades been associated with a lot of famous women, including Melanie Griffith, Darryl Hannah, Jane Fonda, Vivien Leigh, Madonna, Carly Simon, Goldie Hawn, Barbara Streisand…

Oh, and Joan Collins, who said Beatty was “so pretty but just TOO exhausting in the bedroom.”

Mind you, all those women knew about each other. In other words, Beatty’s playboy background didn’t hurt. It helped. ​​

Anyways, now that you have that in mind, I want to tell you something related that might help your copywriting career.

I am currently negotiating a project with a client that I’ve done some smaller work for.

If this comes through, it will be the biggest single project I have had to date.

But the interesting thing is how I got this client.

About a year ago, I wrote him a cold email to introduce myself.

“Sounds interesting,” he replied. “I will keep you in mind.”

And he did.

He first hired me for a single project around December, then again for something in April, then a few small things earlier this summer. And now, here we are.

And here’s the thing.

I’ve sent the same cold email to several other leads.

They haven’t hired me yet. But they have all gotten back to me very quickly, with an almost identical response.

“Sounds interesting. I will keep you in mind.”

So what was the cold email? Well, if you’d like to find that out, you can get it inside my shamelessly promiscuous A-List Zone. For more information:

https://bejakovic.com/alist-zone