Joe Sugarman

How to sell lousy rotten garbage

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“HOT”

That’s the headline of a famous ad written by Joe Sugarman some time back in the 1970’s.

The ad was for a membership program called Consumers Hero — basically a mail-order catalogue of refurbished goods such as clock radios and digital watches.

Sugarman used the “HOT” concept to suck people in — the idea was that this stuff was so cheap that it was basically like stealing from the manufacturers.

And that’s not the only clever idea in this piece of copy.

For example, there’s also how old Joe addressed an objection that the reader was sure to have earlier on. The objection being:

“Sure, the refurbished clock radio might be cheap, but isn’t it junk?”

To which Joe says, of course it is!

In fact, as Joe walks you through Consumers Hero and its service, he uses the phrase “lousy rotten” six times to describe their merchandise. At one point, he even refers to it as “garbage.”

This is something that famed negotiation coach Jim Camp used to call the “negative stripline.””

In effect, it’s when you take a more negative position that the person you’re negotiating with (or selling to).

This disarms much of your adversary’s negativity.

And it can even cause him to try to bring you to a more neutral position.

“Lousy rotten garbage? It can’t be that bad! Tell me more about it, and I’ll see if I want one.”

And of course, Joe does tell you. All about how the money and care that goes into refurbishing the lousy rotten clock radio, into testing it, and in making sure that you’re perfectly satisfied when you get it and use, including a five-year warranty.

So what’s the point?

If your prospects are sure to have an objection, don’t shy away from it.

Beat them to it.

And even make a joke out of it.

And then, end on a less negative note. Such as:

If you have lousy rotten garbage on your hands (just kidding!) and you’re trying to offload it onto your customers, you might like the email marketing lessons found here:

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

Stinkbug surprise

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Last autumn was the first time it happened.

Stinkbugs, invading my apartment. Flying around aimlessly. Bumping into lamps and walls.

Fortunately, stinkbugs are easy to scoop up and dispose of. As a girl I used to know would say, “They have no instinct for life.”

As stinkbugs kept appearing in my living room, I started to wonder, how can such a stupid creature be taking over the world?

It turns out stinkbugs are not always this slow and useless.

They only come inside homes when the weather turns cold. They then enter a state known as diapause, a kind of insect hibernation.

I found out about this from an article titled “Home Invasion,” written by Katharine Schulz, a Pulitzer-prize winning author.

But don’t worry. I’m not here to talk about stinkbugs. Instead, I want to talk about an interesting writing technique that Schulz used in her article.

While talking about the diapause, Schulz writes:

“It is also thanks to diapause that stinkbugs, indoors, seem inordinately graceless and impossibly dumb. But, as we all know, being graceless and dumb is no obstacle to being powerful and horrifying.”

Did you catch it?

There in the second sentence. That unresolved allusion to something “graceless and dumb.”

For reference, this article is from 2018 and was published in the New Yorker, a left-leaning magazine.

When I read the above passage, a wave of pleasant surprise passed over me.

Not because I am outraged over “graceless and dumb” creatures being horrifyingly powerful.

Instead, I was just satisfied at having solved a little puzzle. After all, Schulz didn’t spell it out who or what she was talking about.

This little puzzle spiced up the article for me. It certainly seems to be a good tactic for Pulitzer-winning New Yorker writers.

But should you ever use unresolved verbal puzzles in sales copy?

It seems crazy.

After all, you want sales copy to be as transparent and easy-to-read as possible. As copywriting coach David Garfinkel likes to say, “Either you work and get paid, or your reader works and gets paid” (ie. he keeps his money and doesn’t buy what you’re selling).

And yet, there might be occasions when posing a little intellectual challenge for your readers can work in copy.

Here’s what Joe Sugarman, who ran and wrote copy for a 9-figure mail-order business, has to say on the topic:

“If you make your copy too obvious, the reader feels either looked down on or bored. Provide a little suspense so that the reader has to come to a conclusion on her own using intuition, thought, sensation, and emotion, and you’ve got a very good force working for you.”

And sure enough, old Joe used to pepper in such bits of “mental engagement” in many of his wildly successful ads.

Something for you too to consider.

Of course, there are places in copy where you never want to leave the reader thinking or scratching his head. Such as, for example, that call to action.

That’s why, in case you are looking to make your sales emails stink less, here’s exactly what todo:

Head on down to the page below. And then make a decision whether you want to opt in with your email. If you do opt in, I’ll send you a free copy of my upcoming book on email marketing — once I finish it in the next couple of months. Here’s the link:

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

How to harness the reverse testimonial

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In his Adweek copywriting book, marketing genius Joe Sugarman described an interesting technique.

He called it the “reverse testimonial.”

Let me illustrate it by talking about myself. Or more specifically, about my persona on my aromatherapy website, Unusual Health.

You see, in the aromatherapy world, the man at the top of the pile is a guy called Robert Tisserand.

​Robert is extremely knowledgeable about essential oils.

​​For several decades, he’s lectured around the world about the science behind EOs and about how to use them safely.

​​He’s co-authored a massive book on the topic, filled with literally thousands of scientific citations. He has a huge following online, and he’s routinely considered to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, expert on essential oils.

So how does this apply to me?

Well, several people have recently asked me what my qualifications are to write about essential oils.

So I wrote an email to my aromatherapy list to answer exactly this question. And I started by talking about Robert Tisserand, and how great he is.

I then said how I don’t claim to be an essential oil expert, and how I never expect to have the kind of EO knowledge that Robert has. But then comes the twist, where I explain why this is actually a good thing for my readers.

You’ll have to be on my aromatherapy list to know exactly how I pull this off.

But how I pull off the twist is not the point. The point is that I used Robert Tisserand and his status as “one of the world’s leading experts in aromatherapy” to work for me.

That, in a nutshell, is Joe Sugarman’s reverse testimonial.

You start off by talking about the unbeatable advantages a competitor has over you — including testimonials and social proof — and then you turn that around to actually work in your favor.

Anyways, this might work for you as well, if you are not yet the man at the top of the pile in your market.

By the way, if you need help with sales emails, you might like my upcoming book on the topic. It distills what I’ve learned by writing for clients in the health space (and for my own aromatherapy list).

For more info, or to sign up for a free copy, here’s where to go:

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

How to get readers to drool like fifth-grade schoolgirls with Bieberfever

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I follow tennis closely, and I spend a lot of time reading the latest news and gossip on the r/tennis subreddit.

Every time a grand slam starts up (like the Australian Open right now), one particular redditor pipes up.

His handle is -Rainman500.

And he always writes the same kind of fictional joke post (AKA “shitpost”). They always feature a cast of current tennis stars, with lots of cryptic references to recent tennis news, and they always end the same way: Rafael Nadal gets demolished/decimated/decapitated.

Now here’s why I bring this up.

Whenever Rainman does one of these posts, it shoots up to the top of this active subreddit, with hundreds of upvotes and dozens or hundreds of comments.

This happens in spite of the fact that the posts aren’t very funny. Or particularly valuable in any other way.

In fact, one other redditor complained that the community drools over Rainman like fifth-grade schoolgirls with Bieberfever.

So what gives?

Why is Rainman so popular?

And is there a lesson here to help you inspire Bieberfever in your audience?

There might just be.

And if you look at how I described Rainman’s posts, you’ll probably guess what I have in mind.

In case you don’t get it right away, here’s another example to help you out.

It’s from my current best friend, Joe Sugarman, who made hundreds of millions of dollars selling BluBlocker sunglasses.

Joe did pretty well before BluBlockers, too.

For example, he once sold some kind of physical spell checker with an ad in the Wall Street Journal (this was back in the 1980’s I believe).

There was a clever gimmick in this ad:


Joe purposefully misspelled some words in the copy. And when you put in your order, you could also add in a list of misspelled words you found. For each misspelled word you found correctly, you got 2 bucks off the spell checker.

The promotion was successful. The spell checkers sold well.

But more impressive was that Joe kept getting calls and letters from people who didn’t even want the stupid spell checker. They just wanted to make sure they had gotten all the misspelled words from the ad. Some of them had even spent hours poring over the ad over and over.

By now, I think it should be obvious why Rainman generates Bieberfever.

And like I said, this is something you can easily apply to your copy as well. If you want to see how, you’ll want to get a copy (free, if you sign up now) of my upcoming book on email marketing in the health space. And if you want, you can even use this book to confirm that you’ve identified Rainman’s secret correctly. Here’s the link to sign up for a free copy:

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

 

Mystery PUA offers product marketing advice

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Once upon a time, “pick up artist” Mystery made a rather objectifying comment about women:

“Treat a six like a ten, and a ten like a six. You won’t go wrong.”

What does this have to do with copywriting?

Nothing probably.

Except it mirrors very closely the product marketing advice of direct response genius Joe Sugarman. Says Joe:

“A rule of thumb is to explain a complicated product in a very simple way and explain a simple product in a very complex way.”

For example:

When Joe was selling the first electronic blood pressure unit back in 1980, many people were still intimidated by computers. So Joe didn’t harp on the circuits inside or the assembly code that made this gadget work.

Instead, in a one-page ad, he devoted a total of 3 sentences to how the electronic beast works (wrap it around your arm, inflate it, listen for the beep).

No technical jiggery-pokery, no intimidation through jargon.

But sometimes, jargon is just what you want.

For example, a student of Joe Sugarman, named Frank Lewis, was selling grapefruit through direct mail.

Grapefruit. A pretty simple product.

So in a one-page ad, Lewis devoted five paragraphs to describing the unique features of his “Royal Ruby Reds” — everything from their color (“rich red”), taste (“natural sugar”), acid balance (“low”), juiciness (“high”), meatiness (also “high”), smoothness (can’t be “wind scarred”), and shape (can’t have a “sheep nose”).

​​He really sold this thing.​

Mystery would be proud.

Anyways, this advice can be directly applied in case you’re a freelance copywriter, offering your services on online platforms such as Upwork.

For example, it influences how you structure your description of the services you offer — and how you convince clients that you’re worth hiring.

I lay out all the details of this in my upcoming book on how to become a highly paid, top-rated sales copywriter on Upwork.

If you’d like to get notified when this book goes live on Amazon (and when there will be a short free promo period), sign up below:

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

The marketing genius of colonel Tom Parker

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Without the Colonel, we probably wouldn’t know Elvis.

Colonel Tom Parker was Elvis’s manager from 1956 on.

He made Elvis a household name, and he made himself very rich in the process.

For example, back in 1956, the Colonel signed a merchandising deal to produce a bunch of Elvis tchotchkes, everything from charm bracelets to bookends to stuffed “hound dogs.”

By the end of that year, this contract had already brought in $22 million dollars.

Good. But not great.

After all, not everybody was feeling swept away by Elvis mania — and not everybody was buying Elvis bobby-sox!

No problem .

The Colonel even came up with the idea of selling badges that read “I hate Elvis” and “Elvis is a jerk” — for that other half of the population.

Which I think is a great marketing lesson.

Of course, your product probably doesn’t inspire love or hate on a nation-wide level. And it probably doesn’t make sense to start selling the opposite of what you currently sell.

But the same mindset can apply.

Rather than looking at your detractors and wringing your hands about how they don’t like you, do what 9-figure direct marketing wizard Joe Sugarman used to do:

Look at every problem as an opportunity.

For example, back when Joe was running his Consumers Hero membership program (which sold refurbished goods at cut-throat prices), he got a nasty letter from a disgruntled customer who said he wanted to cancel his membership because the merchandise was junk.

Joe published this bad feedback in the regular Consumer Hero newsletter. He added how he doesn’t really agree, and in any case, he and his team keep striving to do better. And then he went on to talk about all the good news stuff they had in the pipeline.

Just something to consider if you have a business and you’re running your own marketing.

Another thing to consider:

I’ll soon be publishing my Upwork book on Amazon. Once it goes live, there will be a short free promo period. If you want to get notified when that happens, sign up below:

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

Briefs

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Sometimes it can be good to stand out. For example:

Back in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, one Joseph Sugarman made hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales through full-page ads he ran in various magazines. He was competing for the attention of readers with other advertisers, most of whom were trying to cram as many features and benefits as possible into their ad headlines.

Not so with Joe. Much of the time, he ran his ads with cryptic one- or two-word headlines I’ll call “briefs.” Examples include:

“Hot”

“Pet Plane”

“Magic Baloney”

“Vision Breakthrough”

“Hungarian Conspiracy”

Joe’s theory was the all the visual elements of an ad — the headline, the images, the logo, etc — serve only one purpose.

And that purpose is to get the reader to read the first sentence.

The ultra-short headlines old Joe used helped do this in a few different ways.

For one, they stood out, relative to all the other ads out there, and they attracted attention. Two, they were easy on the reader. It doesn’t take a lot to digest one or at max two words. Three: even though they were short, all these headlines were curiosity-baiting. And here’s why that’s so important.

Imagine I’d used a different short headline for this post. In fact, imagine it was simply, “Short Headlines.”

I don’t think, and maybe you would agree, that it would work nearly as well as “Briefs,” which hints at what’s inside without giving it away, while at the same time conjuring up images of red underpants in your mind.

Anyways, I think briefs are great. And they should definitely be used on occasion.

But at least when it comes to daily emails, they shouldn’t be used all the time. It stops being novel or intriguing. Nor should they be used as a crutch, when a more direct, benefit-oriented title, headline, or subject line would do better.

For example, I’ll soon be launching a new book on Amazon. It’s titled:

“How to become a $150/hr, top-rated sales copywriter on Upwork”

I could have called this book “Upwork Secrets.” Or “Freelancing Baloney.”

But considering the platform I’ll be selling on, the people I’m after, and the kind of content that’s inside the book, I think I’ll be more effective with the long title.

Anyways, once I launch the book, it will go through a short free promo period. If you want to get notified when this happens, sign up below:

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

Creative guarantees vol. 2: Consumers Hero

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How do you double your conversion rate?

Well, you can try changing your headline. You can tweak the price or your offer itself. Or you can do what Joe Sugarman did back in the 1970s for one ad he ran in magazines like Popular Science.

Sugarman was the genius behind BluBlocker sunglasses — he sold around $300 million worth of those. But he also sold a lot of other random stuff through ads in magazines, even including an airplane.

For instance, the ad I’m talking about today was for something called Consumers Hero. This was basically a membership club with a $5 signup fee, which allowed you to buy refurbished goods at cut-throat prices.

Old Joe, marketing maven that he was, tested everything.

A new headline improved response by 20%.

A different price didn’t seem to have much effect at all.

But changing just the guarantee — or as Sugarman calls it, “satisfaction conviction” — doubled the response. So let’s look at these guarantees, before and after.

The old one was pretty vanilla, something along the lines of:

“If you don’t buy anything through your membership and you want to cancel, I’ll refund the unused portion of your membership.”

Standard, right? But now, here’s the one that doubled response:

“But what if you never buy from us and your two-year membership expires? Fine. Send us just your membership card and we’ll fully refund your five dollars plus send you interest on your money.”

Creative. And likely to make potential customers think, “he’s going to lose his shirt!” According to Sugarman, that’s the kind of reaction you’re looking for when writing a guarantee.

By the way, I got all this info from Joe Sugarman’s book on copywriting, original titled “Advertising Secrets of the Written Word.” It’s one of my goto’s for copywriting wisdom.

That’s why it’s going on my “Copywriters Hero” bonus that I’m making available for free to people who get my upcoming book on freelance copywriting on Upwork.

The book itself will teach you the business side of getting set up on Upwork, getting clients, and charging increasingly expensive rates for your copywriting services. But it won’t teach you anything about the craft of copywriting. You’re on your own for that.

However, the “Copywriters Hero” bonus will include a list of the best resources I’ve used to actually learn about the craft of copywriting, and ones that any newbie can use to get up to speed fast.

If you want to get a copy of the Upwork book when it goes live on Amazon in a couple of weeks (there will be a short free promo period), sign up below to get notified when it’s out:

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

A Christmas Problem

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It’s Christmas Eve tonight, so I wanted to write a Christmas-themed post.

I rummaged around my brain, and remembered a great scene from the movie “A Christmas Story.”

Little pudgy Ralph, the main character, gets a snowball to the eye from the neighborhood bully, Scut Farkus. Scut then taunts him:

“What are you gonna cry now? Come on, cry baby, cry for me. Come on!”

But instead of crying, instead of running off, instead of just standing there and taking a beating, little Ralphie slowly but surely goes berserk.

He jumps on Scut and beats him to a pulp while a “steady torrent of obscenities” pours out of him.

A problem, about to become an opportunity

Great scene. All I needed for my post was to tie this scene in with some kind of marketing lesson. One problem though.

I couldn’t come up with anything.

I went through a long list of marketing lessons I’ve collected over time. I went through lots of half-baked email ideas I’ve previously laid aside. I sat and stared at the ceiling and hoped for inspiration.

But nothing.

So I gave up. And I went back to re-reading Joe Sugarman’s Adweek Copywriting Handbook. And in there, Joe mentions off-handedly how he always looks at problems as opportunities.

For example, one time he was selling a calculator below the recommended price through an ad in the Wall Street Journal. The manufacturer then complained to Joe about the low price.

“No problem,” said Joe. “I’ll fix it.”

And he wrote a second ad for the WSJ, explaining how he has to raise the price because the manufacturer is complaining, and inviting customers to buy the calculator before the price goes up.

Problem? Yes, and an opportunity too. The second ad outpulled the first one.

So I decided to apply this lesson to my problem (no marketing idea for today’s post), and here we are, you and I, learning something together.

Anyways, no Christmas post would be complete without a present. The present I have for you is currently in the oven, and should be ready in a few days’ time.

It’s my book on becoming a successful sales copywriter on the online platform Upwork.

If you want to get notified when I finish it up, sign up at the link below. And of course, have a merry Christmas, and may you wake up tomorrow to a Red Ryder range model air rifle waiting for you under the Christmas tree.

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

How to use satanism to sell your product

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A couple of weeks ago, a festive satanic statue was placed inside the Illinois statehouse.

It’s the holiday season, after all, and all religious organizations that wanted to could be represented.

Predictably, this led to outrage by conservative groups.

Shocked coverage on news outlets across the world.

And a jump in applications to join the Temple of Satan, the body behind the statue.

So what is it that these satanists are promoting? What evil, filthy, depraved trick are they hoping to play on the rest of the world?

Well, the statue itself has the inscription, “Knowledge is the greatest gift,” and it shows a hand, holding an apple, with a snake coiled around it.

And here are some tenets of the satanist faith, taken from their website (I’m cherrypicking):

– Compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason

– Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world

– The freedoms of others should be respected

It seems these satanists want compassion, reason, empathy, a solid scientific education, and respect for others.

In other words, the Temple of Satan sounds like it’s a cross between the Public Library Association and Amnesty International.

Pretty, pretty boring.

Well intentioned, yes.

But not inspiring or viral at all.

And yet, here we are, reading and talking about them, all because it’s under the satanist umbrella.

Which, of course, is a very good lesson to learn. It’s something that expert copywriter and direct marketer, Joe Sugarman, who made millions selling tech gadgets and blue-blocking sunglasses, called “concept selling.”

Concepts sell better than products.

The Temple of Satan gets attention and new applications to join.

Compassion and empathy — not so much.

So if you’re selling a good, solid, healthy product or service, then it might be time to think of a concept like “satanism” to sell more of it.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be satanism itself. But with a bit of work, you too can come up with a dramatic, attention-grabbing concept, without offending too many religious groups in the process.

If you want a few case studies of how I’ve done this for my own products and for clients, sign up below, and get a free copy of my ebook on email marketing for the health space (ETA February 2019):

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