Justin Goff

Evergreen “wireless” fears

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Did you ever hear of “radio face”? It was a curious affliction that swept through households in England in 1925.

​​The background:

Radio had started to spread in the early 1920s. It became more and more popular to have one at home. As a result, radio programming started to explode like corn over a fire.

By 1925, many people found themselves leaning in to the loud speaker… straining to hear each crackling word of the news or the radio drama.

Finally, a companion who was ready to entertain all day long!

Radio seemed perfect. Until, that is, some of the female listeners noticed a worrisome thing. From an article I read:

“The strain of trying to catch every word of wireless broadcast constantly puckers the lines around a woman’s forehead, and draws more lines around the sides of her mouth.”

As a result, many women in England started to live in fear of “wireless wrinkles.”

“Concentration at the Earphones Brings Wrinkles to the Brow.”

Who knows, maybe they were right?

In any case, this made me think how evergreen the fear of “wireless” has been. You could use it in 1925… and also in 2021.

For example, over the past couple of years, I’ve written a lot of copy for a team of ecommerce guys.

One of the longest-running front-end advertorials that we’ve had going is about the fear of “wireless pickpockets.” The offer is an RFID blocking card you put in your wallet, to keep these wireless pickpockets from swiping your money… and giving you wrinkles from all the frowning you would do afterwards.

A few years ago, Stefan Georgi and Justin Goff ran a webinar, offering to critique copy. I submitted the “wireless pickpockets” advertorial.

Stefan and Justin looked at the advertorial tweaking the copy wouldn’t produce much improvement… but Justin had some tested-and-proven advice about the rest of the funnel:

* Add a lot of reason why copy for the first upsell — even though it was just more of the same RFID card.

I passed that golden info on to my clients. But as far as I know, they never implemented it. So maybe it will be useful to you instead, in case you or your clients also run some kind of ecommerce offer.

Anyways, Justin and Stefan put out two more webinars over the past few weeks. If you haven’t watched them yet, I might write more about them in the coming days… and tell you about any golden info that I find inside.

Meanwhile, I want to tell you about a cool newsletter. It’s called The Pessimists Archive. It’s where I found the above story about radio face and wireless wrinkles.

The whole newsletter is really just interesting newspaper cutouts from decades past. It shows you how many things never change… how many fears and appeals stay the same… how predictable human reactions can be, even century after century.

And you know what? This can be valuable if you are the type to track trends and profit from them.

​​So in case you want to check out news from the past that’s still news, here’s the link to the Pessimists Archive:

https://pessimistsarchive.substack.com/

General Patton and 4 top copywriters

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“The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them, except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other Asiatic characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and is an all out son of bitch, barbarian, and chronic drunk.”
— General George S. Patton, August 8 1945

Why is Patton the most famous American military man, at least among those who never became president?

You might say it’s his wartime performance. That might be so. I’m not a history buff so I can’t say. But my guess is there were lots of other great generals in American history who never became household names. Why Patton?

Maybe it’s the Oscar-winning movie that was made about him, which had the Francis Ford Coppola golden touch. But this raises the question, why make a movie about Patton? I’ll tell you my theory.

Patton became famous because people perceived him as a true leader, and they perceived him as a leader because he was (among a few other things) so unflinchingly opinionated.

Look at the quote above. It’s so stupid. Not just by 2020 standards, but by 1945 standards. But the content of what you say doesn’t matter much as long as you say it with enough fury, conviction, and disregard for what others think.

I have another theory: I believe most people (myself included) have this empty socket in their brain. We are constantly looking for an authority to plug into that empty socket, if only for a little while. The appeal of strongmen like Patton is one manifestation of this… but so is our obsession with celebrities… or even the popularity of concerts and clubs.

All of which has clear implications for persuasion. While doable, it might be hard to get to Patton-like levels of opinionatedness and charisma in real life. But if you’re writing, say a sales letter, then you can definitely whip yourself up into the right kind of certainty and frenzy, and channel that across the page.

Speaking of writing sales letters and authority, I listened to an interesting discussion today between four top copywriters. They were Stefan Georgi, Chris Haddad, Justin Goff, and Dan Ferrari.

Odds are, you’ve already watched this discussion. But if you haven’t yet, it’s worthwhile. There’s nothing tactical being discussed on this call, but there’s a lot of behind the scenes thinking that might interest you if you’re into copywriting or persuasion. Here’s the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThUusBt1dIM

[3-Min DR News] The end of protein, $1M+ email drops, DJ Trump ad spend

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My local radio station has these short, punchy 3-minute news segments.

I like them. So I thought I would do something similar on occasion, but about direct response marketing. Here’s the first edition:

The end of protein?

I just listened to a new interview with Dr. Steven Gundry. Gundry is the face of Gundry MD, a Golden Hippo company. (Golden Hippo one of the biggest direct response health businesses.)

Anyways, Dr. Gundry says in the interview that you should limit your protein to 20 grams a day because that’s all we need and because “protein ages you.” So we’ve come full circle. First fat was bad and carbs were good… Then carbs were bad and protein was good… And now protein is bad and fat is good.

Will a low-protein longevity diet be the new fad for the 2020s, spawning hundreds of new direct response offers, like keto and paleo did before it? Here’s the Gundry interview if you wanna decide for yourself:

https://jamesaltucher.com/podcast/508-dr-steven-gundry

A multi-million dollar email

Justin Goff’s “Wife saves husband — doctors stunned” email drop started running several years, or at least that’s when I first heard about it. In any case, it’s running still. I see it on average twice a month in Newsmax alone. In fact, it ran again today.

Who knows how many millions of dollars worth of business this single piece of copy has brought in? Here’s a version from Glenn Beck’s list is in case you wanna read and study:

https://newslettercollector.com/newsletter/wife-saves-husband-doctors-stunned-by-military-fountain-of-youth-drink(2)/

DJ Trump in 3rd place with ad spend

I wanted to see which advertisers are spending the most on FB ads. Foolish, it turns out. There’s no way FB is sharing that data. But, thanks to Trump and Cambridge Analytica, FB is sharing very clear data about which political campaigns are spending how much.

Looking over the past 30 days, the top spender, at around $4.3 million, is one Tom Steyer, a billionaire Dem candidate for president I had never even heard of. No. 2 is Mike Bloomberg who entered the race only two weeks ago, but already spent $1.5 million. In 3rd place, we have DJ Trump, with around $1.4 mil in ad spend.

If you wanna see the full list, which links to the ads for all the candidates, and also includes other high-integrity advertisers such as Goldman Sachs and Planned Parenthood, here’s where to go:

https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/

Got a hot tip?

3-Min DR News wants to hear from you. You can submit your industry news or gossip, on the record or off, by clicking here and writing our editorial team (of one) an email.

One multimillionaire’s secret of uniquely profitable email lists

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Multimillionaire marketer and copywriter Justin Goff recently described his uniquely profitable email list.

His list has fewer than 1000 subscribers.

Even so, he’s managed to get hundreds of customers from it, all of whom have given at least $2k to Justin, and some of whom have given $10k and above.

One way he did this was by making people fill out a form to get on his email list, and (presumably) rejecting those who aren’t a good fit.

Should you do the same? Well, here are 7 reasons in favor of such an approach:

#1. It makes people more eager to get on your list

I’m on Justin’s list. Before I was on it, I was just so curious. What do his emails talk about to make them worth protecting in this way? It was probably one of the two main reasons that made me sign up (or rather, apply) in the first place.

#2. It makes people on your list pay attention more

One of the conditions for joining Justin’s list is to make a commitment to open his emails and read them. And commitment might just be the most powerful motivator of human behavior.

#3. It makes for better prospects

Like I mentioned above, fewer than 1000 subscribers… hundreds of thousands (or possibly millions) of dollars in earnings.

#4. Fewer trouble makers

I recently got a flood of new subscribers to my own email list from some unknown source. Inevitably, I got some spam complaints as well. You reduce the odds of that happening if you make people jump through hoops before subscribing.

#5. Your emails get delivered instead of flagged as spam

Just a consequence of #4 above.

#6. Your emails get delivered instead of flagged as promotion

The more that people open, read, and engage your emails, the more likely it is that your future emails to all your future subscribers will also land in prominent places rather than in the promotions tab.

#7. It’s cheaper

Many businesses I’ve worked with have email lists in the hundreds of thousands… and some in the millions. It’s not free sending all those emails, even if you’re doing it from your own servers. And if you don’t have your own servers, then a constant drain to pay for email sending you will never get anything out of.

And there you go. 7 reasons. There might be others I’m not thinking of.

So am I saying to stop growing your email list?

No.

​​It’s just that in this situation (as in so many things), there are two objectives you need to simultaneously optimize or meet.

One is the number of new subscribers…

The other is the quality of those subscribers.

It’s possible to create a business doing just one or the other.

But as an increasing number of marketers (even those like Justin, who cut his chops on converting cold traffic) are finding out, it doesn’t pay as well per unit of work invested.

Justin Goff and Stefan Georgi critique my advertorial copy

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Do you know the old chestnut about the drunk copywriter?

He was standing under a flashing neon sign that said ADVERTORIAL.

A passing policeman noticed this strange scene.

“What’s going on here?”

“I lost my keys,” said the copywriter.

“Right here, under this flashing ADVERTORIAL sign?” barked the cop.

“No,” the copywriter said softly. “Somewhere out there.” And he waved his arm into the darkness of the night.

Today, I got a copy critique from Justin Goff and Stefan Georgi.

​​Both Justin and Stefan are multi-million dollar marketers and copywriters. And today, they actually critiqued a bunch of different pieces of copy, mine being one of them. They had lots of insightful and valuable things to say.

So for example, I submitted an advertorial I’d written earlier this summer. According to the client I wrote this for, this offer is “profitable at the moment, although not doing crazy numbers.”

Justin was the one who did most of the critiquing for my copy.

“The advertorial copy is pretty good,” he said. “You could tweak it but it won’t bring in a massive win.”

And then he pointed out some opportunities, specifically in the upsell pages and the actual order page. These were things that would take a small amount of work to do, but could yield a 2- to 5-fold increase in profits. At least that’s what the two experts thoughts.

I won’t spell out these proposed changes here.

I just want to point out that if you’re doing a decent job with copy, then that’s probably not where your lost keys are hiding.

I mean, that’s not where your biggest improvements lie.

And that’s why it doesn’t make sense to keep looking for them under the flashing ADVERTORIAL sign, even though the light is best there.

Instead, you might have to wander out into the darkness that is the rest of your sales funnel. ​​In case you want some help with that, and you want to know the advice that Justin and Stefan gave me, you might like my upcoming guide on writing advertorials. To get notified when it’s out, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

The bully, the charismatic, and the invisible salesman on Facebook

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“In my experience, there are basically three types of salesmen: the bully, the charismatic, and the invisible man.”
— Mark Ford

Over the past few months, I’ve been writing a lot of copy for a client in the ecommerce space.

Their typical funnel goes like this:

Facebook ad -> advertorial -> product page

I’ve been handling the FB ads and the advertorials for a bunch of this client’s products. And it’s been going well. But I recently got some feedback.

It seems some of our FB ads have been getting rejected. In the client’s own words:

“We’re getting a few disapprovals here and there for calling out the user. I don’t agree with it but seems everytime we mention the word ‘you’ even if it’s not a direct call out some reviewers will disapprove.”

So what’s going on?

In a nutshell, it seems Facebook is trying to prevent copy that acts like the “bully salesman” in Mark Ford’s quote above.

By Mark’s definition, that’s the salesman who “succeeds by pressing you so hard that you make a purchase just to make him go away.”

One trivial way that Facebook seems to be reigning in this type of copy is by singling out the word “you,” like in the ads I’ve been writing.

But according to million-dollar copywriter Justin Goff, Facebook also seems to be rejecting clickbaity, fear-laden, “punch-em-in-the-gut” sales letters.

So is this the end of direct response marketing on Facebook?

Not necessarily.

As Mark Ford says above, there are still two other ways to make sales through a combination of personality (charismatic type), stories (both charismatic and invisible types), and indirect claims (invisible type).

So for example, Justin also told the story of one marketer he knows.

She had a long-running VSL that Facebook had started rejecting.

So she wrote a new VSL.

And instead of the usual doom and gloom, she made it softer, kinder, and gentler — like a friend giving you advice.

Facebook approved, to the extent where the new sales page was performing better than the old one.

Promising.

In my personal case, I’ve done something similar:

I’ve simply focused on that old standby, pure story telling, with little or no obvious selling.

In other words, I’ve removed that offensive word “you” by focusing on the harmless word “I”…

And then telling people to click through if they want to learn more.

It’s working at the moment. Which might interest you in case you’re planning on running offers on cold Facebook traffic.

And if you are running such offers, and you want help with the copy, get in touch with me here and we can talk.

Why I’m not qualified to work in the most elite copywriting shop in the world

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During the past week, I was agonizing over a career decision.

Specifically, I was considering whether to apply for a job at Stansberry Research.

If you know direct marketing, you might have heard of Stansberry. They ran the “End of America” campaign a few years back. This was one of the most successful direct marketing campaigns of all time, responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

The point being, Stansberry Research is an elite place for copywriters.

So when I saw that they are hiring, I got a pain in my side and a bug in my head.

Should I apply?

On the one hand, I don’t want a proper job.

On the other, this would be an opportunity to perfect my copywriting skills at the very highest level.

So what to do?

In the end, I didn’t apply — because it turned out I am not qualified. They are only hiring experienced financial copywriters, and I’ve written very little in the financial sphere.

But that’s really not the biggest issue. Because, had I wanted to, I could have written samples of financial copy, specifically as a way to angle for this job.

What got me instead was an interview I saw with top copywriter and marketer Justin Goff. Justin doesn’t do financial copy, but from what I can tell, he sells to a similar audience that Stansberry Research sells to.

And that’s where the problem lies.

Because in this interview, Justin was going over the psychological triggers that motivate this audience.

Things like anger… resentment… fear… suspicion… closed-mindedness… a sense of moral superiority…

In short, these are not people I would want to spend my time around in real life.

And in the same way, I would not want to spend my whole day, every day, researching and writing to this audience. I’m afraid their bad karma would rub off on me.

Maybe it’s crazy.

Or maybe it’s just my brain coming up with excuses, because I like the freelancing life and I don’t really want an office job ever again.

Whatever the reason, the conclusion is I won’t be applying to Stansberry Research now or in the foreseeable future.

And I will continue to focus on the health space. Speaking of which, if you want my insights about email marketing in the health space (including lessons from an email campaign for an 8-figure supplement company that tripled sales for a specific funnel), you might like my upcoming book:

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

Interesting guarantees, part 1

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“You’re going to like reading this post. I guarantee it.”

Guarantees are a penny-a-dozen throughout marketingworld. And even double-your-money-back guarantees aren’t so unusual. Typically though, they are reserved to fairly small offers.

Today however, I came across a version of a double-your-money-back guarantee that’s pretty enormous. I heard about it on a conference call put on by Justin Goff and Ian Stanley. Both of these guys are very successful marketers and copywriters, and they were on the call sharing their experience and answering questions about marketing.

At the end of the call, Justin made a pitch for his Beat Your Control Seminar. This is a $25k affair where he will share his 18 “control beaters” and work with businesses to improve on their marketing funnels.

And that’s where the massive guarantee comes in. Justin’s promise is that he will beat these companies’ controls within 48 hours, and make them an extra $100,000 to $5 million this year. If he doesn’t, he will write them a check for double the money they spent to attend — a $50,000 guarantee.

Now I’m not sure whether Justin is really so experienced that he can beat every control out there. Or whether it’s a marketing strategy. Or whether he is simply ok losing that money with a few customers because he will recoup it with others, especially down the line.

Perhaps he’s simply counting on the quality of information that he’s sharing, and on his skills as a consultant, so that for anyone who attends his seminar, the promise and the guarantee will become irrelevant.

I remember reading something similar about Gary Bencivenga. When he joined an upstart marketing agency, they ran an ad in the Wall Street Journal that said they will run a test — either they beat your control or they will refund your ad spend costs. Apparently they got a ton of business from that ad, but nobody was interested in running the test — they just wanted to hire Gary’s agency outright.

A similar offer from 40 years ago.

Anyways, Justin’s guarantee was big and specific and impressive enough that I wanted to record it, in a similar way that I recorded an interesting offer last time. I’ll keep recording interesting guarantees and offers going forward. Which brings to mind something else Gary Bencivenga wrote:

So, Top Gun, what “red shirt” should you be looking for in your marketing campaign? What do you think is the one thing that could most easily double your response? A breakthrough headline? Hot new premium? A lapel-seizing lead for your letter?

Decide what it is, then start looking for it today. And don’t close your eyes until you find it.

The case against steak upsells

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“Hell yeah we’ll take five more steaks if you cut the price”

Imagine going into a restaurant. You’re hungry and you’re raring for a steak. So you look over the menu, find your steak, wince a bit at the price, but decide to get it.

“I’ll have the 12-ounce steak,” you say to the waiter. He writes this down patiently in his notebook and then says,

“Would you like 18 more ounces of our fine steak at 50% off? You can always take it home with you if you don’t finish.”

Because you’re hungry and it’s a tempting deal, you order the extra slab of meat at a discount. But of course, when it arrives, you can’t finish it. You take it home, where it becomes more of a responsibility than a joy, sitting there cold and hard in your fridge. A few days later you toss it out.

Next time, you stay away from that restaurant. Somehow, you have a bad feeling. You spent too much money. You were emasculated by not finishing the steak. And you don’t need the temptation a second time.

I’ve recently heard a couple of contrasting positions on upsells. Just yesterday, I listened to an interview with successful copywriter and marketer Justin Goff. He talked about how the best upsells are often more of the same.

“Buying one bottle of supplements? How about 3 more at a discount?”

At the same time, Justin talked about the incessant need most direct response businesses have for new customers. According to Justin, new customers are the ones who buy the product, and even the ones who take up affiliate offers. That’s position one.

Then there’s Sean D’Souza. Along with a copy of his Dartboard Pricing book, I got a copy of a talk Sean did for the Ken McCarthy’s System Club. This talk is on the topic of consumption. And one of the things Sean says explicitly is that you don’t want to overwhelm your customers with product, even if they are willing to buy it.

Sean also talks about treating customers the way you would treat your kids — that is, looking out for them and charting a path for them down the line.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Sean’s business seems to rely on a much smaller number of customers, who happily keep coming back year after year and forking over thousands of dollars for Sean’s courses and trainings. It’s what Sean calls a focus on consumption over conversion. That’s position two.

So what’s the conclusion? I guess it depends on what kind of business you’re looking to run. If you want to scale quickly and max out revenue, then aggressive “steak” upsells make sense. If you want to have a long-term business, another strategy might be better.

For example, even in Sean’s way of running a business, the right kinds of upsells can have a place.

Imagine if in that restaurant, the waiter did something different. Imagine if instead of upselling you on more steak, he recommended a special beer on tap, and his favorite salad off the menu. This would still be an upsell, though it wouldn’t make as much money as selling more steak.

Your consumption experience would be much better. You’d be more likely to return. And the restaurant wouldn’t have to constantly worry about digging up new customers.

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.