Today, I will share a super valuable copywriting commandment with you.
Tomorrow, I will tell you an equally valuable commandment, which is the exact opposite of what I’ll tell you today.
How is that gonna work? We will see. Let me set it up with a little riddle for you:
* Almost foolproof contraception: It’s over 99% effective but… so new… most people have never even heard about it!
So, can you guess what this “almost foolproof” method of contraception is?
If you’ve been through my Copy Riddles program, you should be able to answer easily.
In fact, you should be able to answer this riddle even when the neighbor’s car alarm jolts you awake at 3am… while you’re all sleepy and a little drooly… just lifting your head up for a moment and saying, “Yes of course that almost foolproof method of contraception is —” before you drop back down to the pillow and pass out again.
But maybe you haven’t been through Copy Riddles. In that case, answering this riddle might be a bit harder. So I’ll will give you a hint that might help.
A few years ago, the Harvard Business School blog published an article titled, “When Negotiating a Price, Never Bid with a Round Number.”
They cited a bunch of scientific studies, in-lab experiments, and statistical analyses.
And the conclusion was:
Better make your prices, and really all your published numbers, jagged, specific, and unround. That’s because people don’t trust or respect a round number much — they figure that little thought and work went into it, and the number is probably not accurate or not representative.
This is really an example of the incredible uselessness of science, if you ask me.
After all, this bit of scientific research came out a few years ago.
But how long have marketers and business owners known, pretty scientifically, to make their numbers not round? A long time. For example, take Gary Halbert, the 499-pound gorilla in the world of copywriting.
Gary is responsible for that sexual health bullet above. It was part of his sales letter to sell his “Killer Orgasms!” ebook.
I won’t tell you what Gary’s “almost foolproof contraception” method is. But knowing that Gary was a smart marketer, and combining it with that obvious and almost useless bit of HBS scientific news, will probably be enough to get you to Gary’s contraception method, or at least to get you close.
But maybe you really really need to know the answer.
In that case, you can try to dig up a copy of Gary’s book. Or just wait for the next run of Copy Riddles, which will happen in June, and probably at some jagged, specific, not-round price.
Or maybe not?
Maybe the next price of Copy Riddles will end in a zero, or maybe even two zeros?
If you are curious how or why I would possibly want to make my price a nice, even, round number, after everything I’ve just told you, then read my email tomorrow. It will tell you the answer. You can sign up to get it here.