Parris Lampropoulos

Contradicting the great Parris Lampropoulos

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A while back, I wrote about a critique I’d gotten from Parris Lampropoulos.

Parris is an ultra-successful copywriter, who gave me some advice about a sales letter I’d written.

“The body copy is fine,” he said.

“But you never want the headline to tip off that you’re selling something.”

The only exception, according to Parris, is if you’re the first person in a market.

I took Parris’s advice to heart. And I believe it’s made my copy better.

BUT!

I’ve just had a bit of contradictory feedback from one of my clients.

These guys sell physical products through ads on Facebook, which lead to advertorials.

I’ve been writing both the ads and the advertorials. The headlines I’ve been using strictly avoid mentioning the product.

So I was surprised to hear that the client tested out some new headlines, which mention both the product and the price.

Doing this decreased clickthroughs (expected) but increased sales (very unexpected).

This kind of boggles my weary mind. Especially, since the products we’re advertising aren’t unique (dozens of competitors sell identical stuff) and the price isn’t a bargain (you’d be able to find much better deals on similar products by searching on Amazon).

Maybe this testing data point will be useful in case you too sell ecommerce products through advertorials.

And it also shows that even the most iron-clad commandments of copywriting are only rules of thumb.

Yes, they increase your odds of success. But sometimes, breaking these commandments can produce better results. The only way to know is to test.

On an entirely different topic:

I currently have a book on Amazon about how I got $150/hr copywriting clients through Upwork.

I will be taking this book off Amazon this weekend. I will make it available some time later, but off Amazon, and at a higher price.

So if you want to read this book, at its current low price, while it’s still on Amazon, better act fast. Here’s the link to see what it’s all about:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book

How to lose the pork belly without sweating or starving

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It might seem like nonsense at first blush.

But it’s possible to lose fat — not just weight, but fat — without sweating your heart out or starving yourself to the brink of insanity.

The secret is olive oil.

If you’re a health-conscious person, maybe you think I’m just telling you to switch to a Mediterranean diet.

Or that the “antioxidants” in olive oil will somehow cause fat to melt.

Or that there’s some magic in the monounsaturated fatty acids, as compared to the usual butter or lard or canola oil or sunflower oil.

Well, it’s none of those things.

In fact, I’m talking about a kettle of fish that’s so different you will never spot it in a pet shop.

If you’re interested in finding out what I have in mind, then Google the late Seth Roberts and his Shangri-La diet.

Because I’m not really here today to talk about weight loss. Instead, I wanna talk copywriting.

And specifically, I wanted to share with you an “unlikely solution” lead (ahem, above) that I saw in a magalog by Parris Lampropoulos (Parris was making the same claim but with yoga, not olive oil).
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Anyways, here’s how you do the lead:

1. It might seem crazy but [here are the benefits] — [without the usual crap].

2. The secret? [unlikely solution].

3. [List typical objections].

4. None of these are true!

And here’s the thing. This formula doesn’t actually have to be the lead. You can insert it wherever you decide to introduce your product.

Such as for example, after an opening story, or after you’ve badmouthed the alternatives.

This is something I’ll try in an upcoming advertorial.

Speaking of which, I’m working on my guide to writing story-based advertorials. If you want to get notified when it’s out, you can sign up here:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials

Why practice does not make perfect

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I just read that a guy named Justin Blackman forced himself to write 100 headlines a day for 100 days.

Result?

Writing got easier by the end, and he feels he got better at the headlines.

I’m sure the first is true. The second might well be true.

But it also reminded me of something I’d heard from Parris Lampropoulos, one of the most successful copywriters working over the past few decades (he’s been paid a million dollars in royalties for a single sales letter — multiple times over).

“Practice doesn’t make perfect,” says Parris. “Practice makes permanent.”

If you’re moving in the wrong direction, then more practice just means you will be building up bad habits that will be harder to break down the line.

It will help you build confidence, yes.

But then one day, when you find yourself in a smokey roadside bar and two dangerous-looking biker-types start harassing your girlfriend, you’ll walk over, shake your shoulders loose, crack your neck, and say, “Guys, you don’t wanna do this. Because I’ve seen Steven Seagal handle this exact situation, and I’ve practiced his move 100 times a day for 100 days.”

So how do you avoid building up bad copywriting habits?

Well, the same way you avoid winding up in the gutter with a broken jaw. One option is you find people who have proven themselves in the skill you want to learn (think Daniel Cormier, and not Steven Seagal), and you do exactly what they tell you to do.

Another option is you pick fights on the street, but with people you feel you can handle. Sure, you might get a black eye or a bloody nose now and then, but if you adjust and learn from the beatings you get, you will slowly progress and build habits that work.

Or, of course, you can choose to do both. Which is what I’ve done and continue to do. Because practice is important. But deliberate, meaningful practice, and not just Steven Seagal’s patented trachea grab.

Anyways, if you need some of that copy jiujitsu to flip your customers upside down so change starts falling out of their pockets, get in touch with me and we can talk.

Nobel-winning scientist cuts brakes on “most powerful killing system in the world”

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How’s that for a sensationalist headline? But before you turn away in disgust, here’s the story that pays it off:

Back in the 1890s, a surgeon named William Coley was searching for information on sarcoma, a type of bone cancer that killed one of his patients. He came across the record of a house painter with sarcoma, who had had four surgeries to remove the cancer.

Each time, the sarcoma came back. And then…

The house painter developed a severe streptococcus infection, which was close to killing him. He somehow recovered from the infection.

And when he recovered, his sarcoma — which no surgery could eliminate — was also gone.

Coley concluded that the infection killed the cancer. So he went around the country, preaching the new cancer-killing gospel, and purposefully infecting many cancer patients with streptococcus.

​​All the infected cancer patients got very sick. Some of those who didn’t die wound up cancer-free, just like the house painter.

As a result, Coley’s ideas and methods became popular in the early 20th century. But eventually, they were forgotten as radiation and chemotherapy started to develop.

It was only in the 1970s that Coley’s ideas resurfaced again. Scientists realized it wasn’t the streptococcus infection that killed the cancer. Instead, it was the body’s own immune system.

Long story sh-, scientists started trying to figure out how to activate the immune system to attack cancer cells, even without infecting the patient with a dangerous disease like streptococcus.

It would be a kind of holy grail. Because as one scientist working in the field put it, “the immune system is the most specific and powerful killing system in the world.”

Anyways, one big breakthrough came in 1996, when a harmonica-playing immunologist from Texas named James Allison located a “checkpoint” on a specific type of immune cell known as a T cell.

This checkpoint acts as a kind of brake, stopping the T cell from going on a rampage against foreign invaders and local slubberdegullions such as cancer cells.

Allison figured out a way to “cut the brake lines” of this checkpoint, activating the T cells, and killing the cancer.

Fast forward a few more years, and this new approach, known as immunotherapy, started becoming a standard cancer treatment.

That’s a giant breakthrough, because until now, there were only three major ways to get rid of cancer cells — cutting (surgery), burning (radiation), and poisoning (chemotherapy).

Immunotherapy is a fourth way, and it seems to work well in some otherwise hopeless cases. (A famous instance was former president Jimmy Carter, who had advanced melanoma successfully treated with a immunotherapy drug in 2015.)

So yeah.

It’s kindofa big deal.

And it was all cemented last year, when James Allison and another scientist, Tasuku Honjo, received the Nobel Prize in medicine for their discoveries of mechanisms related to immunotherapy.

The end.

What, you’re wondering what this has to do with copywriting?

Well, not much. And also quite a lot.

There’s no direct lesson from immunotherapy itself that I can spot right now.

But there is a general rule of copywriting that says you want to present convincing and credible proof to buttress your sale and to make the close.

And if you’re doing anything related to health (the way I often am), then there are few better pieces of proof than being able to say:

“Based on a Nobel-Prize-winning discovery”

This is something I’ve spotted often in top health sales letters, and I’ve also had it confirmed, in a throwaway comment during a webinar, by Parris Lampropoulos, who is the equivalent of a Nobel-Prize winner when it comes to copywriting.

And that’s why I’ve decided to regularly go back in the annals of Nobel Prizes, and see exactly what those folks did to win.

Anyways, now we’re really at the end.

Or as the brothers Grimm might say, my tale is done, there goes a goose; whosoever catches it, may make himself a pillow out of it. In other words, if you need more guidance on how to write effective sales copy, including strong proof elements, you might like the following:

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

Hundreds of dollars of marketing and copywriting secrets for $21.36

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As I’ve mentioned recently, I’m traveling over the next few weeks. But I’ve got some big plans for when I get back home and get back to work.

I plan to apply lessons from a talk that Gene Schwartz made at Phillips Publishing to copy that I write for my clients. I plan to apply lessons from a Jay Abraham course to my copywriting business. I plan to apply lessons I’ve learned from a Perry Marshall lecture to a new affiliate project I will be kicking off.

These three resources — the Gene Schwartz talk, the Jay Abraham course, the Perry Marshall lecture — currently sell for hundreds of dollars.

That’s if you can find them at all.

And yet, if you dig them up, honestly consume them, and apply their lessons, I believe they will be a terrific investment that will over time make you much more than that what you’ve paid for them.

But here’s the thing. I didn’t pay hundreds of dollars for all these courses. I paid a total of $21.36.

That’s because all three of these reousces are among the 11 free bonuses for Brian Kurtz’s new book Overdeliver.

In case you don’t know Brian Kurtz, he was one of the main guys behind Boardroom (now called Bottom Line), one of the biggest direct marketing publisher of the last few decades. And he’s one of the best-connected and well-liked guys in direct marketing.

That’s one of the reasons why so many top marketers volunteered their valuable products — like the ones above — to serve as bonuses for Brian’s book.

(I also suspect it’s why Brian’s book gets over-the-top praise from many of the big names I’ve mentioned frequently in these emails, including Parris Lampropoulos, Ben Settle, Mark Ford, Joe Sugarman, Gary Bencivenga, Ken McCarthy, Kim Krause Schwalm, and the list goes on.)

Anyways, I’ve personally found Brian’s offer very valuable — even though I have only been going through the bonuses and haven’t even made it to the core book yet. In case you want to check it all out for yourself, and maybe even invest $21.36, here’s where to go:

https://overdeliverbook.com/

How to help your prospects grasp the horror of buying from the competition

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Having trouble getting hard? Don’t get suckered into buying yohimbe. Here’s why…

A couple of days ago, I talked about the proven and ancient copywriting principle of “grasping the advantage.”

That’s when you tell your prospect how your product is unique…

And you then paint the picture of all the ways this uniqueness will gently make your prospect’s life better.

Today, I want to point out a technique I spotted in a top-performing sales letter. In a way, this technique is the negative version of “grasping the advantage.” You might call it “grasping the horror.”

The sales letter in question was written by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos, and it promoted a natural boner pill.

After going through all the ingredients of this pill and helping the reader grasp the advantage of each, this letter addressed the competition.

Among which, there is yohimbe. A natural, fat-burning, erection-promoting supplement.

Yohimbe wasn’t safe enough to be included in this pill, says Parris. That’s because yohimbe can raise blood pressure.

Now, at this point, Parris has basically stated the disadvantage of yohimbe. But that’s not enough. After all, maybe the prospect doesn’t realize why higher blood pressure is a problem.

Don’t worry. Parris immediately makes him grasp the horror of this disadvantage:

“Because yohimbe raises blood pressure,” Parris says, “it puts you at risk for stroke, heart attack, kidney failure, and seizures.”

Whoa. Better not mess around.

Of course, there’s some clever sleight of hand here.

Just because yohimbe raises blood pressure, it doesn’t mean it will cause stroke (in normal doses, it might only raise blood pressure marginally, not enough to create problems).

Parris gets around this with the vague phrase “puts you at risk.” This phrase connects the two pieces of information and makes the connection seem inevitable.

The result is that his prospect grasps the horror — even if the competition isn’t all that bad.

Sneaky. ​​Speaking of which…

​Be careful in case you sell a supplement or other health product through email.

Most advice you’ll come across is from people who have zero experience in this kind of marketing.

And if you follow this dud advice, it can put you at risk of losing a ton of sales, of getting mass unsubscribes, or even of getting your domain blacklisted as spam.

None of which is necessary. If you just follow the advice in my upcoming book, which you can get a free copy of here:

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

The “magic wand” technique for creating sexy sales hooks

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Here’s some hard-core nerd stuff for you:

If you are into copywriting, it helps to pretend you have a magic wand.

No, I’m not kidding.

As just one example of how useful a magic wand can be, let me tell you about a magic spell I learned from one of the most fearsome copy sorcerers out there, the mighty Parris Lampropoulos. This spell is called “The Sexy Hook.” It goes like this:

You take your magic wand…

You take your ordinary product — the thing you’re looking to promote…

And then with a wave of your wand, you say the magic incantation:

“With this wand, I now conjure the most amazing benefit/story/idea to help me promote this ordinary product.”

Sounds stupid?

Bear with me. Because stupid or not, this actually works. Let me illustrate.

I am currently re-working a sales letter for a probiotic supplement.

Probiotics can be tied to every aspect of your health. Which means it’s hard to pick just one good angle to start with.

Enter the magic wand.

I asked myself, since I have a magic wand, what would be the best possible thing I could conjure up to sell these little pills?

And I thought. And I pondered. And I reflected.

Ideally, I said to myself, I would want something that would win over the largest, most desperate, and most skeptical parts of this market.

Say, a scientific study. Which describes people who are doubled over with abdominal pain… constantly exploding on the toilet… and not being helped by any other medical treatment.

And then these suffering people would take an ingredient found in my probiotic supplement — and find their awful problems solved, beyond a reasonable doubt.

A wave of the magic wand (and several hours of research) later…

And whoosh.

There it was. The scientific study I was looking for. Published just a couple of years ago. And not part of the extensive research that the client had given me.

Real magic.

Hopefully this spell helps you the next time you’re stuck marketing your product. Just don’t share this knowledge broadly. It’s too embarrassing.

And if you have an ordinary (or extraordinary) product you’d like some help in promoting, then wave your nerd stick, head on over to the page below, and take advantage of my magical offer:

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

 

8 tired but effective sales cliches

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A word of warning:

You don’t wanna use too many cliches in your sales copy. (They’ll roll right off, like water off a duck’s back.)

But there are exceptions.

Some phrases are just so powerful that it doesn’t seem to matter how much they’ve been overused.

Here’s a collection of a few such cliches, taken from a couple of winning magalogs written by one of the most successful copywriters working today, Parris Lampropoulos:

1. “But that’s not all”

Once you’ve wowed your readers with an amazing benefit, you don’t want to let them sit and ruminate on it. You gotta keep ’em reading. And that’s what this phrase will do. (Its more proleish cousin, “But wait! There’s more…” might be a little too much these days.)

2. “A whopping 34%”

Is 34% good? Or not? Don’t let the reader wonder or draw his own conclusion. Whop him over the head with the statistic so he knows what the point is.

3. “The truth about X”

This isn’t a cliche that’s used by civilians, but copywriters and Internet marketers use it, and use it a lot. Because it works. People love secrets, and they want to be in on the know.

4. “What they found amazed them”

Back in 1942, when Victor Schwab wrote How to Write a Good Advertisement, he noted that the word “amazing” had long been overused, but it still seemed to have some pulling power. And so it continues, 80 years later.

5. “If you’re sick and tired of X”

I’m sick and tired of people using this phrase. But it’s so compact, and it gets the point across so effectively that it will probably never die.

6. “We’re putting our money where our mouth is”

Where else would you put it?

7. “We’ll refund every penny you paid”

I’m not sure this qualifies as a cliche. But it certainly seems to be a common trope in advertisements. It works because it’s specific and it paints a picture.

8. “The most amazing breakthrough in X ever”

Yep, making the most amazing promise in the history of advertising still works. However, be warned. This appeared in the close of the sales letter, not in the beginning.

And there you have it.

Eight amazingly easy ways to write just like one of the greatest copywriters of all time.

Of course, you might need some meat to connect these cliches if you do decide to use them.

And in case that’s not your core competency, or you’re really looking to improve ROI, you might find a  win-win solution in the following offer:

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

The obvious secret to creating blockbuster products

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I talked to a potential client a couple of days ago.

He’s selling a prostate supplement. It’s going well. And he now wants to create other products he could sell to the same audience.

So he wanted to know whether I could give him advice about which products to develop based on what I’ve seen working. I told him the truth:

I don’t know that I can predict which marketplace will sell the best. But I do know of a formula for almost guaranteeing that a product you create will be a blockbuster.

It’s a secret I learned from master copywriter Gary Bencivenga. In Gary’s own words, great products are “those with a clear-cut, built-in, unique superiority supported by powerful proof elements.”

Now, this might sound obvious. Or maybe too abstract. So let me give you a few real-world examples of what “powerful proof elements” really mean in practice:

# 1. RealDose Nutrition is an 8-figure weight-loss supplement company that I’ve written for. Their main product is called Weight Loss Formula No. 1. It’s a combination of four ingredients, each of which has been shown in clinical studies to improve a different hormone related to weight loss.

​​RealDose sources their ingredients in the same way as in the clinical study and they use the same dosage (hence RealDose). At core, their marketing simply consists of saying, “Our product works, and here’s the science to prove it.”

# 2. Another supplement company I’ve written for is Vitality Now. The face of that company is Dr. Sam Walters, who at one point formulated nutrition bars for NASA.

​​Unfortunately, Vitality Now isn’t in the business of selling nutrition bars. If they were, they could make a killing simply by saying, “The same nutrition bars used by NASA!”

# 3. I’m currently going through a magalog written by another famous copywriter, Parris Lampropoulos. This magalog is for a boner pill called Androx. One of the ingredients in Androx is cordyceps — a mushroom from Tibet that was used at the emperor’s court in China for its libido properties.

​​Thanks to this, Parris can open up the sales message by talking about how the Emperor had to have sex with nine different women every night, and how this was the supplement that made it possible.

With products like these, which have such powerful proof elements built in, the marketing writes itself. Or as Gary Bencivenga put it:

“It’s your mission to come up with a product so inherently superior that, as soon as it’s effectively explained, demonstrated, or sampled, your prospects have no conclusion to draw except “I want it!”

I hope that’s the kind of product you’ve got (or are looking to make). And if that’s the case, and you just want good ways to explain and demonstrate to your buyers WHY your product really is superior, then you might like my upcoming book:

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

I survived a copy critique from Parris Lampropoulos

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A few weeks ago, I got a shot at a copy critique from one of the most successful copywriters active today, the great and reclusive Parris Lampropoulos.

Now, Parris can apparently be brutal in his copy critiques.

Plus, the critiques he was offering would be done in front of an audience of several hundred people.

And it would all be recorded.

So I was a little nervous about submitting anything.

At the same time, it was a fantastic opportunity. After all, Parris has written dozens of million-dollar marketing campaigns, and here was an opportunity to get personalized feedback from the guy.

So I gritted my teeth, picked out a sales letter I had written last year, and submitted it.

This sales letter was for RightBiotics, a probiotic supplement sold by RealDose Nutrition.

Anyways, when the the big day came, Parris critiqued several other people’s copy before he got to mine.

And all throughout, he was encouraging and fair — even though he told a few people to burn what they had and start over.

Finally, it was my turn.

“The body copy is good,” Parris said. But there was a serious problem, which Parris pointed out with a question:

“John, are you the first person ever on the face of the planet to sell a probiotic supplement?”

(I am not.)

“So why would you come out and tip off you’re selling something?”

And it’s true. In my headline, I announced a “clinically proven new probiotic that does XYZ.” Regardless of how this letter was formatted — even if it looked like an article — the reader would know immediately I was selling something.

Doing this might be acceptable when you’re selling something incredibly unique…

Or when you’ve already got a good relationship with the reader.

But for cold traffic, Parris said, this simply wasn’t good enough.

And with that, the critique was over.

I was still alive.

And I even had a clear plan of action. That’s because Parris gave me a simple — though not necessarily easy — way to fix this sales letter.

I’ll talk more about this over the coming days, as I implement Parris’s critique.

For now, remember Parris’s advice about tipping off the reader. It applies if you’re ever running ads and trying to sell something to people who don’t know you.

On the other hand, if you’re not trying to make sales to cold traffic, you might consider sending them daily emails to build a relationship first.

And if you want some advice on how to do this well, you might like my upcoming book. It talks about several successful email campaigns I’ve written — including one for RealDose Nutrition, which tripled sales for a specific funnel.

What’s more, you can get a free copy of this book when I finish it (in the next month or two). To sign up, here’s where to go:

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