Parris Lampropoulos

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/

Ginsu knives in corporate boardrooms

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“In Japan, the hand can be used as a knife. But this method doesn’t work with a tomato…”

— Original Ginsu knife commercial, cca. 1980

In copywriting, there’s something called the “false close.”

A perfect example of this is from the famous Ginsu knife TV commercial.

After showing you how the Ginsu cuts paper-thin slices of bread, how it’s sharp enough to saw through a tin can, and how it can even be used to chop wood, the narrator asks:

“How much would you pay for a knife like this?”

That’s the setup for the false close. You might expect that the pitch is coming soon. Instead, the narrator continues:

“Before you answer, listen…”

And then he tells you about all the incedible bonuses you get if you order your Ginsu knife right now.

A matching carving fork. A versatile 6-in-1 kitchen tool. A set of 6 precision steak knives. And a spiral potato slicer.

It’s only then, once you’ve been wowed with the craziness of the entire offer, do you get to hear the price. In other words, that’s when you finally get to the real close.

So should you use a false close in your selling?

It certainly seems so.

Not only does it work for TV commercials, but you can find examples of false closes in copy from some of the world’s best copywriters, including Mark Ford and Parris Lampropoulos.

And yet, other persuasion experts strongly warn against the false close.

For example, Jim Camp.

Camp was a master negotiator, who coached corporate executives in billion-dollar deals.

According to Camp, if you ever try a false close, you’ll get kicked out of the boardroom. At best, you’ll blow the deal and you won’t be invited back.

So how to square this with the Ginsu knife commercial?

It’s simply a matter of knowing your audience and your medium.

Yes, there are fundamentals of persuasion that work in just about any situation.

But convincing people to buy a $9.99 set of precision steak knives is going to take a different approach to closing a complex, year-long, corporate sale.

This might seem obvious.

But this basic principle — know what works for your audience — is violated a lot. Particularly when people try to Frankenstein copy from one market to another.

Anyways, this is one reason why it makes sense to specialize.

And that’s why, while I do write for different markets, I’m specializing more and more in writing health copy.

And if you want some of the best insights I’ve gained about writing for the health market (including writing winning sales emails for an 8-figure supplement business), you might like my upcoming book. For more info or to sign up for a free copy:

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

Parris’s big thing

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Yesterday, I mentioned a big and important principle that A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos uses to guide him in his work. In Parris’s own words, that principle is:

“What do I need to do to weight the odds so heavily in my favor that I know before I’ve even run the ad that it won?”

“Thanks, Parris,” you might say. “If I knew how to weight the odds in my favor and write a killer ad, I would simply do it! I wouldn’t need this stupid principle.”

Easy, friend.

This principle is very valuable.

And its value will become clear once you see it in action.

You see, in the same interview where he revealed this principle, Parris also told a story illustrating how he uses it in practice. Namely:

One time, he was trying to beat a control for a book on tax loopholes. The control made a giant promise as the headline: “Pay no taxes in 1997.” It was written by some unspecified brilliant copywriter, and it was running successfully for many years. Trying to beat it seemed like a suicide mission.

So what to do? Parris started digging through the research.

It turned out that, on average, readers of this book saved $10,731 on their taxes. So he came up with a new headline,

“How to Save $10,731 on Your Taxes Next Year”

This new headline was more specific than the original. People like specifics, sometimes even more than big promises. So does this mean this angle would perform better than the control?

Possibly.

Possibly not.

In other words, it wasn’t a sure shot. Which means that Parris’s big and important principle still wasn’t satisfied.

So Parris kept digging and digging into the research, until he found a second interesting tip: The IRS allows amended tax returns. In a nutshell, you could go back and change your previous year’s tax return with updated data.

Interesting.

Especially when combined with the first, specific numbers. Because now he had the new headline/subhead:

“Bombshell from top tax attorney: The IRS owes you $10,731. Here’s how to get it in as little as 60 days”

That’s a pretty intriguing statement, and those are some heavily weighted odds. And sure enough, Parris used this one-two punch to beat the long-running control.

Fortunately, most of us don’t have to go up against the world’s best copywriters and their long-running controls.

For example, I work with a lot of clients on Upwork. Most of them simply need well-written copy, delivered on time.

The thing is, many copywriters on Upwork can’t even do this. Which means that there’s a good opportunity for anyone who wants to jump in and start offering sales copy as a service on Upwork.

If you want a guide for how to do this, you’re in luck. I’m putting one together right now, and I will publish it on Amazon soon. It will even be on free promo for a few days after it goes live. To get notified when this happens, you can sign up below:

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

The brain chemical to replace sleep

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About 10 years ago, a sensational story appeared on various media outlets:

Scientists funded by DARPA (the military’s research and development arm) were working on a chemical to replace sleep.

As a test, they made a nasal spray out of this chemical, and gave it to sleep-deprived monkeys to inhale.

They found that the tired and worn-out monkeys suddenly acted and performed just like normal, well-rested monkeys.

Soon, the story promised, even great apes like you and me will be able to snort our way to wakefulness and focus.

I found out about this intriguing story yesterday, while doing research for an email to my aromatherapy list. I wanted to write about orexin (the brain chemical from the monkey study above) and its connection to all-body inflammation.

The thing is, even though orexin is an interesting and important topic, it’s not a sure shot as a lead for a sales email.

That’s why I was so happy to find the sensationalist DARPA story from above, and to use it as an email lead (it got me some sales, too).

So what’s the point of this?

Well, a few days ago I listened to a fascinating interview with one of the world’s most successful copywriters.

His name is Parris Lampropoulos.

He’s the guy that’s brought in to defeat controls that have been running for years — and that seem unbeatable.

Apparently, Parris has a success rate of 80% in outperforming these world-class pieces of copy.

In the interview I mentioned, Parris revealed the underlying secret principle that allows him to be so successful. He even gave a demonstration of this secret principle as he uses it in practice. And this lesson from Parris is what guided me while I wrote the sleep-deprived-monkeys lead I mentioned above.

Honestly, I think this is one of the most valuable ideas I’ve ever heard about copywriting.

I’ll talk about the specifics of Parris’s big copywriting secret in my post tomorrow.

And I will also discuss it in more detail in my upcoming book on email copywriting for the health space.

Speaking of which, you can get a free copy of that book when it comes out.

All you have to do is sign up, before the book is released. Here’s where you can do that:

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

The natural and complete cure for hair loss

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Let’s talk about a guy named Rob.

Around the age of 16, Rob started losing his hair.

He went to the doctor, and the diagnosis was uninspiring:

Male pattern baldness. Prognosis: slick and shiny.

Rob started on the available treatments right away, including laser therapy and Rogaine. This slowed the hair loss, but it didn’t stop it, and it certainly didn’t reverse it.

Fast forward about ten years.

What would you expect has happened to Rob in the meantime?

Surprisingly, Rob has regained all his lost hair, completely naturally, without drugs, transplants, wigs, toupees, or that blackening hair spray that used to be sold through infomercials.

Nothing beats a demonstration

So how did Rob do it? In a nutshell:

Detumescence therapy.

Basically, Rob performed a special massage on his scalp, twice a day, every day, for about a year. After month five or so, hair slowly started growing back. By the end of the year, he regrew most of the hair he had lost over the previous decade.

So what’s going on?

Well, there are a few legitimate ways that detumescence therapy might actually work.

One is that the massage releases excess sebum that’s been stored in the scalp, which is slowly choking off hair follicles. Another is that it possibly breaks up and even reverses calcification of the scalp, which has been implicated in hair loss. A third way is that it increases blood flow to the scalp, which is basically the same mechanism that drugs such as Rogaine depend on.

But don’t take my word for it.

Detumescence therapy was first described in a scientific paper back in 2012, by a team out of the University of Hong Kong. It was based on a clinical study in which 100% of the subjects regrew 90% of their hair.

And it has been supported by additional studies out of Japan, which looked at the effects of massage and acute inflammation on hair regrowth.

Anyhow, I’m not here to pitch detumescence therapy to you. (If you want to find out more about it, I recommend Rob’s site Perfect Hair Health.)

All I wanted to do was to illustrate a technique I just learned from an interview with one of the most successful copywriters of all times, Parris Lampropoulos.

Parris writes a lot in the health space.

And in this interview, he shared a three-step process for presenting outrageous (but true) health claims, and convincing prospects that they are real. You can see an example of it in this post. It basically goes story-explanation-studies.

And if you want more such examples, or a breakdown of other ways to present health claims, sign up for my upcoming book.

It deals with email marketing for the health space.

It’s not out yet. But you can get a free copy when I finish it up if you sign up now:

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

How to get copywriting clients quicker than a jackrabbit on a date

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After three days, I’ve finally finished watching A Christmas Story.

So let me share one final lesson with you from this great movie.

In one scene, while setting up the lights on the Christmas tree, the fuse blows out. No problem. As the narrator says:

“The old man could replace fuses quicker than a jackrabbit on a date.”

Which suggestive image I guess is one for the parents watching.

It’s also a great phrase, and it’s going in my great phrases list, which also includes gems such as:

lost like an idiot on a moor
a lame invalid of a sofa
oppression olympics
horse it in
a curable romantic

… and many, many more.

Why use these weird phrases?

Well, as Parris Lampropoulos says in the new episode of David Garfinkel’s Copywriters Podcast, when you tell people something new, it creates a dopamine dump in their brain. They literally become addicted to reading your copy.

Now Parris was talking about new facts and new ideas. But methinks new and surprising phrases have the same effect. And that’s why I’ve been putting together this list, and reaching into it regularly.

Anyways, if you want to rustle up copywriting clients quicker than a jackrabbit on a date, I have something that can light your fuse.

It’s my upcoming book on the business of freelance copywriting on Upwork. More info here:

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