Samuel Johnson

3 reasons to 3+ your prospect

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Negotiation expert Jim Camp promoted a technique he called 3+. Camp said to cover each point of your negotiation at least 3 times in slightly different language.

“So you’re saying you want to subscribe to my email newsletter today. Is that right?”

“Are there any reasons you’d rather wait to subscribe?”

“And if you do get to the end of this post where the optin is, would you still be interested in subscribing? Are you sure?”

Camp did 3+ because he wanted to get to a decision that sticks, rather than just a flaky agreement.

But you can do something similar to get a click or a purchase from a prospect, even a flaky one. All you have to do is repeat your basic promise at least three times.

Don’t worry about annoying your reader. You won’t annoy him, as long as you surround your promise with new info. Phrase your promise in a new and surprising way. But keep hammering away at it.

Really? Yes. Because there are at least three reasons why this 3+ stuff works in sales copy.

One is that repetition creates belief. It shouldn’t, but it does. Just look at the stump speeches of politicians, or the headlines of the major news outlets. Repeat an outlandish idea one, two, three or more times, and people will adopt it as their own.

But that’s not all. Because repetition also creates desire. You’re greasing the groove.

Promise me something once, and I only hear your words. Promise me something twice, and I’m starting to imagine your promise being a reality. Make the same promise three or more times, and I’m getting impatient for the outcome.

But there’s a third and possibly most important reason to repeat your message over and over and over. And that’s the fact we’re living in a noisy world. Your reader doesn’t hear your whole message. He is distracted. He skims. He checks his phone. His mind is elsewhere.

You think you have his whole attention. You don’t. But you can still get your message across, if you keep repeating it. How many times? At least three. More is better.

None of this is new. Almost 300 years ago, Samuel Johnson said:

“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.”

You might already know that quote. What few people know is that Johnson kept talking after the dictaphone stopped recording.

“Yes,” Johnson said, “promise is the soul of an advertisement. But repetition, constant repetition, is the body of an advertisement. So keep repeating your promise to make it more real. Even if you get tired of it. Over and over. Because eventually, your prospect will hear you. And then he will buy.”

By the way, remember that 3+ from the start of this post? About subscribing to my email newsletter? You do?

Well, I’m not sure if you’re still up for subscribing. In case you are, here’s where to go.

Camelopards and soft Facebook advertorials

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Samuel Johnson, who wrote the first great dictionary of the English language, did not like to bathe.

“Mr. Johnson,” said a lady to him once, “you smell!”

“No madam,” retorted Johnson, “you smell. I stink.”

Had Johnson lived today, he might be a hard-working Facebook copywriter. At least that’s how I imagine it, after spending this morning “softening up” an advertorial supposed to run on Facebook traffic.

The original version of the copy mentioned death, bleeding, skin cancer, organ failure, and hospital visits.

The new version looks much the same. But there is no death or bleeding. Skin cancer has become growths on the skin, organ failure is now “internal systems” failure, and hospital visits have morphed into “a trip to the family GP.”

The first version was unacceptable. The second version seems to be acceptable, to Facebook at least.

But here’s the point I want to share with you, which might be useful even if you don’t write FB advertorials:

It pays to write an extreme, un-self-censored first version of your ad.

In other words, your initial draft should stink, not smell.

It’s easy to wave your arms a bit and clear out the stench from a particularly offensive passage. It’s much harder to take a bunch of lukewarm milk and turn it into pungent Limburger.

Finally, do you know what a camelopard is? You will soon. Because here, to close on an educational note, are three unique and precise definitions from that dictionary of Johnson’s:

1. “Camelopard, noun: An Abyssinian animal, taller than an elephant, but not so thick. He is so named, because he has a neck and head like a camel; he is spotted like a pard, but his spots are white upon a red ground. The Italians call him giaraffa.”

2. “Monsieur, noun [French]: A term of reproach for a Frenchman.”

3. “Oats, noun: A Grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”

All right, one more definition. Email newsletter, noun: A sequence of formatting-free emails, containing content like you’ve just read, arriving once a day to your own inbox. Available here.