Bullet 1
The Credo Technique
Stand for something
and you’ll never stand alone.
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
Welcome to your first issue of Bencivenga Bullets, my complimentary e-letter about how to boost your response, online and off.
Tom Watson, Sr., the founder of IBM, said that to be great, a company needs a religion.Good advice, too, for an e-letter like this.
So in this first Bullet, let me share my core beliefs about advertising, and you can see if they match yours.
First, I believe the purpose of advertising is to sell, not win awards or applause. This is why each Bullet will share a little
secret of master salesmanship, applied to direct response advertising.
Second, I believe that a single measurement is worth a thousand opinions. That‘s why these Bullets trade not in opinions, but
proven strategies my clients and I have discovered by investing tens of millions of dollars in scientific direct response tests.
Third, I believe in selling with integrity. The strongest ads tell the truth dramatically. You do n‘t have to lie, shortchange your
customers, sully your good name or cut corners. Treat your customers by the Golden Rule and they will reward you with much
more gold.
Fourth, I believe in you, in the tremendous untapped power of your mind to achieve anything you truly desire and believe, as long
as it does not harm others. So in these Bullets, I will serve up bite-sized secrets of great direct response advertising, powdered with
some magic sugar, little tips for unlocking your own creativity, productivity and talent to achieve your greatest potential.
If you share these four beliefs, I am delighted we have found each other. You and I are kindred spirits, marketing comrades. Which
leads me to:
Bullet #1: In your copy, especially your Welcome Letter, never be afraid to say with clarity and boldness precisely what you believe
and specialize in. Like the original IBM, have a company religion and evangelize it with zeal.
The Credo Technique.
I call this the Credo Technique.
Credo (pronounced CRAY-doe) is Latin for ―I believe.‖
But it is much more than a technique. It is an expression of your most strongly held core values which serve as a clarion call to
gather the like-minded faithful of your marketplace.
You‘ll find that when you clearly stand for something, you will never stand alone. Indeed, standing for something special in
your overcrowded marketplace sets you apart from armies of me-too competitors who try to be everything to everybody, and
wind up meaning nothing special to anyone.
Using the Credo Technique is the surest way I know to attract and bond with your kindred spirits, your true believers, your most
loyal comrades in arms, your best clients and friends, as I hope I have found in you.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this link:
http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your
life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 2
A Fresh Box of Bullets
(How to Load Up on the Ones You’ve Missed)
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
Claude Hopkins, the Aristotle of Advertising, once said:
“Advertising is much like war, minus the venom….We are usually out
to capture others‟ citadels or garner others‟ trade….We must have
training and experience, also right equipment. We must have
proper ammunition, and enough.”
Proper ammunition. Top Gun, if you want to be a marketing sharpshooter, you need the best ammunition you can get, which is why
I have a special box of Bullets for you.
They are the Bullets you‘ve missed—published before you subscribed. You can load up on them by visiting the Bullet Archive at the
link below.
Go there now and you‘ll discover:
The Two Most Powerful Words in Advertising. (No, they are not ―new‖ and ―free‖ nor any other two words you‘d ever guess.)
The Secret of the Red Shirts. (This little-known technique makes it much easier to achieve anything you want in life, including
blockbuster ad campaigns that flood you with orders.)
The 7-Letter Word That Instantly Multiplies Your Creativity 11-Fold. (Not 10-fold. Not 12-fold, but exactly 11-fold, as you‘ll see.)
These Bullets and more are waiting for you in the Bullet Archive. Just click on the link below.
Apply the 80/20 Rule
To Achieve Breakthroughs Regularly
Finally, I want you to know I am a strong believer in the Pareto Principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule, or the rule of the
vital few and the trivial many.
In any human activity, just a small group of factors is responsible for the lion‘s share of success.
For example, just 20% of the salespeople earn 80% of the commissions.
20% of the authors sell 80% of the books.
20% of your daily activities generate 80% of your success and income.
And so on.
This certainly applies to the factors governing advertising success.
As a result, you don‘t need to master scores of rules and learn hundreds of secrets. Just a few—the right few—will bring
you outrageous success.
That‘s why I publish only one Bullet a month. I won‘t clog your inbox with a steady stream of the mediocre, to be read and soon
forgotten.
I will give you a single, solitary polished gem per month. You don‘t need more. What you do need is to learn these few Bullets well.
If you read, study and apply these few Bullets repeatedly, you may well become a giant of our industry. You will grow richer than
you ever would otherwise. And you will be happy, because achievement is the key to happiness.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
In short, you will succeed by mastering the vital few, while others squander their time on the trivial many.
To discover these vital few, visit the Bullet Archive now at the link below.
Top Gun, fire at will.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this link:
http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your life
like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 3
The Two Most Powerful Words in Advertising.
(No, they’re not FREE and NEW.)
Dear Marketing Top Gun:In this BULLET you‘ll discover the two most powerful words in advertising and how to use them to
explode your response fairly easily and consistently.
Which Headline Pulled Best?
First, to illustrate the secret, can you guess which of these two magalog headlines was the big winner for a financial newsletter?
HEADLINE A: (next to photo of financial guru, Charles J. Givens):
If you’ve got 20 minutes a month,
I guarantee to work a financial miracle
in your life.
(caption under photo)
Charles J. Givens, the self-made $200-millionaire,
entrepreneur and best-selling financial author of all time.
HEADLINE B: (same photo and caption):
The Millionaire Maker
(subhead) Can he make YOU rich, too?
***
Which of these headlines absolutely smashed the other in a split-run test, outpulling it by a huge margin and becoming a profitable
control for years?
Rather than just tell you the winner, let me describe how you could know in advance, once you understand the two most
powerful words in advertising today.
By the way, no BULLET you will ever read will give you more sheer power to boost your response consistently, beat existing control
packages easily and create your own blockbuster products than the simple yet profound secret I will now share. Yet I doubt if you have
ever read this anywhere, even if you have been a lifelong student of advertising.
Conventional Wisdom That‘s Wrong
First, you must understand why some of what you have been taught about direct marketing is wrong, or at least outdated
and incomplete.
Most of the few great books on direct response were written more than a generation ago by legends such as John Caples, David Ogilvy,
Claude Hopkins and one or two others. Most of their response-boosting secrets remain valid, as we will see in future BULLETS.
Their main teaching: benefits, big benefits, are the key to high response.
Makes sense. But there‘s a problem. These giants wrote this advice long ago when, compared with today, prospects were undermarketed. So, yes, back then, flat-out big benefits and words like FREE and NEW got people excited.
But today, more often than not, these same words and super-sized claims instantly trigger rejection. The problem is, words like
FREE and NEW and the big-claim style of advertising they reflect, have been so overused, they have become bright red flags that
instantly scream to your prospects, throw me away!
As proof, if I were to send you an email with the words ―new‖ and ―free,‖ I must misspell them, or your spam filter may bounce my
message.
Best proof: just ask yourself, do you get overly excited when you encounter an email or direct mail package trumpeting free or new
or some fantastic claim to make you rich, change your life overnight or grow body parts bigger than you ever dreamed?
Of course not.
You have heard such claims too many times. Your own exquisitely sensitive mental spam filter rejects all such messages instantly, as
you think to yourself, YEAH, SURE.
And those, Top Gun, are the two most powerful and influential words in advertising today. Yeah, sure.
They are the near-universal response of a too-busy world awash in marketing.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
These two words are merciless tyrants, mass murderers of response, because they are exactly the words your harried prospects think
every time they must slog through the daily, ever-rising tide of advertising claims.
Get rich quick! Yeah, sure (toss it).
Lose weight fast! Yeah, sure (toss it).
Make $1,000 a week stuffing envelopes! Yeah, sure (toss it).
Elect me and I will make the world safe, cut your taxes and give everyone universal health care. Yeah, sure.
And so on, including almost all of the big-promise messages you were taught to trumpet by the direct response scriptures.
A Simple Secret for Exploding Your Response
As a result, the vast majority of B level copywriters spend most of their days dreaming up ways to pump up ever-bigger claims …
which is why their mailings are almost always beaten easily by the tiny handful of A level copywriters who know this simple secret of
successful selling in an overmarketed world…
Never make your claim bigger than your proof. And always join your claim and your proof at the hip in your headlines, so
that you never trumpet one without the other.
There is no more powerful nor consistent way to explode your response. Surround your claims with stronger, bolder proof and watch
your response soar.
And I am not talking just about testimonials, which do help but have become so overused themselves, they have lost some of their
magic. I am talking about every method you can possibly find to bolster your proof and credibility.
There are many ways to do this, as I will teach you in future BULLETS.
One of the easiest ways is simply to avoid like the measles phrases so overused, they instantly trigger the Yeah, Sure response,
phrases such as get rich quick … lose weight fast … and, yes, become a millionaire.
Another way is to sandwich your big promise inside an IF …THENconstruction in your headline.
When you say IF (followed by a requirement your prospects have to meet), it seems to magically switch off and bypass their Yeah,
Sure alarm and usher you right in their front door to sell.
Surprisingly, it even works when you make the requirement easy to meet.
And now you know the winner, headline A:
If you’ve got 20 minutes a month,
I guarantee to work a financial miracle
in your life.
I know, the promise still seems so big and hard to believe. But that is the power of the IF…THEN construction. For some reason,
it seems to put the universal Yeah, Sure alarm to sleep, like punching in the alarm code when you enter your home.
The formula: a reasonably easy requirement, followed by a strong promise. Think up ways to use this for your own product.
Of course, be sure to pay off in your body copy why and how the benefit can be achieved by such an easy requirement. And if it is not
extremely easy, but only moderately easy, that is even better, as it is more believable. Surprisingly, candor is gloriously effective in
boosting response.
Anyway, test this IF…THEN idea sometime soon, measure the results, and you may be startled by how much it outpulls the
typical big-promise headline most ads rely on.
In fact, the headline above was so successful for Givens, his publishers asked me if they could adapt it for another of their products, a
weight loss newsletter by Richard Simmons. Against a strong control package that had beaten off all comers, they tested this headline,
keeping all other elements in the package the same:
(Next to photo of Richard Simmons)
If you’ve got 20 minutes a month,
I guarantee a thinner, healthier you.
It worked like a charm and handily beat the previous champ. (BTW, notice the absence of exclamation marks, the overuse
of which increasesthe aroma of hype and a resulting Yeah, Sure response.)
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Best Example I‘ve Ever Seen
The most effective use I have ever seen of this IF…THEN technique was a famous ad for a speedwriting course.
I saw it when I was a copy cub, commuting to Madison Avenue by subway. It was addressed to secretaries and ran for many years.
As you were standing there, hanging on your strap and swaying with the motion of the train, you‘d read this poster just above eye
level. The headline was a sentence handwritten in script across a spiral, steno-type notepad. It read:
F u cn rd ths msg,
u 2 cn dbl yr incm
w spdwrtng.
When I figured it out…
…I flt lk a blumn gnys!
So did legions of secretaries who responded to this ad for many years.
Coming in Future BULLETS…
…Many more ways to switch off the Yeah, Sure alarm and easily get your foot in the door, which is half the challenge in
direct marketing.
In your next BULLET: The most important advertising question you can ask. This, too, is a secret you have never read elsewhere, yet
it will make a huge difference in your marketing fortunes. You will see.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this link:
http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your life
like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 4
The Most Important Advertising Question
Ask this simple 5-word question, stand back
and watch your breakthroughs—and response—erupt.
Dear Marketing Top Gun:In this Bullet, you will learn a simple five-word sentence that gives you an almost unfair advantage in
boosting your response, outselling your competition and triggering an ongoing stream of creative breakthroughs.
Asking this simple question is the easiest way I know to get yourself and your staff to think outside the box. It can literally make
you wealthy and establish your reputation as a marketing visionary with a Midas touch.
This is true whether you‘re an entrepreneur, infopreneur, copywriter, marketing manager, CEO—anyone with anything to do
with marketing.
Shameless over promising? Not at all, as you‘ll now see.
Here‘s the question:
What are we really selling?
Just five little words. But let‘s explore their revolutionary power, first on a basic level, then advanced.
A Little-Known Secret of Master Closers
First, always remember that advertising is nothing more than salesmanship multiplied by a mass medium. This is why it can unleash
such powerful leverage in making you rich and successful. It is a persuasive salesperson able to close thousands or even millions of
sales at once. And then do it again tomorrow and the next day.
Knowing this, the happiest hunting ground I‘ve ever found to uncover new ways to explode response is to learn the secrets of master
salespeople and then apply them to direct response.
What follows is easily one of the most powerful.
Early in my career, a wizened old Copy Chief taught me that one of the shrewdest questions master closers always ponder is,
―What are we really selling?‖
For example:
You are not selling grass seed. You are selling a greener lawn.
You are not selling boilers and BTUs. You are selling warmer, cozier winter nights at a 27% fuel savings.
You are not selling baseball tickets. You are selling memories of sunny afternoons that a father and his children will cherish forever.
Back in 1781, Samuel Johnson understood this well. When he was appointed to auction off the Henry Thrale brewery, he announced,
―We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.‖
Perhaps lipstick king Charles Revson said it best: ―In the factory we make cosmetics. In the store we sell hope.‖
You get the idea.
Whenever you are marketing anything, always ask, ―What are we really selling?‖ Don‘t stop until you‘ve got a long list of answers
and test an ad built around each of your best. The difference in response will often astonish you, open up whole new markets as well
as lots more opportunities to raise the question again.
But We‘re Just Getting Started.
Let‘s Think Even Bigger…
If you want to grow rich in direct response and perhaps even establish a reputation as a marketing visionary with a Midas touch, just
start asking this same question of not just a single product or service, but of your entire enterprise.
Some revolutionary examples:
A hundred years ago, the railroads dominated the American economy. If you had asked the railroad moguls of the day what business
they were in, they would have replied, ―The railroad business, of course.‖
But had they raised our 5-word question, ―What are we really selling?―, they could have realized they were in the
transportation business.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
And that simple insight could have allowed them to dominate whole new transportation industries that would soon emerge—
automobiles, airplanes and trucking, whose revenues would dwarf those of the railroads. But the railroad tycoons never saw
these upstarts coming. They were blindfolded by the familiar. They were in the railroad business.
Another example:
For many decades, cigarettes were sold on the basis of ―rich tobacco taste.‖
Then some diabolically clever soul raised the question, ―What are we really selling?‖
He reasoned that teenagers don‘t start smoking to experience ―rich tobacco taste.‖ Heck, most teenagers turn green with their
first drags on a cigarette.
What are we really selling? Why do teenagers start using such an instantly noxious product? Obviously the answer is to look hip
and rebellious among their peers. To imitate more glamorous, powerful, individualistic adults. To project a cooler self image.
A cooler self image—that‘s what cigarette makers were really selling. And so was born The Marlboro Man, the strong, aloof cowboy
on horseback, squinting into the sunset like Clint Eastwood, his own man, impervious to the demands of society—just like so many
teenage boys crave to feel and look like.
Result: Marlboro sales skyrocketed and to this day, decades later, Marlboros remain the world‘s top-selling cigarette.
Such is the power of this simple 5-word question.
Another example:
When a man named Ray Jacuzzi was getting nowhere trying to sell his whirlpools to physical therapists, he refused to give up.
Instead he asked, ―What are we really selling?‖
Another possibility arose—hot tubs for homes—and that idea catapulted him to stratospheric success.
Another example:
By the 1950s, almost every family in America owned a big square white refrigerator. As long as it kept the milk cold and didn‘t
conk out completely, families were content to let it sit in the kitchen forever.
So how do we sell more refrigerators when everybody owns one?
―What are we really selling?‖
Hey, we could start selling refrigerators as kitchen decor.
Let‘s produce them in decorator colors and styles to suit every taste and fashion. This way, when people remodel their kitchens,
they‘ll want new refrigerators to match.
That insight quickly became (and largely remains) the driving force behind new refrigerator sales.
The automobile industry had come up with the same simple answer decades earlier. How could new rivals sell cars when Henry Ford
dominated the business with his basic black cars? (Ford had boasted, ―You can have a Ford in any color you want, as long as it‘s
black.‖)
His rivals asked, ―What are we really selling?‖ What happens if we change the answer from ―transportation‖ to ―style‖?
Look, we can‘t compete head-on with Ford selling basic ―transportation.‖ He has that market locked. But we could start offering cars
not just with Henry‘s basic black color and one-size-fits-all features, but in lots of different colors and models, so that cars can now
be an expression of personal style. Then we‘d be selling something different and open up a whole new market.
That was the breakthrough—and the way cars are marketed to this day.
So think for a moment…
What are you really selling?
Are you sure? What else could it be? How might you repackage your product, or add to it, to trigger new demand or crack open
a whole new market? Think big!
Starbucks sells more than coffee. Disney World sells more than rides.
Ask ―What are we really selling?‖ often enough and I guarantee this—bold new answers will arise and with them, major
opportunities to open new markets and explode your response.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
In Your Next Bullet
Your next Bullet will be what I call a Silver Bullet, one so special, it will change your life in many positive ways as soon as you
start using it. It will startle you with its effectiveness and simplicity. It will empower you to be far more successful, with less effort,
in marketing or any other activity you choose.
In fact, this Silver Bullet is possibly the most reliable secret for getting whatever you want in life without strain. Yet you have
never read it elsewhere, I promise. You will see.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this link:
http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your life
like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 5
The Secret of the Red Shirts
A little-known secret for instantly accelerating your
success in marketing or any other activity in life.
Dear Marketing Top Gun:Today I bring you a rare Silver Bullet, a secret so powerful, it can work a profound change in every area of
your life, including marketing.
I learned it from Edward De Bono, regarded by many as the world‘s top authority on creative thinking.
The secret is remarkably simple. In the next 60 seconds, it will empower you to open your eyes and see the world in a new way. It will
let you uncover many of life‘s treasures hiding in plain sight, and can be used to obtain anything you desire far more easily.
I call it…
The Secret of the Red Shirts
Let‘s imagine that you and I are sitting in a large stadium, watching a baseball game on a sunny afternoon in mid-July.
I say to you, ―Top Gun, look around the stadium. Take a good look and then close your eyes.‖
You do so.
Eyes closed? Okay.
I then ask, ―Top Gun, how many red shirts did you notice?‖
You think for a moment and reply,‖Why, I really didn‘t notice any. I was looking at the crowd.‖
Just what I thought. When it came to noticing red shirts, your eyes were wide open but you were still asleep.
Alright, a second chance. Scan the crowd again, but this time, look for the red shirts.
You do so and suddenly notice more red shirts than you can count.
Instantly, you have just experienced a quantum leap in your ability to perceive red shirts.
That‘s cool, you think. But why is this such a powerful secret for mastering marketing … or anything else in life?
Simple.
For the words, red shirts, substitute blockbuster headline.
Or irresistible offer.
Or product that will make you rich.
Or new report that will sell like wildfire.
Or career of your dreams.
Or love of your life.
You won‘t likely stumble across any of these things by going through life staring blankly at the crowd. But you will spot them
unfailingly once you look specifically, exclusively and persistently for each.
In short, intention facilitates perception.
―Seek and ye shall find‖ is one of the oldest truisms of life. But it works only when you seek for one thing specifically, exclusively
and persistently.
This is why The Secret of the Red Shirts takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.
The problem is, we all want many things at once. Life is so rich and enticing, we flit from light to light like moths at a carnival. We seek
not only red shirts. We desire whole wardrobes, awash in a peacock‘s palette of colors, and we want them all simultaneously.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
But as you saw in the stadium of your mind, life reveals its precious opportunities one at a time. To find a red shirt, you must look for
a red shirt and only a red shirt, and keep looking for a red shirt until you find one. Then you can move on to yellow shirts, or whatever
else you desire in life.
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.
In Your Next Bullet
Your next Bullet will reveal the 7-letter word that makes it much easier to beat any control ad, in any medium. It‘s probably the
most important word in the history of creativity, but almost no one has ever heard of it.
It will easily multiply your creativity 11-fold. Not 10-fold. Not 12-fold, but exactly 11-fold, as you‘ll see in your next Bullet.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this link:
http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your life
like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 6
The 7-Letter Word That Instantly
Multiplies Your Creativity 11-Fold
Dear Marketing Top Gun:The 7-letter word is SCAMPER.Never heard of the SCAMPER secret?
Top Gun, that‘s what I‘m trying to give you in these Bullets, little secrets for exploding response you‘ve never heard elsewhere,
instead of the same old, same old.
This one is a real beaut. It will singlehandedly let you generate more breakthroughs than you ever imagined, and you‘ll do so with
an ease that will make others think you must have dropped your hair blower into the tub and zapped your brain to a higher level.
SCAMPER is an acronym created by Alex Osbourne, the father of creative problem solving.
Each letter stands for something simple you can do to get a fresh take on anything—a headline, offer, product, market, layout,
anything. It instantly gives you 11 easy ways to multiply your number of new solutions.
Whenever you‘re trying to solve a marketing problem, just start playing with each of the capitalized words in the following list:
S = SUBSTITUTE (a new, surprising or more contemporary element for a tried and true one).
C = COMBINE (successful elements from two or more different sources).
A = ADAPT (a winning headline, product, offer, etc. from another product category).
M = MODIFY, MINIFY OR MAGNIFY (any element).
P = PUT to other uses (who else can use this and why?)
E = ELIMINATE (one or more of the elements that have always been included, and see what happens).
R = REARRANGE, REVERSE OR REDEFINE (any part or the product, selling process or problem you‘re confronted with).
Three Quick Examples…
Take the word, SUBSTITUTE.
The Doubleday Book Club became one of America‘s most successful mail order companies by offering best-sellers with the appealing
proposition, Take Any 4 Books for 98¢.
(The number of books and price have varied over the years, but that‘s the basic offer—an armload of books for a ridiculously low price
in exchange for your commitment to buy more later.)
Doubleday wondered, can we conquer lots of smaller, highly profitable niche markets with this same offer?
They substituted other concepts into their winning formula and, voila!—built a sprawling empire of new mail order profit centers,
including the Military Book Club … the Mystery Guild … the Quality Paperback Book Club … the History Book Club … the Children‘s
Book-of-the-Month Club … The Good Cook Book Club … and many others.
Let‘s Try the Word, Combine
Many of the hottest money-makers on the internet are sites devoted either to news or pornography. A show called The Naked
News combines the two, having good-looking announcers, both male and female, giving straight news as they completely disrobe.
(Can revealing their sources be far behind?)
How About the Word, Adapt
One of the most famous mail order ads in history was the Sherwin Cody ad for a course in English grammar. The headline:
Do You Make These Mistakes in English?
The body copy cited embarrassing grammatical mistakes most of us commit, making ourselves seem uneducated and instantly
proving why we need the course. This headline was so strong, it was unbeatable for 40 years, outpulling every other ad that
the world‘s best copywriters could hurl against it.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Can you adapt this powerhouse headline for your product? Sure you can. Every time I‘ve adapted this headline to a product I
wanted to promote, it‘s given me a breakthrough.
Just one example among many….
One of the most successful packages I‘ve ever written for the world‘s most popular health newsletter, Health & Healing, featured
the headline (you guessed it): Do You Make These Mistakes with Vitamins?
Try this proven headline in your own marketing and discover its outrageous power for yourself. The key to making it work: fill your
body copy with common mistakes people invariably make when they don‘t have your product.
And after you create a new winner with this headline, you can use this same ADAPT process to ride the coattails of many other
blockbuster headlines, as you‘ll see in future Bullets. You‘ll never run out of new ideas to test, and they‘ll all be based on proven
winners.
Contest: What Examples Can You Come Up With?
Can you think of any breakthroughs that have used key words in the SCAMPER formula?
I ask because I‘ve pledged to keep these Bullets short and fast, which is why I‘ve given only three examples here. Besides, why should
I do all the work … and have all the fun?
Tell you what. E -mail me any example you can think of that uses one of the words in SCAMPER. I‘ll share the best submissions
in futureBullets. If yours is among them, I‘ll give you credit and send you a surprise little gift.
You‘ll Thank Me for This One Day
Top Gun, I urge you to start building your own collection of examples that illustrate the amazing power of SCAMPER.
On days when you don‘t feel so creative…
…Or if you‘ve been working on the same product for years and need to see it with fresh eyes…
…Or when your task is to beat a monster control and everything you come up with seems like a puny David against a menacing
Goliath…
…At those desperate moments this precious little acronym will save you. It will instantly give you 11 of the most powerful, easiest–touse tools anyone has ever devised for playing with ideas and coming up with not just one breakthrough, but many. And any examples
you‘ve collected for your SCAMPER Swipe File will make the process even easier, almost automatic.
Of course, don‘t forget to save these Bullets as well, and re-read them often. Someday I‘ll start taking them down from my site, to
prevent their value from being depreciated by over-familiarity, and this itself will teach a valuable lesson in value perception.
(When something is always free and permanently accessible, it will inevitably be devalued and taken for granted.) These Bullets are
too valuable to be treated with such disrespect, and I won‘t let that happen.
Among all the Bullets , please be sure to save this one. I guarantee it will be one of the biggest guns in your marketing arsenal.
With this tool making it so easy to unlock your potential, you can become a creative genius—without dropping your hair blower
into the tub!
In Your Next Bullet…
Which headline pulled best for an aspirin company giving away a free sample bottle:
Headline A:
Tension Headache?
Or Headline B:
When Doctors Have Headaches, What Do They Do?
Clue: The real reason one of these outpulled the other by 71% can be found in Bullet #2, which contains one of the most
consistent themes I want to teach you to keep boosting your response. See if you can figure it out.
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© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your life
like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 7
Can You Pick the Winning Headline?
Dear Marketing Top Gun:Which headline was the winner for an aspirin company giving away a free sample bottle?
Headline A:
Tension Headache?
Or Headline B:
When Doctors Have Headaches,What Do They Do?
Clue: In Bullet #3, “The Two Most Important Words in Advertising,” I gave you one of the most valuable secrets you‘ll ever read for
consistently boosting your response in today‘s skeptical, over-marketed world. Let me repeat that secret, because in our search for
ever more powerful claims, we can forget it too easily. As a general rule…
Never make your claim bigger than your proof. And always join your claim and your proof at the hip in
your headlines, so that you never trumpet one without the other.There is no more powerful nor consistent way
to explode your response. Surround your claims with stronger, bolder proof and watch your response soar.
I advise this not because it‘s the honest thing to do, which is of course commendable. (I sound like Henry Kissinger, who once
described an official government explanation as not only acquitting the US of any wrongdoing, but also having ―the additional
side benefit of actually being true.‖)
No, I recommend this mainly for its awesome response-boosting power in attracting new customers.
From now on, whenever you face the question, “Which of these headlines or main themes will likely outpull the other?”, one of the
most reliable ways to know in advance, without spending a dime on testing, is to ask, “Which offers the more compelling proof?”
This is so effective in predicting winners because your prospects use two razor-sharp questions to cut through their mail: “Is this
of interest to me?” … and second, “Is it believable…or typical advertising hype?”
Most marketers and copywriters focus almost all their firepower on the first question, overlooking the second, which is why
their response falls way short of what it could be.
Your prospects are not morons. They are as savvy as you. From birth, they have been educated about marketing by hundreds of
thousands of over-promising messages. Your prospects have become like light-footed dancers running across a football field full of goose
droppings. They deftly dodge over and around hundreds of unproven claims a day. They can spot your hype yards in advance.
This is why the smartest, most reliable way to get prospects to read your message and respond is not by cranking up the volume on
your promise. That just makes it look like a bigger pile of hype. It is by raising the level of your proof, which sets you apart from the
hype, deserving of further investigation.
With this in mind, let‘s take another look at the two headlines. Which headline promises the reader more proof?
Headline A:
Tension Headache?
Or Headline B:
When Doctors Have Headaches, What Do They Do?
Of course, it‘s Headline B, which ties the implied promise (a headache remedy) to a strong proof element, doctors.
When John Caples tested these two headlines, Headline B won by a fat and happy 71%.
It‘s also a classic formula I‘ve seen used with great success many times, for many health products and services. The single
word ―doctors‖ automatically raises response because it raises the level of proof.
It worked more than thirty years ago for John Caples. It was a big winner more than forty years ago, as reported by Vic Schwab in his
wonderful book, How to Write a Good Advertisement, written in the 1960s. One of the 100 greatest headlines cited in Schwab‘s
book is,‖When Doctors ‗Feel Rotten‘ This Is What They Do.‖
And it still works today. This headline‘s great grandson is chalking up sales big time. The current control for Boardroom‘s Bottom
Line Health is, ―How Doctors Stay Well While Treating Sick People All Day.‖ The headline combines a promise, proof, curiosity
and an immediate reward for reading—a potent combination.
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© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
What Is Effective Advertising Anyway?
So there really are few new ideas under the sun.
And that brings me back to something else John Caples said. He defined effective advertising as, “A believable promise to the right
audience.” Far too many copywriters and marketers focus on just the promise (the flashy, fun part), and ignore the more
demanding challenge of building belief. But without belief, nobody buys.
Please mull that over again, slowly enough to let it seep into your marketing memory.
Without belief, nobody buys.
And without seeing in your headline a hint of proof, most prospects won‘t even read your message.
So let your competitors crank up their claims to ever more unbelievable decibels. That‘s not how you win the game of
response. Yelling is not selling. Focus on beefing up your proof, and you‘ll walk away smiling, a drum major who leads a long
parade of customers who were enchanted to find a rare message—and a person—to believe in.
Remember this always—
Almost everyone in the world, in every field of human endeavor, is desperately searching for someone to
believe in. Be that person and you can write your own ticket.
Belief is today‘s most overlooked yet most powerful key to boosting response to any ad, in any medium. Harness it and you
unleash the core atomic power for exploding response. Because the hunger for belief is so vast in every market, so deep-seated in
human nature itself, you can tap into it again and again—infinitely—to make yourself and your clients rich.
Today, ask yourself how you can make your advertising more believable. Be ruthless —push yourself hard on this. Be a
“yeah, sure”skeptic when you read every sentence and see what you‘d change to make your copy almost impossible to refute.
Ask yourself, ―What proof would I need to persuade a fair-minded jury beyond a reasonable doubt that my copy rings true?‖
If the tough objections you raise expose bullet holes in your sales argument, patch them with stronger proof. If you don‘t, sure as
shootin‘, your prospects will riddle your claims with those same bullet holes of skepticism. They can‟t help it. It is their
automatic response in a world awash in hype.
Heed what I say here and you will be startled at how powerfully and consistently you will be able to boost response to almost any
advertisement.
Coming in Your Next Bullet
Your next issue will feature a Silver Bullet, one so special, it will change your life in many positive ways as soon as you start using it. It
is one of the greatest secrets I have ever found for achieving enduring happiness. It is also the most effective way I know to turn
virtually any situation, whether in marketing or any other area of life, to your advantage. It has made a profound difference in my
own life, as I will share with you in your next Bullet.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your life
like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 8
The Secret of How to
Turn a Setback into Triumph—
in Marketing or in Life
Dear Marketing Top Gun:Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, there are some strategies and core personal beliefs so powerful, they
will help you succeed brilliantly in all of life, including marketing.Today I share such a treasure. It‘s a rare Silver Bullet, with
enormous power to change your life, make you happier and leverage your success as a marketer, writer or salesperson.
I learned this secret (at least it was a secret to me), from the great Napoleon Hill, author of the self-improvement classic, ―Think
and Grow Rich,‖ inspired by the principles of business genius Andrew Carnegie.
The Secret Is This…
Every adversity carries within it the seed of equal or greater benefit.
If, in the grip of defeat, discouragement or heartbreak, you look for that seed and nourish it, you will lay the groundwork for
great triumph.
At first, you may think, as I did, that this may be just Pollyanna claptrap, rah-rah ―positive thinking‖ that collapses, like a
cheap folding chair, under a two-ton challenge. But you‘d be wrong to think that, as I was.
Over time, I found this Silver Bullet proved to be one of life‘s most remarkable and reliable secrets of success and happiness.
This is because the universe is governed by laws. It is knowledge of these laws, and how to manipulate them, that will bring you
success, whether your aim is to split an atom, build an empire, write a blockbuster ad or live a happier life.
And applying this secret—looking for the good in whatever setback you encounter—is the master ―skeleton key‖ that will
unlock whatever knowledge you need to accomplish your goal.
The universe is indifferent to whether you‘re a nice person or mean. The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. The universe
surrenders its power to anyone who possesses the right knowledge of how to harness its laws, and that‘s what you‘ll discover by
applying this Silver Bullet.
I usually don‘t get personal in these Bullets, but today I will, to help you understand the life-changing power of this secret. In fact, I‘ll
give you two examples, one from my personal life and one from marketing.
A Painful Lesson from My Own Life
Pauline and I were married young, in our teens, and two years later had our only child, Laura.
My life changed forever when I met the doctor in the hospital waiting room, when he came out to tell me the good news: ―You‘re the
father of a beautiful baby girl.‖
Strangely, there was no joy in his face, so I asked, ―How are mom and baby doing?‖
He replied hesitantly, ―Well, Pauline is fine.‖
Then he looked down with a pained expression, and I instantly knew my world was changing.
As we later learned, after lots of doctor visits and diagnoses, our Laura was born with mental retardation and other
medical problems.
Yet the story of our little family is not a tragedy, not by a long shot, due to the always mixed nature of life and the principle mentioned
above. As it would take Pauline and me painful years to appreciate, it‘s not what happens to you that determines your happiness and
success in life, but how you respond.
After all, you can‘t always control what happens to you. But you can always control how you respond, especially if
you remember: Every adversity carries within it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
You might ask, ―What possible benefit could arise from your daughter being born with mental retardation? Or from a war, for
that matter? Or a plague? Or an earthquake?‖
Let me speak only from my own experience.
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Our daughter, despite her disabilities, quickly became and remains the light of our lives.
What she lacks in brains she makes up in heart.
She has taught us more about how to love and care for others than any religious sermon, Indian guru, new age course or book
ever could.
She has brought into our lives a caring and dedicated network of teachers and friends we would have never met otherwise.
She has opened our hearts and turned us into benefactors for children‘s causes.
She has taught us how to be brave. Can you imagine the bravery it takes to look different, attract attention just by walking down the
street or through a mall, speak unintelligibly to most people‘s ears, encounter so much frustration in attempting simple tasks like
tying a shoe or buttoning a blouse, never fit in with the social activities of your peers while growing up, not belong in their classes at
school, not understand the jokes everyone laughs at and, at times, be laughed at yourself by ignorant people or other children who see
only what‘s different about you and not what‘s human and tender?
Can you imagine the bravery it takes to experience all that … yet still go through life with a smile on your face, acceptance in your
heart and a bubbly spirit of joy for those who share your life?
That‘s just the beginning of what Laura has taught us.
Of course, despite these benefits, I would still have given anything to have allowed my daughter a normal shot at life. And, after all
these years, I cannot hear the Straw Man in the Wizard of Oz sing, ―If I only had a brain,‖ without thinking of Laura, what might
have been, and feeling my eyes well up with sorrow.
The point I‘m making is that this principle will never banish all sorrow. Nothing can do that. But it can transform setbacks and
sorrow into glorious achievements and opportunities for growth on every level of your life—if you‘ll persistently look for that allimportant seed of benefit.
Once I learned to look for the good in a bad situation, I realized there is plenty of good to be found. I have never found an exception
to this rule.
Good—even triumph!—can come from anything, as long as you‘re willing to look for it. This is a rule of the universe, at least in
my experience and in the eyes of many of history‘s greatest teachers.
How to Apply This to Marketing
My biggest successes and advances in direct marketing have universally come from defeat. Earlier in my career, whenever I lost a
split-run test against someone else, I hated the experience. I despised it with a passion.
My only consolation for having to swallow such poison was to turn it into medicine—somehow find the good. I learned to ask, ―Why
was I beaten on this? Why did my copy fail?‖ Once I figured out the answer, I vowed, ―this will never happen to me again!‖ And I was
that much tougher to beat the next time.
Michael Jordan and Bill Russell, perhaps the two greatest basketball players ever to step on the court, both had difficulty
making their high school varsity teams. But they transformed their frustration into fierce determination and prevailed.
You can emulate their attitude every time you experience a setback in your own marketing. Mark my words—your setbacks will yield
the secrets of your greatest breakthroughs!
To give you a wonderful example in marketing, let me relate this true story from a book called, ―Crackerjack Positioning,‖ by Don
Reynolds, Jr.
The Story of Uncle Jim‘s Mountain Grown Apples
Reynolds writes…
―An advertising executive moved to New Mexico and purchased an apple orchard located on the side of a mountain. He began
to sell the apples by mail order.
‗Uncle Jim‘s Mountain Grown Apples‘ they were called, and he shipped them with the following unconditional guarantee:
„If, for any reason, you find these apples unacceptable, just let me know and I‟ll return your money with no questions asked.
One year disaster struck. A hail storm marked all his apples. The taste was not affected. If anything the apples were
sweeter than ever. But they certainly weren‘t as pretty.
For some reason Uncle Jim had more orders that year than ever before. He was faced with the alternative of either returning
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© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
all the orders unfilled or shipping the apples and hoping for the best.
He decided to ship the apples. In each box he placed a card that read:
„Notice the hail marks on these apples. These are proof of their growth at a high mountain altitude where sudden chills from
hail storms help stimulate the natural fruit flavors which give Uncle Jim‟s apples their incomparable taste.„
That year Uncle Jim had fewer money-back requests than ever. His action further strengthened his unique position of
marketing mountain-grown apples. He still gets orders asking for ―Hail-marked apples, if available. Otherwise, the regular
kind.‖
That story embodies so much of what I admire in great marketing: uniqueness, compelling proof, honesty and an eye for turning
a setback into a fabulous opportunity.
All discovered inside the ―gift‖ of a disastrous hail storm.
From now on, search for the good in any setback and see for yourself if what I promise is true: you will find the seed of your next
great triumph.
***
Parting Shot (A Favorite Quote)
―Only the heart knows how to find what is precious.‖ —Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your life
like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 9
The Most Persuasive Tool
in Advertising and How to Use It
Dear Marketing Top Gun:My friends, star marketers Alex Mandossian and Yanik Silver, recently paid me a compliment by calling
me, ―The world‘s greatest living reason-why copywriter.‖
I consider it such high praise because my mentor, David Ogilvy, was in my view the greatest reason-why copywriter of all time. In fact,
when asked by a reporter if he was a strong proponent of ―reason why‖ advertising, Ogilvy responded, ―Is there any other kind?‖
Thinking of Mr. Ogilvy (or ―D. O.,‖ as we staffers at Ogilvy & Mather called him) has prompted me to once again offend every English
teacher whose classes I endured, and inspire everyone else who speaks the King‘s English to cringe, by penning another of my
infamous poems, this one entitled . . .
The Most Persuasive Tool in Advertising
―How can I sell more product?,‖ is the marketer‘s eternal question.
If you sincerely seek the answer, just follow my suggestion.
When it comes to creating advertising, most advice is for the birds.
But the greatest secret of success can be found in two little words.
No, they‘re not, as some have written, those standbys NEW and FREE.
Neither are they NOW and SALE, or even YOU or WE.
No, to open minds and wallets and have prospects eagerly buy,
The most persuasive words in advertising are simply, REASON WHY.
Whether you spread your message on TV, the internet or by letter,
You must explain the REASON WHY your product is much better.
And while you‘re at it, don‘t forget that your audience won‘t believe you
Unless you give the REASON WHY what you claim is true.
To close the sale, these two little words once again point the way.
Just give me another REASON WHY I should act today.
There you have it, clear as day. If you want to sell, here‘s how:
Give good reasons for these three questions—why you, why true, whynow?
This little secret works like magic, for all products, in all seasons.
If you want to sell like a superstar, just boldly state your reasons:
First, the reason yours is best. Second, a reason to believe,
And third, a reason to act right now—give these and you‘ll receive
More sales than you can imagine, gold and riches heaped on high.
The world showers you with treasure when you give the REASON WHY.
***
Could this be verse? I doubt it! But maybe a couple of quick examples will make the point . . .
Soft drinks are one of the most difficult industries to break into with a new product. The number of times it‘s been done over
history is very, very seldom because people are loyal to whatever soft drink they like.
Not long ago, Slice soft drink came out with a campaign that said it‘s a better-tasting soft drink because it contains 10percent fruit juice.
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It gave a little reason in the headline—the 10-percent fruit juice—to explain why it tastes better than the average fruit soda.
And that made all the difference in the world. In a product category that‘s renowned for a sky-high failure rate among new
products, Slice quickly captured 7 percent of a $30-billion-a-year soft drink market.
Today, that same soft drink market is probably worth more than $50 billion per year. That means that right out of
the box, Slice created $2 billion a year in sales on the strength of this one little proof element, 10-percent fruit juice.
To see how critical that line is to its success, try taking it away, and what do you have? ―Slice, a better-tasting soft drink.‖ Nothing
there but a bland claim.
But because it contains 10-percent fruit juice, if you‘re a soft drink aficionado, you think, maybe I‘ll try it. There‟s a good reason to.
Let‘s look at another example. The headline of one of the most successful direct response ads of all time is:
How to win friends and influence people.
Wisely paying off that key word ―how,‖ the body copy of this ad gives many, many reasons in support of this powerful headline.
Here‘s another classic reason-why positioning that built a fortune.
Kleenex towels absorb 50 percent more
because they’re two layers thick.
―Well, that makes sense,‖ you say to yourself. You can buy into the promise because it gives you its proof element, its reason why,
right in the headline.
Half Off Sale!
We‘ve all seen half off sales and, by and large, they slide off your mind like water off a duck.
But give it a reason why and look what happens. Imagine if you say instead:
Fire sale! 50 percent off everything in our store
because of our recent fire.
See what a difference that makes?
If I‘m going to buy a stereo, I don‘t care if the box smells a little smoky. The reason why—the recent fire—gives me a rationale to buy
into it, a believable explanation of why I might really get 50 percent off, rather than just another garden-variety, totally unbelievable
and unmotivating ―half price sale.‖
Take a hard look at your most critical marketing materials, especially any that are underperforming. Ask if you are giving reasons
why in each of these three areas:
1. Compelling reason(s) why your product is superior to other solutions your prospects might choose, including doing nothing.
2. Compelling reason(s) to believe that what you say is true.
3. Compelling reason(s) to seize the opportunity today.
When you examine the most successful examples of salesmanship-in-print, you‘ll almost always find these three reasons-why in
full force, which is why they are so profitable.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your life
like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 10
The Secret “Trigger Word”
That Makes More of
Your Prospects Say Yes
Than Any Other Word
in the English Language
Dear Marketing Top Gun,This Bullet is the companion of Bullet #9, which described the awesome persuasive power of
giving compelling ―reasons why‖ in your direct marketing copy.
As you recall (or should recall if you‘re paying close attention to these valuable Bullets! ), one of the most reliable ways you‘ll ever
find to boost your response by 50%-100% or more is to fill your direct marketing copy with potent ―reasons why‖ in each of three key
areas:
1. Compelling reason(s) why your product is superior to other alternatives your prospects might choose, including doing nothing.
2. Compelling reason(s) to believe that what you say is true.
3. Compelling reason(s) to seize the opportunity immediately.
The Trigger Word That Secretly Persuades People
Okay, today I‘m going to share what I‘m convinced is the single most powerful trigger word that makes your ―reasons why‖ hit
home with much greater persuasive force. It is the overlooked word that causes more prospects to say ―yes‖ than any other word in
the English language.
Why is it so powerful?
. . .Because it triggers an automatic and favorable response in the overwhelming majority of your best prospects—94 percent and 93 percent in
two typical scientific experiments I‟ll cite in a moment.
. . .Because it secretly “anesthetizes” the skeptical part of your prospects‟ brains, seducing them into deciding emotionally, often with little or no
critical thinking. This results in much higher levels of response and sales.
. . .Because you can use this magic word any time you want to persuade almost anyone to do almost anything, whether in your advertising,
presentations, relationships with your customers, employees, management, board members, spouse, children, lover, a jury—anyone you wish
to persuade in the fastest, most reliable manner.
. . .Because people love to be persuaded this way, as you‟ll see.
Interested? If so, you are already coming under the spell of this magic word in this message because I always use it throughout my copy. (In
fact, I just used it in this paragraph and you probably didn‟t even notice. That‟s how it works—invisibly.)
First, let me give you the scientific proof on why it works, and then I‘ll reveal the word that is likely already building curiosity
and desire in you.
Two Fascinating Experiments Every Marketer Should Memorize
In the animal kingdom, as well as in humans, sometimes a single sound can trigger automatic behavior. For example, when a
mother turkey hears a certain chirp from her chicks, she becomes a very conscientious mother turkey. But if she doesn‘t hear exactly
that chirping sound, she will ignore or even kill her young.
But here‘s where it gets interesting, especially for anyone who wants to evoke automatic and favorable responses in humans. Listen to
these two amazing experiments, described in the wonderful book, The Psychology of Influence, by Dr. Robert B. Cialdini. The first
involved mother turkeys, the second, humans. Let‘s look at the first . . . .
“For a mother turkey, a polecat is a natural enemy whose approach is to be greeted with squawking, pecking, clawing rage. Indeed, the
experimenters found that even a stuffed model of a polecat, when drawn by a string toward a mother turkey, received an immediate and
furious attack.
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“When, however, the same stuffed replica carried inside it a small recorder that played the „cheep-cheep‟ sound of baby turkeys, the mother not
only accepted the oncoming polecat, but gathered it underneath her. When the machine was turned off, the polecat model again drew a
vicious attack.”
In other words, the ―cheep cheep‖ sound of a baby turkey was the only key factor that mattered in evoking an automatic and favorable
response in our mother turkey.
And if you think this happens only to our bird-brained feathered friends, listen to this second experiment involving humans,
reported by Dr. Cialdini:
“A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason.
“Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer demonstrated this unsurprising fact by asking a small favor of people waiting in line to use a
library copying machine. „Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I‟m in a rush?‟
“The effectiveness of this request-plus-reason was nearly total: 94 percent of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line. Compare this
success rate to the results when she made the request only (without giving a „reason why‟): „Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox
machine?‟
“Under those circumstances, only 60 percent of those asked complied. At first glance, it appears that the crucial difference between the two
requests was the additional information provided by the words, „because I‟m in a rush.‟
“But a third type of request tried by Langer showed that this was not the case. It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first
one, „because,‟ that made the difference. Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer‟s third type of request used the word
„because‟ and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious: „Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I
have to make some copies?‟
“The result was that once again nearly all—93 percent—agreed, even though no real reason, no new information, was added to justify their
compliance. Just as the „cheep-cheep‟ sound of turkey chicks triggered an automatic mothering response from maternal turkeys—even when it
emanated from a stuffed polecat—so, too, did the word „because‟ trigger an automatic compliance response from Langer‟s subjects, even when
they were given no subsequent reason to comply.”
How to Use This to Leverage Your Response
Top Gun, if you want to boost your results by very significant numbers—virtually automatically!—start filling your copy with
more ―becauses.‖
Why? Because it works!
And, for best results, always follow your ―becauses‖ with compelling reasons.
Remember, in Dr. Cialdini‘s example, where someone asked to jump to the front of the line, people were persuaded solely by the
word ―because,‖ even when the ―reason‖ that followed wasn‘t particularly rational or logical.
But with written words, I believe the bar is raised a little higher because people are more deliberative when they read.
So, when using the written word, you‘ll enjoy maximum results when you use lots of ―becauses,‖ followed by compelling reasons.
For example, I could encourage you to read these Bullets regularly by saying, ―Read the Bullets—you‘ll be glad you did!‖ But you‘ll
probably feel a stronger pull of persuasion if I urge you to read these Bullets:
…Because they are based not on opinions but on solid research of the most effective ways to influence others, as well
as literally thousands of scientific split-run tests I have conducted for my clients.
…Because they will help you become a master of persuasion in any medium.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
…Because they are the best gems of persuasion and direct response wisdom I have gleaned from almost 40 years of
hard work, passionate dedication and relentless searching for the best ways to make others respond favorably … and
because you can profit from all this free.
…Because they are shortcuts to whatever you want in life—money, fame, status and the freedom of financial
independence, all of which can be yours once you know how to persuade others to do what you ask.
These excellent reasons, framed by ―because,‖ are infinitely stronger than a lame claim like, ―you‘ll be glad you did.‖ See the
difference?
Fill your copy with potent ―reasons why,‖ peppered with lots of ―becauses,‖ and I guarantee you‘ll find it so much easier to persuade
people. You‘ll also find that people love to be persuaded this way. Here‘s why ….
It‘s Not Only the Most Effective, but also Most Ethical Method of Persuasion
In the end, there is no great mystery, nor any unethical manipulation involved in the use of the word “because.” In fact, it‘s the most
honest, straightforward, aboveboard and ethical type of persuasion you can use.
Why?
Because (there it is again) people act in their own self-interest. That‘s a given. And when you give people rational, logical and honestto-goodness reasons to act in their own self interest—voila—they do!
You win, they win, and as long as your reasons are accurate, you accomplish your goal without trickery or deceit.
What‘s more, it‘s the best kind of sale you can make, because it‘s a sale built on mutual benefit, trust and the truth, all of which will
endow you with future sales from that same customer.
So persuading a customer in this straightforward, ―reason-why‖ way creates not just one sale, but a repeating ―annuity‖ for you, a
future stream of revenue that keeps making you wealthier repeatedly, not just once. It is therefore the most leveraged way to
build both your sales and your wealth, all from a single magic word—because, the great, secret ―hinge of persuasion‖ that lets you
open almost any heart, mind or door and grow richer in the process.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your life
like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 11
The Secret of Happiness (A Holiday Message)
Dear Marketing Top Gun,
Today, in honor of this season of giving and joy, I have a special gift for you. It comes not in a golden box with a fancy red ribbon,
but in the unadorned text of the message you‘re about to read.
It reveals one of the great secrets of marketing, of life, of how to connect with people, and, most of all, how to experience unsurpassed
joy any time you wish.
If you read every word that follows, don‘t be surprised if a tear wells up in your eye. This is my holiday gift to you, a true story that will
touch your heart.
As I mentioned in an earlier message, I am the father of a developmentally disabled child, our daughter Laura, the light of our lives.
But this story is about another father of a disabled child, in his case, a son named Shaya.
This story was originally reported in the New York newspapers. It was so touching, it spread like wildfire across the internet, and
many began to question, “Did this really happen, or is it just another urban legend?”
Yes, This Story Really Is True
Well, that‘s the amazing part of this story. It is true. In fact, because of all the buzz, a web site called ―TruthOrFiction.com‖
investigated and has reported that, yes, the story is indeed true. It has also been confirmed by no less an authority than the highly
respected Rabbi and author, Paysach Krohn of Brooklyn, who says that he personally knows the participants and that every word of
the story is true as originally reported.
As I said, the story is about Shaya, a learning disabled boy in Brooklyn.
On weekends, Shaya and his dad like to go for walks. As they do, they like to stop and watch the neighborhood boys play baseball.
On this one Sunday afternoon, as they approached the ball field, Shaya looked up at his father and asked, ―Dad, do you think
they would let me play?‖
Now, this gave Dad a dilemma. He knows his son is learning disabled, very uncoordinated, and has never played baseball before.
But Dad also knows that the neighborhood boys have always treated Shaya with kindness. And he feels that if he, his father, doesn‘t
speak up for Shaya, who will?
So he walked over to one of the boys and asked, ―What do you think about letting Shaya in the game?‖
The boy didn‘t know what to say, and looked around to his teammates for guidance. Not getting any, he took matters into his own
hands. He said, ―Well, we‘re about to start the eighth inning, and we‘re losing by six runs. I don‘t think we‘re going to win this game, so
what‘s the difference? Get him a glove and he can play behind second base, in short center field,‖ which Shaya did with a big smile on
his face.
In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shaya‘s team rallied and scored three runs. But they were still losing by three.
In the bottom of the ninth, they rallied again. They had three runners on base, two out, and it was Shaya‘s turn to bat.
Dad wondered, will they even let him bat? But without hesitation, one of the boys shouted, ―Shaya, you‘re up!,‖ and he was handed a
bat.
But as he stood at home plate, it was obvious to all that Shaya didn‘t even know how to hold the bat, let alone hit with it.
So the pitcher moved in a couple of feet and lobbed the ball very softly so Shaya could at least make contact.
Shaya swung and missed by a wide margin. Before the second pitch, one of Shaya‘s teammates called out, ―Hold on, let me help
him. Let me show him how to bat.‖
This boy came and stood behind Shaya, and put his arms around him so the two boys were now holding the bat together.
The pitcher moved in a couple more feet and again lobbed the ball as softly as he could.
The two boys swung the bat together and managed to tap a soft grounder right back toward the pitcher. Shaya‘s teammates
yelled, ―Run, Shaya! Run to first!‖ And he took off for first.
But the pitcher pounced on the ball in an instant and could easily have thrown Shaya out at first, ending the game.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Instead, the pitcher took the ball and, with obvious intention, threw it on a high arc way over the first baseman‘s head, all the way into
the outfield.
Shaya was safe at first. The first baseman turned him toward second and said, ―Run, Shaya, run to second!‖
But by then, the right fielder had chased down the ball and he, too, could have easily thrown Shaya out, at second.
But he understood what the pitcher had done.
So he threw the ball not just over second base, but way over the third baseman‘s head, so far that nobody was going to retrieve
that ball.
As Shaya chugged into second base, the opposing shortstop ran towards him, turned him towards third base and shouted, ―Run,
Shaya, run to third!‖
Of course, by now the three runners who had been on base had scored. The game was tied, Shaya represented the winning run, and his
teammates were screaming with excitement.
As Shaya rounded third base, every boy from his team and several from the team on the field were all running behind him,
cheering him home.
And as he put his foot on home plate, both teams gathered around him, lifted him on their shoulders and cheered him as the hero
of the game. He had just hit a home run and won the game.
These boys gave Shaya the thrill of his life. Of course, they gave him something even more precious—their acceptance.
The Secret of Happiness
Obviously, these boys had either been taught, or perhaps had discovered on their own, the greatest secret of human happiness.
And that is . . . .
We experience our moments of purest joy at precisely those moments when we are causing it in others.
It is a truism of life—whatever we give out comes back to us, multiplied. Which brings me back to the beginning of this message . . . .
In the hurly burly of the holiday crush, if you want to experience some genuine joy, all you need do is take a few moments to
spread some around.
So maybe it‘s time to call an old friend who needs calling, to forgive what needs forgiving, to let a family member hear some healing
words, to write that note that needs writing, to smile an accepting smile at the next disabled person you encounter, or perhaps to just
relax in the moment with someone older who‘d love your undivided attention for a few minutes, as all living things thrive on attention.
Of course, you may ask, what does all this have to do with effective marketing, the usual subject of these Bullets?
Nothing, really.
And everything.
As Malcolm Forbes was fond of saying, ―In all thy getting, get understanding.‖
It‘s vital for all of us to understand that our prospects and customers are people, too . . . and people like to connect with others who are
unafraid of showing a little humanity, of taking some time now and then to share a laugh, feel some warmth, express some sympathy,
do a favor, help a charity, be a friend.
Whatever your product, however impressive your expertise, people will never care how much you know until they know how much you
care.
Every now and then, toss a few pebbles of caring into your pond of contacts. Those ripples of friendship will spread and
unfailingly return to you in waves of appreciation and loyalty.
Especially at this time of year, we all need to rediscover, like Scrooge in ―A Christmas Carol,‖ the sheer, giddy delight of perpetrating
on unsuspecting humanity an occasional act of random, senseless joy.
***
If you would like to share Shaya‘s story of joy with anyone you know, you certainly have my permission to share this message with
as many people as you wish, to spread a little cheer yourself and honor the spirit of the season.
In closing, at this time of year, I normally wish my clients and friends ―happy holidays and a prosperous New Year.‖
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Well, you already have my message for a happy holiday. In the next issue, Bullet #12, I will share one of the greatest secrets I have
ever learned for achieving prosperity. It‘s entitled, “How to Get Anything You Want in Life.”
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your life
like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 12
How to Get Anything
You Want in Life
Dear Marketing Top Gun,The great motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar, has said, “You can get anything you want in life if you
help enough other people get what they want.”
Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, put the same thought this way, ―The only way to
influence someone is to find out what they want, and show them how to get it.‖
Notice that both these masters of influence say that success lies in what others want.
Ignoring this simple insight is the most common cause of marketing failure. Over and over, I‘ve seen otherwise sharp marketers
launch a product because they want to sell it, not because anyone wants to buy it.
Top Gun, remember this always—you will easily avoid embarrassing failures and discover great riches only when you look at
markets through the other end of the telescope—not the lens of what you want to sell, but the lens of what people want to buy.
This is why marketing decisions based on demographics, psychographics, ―relationship marketing‖ and other hifalutin
phrases can be a huge trap.
Let me tell you something—I‘ve never bought an aspirin because I‘m a member of a demographic group or because I want
a relationship with my druggist. I buy aspirin because I have a headache!
Headaches, problems, desires—human wants—these are your markets!
Identify these wants, these ―hungry crowds‖ as my friend Gary Halbert puts it, and you can make more money than is likely
good for you. Help enough people get what they want, and you can get virtually anything you want.
How Can You Identify Wants?
I have many suggestions, but I promised to keep these Bullets short, so let me name three of my favorites for now:
1. Keep your eye on best-seller lists. These are straws in the wind of what the public wants. Example: go to
Amazon.com and look up the 25 best-selling books in your market. They will instantly give you lots of ideas on what people
in your market are looking for. Similar titles could make red hot informational premiums to add to your own offer.
2. Watch more movies because movies are the playgrounds of human emotion. As a marketer, you want to be an expert
in human emotions. As you watch, try to identify every emotion the actors are playing, and let yourself feel it intensely.
It‘s fun and instructive.You‘ll also open up your emotional channels as never before. This will help you immensely in
writing more emotionally powerful copy because you will feel what you are writing about.Remember that in direct
response, for clarity and for maximum believability, we must express our thoughts in logical sequence, in rational
sentences, offering lots of proof and ―reasons why‖ along the way. These are rational elements that make up the bones, the
skeleton of your presentation. They are critically important.But emotions are the flesh and blood of your copy. They are
the life juices, the beating heart of your ad. The vast majority of products are sold because of the need for love, the fear of
shame, the pride of achievement, the drive for recognition, the yearning to feel important, the urge to look attractive, the
lust for power, the longing for romance, the need to feel secure, the terror of facing the unknown, the lifelong hunger for
self-esteem and so on. Emotions are the fire of human motivation, the combustible force that secretly drives most
decisions to buy. When your marketing harnesses these forces correctly, you will generate explosive increases in response.
3. Follow Your Heart. Your brain is the smartest organ in your body, but your heart is the wisest. In any activity,
whether in marketing or in life, listen to your heart.If your heart is saying one thing, but your brain (or the ―expert‖
running the meeting) is forcing the issue in another direction, take a step back and listen to that voice from your heart.
Don‘t be afraid of that inner voice. It is not just your best friend. It is you.You will live a much happier life, be much more
influential and become a much better marketer because other people‘s hearts vibrate to the same string. The more you
listen to your own heart, the more you will hear—and influence—the hearts of others.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with
this link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 13
How to Be Lucky
Dear Marketing Top Gun,
There are some secrets so important, I call them Silver Bullets, because they greatly enhance your success in all areas of
life, including marketing. Such is Bullet #13.
Many people associate the number 13 with luck, which is why I saved this message for now.
Personally, I don‘t believe that numbers, in and of themselves, influence your luck.
What will? I believe three factors are paramount.
But first, please understand that I‘m not talking here about winning-the-lottery luck. The odds of such occurrences are so
remote, they‘re not worth investing much of your time or money.
You‘ll be far more successful—and a lot luckier in life—if you seek good fortune in areas much more likely to pay off, such as
seizing opportunities, having an edge in your business dealings, and developing a reputation as someone whose campaigns
are consistently successful—often record-breakers.
What are the factors that make such good luck strike repeatedly in your life?
Three Factors That Make You Luckier
1. Build up your “risk muscle.” In most people, the fear of loss is a much stronger motivator than the desire for gain.
Knowing this can be quite useful in boosting your advertising response, as it can be very persuasive to spell out what your
prospects will lose by not taking action.For example, Alan Rosenspan reports that in one study, people who were
interested in saving home energy costs were asked one of two questions:‖Did you know you can save an extra 75 cents a
day by implementing our recommendations?‖Or….‖Did you know it costs you an extra 75 cents a day if you don‘t
implement these recommendations?‖
Question #2 won by a wide margin because it more directly tapped into our universal fear of loss.
Of course, this fear, unfortunately, stunts our good luck if we live by it too rigidly. Most of the time we tiptoe through life
too timidly. Like small children, we cling to the pole of our carousel pony tightly with both hands, afraid we may fall off if
we stretch for the brass ring. Is it any wonder we keep going in boring circles, without a big dream to energize our souls
each morning?
Those who work with the elderly report that at the end of life, the most common regret is not over what we did, but
what we failed to do: the chance not taken, the business not started, the invention not patented, the dream not followed,
the talent not nourished, the novel not written, the product not tested, the trip not taken, the apology not offered—so
much music that died, bottled up inside us, because we were too timid to let it out. Don‘t let this happen to you!
Jim Rohn has said, “If you don‟t push timidity into a corner, it will push you into a corner.”
The remedy: build your risk muscle, like any other, by using it more often, even in small things. A little more risk adds
spice and adventure to life, and can greatly increase your good luck. Fortune favors the bold. A perfect example in
marketing: make an offer to your prospects so outrageously generous, only a fool would refuse it. In one daring stroke,
you can have a blast, electrify your marketing team, outflank your competitors, seize momentum, wow your prospects,
trigger fantastic word-of-mouth, spark some media buzz, and uncork a geyser of new business.
I wish I had learned many years ago this sensible rule from psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers, for whom I once
test-marketed a newsletter on successful living: “If you can take the worst, take the risk.”
2. Make “persistence” your job description. President Calvin Coolidge once said, ―Nothing in the world can take the
place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not.
Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and
determination alone are omnipotent.―One of my most successful clients, a top producer for Merrill Lynch, kept this sign
over his desk: “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”Other brokers would marvel at how ―lucky‖ he was, because he so
often ―bagged the elephant‖ (signed up a super-wealthy client). The secret of his luck? He was more persistent than
anyone else. He told me that most brokers give up on a prospect after calling two, three or, at most, four times and getting
the brush off. He developed what he called his “rule of nine.” He would call on affluent prospects at least nine times.Why
nine? On average, it would take him nine calls to strike gold—yet most other brokers threw in the towel after just three or
four! When telemarketing fell out of favor, he switched to personalized direct mail (which is how he came to retain me),
and found that his persistence paid off even better in direct mail.Want to bag more elephants in your business? Apply
your own rule of nine contacts—through an e-zine to your industry, a free online e-course to your best prospects, a
personal direct mail campaign, free offline newsletter, simple follow-up calls, anything proven to work in your industry
and that offers something of value repeatedly to your best prospects. Nine hooks dangling in the water—or 25—will catch
more fish than one.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Single Most Important Factor In Boosting Your Good Luck
3. To reach a destination, you must first have one. In my experience, the most important ingredient in filling your life
with good luck isclarity— clarity about what you want.Put simply, when you are clear about what you want, you are much
more likely to get it.As the Zen master said to his archery student, ―If you aspire to hit a target, you must first see it.‖
Before you can arrive at a destination, you must first have one.This is so obvious, it seems almost simple-minded. Yet
how often do we rush into activities, relationships, and projects—sometimes wasting months if not years—without first
investing just sixty seconds to ask ourselves, “Why am I doing this? What is my goal here? What outcome do I hope to
experience?”You‘ll be so much luckier in life—and in marketing—if you define and then picture your successful outcome
before plunging in.
For example, before you invest days or weeks writing your next ad, take just sixty seconds to picture it being a smashing
success and how good that makes you feel. Then review your clear image of success before every new work session, to
keep yourself heading straight for the target you‘ve now envisioned.
Likewise, before you hurry into your next three-hour marketing meeting, picture clearly what you want to see as the
successful outcome of this meeting. Your clear vision beforehand will keep bringing the meeting back into sharp
focus when people wander, and you‘ll accomplish a lot more.
And before you give anyone on your marketing team an assignment—whether to find a new list universe or develop a
breakthrough new product—clearly define for them your vision of a successful outcome, so it can guide them at every
step.
As the military genius Sun Tzu said, ―The battle is won before it is engaged.‖ The architect sees her majestic
skyscraper long before the first shovel breaks earth.
In every major activity, first devote a few moments to clarify and clearly picture your objective. When you are crystal
clear about what you want, and then envision success vividly and repeatedly, all the universe conspires to help you.
This is because your mind is like a powerful radio transmitter, and when you mentally broadcast with clarity, regularity
and vivid mental imagery exactly what you want to experience, the whole universe is listening. Forces seen and unseen
respond to your call. Allies assemble. Assistance arrives, opportunities materialize, often from the most unexpected
sources. Sure it‘s good luck, but good luck that you‘ve attracted to yourself by broadcasting a clear message of your
desired outcome.
Psychologists say the reverse is also true. When you broadcast worry and fear, or images of hate, hostility and anger,
you will attract these to yourself as well.
The key is to realize that you have been given by your divine creator the free will to broadcast whatever signals you
wish and, in so doing, attract into your life exactly what you broadcast.
Every day, before each major activity you undertake, remember to imagine with clarity exactly what you‘d like
to experience, and you will be astonished at how lucky you become.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with
this link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will
vanish from your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 14
6 Little Words That Boost Your Sales
Because They Make Your Advertising
More Interesting and Believable
Dear Marketing Top Gun,
―You can‘t save souls in an empty church,‖ said David Ogilvy.
―And you can‘t bore people into buying your product.‖That‘s why Ogilvy sought to hire copywriters ―with richly-furnished minds.
―How can you have a richly-furnished mind and write copy so interesting that, in the words of legendary Copy Chief, Vic
Schwab, it‘s ―easier to read than to skip‖?
You can start with this advice to young writers, from poet Ezra Pound:
“Curiosity. Advice to the young. Curiosity.”
Substitute “copywriters” for ―the young,‖ and you‘re seeing the light.
And how can you easily become more curious and thus more interesting? I commend these words from Nobel prize-winning poet,
Rudyard Kipling:
“I keep six faithful serving men
Who teach me well and true
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who.”
Journalists call this the ―5W1H‖ formula for investigating any subject. It‘s quite useful in marketing. For example:
Who are you advertising to?
What does your product do for them?
Why is it superior to alternative products?
How can you prove your case?
Where should you advertise to reach prime prospects?
When is the best time to reach them?
Each of these five ―W‘s‖ and one ―H‖ will lead you to a dozen more, after your first pull at the ball of string.
The team captain of your six faithful serving men is Mr. Why. If you aspire to write compelling copy or be a marketer with a
Midas touch, ask at least one good ―why?‖ every day and, like a dog with a bone, gnaw on it until you‘re satisfied.
Why is this product such a red-hot seller?
Why did this headline outpull the control by 60%?
Why is our renewal rate falling?
Why are our sales much higher in California?
Why do women comprise 80% of my practice?
Why do I want to take on this project?
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
There Are No Boring Subjects, Only Boring Writers
When you research a product, send your six faithful serving men into the field to inspect everything—look under every rock,
poke into every closet, roam and rummage through back offices, interview the product‘s creators, best salespeople, enthusiastic
customers and anyone else standing around.
Appoint Mr. Why as your lead detective. Instruct him to come back with at least seven times more information than you can use,
and he will dump on your desk a gold miner‘s sack of fascinating factual nuggets, each of which will outweigh 100 airy
adjectives.
Chisel away the encrusted dirt from your golden nuggets, refine them into gleaming insights, hammer them into logical
sequence, fasten them to reader benefits, then polish and polish until your fingers ache, and you may create a glittering necklace
of persuasion that seduces the eye, charms the imagination, and dazzles the reader with so much human interest that it is indeed
easier to read than skip.
Like gold in many forms, your copy will not only attract attention, but simultaneously trigger a lust for
possession. “Curiosity. Advice to copywriters. Curiosity.”
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with
this link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
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Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
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Bullet 15
The Secret of the Monkey’s Fist
Perhaps the most effective
selling strategy ever discovered
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
When I was a young, inept copywriter, I felt acutely ashamed of my lack of skill. I craved respect in my craft yet reeked
of mediocrity. I was determined to better myself by learning from the best.
That‘s easier to do in New York City than just about anywhere else on earth because so many outstanding people in every
field work in New York.
Reaching beyond my grasp, I applied for a job with the legendary copywriter and direct marketing agency boss Tom Collins.
My interview with the great man took place in his office, after hours.
I can still see him now, so friendly and courteous to a copy cub so beneath his level. Leafing through my portfolio, he politely
searched for something encouraging to say about my mundane samples. Finding nothing to compliment in my headlines, he
plowed into body copy.
As he read, I glanced around his office and stared out his window, feeling that my future as a copywriter loomed as dark as
the New York night. I had been rejected for other jobs with other masters, and the pattern was about to repeat.
Sure enough, he told me in a very considerate way that I wasn‘t ready to make it in his agency. ―Maybe sometime in the
future,‖ he said, as he closed my portfolio and handed it back.
However, the experience did prove to be a turning point in my career. That‘s because, during the interview, as I looked around
his office, I noticed a little sign on his desk, carved in wood. It said, “Advertising Is Hard.”
―You‘re not kidding,‖ I thought.
For several years, I had found copywriting exasperatingly difficult. Nobody seemed able to teach me a simple, logical way to
produce outstanding copy consistently. It was all so subjective. I never knew where to begin an assignment. I had nary a clue
about how to develop an ad into a powerhouse of persuasion. So of course I harbored no dreams of shattering response
records. My lowly standard was, ―If I can get this past the copy chief, I‘ll feel so relieved.‖ But even that often proved to be an
exercise in frustration.
There were few good books on the subject. One I remember was the Vic Schwab classic, How to Write a Good Advertisement,
which I bought in a bookstore on my lunch hour when I was feeling particularly desperate for guidance. An excellent book, it
extolled a list of ―100 good headlines,‖ but, as I would learn, most of them, even back then, had already become tired old
formulas that no longer worked in the real world. (After extensive testing, I wouldn‘t dream of using 90 of those 100 headlines
today. They would bomb.)
I could find no easy, repeatable path to success. Even worse, here I was, sitting in the office of a legendary copywriter, someone
I fervently hoped could make my career easier, but whose blunt motto turned out to be “Advertising Is Hard.”
―This man is a legend,‖ I thought. ―If it‘s hard for him, it‘s hopeless for me.‖
I have always enjoyed walking. After this failed interview, I said to myself, ―Maybe I should get a job as a mailman. I could walk my
route each day, stay physically fit, deliver mail and derive fulfillment in life purely from my family and spare-time activities.‖
Don‘t Laugh, But…
…I actually went so far as picking up an employment application at the post office, only to be told that: (1) they were not
hiring, and (2) if they ever did start hiring again, thousands of names were ahead of me on the waiting list.
This was an unhappy time for me. But when life knocks you down, you face a decision: either give up or get up, dust yourself
off and try again.
In my case I had no choice. I had a young family, a medically involved daughter, and we needed an income and health insurance.
Then, not long after my interview flop with Tom Collins and reading his little sign, something in me snapped, a second wind
filled my sails and, since the post office wouldn‘t have me, I vowed, “I am going to make copywriting easier if it‟s the last thing I
do.”
And that‘s what I did. Ever since that night almost 40 years ago, I have devoted myself to uncovering easier ways to trigger
outstanding results in advertising. I thank my lucky stars that nobody fired me until I got the hang of it. It did take me several
more years of trial and error, of scientifically tracking the results of hundreds and then thousands of campaigns, of studying under
various masters and great copy chiefs, learning their tips and tricks. In time my snowball-size skill started a slow roll
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
downhill, eventually picked up speed and turned into something considerable.
The most important lesson I learned along the way was that almost anything in life can be greatly improved with time
and persistence. Almost always, there‘s no reason to remain hopeless.
Eventually I succeeded in finding so many ways to trigger outstanding results in advertising that, ever since those early days, I
have almost never failed to deliver outsize results for my clients, offering them not one but a variety of ways to beat their
control packages and ads, usually by wide margins of 25 to 100 percent or more and sometimes, when their ads were weak, by
several hundred percent.
Among the most powerful master strategies I ever learned is the one I will share today, The Secret of the Monkey‟s Fist.
In every sale, either in person or in an advertisement, there are at least two sales that have to be made, not just one. This is true of
anything you sell, and the sooner you realize this, the sooner you can become a master at selling anything, in person or in print.
The main sale, of course, is the product or service you ultimately want to sell. But before you can even get a chance to sell
your main product, you must first sell your prospect on giving you an audience.
That is known as the sale before the sale. In short, you must sell the chance to sell. This will become clear in a moment.
I learned this secret from one of the greatest salespeople who ever lived, the legendary life insurance salesman Frank
Bettger (rhymes with ―catcher‖).
Bettger was such a crummy salesman that he came close to quitting before he stumbled upon one of the most powerful
strategies for selling anything. He later revealed it in one of the all-time best-selling classics of salesmanship, How I Raised
Myself from Failure to Success in Selling. (I love that title. It‘s exactly the same ―oaf to success‖ road I had walked.)
Bettger discovered this strategy on his vacation, while standing on the deck of a ship about to dock in Miami. Bettger noticed that the
ropes needed to moor a great ship to the dock are tremendous. They are very long and as thick as a man‘s thigh. He wondered how any
seaman, no matter how strong, could ever lift such a thick rope, let alone hurl it so that it would reach the pier.
So He Decided to Watch How It‘s Done…
He discovered that the crew doesn‘t even try to throw the heavy rope, known as a ―hawser.‖ Instead, he saw a solitary
crewman hurl a little iron ball, called a ―monkey‘s fist,‖ which was attached to a thin rope about the size of a clothes line.
He tossed this monkey‘s fist to a longshoreman standing on the pier, waiting to receive it.
When the longshoreman caught the little iron ball, he started to haul in the thin rope attached to it. This thin rope, in turn, was
attached to the huge hawser, which Bettger then saw moving through the water as the fellow on the dock hauled it in. And
that‘s how the big, unwieldy hawser gets tied to the moorings on the pier.
Throwing the hawser was too big a first step for any sailor, just as it‘s too big a first step for any marketer to approach icecold prospects and instantly persuade them to buy.
So this is the little-known but amazingly reliable formula for opening—and then closing—many, many more sales, in person or
in direct response advertising. Make the first step for your prospect irresistiblyeasy to take.
This means that whether you‘re selling in the mail, on the Net or in space, you shouldn‘t start off trying to sell your product. Break
it into smaller steps. As a first step, offer something that makes it easy, irresistibly easy, for your prospect to say yes.
An Example from the Great Claude Hopkins
Claude Hopkins, the Aristotle of advertising, described how in the early days of the twentieth century, door-to-door
salesmen would go through a neighborhood, knocking on doors, to sell coffee.
Sounds like a tough way to make a living, doesn‘t it? Imagine how many doors would be slammed in your face by the end of
the day?
After experimenting with many different presentations, the coffee marketers found an incredibly easy and effective way to
sell. They ―threw the monkey‘s fist‖—made the first step in the sales process irresistibly easy. It was so simple…
The salesman would knock on the door. When it was opened, usually by the woman of the house, the salesman (almost
all salespeople were men in those days) would NOT launch into a sales pitch about coffee.
Instead, he would say, ―Good afternoon, madam. Today I bring you a special gift, a free half-pound of our finest coffee. Please
accept it with my compliments. In about a week, I‘ll return to see what you think about it. Fair enough?‖
How could she refuse?
Next week, he‘d return and, instead of asking for an order, would surprise her with another gift, which could be hers free if
she placed her first order.
Making the sale in this way was so easy, because the salesman made the first step easy. He completely bypassed the automatic
rejection he would surely get if he tried to strong-arm prospects with a hyped-up sales pitch. As Hopkins put it, ―Any apparent effort
to sell creates corresponding resistance.‖ Therefore, do NOT approach your prospects, either in person or in print, with an
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
obvious effort to sell.
There are countless ways you can achieve this gentle, seductive first step in your marketing. The free sample of the actual
product is one way. A magalog or direct mail letter that reveals interesting, valuable information right in the copy is another. A
free checkup, audit, analysis, first lesson, consultation, etc., are yet more. So is an enclosed quiz or treasure hunt or free
informational guide on a topic of high interest to your prospects. The Gary Halbert, dollar-bill- stuck-to-the-top-of-the-letter is
still another. The variations are endless.
The Best Way to Do This, Most of the Time
I have found that offering valuable, free information that targets your prime prospects is the most versatile, economical and
usually most effective execution of this strategy. It works so well because it not only makes it much easier to open the sale
with your best prospects, but also sets you up perfectly to close it.
For example, if you sell a carpet-cleaning or housekeeping service, you can offer your prospects a free booklet entitled, “How
to Keep Your House Free of Health-Destroying Dust Mites.”
If you sell a course on Internet marketing, you can offer a free e-book such as, “The 100 Most Successful E-mail
Advertisements Ever Written.”
If you manage a real estate office in, say, Marietta, you can offer a free “Trend Report—Sale Prices of Marietta Homes,
Condos and Co-Ops over the Last Six Months.”
If you‘re a chiropractor, you can advertise a free guide, “My Seven Best Secrets for Having a Pain-Free Back in Just Six Weeks.”
If you‘re a headhunter, you can offer a free report, “How to Launch Your Career on the Fast Track—By Getting Today‟s
Best Employers to Call You.”
If you sell a course on public speaking, you can offer a free cassette,“Secrets of Getting a Standing Ovation Almost Every
Time You Speak.”
If you sell a magazine on parenting, you might offer a premium, “How to Raise a Happier, More Confident Child—Startling
New Research from Harvard Psychologists.”
All these examples ―throw the monkey‘s fist‖—they make it much easier for your prospects to lower their guard, give you
their time and allow you into their busy lives. This is how you make the sale before the sale.
It‘s the same as courtship. You would never dream of walking up to a total stranger and asking him or her to marry you. The
first step might just be a flirtatious conversation, which leads to a date, which leads to more dates, which lead to an engagement,
which leads to a marriage proposal, which leads to a lifelong relationship. Trying to race to the ultimate destination from an icecold start just won‘t work.
Romance your prospects in the same way. Make the first step easy, nonthreatening, enjoyable, irresistible! Then make the
next small step the same way, and keep going until you‘re both in love.
Perhaps this bit of doggerel will help you remember the principle…
Whether you‟d like to dock a ship,
Sell a product or be kissed,
Just follow this little tip—
First throw the monkey‟s fist!
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with
this link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 16
The “Fuzzy Dice” Secret
For Exploding Your Sales
How to Find “Hot Pockets” of Customers
Eagerly Looking for What You Sell
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
A master salesman, one of the most successful in America, once told me that selling is simple, unless you make it complicated.
He then taught me his greatest secrets for keeping it simple.
I found that his secrets worked like a charm in advertising as well, because advertising is nothing more than multiplied
salesmanship—one good salesperson working his or her magic with thousands, even millions, at once. In fact, it‘s this mighty
multiplication factor that empowers advertising to rapidly enrich Top Guns who know how to use the simple secrets shared
in these Bullets.
So let‘s take a look at one of the greatest secrets this wise old salesman taught me. Just as I did, you‘ll find it‘s one of the
easiest things you can do to increase your response. It seems so obvious, you may well think that you‘re doing it already. But
let me assure you of two things…
First, 98% of all marketers, even savvy ones who think they may know this, can do a much better job of applying it (most have
barely scratched the surface). Second, once you do apply this in your market, you‘ll be able to attract customers the way a
large magnet draws metal filings. Or, merrily mixing my metaphors (I love doing that), you‘ll be tossing your hook right in
front of a ravenously hungry school of fish.
So what‘s the big secret?
Well, the wise old salesman told me you’ll corral lots more customers by intercepting them wherever they
are looking for someone like you.
Sounds simple, and it is, but we often complicate it to the point where we‘re not doing this at all. Let me illustrate with
an example I came upon recently, which I‘ve dubbed…
The Fuzzy Dice Secret
My best ―aha!‖ moment last year hit me when I learned the smartest way to sell just about anything online.
I learned it from Andy Jenkins, a supersuccessful internet entrepreneur who‘s created a sprawling online empire of more than
80 sites that sell everything from information to specialized electronics to medieval suits of armor at $7,000 a pop.
For months, I had been trying to figure out for a business partner the best way to sell products online. Where to begin? What
marketing strategy would work best? Should we create one big website selling all our products—in effect, an online catalog?
Or would separate websites for each main product be better? And how should we drive traffic—with ezines, Google ads,
search optimization, banner ads, blogs, podcasts, a little of everything, or what?
The marketing questions seemed endless, and the answers elusive…until Andy clarified everything by sharing what I have come
to call ―The Fuzzy Dice Secret.‖
Andy explained his approach in an interview conducted by internet guru and my friend, Ken McCarthy, whose System Club
features excellent interviews with successful internet marketers. Andy explained that all his years of testing have taught him
the smartest way to sell anything online. And that is, to apply the same secret of the wise old salesman—intercept your
customers precisely where they are looking for someone like you.
Applied to the internet, this means matching your selling process to the way people search online.
Let‘s say, for example, that you sell car accessories. Now, you could create a website, and a series of Google and banner
ads, trumpeting your product line, ―Car Accessories.‖
Logical enough, right? It‘s what most companies do. Trouble is, people don‘t go online searching for ―a product line.‖ Almost
nobody searches for ―Car Accessories.‖ That‘s way too broad. When I typed those words into my search bar, I got more than
49 million results! If I were a thorough shopper and wanted to check out each of these vendors for just 20 seconds apiece, I‘d
have to sit at my computer 24/7 for the next 31 years (without a single bathroom break)!
More than 49,000,000 advertisers are offering their wares under ―car accessories,‖ yet almost nobody searches for
―car accessories.‖
But people do go online searching for a single product.
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For example, they go online searching for ―Fuzzy Dice‖ (you know, those tacky, spongy dice that dangle gaudily from the
rearview mirror).
Or they‘ll search specifically for ―Leather Steering Wheel Covers.‖ Or ―Car Stereo Subwoofers.‖ Or ―Mercedes Replacement
Hood Ornaments,‖ etc.
Since that‘s how people search, that‘s how you should sell—with a mini website devoted exclusively to Fuzzy Dice. Or another
devoted to Leather Steering Wheel Covers. Or another offering Car Stereo Subwoofers, or Replacement Hood Ornaments, etc.
Sell the way your prospects buy—with a rifle shot like ―Fuzzy Dice,‖ not a shotgun like ―Car Accessories.‖ Like the wise
old salesman said,intercept your hot prospects where they are looking for someone like you!
There are some exceptions, of course. If you‘ve got megabucks, you could try to become the next ―horizontal‖ one-stop
superstore, ala Amazon, Staples, or Wal-Mart. But at this stage of the internet‘s development, you‘d probably go broke trying to
muscle your way into dominance of any broad categories, even the medium-sized ones.
And, sure, it‘s usually desirable to have a ―hub‖ or what I call a ―kitchen sink‖ website, where you summarize everything your
company is about, as well as all your offshoots and products, for those who happen to stumble onto your site and want an
overview.
But if you really want to hear your cash register endlessly murmur its happiest mantra (ca-ching!), you must develop for each
star product its own separate mini site, supported by equally vertical, dedicated, and specific Google ads and ezine marketing
campaigns that drive traffic directly to that site, where prospects are then greeted with an in-depth sales presentation focused
exclusively on that single product, fully explaining its compelling raison d‘être.
This is exactly what my client and I wound up doing, and the program of narrow, ―rifle-shot‖ campaigns we‘ve developed
is working beautifully.
Please listen to the wise old salesman…
Don‘t sell a ―stock market newsletter.‖ Sell a special report on ―Three oil service stocks that may soar in the next 12
months because of the worsening worldwide oil squeeze,‖ and give me all the reasons to buy into that story.
Don‘t sell ―retirement planning.‖ That phrase brings up more than 41 million results! Create a website offering a video on ―How
to Retire to Mexico and Live Like Royalty on $500 a Month or Less.‖ Run a Google ad with the same headline, and everyone
searching for ―retirement in Mexico‖ can easily find you and respond.
Don‘t sell ―gourmet foods.‖ Sell, ―Imported Smoked Scottish Salmon,‖ and give me the full sales pitch on why it‘s the best I
can buy.
Don‘t sell a report on ―Hospital Trends.‖ Sell a report on ―How the New HIPAA Regs Will Change Your Hospital
Emergency Room Procedures in the Next Six Months and What You Must Do Now to Reduce Your Potential Liability.‖
Don‘t sell ―insurance.‖ I‘ll find you faster and buy from you a lot more quickly if you run a Google ad that leads me to a website
offering ―Flood Insurance for Homes in the Hamptons‖ (where I live). Why? Because that‘s what I was just searching for
online recently, not ―insurance‖!
That‘s it, the secret of how to sell anything online. Go vertical and go deep. Use highly specialized mini sites dedicated to a
single star product, and deliver an in-depth, fully developed sales presentation to capture your prospects and convert them into
customers. Once they are customers, you can then branch out, offering related follow-up sales pitches, via specialized ezines,
which lead them to other highly targeted mini sites. And just keep repeating the process for every major product or service you
want to sell.
Highly specialized, single-product, vertical mini sites automatically optimize your position in searches. They also make more
people click on your links because, unlike most others in your market, you‘ll seem to specialize in exactly what that searcher
came online to find. For the same reason, your highly specific Google headlines will trigger higher ad placement and higher clickthrough rates.
The internet is the ultimate vertical selling machine, a niche marketer‘s dream, but only if you use it right. The general rule: The
sharper your focus, the better your results.
Don‘t sell horizontally, sell vertically. Don‘t sell ―Car Accessories.‖ Sell ―Fuzzy Dice.‖ That‘s how you‘ll intercept the ―hot
pockets‖ of customers eagerly searching for someone just like you.
Here‘s Another Example…
…from another master marketer, Jeff Paul, whose Tape of the Month Program also interviews star marketers. I remember
that Jeff once interviewed John K. Harris, chairman and CEO of JK Harris & Co., which helps taxpayers resolve problems
with the IRS.
Earlier in his career, John was an ambitious car salesman who knew how to apply the wise old salesman‘s secret of
intercepting your prospects where they are looking for you.
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© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
At one point, he was hired to help turn around a failing Lincoln Mercury dealer whose sales were 48th out of 52 dealers
in Florida.
By the end of the first year, he moved that dealer from 48th to 9th. Within 18 months, he brought the dealership from a
$250,000 loss to a $1.8 million profit.
How on earth did he do that in such a competitive ―commodity‖ type of business as selling cars?
He did many things right, but probably the most important wasintercepting his potential prospects precisely where they look for
a new car.
When he first arrived at the dealership, he saw that it was spending a lot of money on TV advertising every month. But people
don‟t shop for cars on TV, and John knew it. From his experience as a car salesman, he knew that people sometimes take a long
time to decide whether or not to buy a new car. But once they reach a firm decision, they move fast and almost always buy
within the next 10 days. And once that 10-day ―buying clock‖ starts to tick, the first place they look for a car is not on TV, but in
their local newspaper. That‘s where prospects know they will find the biggest selection of car ads.
So John axed the dealership‘s TV budget and boosted its newspaper ad budget from $5,000 to $25,000 a month.
With that master stroke, as well as teaching his salespeople how to close the flood of new prospects that started pouring in
the door, he turned that dealership around from a $250,000 loss to a $1.8 million profit in just 18 months.
Like a shrewd general who knows exactly where to deploy his greatest troop strength to turn the tide of battle, John redirected— and
significantly increased— his ad budget to intercept his prospects precisely where they were looking for someone like him.
Advertising is simple, unless you make it complicated. First find out exactly how, where, and when your hottest prospects go
about shopping for your type of product or service. Then simply go there and intercept them just when their wallets are out and
they‘re ready to buy.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with
this link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 17
How to Name Your Product
…including 21 examples of great names
Dear Marketing Top Gun,
The best product names have a benefit built right into them.
For example, Kleenex embodies the benefit of clean.
So does Mr. Clean.
I love the name Swiffer, the dust picker-upper that swiftly glides over your floors and under your coffee table to snare the
dust bunnies.
Health & Healing, the newsletter from Healthy Directions, is a great one.
For an oven cleaner—Easy Off.
For a car window shade—Way Cool.
For weather stripping that blocks winter drafts under your front door—Draft Dodgers.
Fat Blaster, Wonder Bread, Mr. Peanut, Arrid Anti-Perspirant, Vein Away Cream—great names.
I like my own company‘s name—Accountable Advertising, Inc.
A new product I recently came across is named Bites. These are bite-sized oatmeal and jam treats from Quaker Oats. A
splendid little name,Bites. Quaker Oats is already selling 5 million Bites a day.
I love the name Blue Blockers, Joe Sugarman‘s famous sunglasses that shield your eyes from harmful blue rays.
If you‘re well-known in your field, consider naming your product after yourself, as did Ransom Eli Olds with his Oldsmobile and
also his company, Reo Motors, named from his initials. The benefit here is that your market respects you and knows that if
you‘ve put your name on a product, you‘re proud of it.
Louis Rukeyser could not have chosen a better name for his newsletter than Louis Rukeyser‟s Wall Street. It quickly became the
most successful launch in the history of investment advisory publishing.
If you‘re in a service business, it can likewise pay to name your company after yourself, as clients like dealing with the
person whose name is on the front door.
Whenever you come up with a good name, be sure to do a name search, so you don‘t step on anyone‘s toes, triggering angry
cease-and-desist letters or a costly lawsuit. If your search reveals that your name is unique, lock it up quickly. Have your attorney
apply for a trademark.
Always keep your eyes peeled for good names and jot them down.
While driving recently, Pauline and I spotted a paint store with a name we liked—The Fresh Coat Paint Store. It
immediately planted the idea of how nice a room or house looks with a fresh coat of paint.
Just as we do, make it a game, a hobby, to collect great product names. Your list can goad you to greatness when you
need inspiration.
Another time while driving, we passed a dentist‘s office in the Hamptons, where we live. His sign: Gentle Dental.
The True Story of ―Painless Parker‖
Speaking of dentists, have you ever heard of ―Painless Parker‖?
You‘ll enjoy this.
Back in the early 1900s, there lived a famous dentist and flamboyant pitchman named Edgar R. ―Painless‖ Parker. He looked
like Colonel Sanders and behaved like P. T. Barnum.
He wore a top hat and a necklace made of teeth he had pulled from his patients‘ heads. To attract new business, if you
can imagine this, he crisscrossed the countryside with a combination circus-and-dental-clinic.
He would roll into town, with his circus-and-dental-clinic in tow, proclaiming “Painless Dentistry!”
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© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
He‘d set up his dentist‘s chair on the bed of a horse-drawn wagon parked in the center of town, and hired a brass band to play as
he pulled teeth. The twofold purpose of the brass band was to attract a crowd and drown out the moans of patients, who had
been plied with whisky and other pain-reducing concoctions.
For his outrageous antics, he incited the holy wrath of his fellow dentists. The American Dental Association denounced him as
―a menace to the dignity of the profession‖ and vowed to put an end to his shameless promotions, which made headlines and
attracted scores of patients wherever he went.
The dental establishment hatched a strategy. They accused him of false advertising since he claimed that his dentistry
was painless, and no dentistry could truly be called ―painless.‖ If they could legally deny him the right to promote
―painless‖ dentistry, they‘d severely undercut demand for his services. At last, the deacons of dentistry had their rogue
treed and surrounded!
But the wily pitchman outfoxed his tormentors again. Parker legally changed his first name to ―Painless,‖ and they couldn‘t do a
thing except gnash their teeth. Emboldened, ―Painless Parker‖ opened a chain of some 30 West Coast dental offices, all
featuring his ingenious name which proved so appealing, he employed 70 dentists and grossed $3 million per year, quite a
fortune in his day.
Never underestimate the power of a good name—one with a built-in benefit!
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with
this link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 18
A Simple 7-Step Formula
for Succeeding Online
Dear Marketing Top Gun,
If you want the easiest, surest and most rewarding way I‘ve found to succeed online, here is the simple 7-step formula:
1. Carve out a niche. Be known for something specific. Use the rifle, not the shotgun. When in doubt, go narrower than
others in your field. For specific examples, see Bullet #16, ―The Fuzzy Dice Secret for Exploding Your Sales.‖ You can find
it in the BulletArchive (link below).
2. Give something valuable away free. Within your narrow specialty, create an ezine (or course, collection of tips,
series of mistakes to avoid, seasonal recipes, any regular communication) that demonstrates your expertise and is so
helpful, interesting and informative, your prospects will want to keep getting it regularly.
3. Promote your free ezine every way you can—in Google ads, articles you write for the media, speeches before trade
groups, press releases, radio interviews, communications with your customers, take-ones at related retail outlets, space ads,
newspaper classifieds, direct mail, co-ops and swaps with others in your industry, etc. Explore any and all avenues.
4. Capture email addresses. Never give away your valuable free tips on your website! Share them only in exchange for an
email address when someone signs up for your ezine. Consider offering one of your best free tips in the form of a free
report to induce people to sign up. This automatically gives you permission—and the means—to stay in touch with your
market, building your most valuable direct marketing asset, your list.
5. Pile on the value. Work hard to make your free ezine so valuable and interesting, your prospects eagerly open it. As in
romance, woo your new prospects with your bouquets of insight and pearls of wisdom. Don‘t be shy about opening up and
getting personal. Become a friend. Resist the urge to keep lunging at them with sales lust. Your goal: get your prospects
into the habit of welcoming your emails like love letters because they are so valuable, useful and interesting…not in the
habit of deleting them on sight because they are self-serving sales pitches. The rule: establish trust before you sell with lust.
6. Never sell hard in your ezine or free course. Instead, dance the two-step. The biggest mistake even savvy
marketers make in their ezines is selling too much, too soon, too hard, and too often. Let your ezine be an oasis of value in
a desert of hype. Always, and especially in your first several communications, let the value of your free information far
outweigh your sales copy.
Eventually, after you‘ve proved your value to readers and it‘s time to sell something, dance the two-step…
First, mention that you have a great product that enhances the valuable, free tip you‘ve just shared in your ezine. To learn
more, ―click here.‖
Second, when readers click on the link, they land on a dedicated page elsewhere, where you can sell your product or service
as hard as you want.
In other words, never sell too hard, too often or too early in your ezine! Doing so makes your reader perceive it as a vehicle of
hype, not a trusted vehicle of value.
Once your prospects categorize your ezine as sales hype, you will lose them by the score. Game over! Their door will shut as closed
as a coffin, as tight as a tomb. Your emails will bounce off their mailboxes like corks off granite. In your eagerness to sell, you will
have trained your best prospects to shun you. You will have taught the legions of people who were ready to trust you, who had
hoped you were different, to conclude that you‘re just like all the rest—just another ―me-first‖ marketer pushing too hard to sell, not
serve.
Once you‘ve painted yourself into this portrait, your identity remains fixed. Every time your prospects see your name on an email,
they‘ll automatically think ―sales pitch‖ and most will delete you on sight. You will have committed list suicide. Don‘t make this
fatal mistake!
Remember—use your ezine to deliver pure, rare, refreshing, beautifulvalue—interesting, useful tips that your market is yearning
for and delighted to receive. Introduce sales messages only occasionally, briefly, lightly, as I‘ve described above, using the soft twostep—tying a brief mention of your product into the valuable tip you‘ve just shared, then using a link to a hard-selling page that
resides elsewhere.
A Little Secret for Boosting Your Sales Up to 400%
7. For even better results, capture their physical addresses. Once your prospects have a relationship with your
ezine, offer them another free gift. It must not only be valuable, but something you have to send to their home, such as a
report, CD, DVD, paperback book, newsletter, cool poster, free sample, gift certificate, etc.
Why something physical? Because this gives you the right to ask for—and get—their physical address. And why is that
so important? Two reasons…
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
First, a physical gift normally has higher perceived value than, say, an ebook. But far more important, getting a physical
address enables you to send a compelling direct mail promotion with your gift, and to follow up later with additional
direct mail.
And why is that important? Let me relay the experience of my friend Gary Halbert, from whom I originally heard this idea.
Gary reports that sending your direct mail promotion to the physical addresses of prospects who originally signed up
online usually pulls up to 400% higher sales than the same copy delivered on the web only.
***
And that‘s all there is to it. Repeat these 7 simple steps for every major product or service you want to sell.
Are there other roads to Rome? Of course! But for me and others I respect in direct response, this has been our express lane.
This simple, 7-step plan is a good illustration of what these Bullets are—highly concentrated packets of knowledge…small, fast and
powerful, like Bullets.
So saddle up, marketing gunslinger, and ride out to claim your stake of the wild web frontier. Yes, the hills are full of
renegades, bandits, and wolves. But you will prevail. You, Top Gun, are packin‟ better ammo!
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 19
The Most Important 9-Word Sentence in Marketing History
Dear Marketing Top Gun,
If I were on my deathbed about to wheeze my last breath, and you asked me to sum up in a single sentence the most important
marketing secret I could bequeath to you before I kick the bucket (or bedpan), here is what I would whisper in your ear, hopefully
without giving you anything contagious.
It‘s a 9-word sentence I first read in the book Reality in Advertising by copywriting genius Rosser Reeves. He said that he had
learned it from a legendary copywriter whom he didn‘t name. This one sentence made fortunes for Reeves‘ clients, as well as my
own, and for scores of other marketers wise enough to apply it rigorously, as I hope you will.
Ready?
Bend close now as I whisper. Oops, let me raise myself up a bit first. OK, here goes…
A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen.
That‘s it—the 9-word secret so powerful that it has built more fortunes than any other principle in marketing.
To explain its profound insight, let me quote advertising luminary Bill Bernbach, creative director of Doyle Dane Bernbach, the
renowned ad agency responsible for the brilliant and enormously successful Volkswagen Beetle ads of the 1960s, voted the alltime greatest general advertising campaign in history.
Bernbach was also named No. 1 on Advertising Age‗s 20th century honor roll of advertising‘s most influential people.
Said Bernbach, ―The magic is in the product,‖ not in the copywriter‘s pen. Or as he put it another way, ―Advertising doesn‘t create
a product advantage. It can only convey it…No matter how skillful you are, you can‘t invent a product advantage that doesn‘t
exist.‖ If you‘re involved in marketing in any way, this 9-word sentence may well give you an “Aha!” moment, because it instantly
clarifies the roles of everyone involved.
The Surest Road to Riches for Marketers
For example…
If you are the client (the advertiser), it means that it‘s your job, not your copywriter‘s or ad agency‘s, to come up with
a brilliant product, one with a clearcut, built-in, immediately understandable, unique, and highly desirable advantage.
It means that if your ―research and development department‖ responsible for coming up with such blockbuster product
advantages resides only in your copywriter‘s keyboard, you‘re already in big trouble.
It means that if you‘re settling for a ―me-too‖ product and hoping that a gifted copywriter will carry you on his or her back to the
winner‘s circle, you‘re kidding yourself. Your product is the horse; your copywriter is only the jockey. Yes, good jockeys are
worth their weight in gold. But champion race horses are worth much more. It‘s your job to breed champion race horses.
Remember that most businesses make real money only on repeat sales. While a good copywriter can make a
prospect hopeful enough to try a product, he or she can‘t make that customer delighted enough to buy it again. Only you and
your product can do that.
Our 9-word rule means 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!”
Create “Wow!” products like this, add in great customer service, and something magical happens. Your customers become your
auxiliary sales force—a large, unpaid, ever-growing army of raving fans who extol your product to others, causing your market
and profits to grow far more effectively than any copywriter can.
This is where real marketing magic is born—in the product itself.
What If You‘re a Copywriter?
If you are the copywriter, our 9-word rule means that the star of your ad should always be your product and how it
uniquely benefits your prospects.
It means that your job is to research the product thoroughly to uncover its unique advantages. Research—deep research—is
the launch pad of copywriting breakthroughs.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
It means that you should never even think about writing a word of copy until you‘ve done your homework and become an expert
in the product and its market.
It means that you should begin every assignment like an investigative reporter, asking your client and his or her best salespeople a
torrent of questions, starting with these 10…
1. Why is this product made the way it is?
2. What consumer problems, desires, and needs is it designed for?
3. What‘s special about it—why does it fulfill a consumer‘s needs better than the competition?
4. Who says so besides you?
5. What are your strongest proof elements to make your case believable?
6. What are all the product‘s best features and how does each translate into a consumer benefit?
7. If you had unlimited funds, how would you improve this product?
8. Who are its heavy users—the 20 percent who generate 80 percent of sales?
9. What irresistible offers might trigger an explosion in sales?
10. What premiums can be tossed into the mix to press your prospects‘ hot buttons?
Likewise, since the product itself is the star of your ad, you should fiercely resist all temptation to be clever, cute, or entertaining, all
of which only call attention to your creativity and away from the star. Puns in headlines are advertising malpractice. As David
Ogilvy warned—‖If you spend your advertising budget entertaining the consumer, you‘re a bloody fool. Homemakers don‘t buy a
new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night. They buy the new detergent because it promises a
benefit.‖
The Secret of Getting Rich and Famous as a Copywriter
If you‘re a direct response copywriter who seeks fortune and fame, knowing this 9-word truth will reward you immensely. Here‘s
why…
Your career success is tied directly to the performance of the ads you write. Write for great products that drive consumers wild
with desire, and their success will make you seem like a genius. Write for weak ones and, even when you do a respectable job, the
smell of the product‘s failure will rub off on you.
Think of it this way. You are a jockey. If you want to win more races, by all means hone your craft. But even more important, learn
how to spot and get yourself assigned to faster horses. That‘s a big part of building your reputation and career success.
You want your name associated with winners, not losers! Cultivating a jockey‘s eye for winners and then campaigning to ride
them is one of the most rewarding skills you can develop.
As a jockey, you can‘t do the horse‘s job. You can‘t carry your horse across the finish line. The best you can do is guide your pony to
win, using every trick of your craft. Even if you‘re a great jockey, if you‘re too often teamed with milkwagon nags, you‘ll be labeled a
loser.
While you can‘t carry a flawed product—or a slow horse—on your back to glory, great products, like champion race horses, will
put you in the winner‘s circle consistently.
And that will work wonders for your career. When you win, the entire industry notices. Even if your horse is a Secretariat, you will
be credited as the brilliant jockey who rode him home to victory. You‘ll get a rep as a winner, a hot hand—a Top Gun! If you work in
an ad agency or in-house copy department, you will earn more generous raises, faster promotions, high praise at meetings—all the
things that make work fun. If you are a freelancer, the demand for your services will rise exponentially, and you can start to
command some of the highest fees and royalties in the profession.
All from hitching your fortunes to this potent 9-word insight—a gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen.
There Are Three Additional Benefits As Well…
Learning to spot great products also forces you to see the world through the eyes of your prospects, which is the single
most valuable trait you can cultivate as a marketer or copywriter.
In addition, knowing what great products look like and asking, ―How can this one be better?‖ will inspire you to help your
clients create much stronger products, making your counsel exceptional, perhaps even indispensable.
Moreover, as a copywriter, your life will be mercifully easier when you work with great and worthy products. When a product has
a clear-cut, built-in, unique superiority, your ad often writes itself. As Bill Bernbach said, all you have to do is convey the
advantage, not create it out of thin air.
Having to invent a non-existent product advantage puts a tremendous strain on you because that‟s not your job! You should not
have to carry your horse!
Your job is to get the best possible ride out of your horse. If it‘s a milk-wagon nag, you‘re won‘t win any races…or the fortune and
fame that follow.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Take my advice. Develop an eye for great products, those with a clear-cut, built-in, unique superiority supported by powerful proof
elements. Then all you have to do is focus your headline and body copy dramatically on that inherent superiority and the proof
behind it and in no time, you‘ll find yourself atop a winner, galloping like the wind around the far turn and heading for home ahead
of the pack, with the crowd going wild. Your biggest strategic question—what should I write about?—is already answered for you by
the product‟s unique advantage. That unique advantage will, by itself, speed you to the winner‘s circle much of the time, which is
where a Top Gun like you belongs.
To sum up, if you want to become a successful copywriter, hook up with brilliant products, focus your headlines and copy on their
unique advantages, and let them carry you to glory.
And if you aspire to be a copywriting legend, learn to spot winnersand become a master of your craft. In all of marketing, there is
no combination more powerful than a gifted product and a gifted pen!
Here‘s a Little Rhyme to Help You Remember
To be a master marketer, remind yourself again—
A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen.
***
Well, after talking this through with you, I feel much better now. So what am I doing lying here in bed, whispering in your ear?
The sun is shining…life is so beautiful…and time‘s a-wastin‘! There are ambitious jockeys to coach…fast horses to cheer…thrilling
races to catch…and big money to win. Hand me my socks and shoes, Top Gun, and let‟s go!
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 20
Controversy! Gunfire Erupts Over “9 Most Important Words in
Marketing History”
Dear Marketing Top Gun,
My last Bullet revealed what I firmly believe is the most important sentence in marketing history.
That nine-word sentence is…
A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen.
As I explained, this principle has built more fortunes than any other marketing insight and is the surest road to riches in business.
Why?
Because, as the great Bill Bernbach said, ―The magic is in the product,‖ not in the copywriter‘s pen. ―Advertising doesn‘t create a
product advantage. It can only convey it…No matter how skillful you are, you can‘t invent a product advantage that doesn‘t exist.‖
The better your product, the more persuasive your ad can be, and the bigger your marketing success. Clever copywriting
technique is no substitute for a brilliant product. Consumers are too smart.
But soon after I fired off this Bullet, I heard sniper fire…and suddenly bullets were zinging around me! Pow! There went my
flowerpot! Smash!There went my lamp! I had to duck for cover under my desk!
To some readers, especially a few copywriters, my Bullet had not only missed its target, but had gravely wounded a sacred cow. The
part of my message that these readers took exception to was this advice to copywriters…
―Our 9-word rule means that the star of your ad should always be your product and how it uniquely benefits your prospects. It means
that your job is to research the product thoroughly to uncover its unique advantages. Research—deep research—is the launchpad of
copywriting breakthroughs.‖
The friendly fire triggered by this statement could be summed up this way…
Gary, you say that the product should be the star of the ad? No way! The prospect should always be the star of the ad!
Making your product the centerpiece can be deadly dull, especially if you leave out the prospect and his or her wants!
Top Guns, Hold Your Fire!!!
Let me come out from under my desk (it‘s uncomfortable down here), and you‘ll see we‘re still on the same side. No need for an
armed insurrection!
The question of whether the product or the prospect should be the centerpiece of the ad is a needless choice and a common
misunderstanding of what was preached by Rosser Reeves, the copywriting genius who created the Unique Selling Proposition, or
―USP‖ strategy. The ―USP‖ is probably the most successful and reliable mass marketing strategy ever created, and it‘s based
squarely upon the nine-word sentence, A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen.
It teaches that, just as in a military campaign, when you create an advertising campaign, you must think about two separate
issues— yourstrategy and your tactics.
By strategy, I mean the main message to be communicated—the unique benefit, or combination of benefits, you want to emphasize,
regardless of the execution.
By tactics, I mean the ad‘s execution, or the way you want to present your message.
First you figure out your strategy (your message), and then you figure out your tactics (your execution). Approach your assignments
this way, and you‘ll see that this makes copywriting a whole lot easier, and a lot more successful.
Sound tactics— putting the consumer front and center in the picture—are always necessary to win any advertising battle, and this
includes all the proven techniques for capturing your prospect‘s attention, getting him or her interested, building desire, proving your
case, making an irresistible offer, closing the sale, etc. And, sure, in all such instances—on the level of execution—the prospect should be
front and center every step of the way: his or her problems, wants, desires, needs, objections, concerns, questions, etc.
But what Reeves teaches us is that you first need a strategy—a unique and powerful message—to win the war. Always, always,
always decide on your ad‘s strategy first—what message do you want to convey as you put the prospect in the picture?
What unique benefit(s) can this product accomplish in your prospect‘s life?
Or to say it another way, putting the prospect front and center means answering his most obvious question as he encounters
your ad: how will this benefit me in a superior way compared with every other product making pitches for my business?
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
If you have a gifted product—one that fills the consumer‘s wants better than other options—the answer will be much more
persuasive than if you have only a gifted pen pouring out puffery about the prospect and his wants.
A Classic Example
While working in Europe during the 1930s, it occurred to candy maker Forrest Mars to give chocolate a protective candy coating to
stop it from melting. The idea became M&Ms candies. Because they didn‘t melt, they were adopted as a staple ration for U.S.
forces during World War II.
After the war, Mars wanted to sell his candies via TV, the hottest new mass-marketing medium ever to come along. He hired
Rosser Reeves.
If Reeves had been just a journeyman copywriter, he might well have taken the tired, traditional approach of selling M&Ms based
on their wonderful chocolate taste. After all, that‘s what prospects want in chocolate, isn‘t it? And if you think of only your prospect,
that‘s what you‘re going to focus on by default—the obvious wants that every other product talks about, and which the consumer
has heard countless times and just screens out. This is why a message that focuses only on what the prospect wants almost never
seems fresh, new, interesting, or compelling. The cruel fate of such ads is death by boredom, because their message is all too
familiar and not unique.
But Reeves knew better. He understood that before you write a word about your prospect‘s wants, you should research
your product‟s unique strengths… and see if these unique benefits can be the foundation of a unique selling message. Your
research might discover that your product satisfies a different prospect desire than you might have guessed at first, and this could
give you a fresh, much more compelling message to feature in your advertising, one that makes you stand out from all the clutter
andcreates desire to buy the product.
So instead of writing puffery about rich chocolate taste, Reeves did his homework and discovered what‘s unique about M&Ms—
thanks to their thin candy shell, they melt in your mouth, not in your hand.
Reeves‘ digging had uncovered a rich gold strike! It meant that millions of chocolate lovers could now buy a delicious treat and
not worry that it would melt in inconvenient places. M&Ms wouldn‘t melt on store shelves (important in an era when many stores
lacked air conditioning). Neither would they melt in your car‘s glove compartment, your kitchen cabinet, or your child‘s lunch
box. They wouldn‘t make your fingers messy and stain your clothes. You could enjoy chocolate anywhere, anytime, without
needing a napkin to wipe your fingers.
Aha! He had his core message—‖M&M chocolate candies melt in your mouth, not in your hand!‖
Then and only then did he start writing his executions—magnificent, utterly compelling TV ads demonstrating this core strategic
message. These ads were so powerful that to this day, 50 years later, I can vividly remember one commercial in which the
announcer showed two closed fists on the TV screen and asked, ―Which hand holds the M&Ms?‖ Then he‘d open one fist showing a
melted mess of chocolate. He‘d say, ―Can‘t be this hand! Must be this one!‖…and then he opened his other hand, showing prim little
unmelted M&Ms. He‘d end with a tagline, and I‘m doing this from memory but believe it‘s accurate, ―M&Ms are the only chocolate
candies that melt in your mouth, not in your hand.‖
Reeves delivered his unique message in ads that certainly put the consumer front and center in his executions. Compared to
traditional candy advertising, the difference was that his ads were based on a superior strategy, one that dramatized the uniqueness
of the product and the unique benefit it made possible for consumers. Based on that unique advantage, dramatized to the hilt from
the prospect‘s point of view, tens of millions of moms started buying M&Ms to put into baby boomers‘ lunch boxes so they wouldn‘t
mess up their clothes at school.
It‟s the most reliable copywriting formula ever discovered: A brilliant strategy (a message based on a product‘s unique benefits)
+ a compelling execution (an ad that shows how this unique benefit improves the prospect‘s life) = blockbuster success.
Result: the Mars candy company minted money!
Indeed, when Forrest Mars died in 1999, he was a multibillionaire, one of the richest men in the world. As of this writing, Mars
remains a privately owned company and is one of the world‘s largest family-owned firms, grossing some $18 billion a year in 65
countries. Several of Mr. Mars‘ descendants are each listed among the world‘s wealthiest individuals.
If you‘re a copywriter, imagine the opportunity, the vast wealth, that would have been lost if Reeves had thought only about
putting the prospect in the picture—and didn‘t look first at what‘s uniquely strong about the product.
If you‘re an entrepreneur, imagine the opportunity, the vast wealth, that would have been lost if Mars had aspired only to create
another me-too chocolate candy with no clear-cut, built-in, immediately understandable, unique, and highly desirable advantage.
But because both were smart and dreamed big, they teamed up to create the most powerful combination in all of marketing—a
gifted product and a gifted pen!
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
What you say is more important
than how you say it.‖ —David Ogilvy
In the end, A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen means that a superior message is even more important than the
way it is delivered, as most good copywriters can be counted on to do a halfway decent job of putting the prospect in the picture. But
if their ads aren‘t based on a powerful strategic difference that a gifted product makes possible, prospects are smart enough to see
the message for what it is—a weak, me-too product presented skillfully. Result: no sale.
It‘s why David Ogilvy counseled forcefully and repeatedly, ―What you say in your advertising is more important than how you
say it!‖
Top Gun, I hope this clears the smoke. Holster your weapon, go back to your keyboard, and start figuring out what
unique benefits your product offers. Then and only then commence your execution (and not of me, please!).
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 21
Which Offer Pulled Best?
Plus, a checklist of proven offer ideas to boost your response
Dear Marketing Top Gun:Which of these three offers pulled best? Please note that all are identical but expressed differently…
1) 50% Off!
2) Half Price!
3) Buy One, Get One Free!
In my experience—as well as that of others who‘ve tested this—#3 invariably wins. It‘s called the “bogo” offer—short
for buy one, get one free.
Bob Stone, in his classic book Successful Direct Marketing Methods, reports that offer #3, the bogo, outpulled the other two by
40 percent.
Do You Bogo?
The bogo works like magic in boosting response in virtually all markets where it‘s appropriate to give a discount. I say
―appropriate‖ because if you‘re a neurosurgeon, running a “buy one, get one free” sale on brain operations would scare away more
patients than you‘d attract.
But for just about everyone else, it‘s exceptionally responsive. The classic way to bogo is to give away the exact same product for a
purchase.
Or you can get creative…
When I was a copy chief, we had a client who sold gold and silver bullion, both of which were red-hot investments at the time. One
of my star copywriters, Peter Betuel, came up with this great offer: “Free ounce of silver for every ounce of gold you buy!” Then as
now, silver cost a tiny fraction of gold (about 1/60th), so this was easy for our client to do. But what a compelling offer it makes!
Do You Gogo?
Another strong offer, especially around the holidays, is the bogo‘s first cousin, the gogo—short for “give one, get one free.”
Example: Not long ago I wrote a renewal letter for a newsletter in which I‘m a partner. To all our subscribers, we romanced what an
ideal holiday gift the newsletter makes for family, friends, and business associates. The killer offer: ―For every one-year subscription
that you give to someone else, we‘ll extend your own subscription by a year.‖ Give one, get one free. Give two, get two free, etc.
It worked like a dream. One man gave away 62 subscriptions, earning so many one-year extensions, he‘ll have to leave them in
his will.
Checklist of Proven Offer Ideas to Boost Your Response
1. The offer is the second-most-important component in any direct marketing effort. The first is your list;
the third is your copy. It follows that you should spend at least as much time tinkering with your offer as with your
headline. Here are some ideas to spur your thinking…
2. “Make your offer so great that only a lunatic would refuse to buy”
—Claude Hopkins.
3. A believable reason for a special offer boosts response. Was there a fire at your warehouse and you must
liquidate everything? Is the manufacturer running a one-time-only promotion? Is your company‘s founder retiring
and giving his best customers an unprecedented deal as a fond farewell? Are you celebrating a special anniversary
or event, introducing a new service, or clearing out overstocked inventory? Are you tying your offer to a major
news event or seasonal holiday on everyone‘s mind? Will you give a portion of your profits to a charity or to help
victims of a recent disaster? Are you offering your product at cost for a limited time to win new customers?
Whatever the reason, merchandise it to the hilt and your response will rise. If you don‘t have a reason to run a
special offer, come up with one. A believable reason gives your offer traction.
4. Never sell more than one thing at a time, unless you have a catalog or a group of closely related items (for
example, mystery books in a book club offer). In more than 40 years of copywriting, the most effective strategy
I‘ve ever found for advertising profitably is to sell one thing per ad and sell it thoroughly.
5. However, always try to come up with a deluxe version of your basic offer. A percentage of your
prospects will always opt for your highest-priced offer. Offering a deluxe option also subtly switches the decision
your prospects face from a “yes-or-no” choice to an “A-or-B” choice, often resulting in a higher response and
almost always a higher average sale.Carrying this one step further, it often pays to make a good, better, best offer,
such as the Franklin Mint has done with bronze, silver, or gold versions of its collectible coins and ingots.
Magazines and newsletters do the same with one-year, two-year, and three-year options, featuring progressively
generous discounts or additional premiums.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
6. Always test the same type of offer being repeated by your competitors. Unless they‘re dummies
(always possible), they‘re repeating it because it works. But also try something dramatically different along the
lines of #2 above—so outrageously risk-free and irresistible, only a fool would refuse.
7. Make your guarantee as strong as you can. For example, I‘ve found that longer-term
guarantees reduce refunds! In other words, a one-year, full money-back guarantee not only gives your prospect
more confidence when considering an order, triggering higher response, but also results in fewer refunds than a
one-, three-, or six-month guarantee. A five-year guarantee works better still. These longer terms allow a
disappointed customer to feel that he has plenty of time to get around to returning the item. Most of the time,
he never does.
8. Test a price ending in 7. My friend, the legendary marketer and copywriter Ted Nicholas, has tested pricing
extensively. He reports that prices ending in the number 7 work better than any other number. (Pricing is its
own major subject, and there are so many pointers I‘d like to share, I‘ll cover them in a separate Bullet. But I
couldn‘t resist sharing this gem from Ted.)
9. “Till forbid” is where the largest treasure is buried! In any business, repeat business is where the real
money lies. That‘s why it‘s usually much smarter to sell an ongoing product or service than a one-shot. Whatever
your business, try to figure out how you can market it as a club, a membership, a newsletter, a periodic
maintenance service, or some other continuity relationship.Better still, have your new customers pay by credit
card and give you their permission to bang it every month, quarter, or other regular interval. You‘ll never find an
easier way to make money than when your customer is on an automatic repurchase plan. It puts you in control of
initiating the next regular purchase, instead of relying on your customer to remember. In this way you convert
onetime sales into continuously flowing rivers of revenue.
10. A “takeaway” offer can be extremely effective in boosting response. People never want something so
much as when it might be snatched away and thereafter forbidden. If you have a hard deadline after which no
orders will be accepted or a limit you can place on the number of orders you‘ll fulfill, by all means mention it. It
will significantly boost your response.And whatever limit you set, either in time or the number of allowable orders,
mean it! Don‘t fudge or give in to greed and accept orders beyond the limit. If you do, your customers will
eventually discover that your deadlines and limits mean nothing, and you will have killed this golden goose.Louis
Rukeyser once sought my counsel on how to increase subscribers to his investment newsletter. He already had
amassed about 500,000 subs, which made his publication the world‘s largest ―guru‖ letter. But he wanted more.I
told him that the easiest way—in fact, the only way—I could see him attracting a million subscribers would be,
ironically, to strictlylimit subscriptions to one million. Having such a cutoff would drive subscribers through the
door in droves. I said, ―Lou, I‘d be happy to write a direct mail package for you that strictly limits your readership
exclusively to one million investors. We can romance it this way: ‗Just one million subscribers—a tiny
fraction of one percent of the world‟s investors—will be exclusively entitled to receive my specific
buy/sell recommenda- tions.'”He rejected my idea because he didn‘t want to limit the growth of his newsletter
in any way or to any size, even a million. But true to my forecast, he never reached anywhere near the million
mark.
11. If prices are going up, say so! Another form of the ―takeaway,‖ this beat-the-coming-price-increase offer works
like gangbusters with your existing customer list.
12. Always offer a unique and alluring premium or set of premiums. Usually premiums related to your
product work best, especially for informational products. But not always, so test.In his book, Secrets of Successful
Direct Mail, mail order wizard Dick Benson says, ―Desirability is the key element of a premium. The relationship
of the premium to the product isn‘t important.‖ As an example, Dick describes tests he conducted to induce
drivers to apply for the Shell gasoline credit card. To everyone‘s surprise (including mine, as I was one of the
copywriters working on the Shell account at the time), the strongest premium had nothing to do with cars or
driving. It wasn‘t car coffee mugs, sunglasses, or even free gasoline. The winner was a free set of steak knives.
13. Offer an extra bonus for prompt response. This is sometimes called an ―early-bird bonus,‖ or a ―fast 50″ gift, as
in “Free Gift for the First 50 Who Reply.” Unless you‘re online, don‘t lock yourself into a fixed date, such as, ―Free if
you reply by January 31.‖ An unexpected delay at the hands of the post office or printer can massacre your response, as
prospects are already too late as soon as they see your ad.Instead, say ―Free if you reply in 7 days.‖
Test different periods, such as 10, 15, or even 30 days, to find what works best for you.
14. Sometimes a “mystery” early-bird bonus, described with tantalizing copy, can pull even better
than a specific description.Example: For a weight-loss space ad I wrote for Richard Simmons, our strongest
early-bird premium proved to be a mystery gift. Here‘s how I described it, next to the coupon, using Richard‘s own
voice, of course…
―A Surprise Gift from Me to You…with Love‖
“Everyone loves a surprise gift, especially me! And I‟ve got one for you that‟s extra special if you respond to my invitation within
the next 10 days. It‟s something you absolutely must have before you can seriously consider losing weight and keeping it off. And
it‟s very, very personal.
“I‟ll bet you want to know what it is…Sorry! I can‟t tell you—that would ruin the surprise! But I can tell you what it‟s not:
“It‟s not a magic potion or a low-calorie pizza…It‟s not a zipper for your mouth or a padlock for your refrigerator …And
it‟s definitely not another fat-gram counter!
“It IS, quite simply, to be an indispensable item that will help you get and stay motivated. You‟ll slim down. You‟ll become fit and
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
healthy. It will help you see yourself perhaps as you‟ve never seen yourself before, and it will continue to inspire you for years to
come.
“Oh! I just can‟t contain myself any longer! The suspense is killing me. The surprise is…Oops! I almost said it!
“Sending you this wonderful gift with my love and affection will give me such pleasure. Join my exclusive Never Give Up Weight
Loss Club right now and this gift will be yours to keep, along with everything else I name in the coupon at right.(Pssst…don‟t tell
anyone else what your gift is when you get it. You don‟t want to ruin their surprise, do you?)
Love,
Richard!”
***
This mystery gift offer worked like a charm. I described it this way because the gift was a small book of testimonials from Club
members who mentioned some of their favorite weight-loss tips and why the Club meant so much to them. To describe it as such
seemed a little flat, and try as I might, I couldn‘t come up with anything scintillating. So I turned to the ―mystery gift‖ strategy. It
helped make Richard‘s audience not only want this gift, but even more passionately want to join a club where they could experience
an ongoing relationship with Richard, who seemed to care so much about them and their weight problems. They wanted to feel his
warmth, understanding, encouragement, and acceptance much more than they craved another set of diet tips.
And that is probably the greatest secret of all—with each of your offers, let your genuine love, empathy, and affection for your
customers shine through. They will feel it and respond in kind.
Other enticing offers you can try, depending on your business: free shipping, free sample, free trial, free information,
free estimate, free consultation, or even free ―money‖—such as a coupon, discount certificate, or facsimile currency or
check that‘s valid toward a purchase. Notice the common element in all these proven offers: the word free, which reduces
your customer‘s risk and makes it more enticing to say yes.And let‘s not forget the venerable free talent test. For many years,
the Art Instruction Institute ran ads on matchbook covers, featuring a sketch of a pirate along with this challenge…
Are You an Artist?
Draw the Pirate
This matchbook ad promised that if you take this simple aptitude test (tracing the pirate not permitted), the Institute‘s
instructors would review it and let you know if you have the talent to be an artist. I understand that Peanuts creator Charles
Schulz was accepted and later graduated from this program with honors.
To my dismay, I could not draw the pirate.
Would you like a good laugh right now? Check out this underground film short (just seven minutes) that anyone in direct
marketing should find hilarious. It spoofs the famous matchbook ad, “Draw the Pirate.” Go to this link now and you‘ll be LOL, I
promise… www.undergroundfilm.org/films/viewer.tcl?oftype=lar&reso=2&wid=1028027
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 22
16 Rules for Success
Dear Marketing Top Gun,
I‘m a sucker for any article promising ―rules for success.‖
You too?
If you‘re like me, deep down you suspect that you already know whatever the rules are going to be. But you harbor a glimmer of
hope that maybe, just maybe, you‘ll uncover a gem, an ―obvious‖ secret that has somehow eluded you all these years and will
now lift your performance to a new level.
Even if not, such lists can be quite valuable because, as one of my mentors used to say about the rules for writing good copy, “We
need not so much to be taught as reminded.”
When I came across the following list, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, the list expresses mostly insights I ―knew‖ in some form or
other, but have sometimes forgotten, for which I‘ve always paid a price. (Rule #10 is my favorite in that department! I also like #1,
#3, #6, and #16 a lot.) I‘ll bet that you, too, will find yourself nodding in heartfelt agreement with these rules, as they resonate with
your own hard-won life experiences.
The list was posted online recently by Bob Parsons, a high achiever who started with little in life and has founded several wildly
successful companies, including GoDaddy, the Internet domain registrar and hosting company. His 16 rules sum up the lessons he‘s
learned along the way.
No, I‘m not an affiliate for Bob, GoDaddy, or anyone else. I don‘t even know Bob personally. But I really enjoyed his 16 rules.
Reviewing them is a great way to start any new year…or any new day.
So here, with his permission and in his own words, are…
Bob Parsons‘ 16 Rules to Live By
1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we‘re in our comfort
zone. I hear people say, ―But I‘m concerned about security.‖ My response to that is simple: ―Security is for cadavers.‖
2. Never give up. Almost nothing works the first time it‘s attempted. Just because what you‘re doing does not seem to
be working doesn‘t mean it won‘t work. It just means that it might not work the way you‘re doing it. If it was easy,
everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn‘t have an opportunity.
3. When you’re ready to quit, you’re closer than you think. There‘s an old Chinese saying that I just love, and
I believe it is so true. It goes like this: “The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.”
4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a
point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as
a cloud of ―undefined consequences.‖ My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to
get Parsons Technology going, ―Well, Robert, if it doesn‘t work, they can‘t eat you.‖
5. Focus on what you want to have happen. Remember that old saying, ―As you think, so shall you be.‖
6. Take things a day at a time. No matter how difficult your situation is, you can get through it if you don‘t look too far into
the future and focus on the present moment. You can get through anything one day at a time.
7. Always be moving forward. Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. The
moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die. Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some
small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.
8. Be quick to decide. Remember what General George S. Patton said: ―A good plan violently executed today is far and
away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.‖
9. Measure everything of significance. I swear this is true. Anything that is measured and watched improves.
10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate. If you want to uncover problems you don‘t know about, take a
few moments and look closely at the areas you haven‘t examined for a while. I guarantee you problems will be there.
11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you’re doing. When you look at your
competitors, remember that everything looks perfect at a distance. Even the planet Earth, if you get far enough into space,
looks like a peaceful place.
12. Never let anybody push you around. In our society, with our laws and even playing field, you have just as much
right to what you‘re doing as anyone else, provided that what you‘re doing is legal.
13. Never expect life to be fair. Life isn‘t fair. You make your own breaks. You‘ll be doing good if the only meaning fair has
to you is something that you pay when you get on a bus (i.e., fare).
14. Solve your own problems. You‘ll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you‘ll develop a competitive edge.
Masura Ibuka, the cofounder of Sony, said it best: ―You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following
the others.‖ There‘s also an old Asian saying that I remind myself of frequently. It goes like this: “A wise man keeps his
own counsel.”
15. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Lighten up. Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. None of us
are in control as much as we like to think we are.
16. There’s always a reason to smile. Find it. After all, you‘re really lucky just to be alive. Life is short. More and more,
I agree with my little brother. He always reminds me: ―We‘re not here for a long time; we‘re here for a good time.‖
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
The above rules are republished with the permission of Bob Parsons (www.BobParsons.com) and are copyright — 2004-2007 by
Bob Parsons. All rights reserved.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 23
The One Word That
Teaches Almost Everything
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
The legendary copywriter and my friend Gary Halbert has passed away.Even reading what I just wrote, I feel it can‘t be true,
because he was so full of life and tiptoed off the stage so softly, so unexpectedly—not his style at all. I understand that he passed
away in his sleep, Sunday night, April 8, at his home in Miami.
As always in these Bullets, I‘d like to share a marketing lesson in this issue. But given this sad news, let me do it by sharing just a
bit of what I learned from Gary Halbert, the renowned Prince of Print.
In fact, I was thinking about Gary and his newsletter just a few weeks ago. I had noticed something unusual about my reaction to it.
I subscribe to numerous marketing ezines. But I noticed that, under the crush of hundreds of emails a week, I found myself deleting
almost all of them unopened…except for The Gary Halbert Letter. I would always open his, usually as soon as it hit my inbox.
Your One-Word Teacher
Whenever I notice an anomaly like that, I ask the most instructive word in the English language: Why?
“Why?” is the world‘s best teacher, a one-word university more valuable than a king‘s library. As far as learning is concerned,
a day without raising a good “why?” is a wasted day.
―Why,‖ I asked myself, ―have I always opened every new issue of The Gary Halbert Letter, while most marketing ezines
go unopened from my inbox to the trash?‖
In light of his passing, let me share my thoughts, each one a tribute to the man, his writing style, and what we can all learn from
him…
1. Gary shared news. Sometimes he was the news, sometimes it was a dramatic turn of events in his tumultuous life, but often
enough, he shared news of a technique or strategy that would make your response and profits soar. You couldn‘t afford to miss
even one of these gems, so you had to open every issue.
Example: In one issue, he urged us to capture as many physical addresses of our online prospects as possible. Why? He said that if
you can collect the physical addresses of your online prospects (ezine subscribers, for example), you can then send them a direct
mail promotion and generate up to 400% higher sales than with the same copy delivered only on the Web. What a tasty little tidbit
that is! And Gary generously shared hundreds of such gems.2. Gary was interesting. Like coming upon a letter in a bottle
washed ashore, you would never know what you‘d find inside an issue of Gary‘s letter. Its contents were totally, wildly
unpredictable.
What can we learn from that? Why is unpredictability essential to getting your copy read?
When I was a copy cub at BBDO, John Caples, who also worked there, told us that if we wanted to learn how to write great
headlines, we should study the front covers of the Reader‟s Digest. In those days, and up until fairly recently, the front
cover of Reader‟s Digest would list every article inside the magazine. Today it just features a few highlights, not every
article.
But if you read through the entire list of article titles, you would see instantly that a few would exert a powerful magnetic pull
on your interest, so much so that you would want to stop everything you were doing and read that article immediately.
Yet most of the other article titles, even on subjects that might generally interest you, would leave you unpulled.
What made the difference?
To Write Great Headlines,
Remember This Formula:
I=B+C
In pondering this, I realized a great truth about headlines: your level of interest is directly proportional to the presence of two
factors: benefit and curiosity.
Either one without the other is a devastating weakening. I = B + C.Interest equals Benefit plus Curiosity.
For example, even if a headline is well-written, promises a benefit, and also has the look and right words of a ―classic,‖ strong
headline, if I suspect that I can predict what the article will likely say, I will skip the article. Predictability kills curiosity!
On the other hand, when an article promises something of interest and the title leaves me wondering, “How could this be?”—in
other words, when its content is unpredictable—it inflames my curiosity and I have to read it.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Make a practice of reading the contents pages of your own favorite magazines and you‘ll see what I‘m saying is true. When you
encounter a title or headline that combines both benefit and curiosity, it pulls on you like an irresistible force field. But if either is
missing, you‘ll feel little or no pull.
And that was a fascinating aspect of Gary‘s writing. He would give you a big benefit wrapped in a headline that would also feature a
certain ―curiosity factor‖ that intrigued the devil out of you.
For example, look at some of these great Halbert headlines and see if you don‘t agree—they not only promise a benefit, but also
ignite your curiosity by being so unpredictable:
“How Does An 84 Year Old Woman With Extreme
Arthritis, A Fractured Knee…And…A Torn Rotator Cuff
Humiliate Young, Expert Golfers By Hitting Every
Tee Shot Out Of Sight Straight Down The Fairway?”— — —‖The Amazing Fighting Secret Of
A Very Deadly Mexican Who
Doesn‘t Want Anybody To Ever See His Face!‖— — —‖How To Make People Stand In Line And
Beg You To Take Their Money!‖— — —‖The Amazing Facelift In A Jar
Used By Hollywood Stars
Who Don‘t Want Plastic Surgery!‖
———
―How Almost Any Man Can Get
Non-Stop Sex…While…He Is
Waiting To Meet His Dream Lover!‖
———
―Russian Scientists Discover Simple Secret
To Younger, Healthier, Beautiful Skin!‖
———
―How To Fly To Hawaii For Free!‖
———
―Free Report Reveals Little Known
Secrets Overweight Women Use
To Look 15 Pounds Slimmer
Than They Really Are!‖
———
―The Amazing 10-Minute Secret Used Religiously
By The Most Overworked People In The World…
To Have Better Sleep, All-Day Energy,
And Supercharged Brainpower!‖
———
―Jacksonville Man Discovers Strange
New Way For The ‗Little Guy‘ To Get
Rich In Real Estate!‖
———
By combining a big benefit with a mysterious ―curiosity factor,‖ these great headlines—like Gary‘s newsletter issues—were so
interesting that they truly lived up to Vic Schwab‘s definition of compelling copy—they were easier to read than ignore.
3. Gary was real. Gary‘s writing was often raw but always real. His Boron letters, for example, written behind bars, from a
dark place in the soul where neither he nor you had ever wanted to visit, were as hauntingly real as writing gets.
But whatever he was writing about, you felt that his copy pulsated with the warm, red blood of a beating, passionate, humorous
heart, not extruded like cold, homogenized milk through the sterile pipes of overly cautious copy committees.
Yes, sometimes Gary swore like a sailor, ranted like a rabble-rouser, threw bombs like a provocateur, and gleefully flouted every
tenet of political correctness. He had more funny war stories than a MASH unit. He offended many female readers with blatantly
sexist humor, yet found women enchanting. He reveled in being a human pin in search of pompous balloons and delighted in
tweaking the noses of the arrogant and thoughtless. And all this of course added up to one more reason you had to open his
letters, to find out “What on earth is he going to say now?”
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
4. Gary was original. His favorite saying, the one he lived by, was“Nothing is impossible for a person who refuses to listen to
reason!” With that as his credo, he blazed many new marketing trails that the rest of us followed.
What does this all mean to you? Let‘s sum up. If you want to pay tribute to Gary and what he taught us…
1.
2.
3.
4.
Share valuable news in your advertising and ezines. It commands readership and loyalty.
Be interesting. You can‘t bore people into buying.
Get real. Let a human personality shine through your copy.
Be original. But let that human voice be your own or your client‘s, not the distinctive voice of Gary, or John Carlton,
or Gene Schwartz, or anyone else.
In honor of Gary, here in his own words are a few more ―Halbertisms‖ I totally agree with:
―Specific claims increase believability. Do NOT write in your advertising, ‗This car gets great gas mileage.‘ DO write, ‗This
car gets 41 mpg in the city and 52 mpg on road trips.'‖
―Ground yourself in the true fundamentals of marketing…heighten your awareness of what‘s working NOW…and
continually capture ideas, headlines, thoughts, techniques, etc.‖
―Using negative adjectives in your headlines works like crazy. Here are some examples:
Desperate Nerd From Ohio…
One-Legged Golfer…
Blind Medical Doctor Discovers …
Half-Dead Cuban Washes Ashore In Miami With Strangest Secret That Can Double The Income Of Most Americans!‖
―If you are sending out snail-mail sales letters, try to send them so they are most likely to arrive on a Tuesday (the best
day for response).‖
―Always keep in mind that the people of America sort through their mail while standing over a wastebasket.‖
―Stop taking yourself so seriously. You really aren‘t that important. Your passing may leave a vacuum, but it will be filled
faster than you would ever believe. I don‘t say this to put you down. The real message here is… Get Out There And
Start Having Some Fun!―
Precisely because he lived lustily by that last sentence, Gary Halbertwill leave a vacuum for a long, long time.
I am so sad that he has passed. He will be deeply missed not only by his family and close friends, but by the entire copywriting
fraternity.
I suspect that this marketing maverick, who believed in God but loathed religions, shared the same sentiment as Winston Churchill, who
said, ―I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.‖
I believe in an afterlife…and if any mortal who‘s crossed that river can figure out a way to get a message back to us still here on the other
side, that person will be Gary Halbert. If and when he does, just as he did on earth, he‘ll trigger his customary huge response.
Thanks to Joe Polish, here‘s a photo, taken not long ago at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City, of four marketing amigos. From
left to right—Joe Polish, Gary Halbert, me, and John Carlton. In light of Gary‘s passing, I‘ll treasure this.
But why did he have to leave us so soon? “Why?”…the word that can teach everything…almost.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 24
The “Borden Formula”
for Giving a Great Speech
…or Writing a Potent Headline
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
I‘m sure you‘ve heard about the surveys showing that more people are afraid of giving a speech than dying.
Perhaps most dreaded of all is dying while giving a speech! But that will never happen to you if you remember this Bullet.
In four easy steps, it will teach you how to craft a powerful speech on any topic, a talk your listeners will enjoy and respond
to favorably. As an extra bonus, this method will also help you to write a winning headline whenever you need one.
This four-step formula was created by Richard C. Borden. Many years ago, Borden was the Administrative Chairman of the
Department of Public Speaking at New York University. He was also one of the nation‘s most popular speakers and sales trainers, as
well as an author of books on selling and public speaking.
To give a great speech, Borden recommends that you imagine your audience shouting out these four emotional outbursts as you
give your talk (this will become clear in a minute)…
1.
2.
3.
4.
“Ho hum!”
“Why bring that up!”
“For instance?”
“So what?”
Let‘s see how this works in practice . . .
Let‘s imagine that you must give a speech or important presentation. You are dreading it, but there‘s no escape. So you enroll in a
course that teaches the Borden method. At your weekly classes, you practice by standing before the group and giving talks on
various subjects assigned to you.
Each time you do, as you take your place at the front of the room, on cue the entire class shouts at you, at the top of their lungs, “Ho
hum!”
If you were nervous before standing up to speak, hearing this thundering “Ho hum!” hurled at you by forty to fifty bored people
will instantly turn you into a quivering mass of jelly.
But the experience teaches two valuable lessons . . .
First, you learn—in your gut, as only actual experience can teach—this truism of life: Fear is a cowardly bully. Stand up to it, and it
runs.
Second, this experience indelibly stamps in your awareness the most critical principle of giving an effective speech: Your opening
must electrify your audience, shake them awake, or, as we Borden students like to put it, “crash the ho-hum barrier.”
In his book, Public Speaking as Listeners Like It! Borden gives this example. Let‘s say you‘ve been asked to speak on traffic safety.
Don’t start out with . . .
―The subject which has been assigned me is the reduction of traffic accidents.‖ Ho-hum indeed!
How much more interesting to start your speech with . . .
―Four hundred and fifty shiny new coffins were delivered to the city last Thursday.‖
That‘s a grabber that will instantly interest your audience as they wonder, “Why?”
***
OK, so let‘s say you‘ve got an interesting opening sentence that survives the “Ho hum!” challenge. You‘re just getting started in
the Borden torture chamber!
Next, the entire class shouts at you, “Why bring that up?” which is your invitation to expand upon your attentiongetting opener.
Next, the class shouts, “For instance?” demanding at least one specific, persuasive example of the point you‘re
making. Finally, the class screams, “So what?”—what do you recommend we do about this?
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Let‘s see an excellent example provided by one of the greatest copywriters who ever lived, Bruce Barton, cofounder of Batten,
Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO), a leading Madison Avenue ad agency where I used to work alongside John Caples. (That
name, by the way— Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn—was once described by an advertising wag as sounding ―like a man with a
suitcase falling down a flight of stairs.‖ I love that description!)
Here is an example from a talk by Bruce Barton that Borden cites in his book. Barton was a firm believer in self-improvement,
and in this talk he was urging a group of young men to make more productive use of their spare time. (Though they were not part
of Barton‘s talk, I‘ll overlay the four Borden questions at the right places to show, as Borden did in his book, how well Bruce
Barton‘s talk illustrates the Borden method.)
1. Ho Hum!
Barton begins his talk with an intriguing observation about the potential value of spare time…
―Last month a man in Chicago refused a million dollars for an invention he had evolved in his spare time.”
2.Why Bring That Up!
―You are interested in this because it confronts you with the possibilities of your spare time. Did you ever stop to think that most of the
world‘s great men have achieved their true life work, not in the course of their needful occupations, but—in their spare time?
3. For Instance?
―A tired-out rail-splitter crouched over his tattered books by candlelight or by fire-glow, at the day‘s end; preparing for his future,
instead of snoring or skylarking like his co-laborers. Abraham Lincoln cut out his path to later immortality—in his spare time.
―An underpaid and overworked telegraph clerk stole hours from sleep or from play, at night, trying to crystallize into
realities certain fantastic dreams in which he had faith. Today the whole world is benefiting by what Edison did—in his spare
time.
―A down-at-heel instructor in an obscure college varied the drudgery he hated by spending his evenings and holidays in tinkering
with a queer device of his, at which his fellow teachers laughed. But he invented the telephone —in his spare time.
4. So What?
―Gentlemen, you, too, have spare time. The man who says: ‗I would do such and such a great thing, if only I had time!‘ would do
nothing if he had all the time on the calendar. There is always time—spare time—at the disposal of every human who has the
energy to use it. Use it!”
***
In your spare time, Top Gun, I urge you to practice using this simple four-step Borden formula whenever you prepare your emails,
memos, or presentations. It will work wonders in making you more persuasive.
It can also help you write a great headline for an ad or direct mail package.
I use many tests to measure the strength of a headline before I‘m happy with it. And I usually write 30 to 50 headlines before I pick
the best.
Several of my headline tests are quite advanced and would require more space and illustration than I can provide here.
But Borden‘s step #1 is an excellent starting point: Does your headline crash the ho-hum barrier?
When judging headlines that my clients have asked me to critique over the years, I would often explain my ―shake-me-awakeat-three-a.m.‖ test, which is the same as Borden‘s step #1. If you were to shake me awake at three in the morning and read me
your headline, would I care? Would it address a concern of such urgency that I‘d immediately blink my eyes awake and want to
know more? Or would I beg you to let me go back to sleep?
Open any magazine or newspaper and apply this ―shake-me-awake-at-three-a.m.‖ test to the headlines atop the ads, and you‘ll
see that most fail miserably. Even headlines by good direct marketing writers often fail this test.
―But is that really a fair test?‖ a wounded copywriter may ask. ―People will be reading my headline while fully awake. Why insist
that it be compelling to someone who‘s just been shaken awake at three a.m.?‖
The truth is, most of us are asleep—sleepwalking through our days, deeply absorbed in the ceaseless chatter of our own minds.
So, yes, your headline most definitely has to shake your prospects awake, crash the ho-hum barrier, and electrify them with
interest!
Your headline must be so compelling because, as David Ogilvy said, ―On the average, five times as many people read the headline as
read the body copy. When you have written the headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. If you haven‘t done some
selling in your headline, you have wasted 80 percent of your client‘s money.‖
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Your headline must be so arresting because, as John Caples said, ―In a print ad, 75 percent of the buying decisions are made at
the headline alone.‖
So go forth, Top Gun, and in every talk you ever give, in every headline you ever write, electrify them with interest. Crash the hohum barrier!
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from
your life like a shadow in the night.
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Bullet 25
The “Golden Key” of Persuasion
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
If you‘re willing to use a little imagination, I will now place in your hand a golden key.Ready to play along?OK, vividly picture in
your palm a large, gleaming, golden skeleton key.
Feel how heavy it is? It‘s made of solid gold.
See how brightly it shines? It seems to pull extra light out of the air itself!
Notice how cold it feels? It‘s as if it‘s been stored in the refrigerator.
Can you see and feel this key in your palm now? OK, squeeze it. Feel its heft and coolness. See it gleam.
Good!
Now you start to feel very pleased to have been given this golden key, because it is priceless!
How so?
As you will soon discover, this rare key will enable you to open numerous treasure chests hiding in plain sight all around you. It will
make you uncommonly effective as a persuader, someone known and respected for being able to unlock many hearts and minds
with only your words.
Such is the power of the key I hand you now—the golden key of metaphor.
Metaphor?
Whazzat?
―Metaphor‖ is based on a Greek word meaning to ―carry something across‖ or ―transfer.‖ Today we use ―metaphor‖ to mean a direct
comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects.
You‘ll get the idea in a minute, but first let me promise you that this is no mere grammar lesson…
If you heed my advice today about how to use metaphors, you can easily become one of the most persuasive people on the planet. As
Aristotle said about the art of persuasion, “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.” And the Big A was right too,
because nothing persuades as quickly, effectively, memorably, or permanently as a well-crafted metaphor.
As an added benefit, just as the God of Genesis breathed life into man‘s nostrils, metaphors will breathe life, color, and power into
everything you write.
Let‘s Look at a Few Examples…
Let‘s say you are an ad agency executive pitching a new account. Youcould drone on about the necessity of having ―impactful
ideas that capture consumer awareness…blah, blah, blah.‖
Or you could begin your presentation like David Ogilvy, with a deft metaphor…
“Ladies and gentlemen, unless your advertising is built on a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.”
Instantly, your audience thinks, ―A ship in the night? No, we can‘t have that!‖
That image perfectly sets up a show-and-tell presentation of the big ideas you‘ve come up with to boost your clients‘ sales.
With a good metaphor, you fuse at the hip two different things and, by a mysterious alchemy, instantly transfer the qualities of one
into the other. Good metaphors are wizardry that work real magic in your prospects‘ minds. That‘s because this process of
transferring the qualities of one thing into another takes place instantly, bypassing critical analysis and resistance. All you do is
compare A to B in an effective way and voila!your point is made instantly without disagreement. This can make you a magician of
persuasion!
A perfect example…
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan won the understanding and acclaim of the entire country—from Washington to Wall
Street to Main Street—when he proudly reported that he presided over “a Goldilocks economy. Not too hot. Not too cold.
Just right.” That simple metaphor—‖a Goldilocks economy‖—was more persuasive than a 10-foot stack of economic reports.
Let‘s say you are writing about the wisdom of starting early to invest for retirement. You could write a sleep-inducing treatise on
the subject. But look at how effectively master investor Warren Buffett does it—with a simple metaphor…
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“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
Or consider Ben Franklin on the wisdom of frugality…
“Small leaks sink great ships.”
Do you see how tight, how irrefutable, how powerful such arguments are when phrased in an apt metaphor? They yield
instant agreement, and that is their magic.
Float Like a Butterfly…
Do you remember Muhammad Ali in his prime? His wit was as quick as his left jab. In prefight banter with reporters, Ali could
verbally out-shadowbox even the cleverest reporters, leaving them laughing with metaphors like these:
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”“Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a
brick. I’m so mean I make medicine sick.”
“Joe Frazier is so ugly that he should donate his face to the U.S. Bureau of
Wildlife.” “I’ll beat him so bad he’ll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.”
“I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room
was dark.”
Novelist and journalist Norman Mailer, who covered Ali and was himself a master of metaphor, described the champ‘s wit this
way: “He always held aces to your kings.”
A Personal Story
When we were young, Pauline and I, while driving on vacation, came upon an adorable little cottage for sale on a little
bluff overlooking the ocean. We fell in love with it.
Prices of Hamptons real estate were much lower then, and we bought it, signing a contract to close in May. We couldn‘t wait for
our dream summer at the beach. But as the closing date drew near, the scheming seller realized he could make even more money if
he rented the cottage out to someone else for the summer, so he insisted that he had to postpone our closing until mid-September.
―No way!‖ howled my lawyer. And then he lowered the boom on the seller‘s gambit with this telling metaphor: “You want to
sell Gary and Pauline a toy store on the day after Christmas. No fair!” The seller caved; we closed in May and enjoyed
the first of many enchanting summers in our cottage by the sea.
Best Sources of Persuasive Metaphors
Your richest sources of metaphor include the Bible, fairy tales, sports, the movies—any source of images that we all know by heart.
And I do mean ―by heart,‖ because the mere mention of certain images will automatically trigger in your audience powerful
emotions they already harbor, which often enables you to persuade instantly.
For example, when writing to investors, I would shamelessly massage their greed glands by describing “a Sleeping
Beauty stock‖ or“Cinderella opportunity” or “ugly-duckling company about to become a swan.”
If you manage a team trying to outperform a superior competitor, you can instantly give them more confidence by describing
them as fearlessDavids about to take down Goliath. If you‘re putting a work group together for a special project, it‘s
motivational magic to tell each member that he or she has been selected for an all-star team…or that they are about to move
from summer stock to Broadway…or get the chance to compete “in the Super Bowl of our industry,” etc.
You can instantly illustrate a charismatic leader‘s strong hold on his followers by saying that, to them, “he walks on water”
or she could“part the Red Sea.” You could call a crooked politician a liar, but it‘s so much more amusing—and devastating—
to quip, “With his every statement, his nose grows longer.”
You can give a metaphor a humorous twist to enliven any speech or ad. In the keynote address at the Democratic National
Convention of 1988, former Texas Governor Ann Richards lampooned the first President George Bush. Describing, in her view,
his fumbling attempts to connect with the American people, she lamented…
“Poor George. He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
You Can Do This!
First identify the point you want to make. Then imagine, just as you did with the golden key above, a metaphor (or comparison) that
makes your point for you. It‘s fun, like a treasure hunt, like looking for money as you walk down the street in a city where everyone‘s
pockets have holes.(Hey, I just penned a metaphor! When you get into the habit, it becomes second nature.)
Start looking and you‘ll notice useful metaphors everywhere. Collect them like coins and you‘ll find many opportunities to spend
them on more colorful prose. Just the other day I heard Jacob Teitelbaum MD speaking on the radio about the effect of too much
coffee:
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“Caffeine is an energy loan shark. What it lends you in the morning it
takes back with heavy interest in the afternoon.” Please don‘t turn up your nose at the more familiar metaphors. I love
clichés, and you should too! They are clichés precisely because everyone already believes them, so using them gives your copy
greater credibility. Some examples…
“Old as dirt.”
“Smart as a whip.”
“Cool as a cucumber.”
“Dumb as a box of rocks.”
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
“A leopard doesn’t change its spots.”
“Where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“This product gives your portfolio Gibraltar-like security
because…” “The lion’s share of the profits will go to the few who
realize…” “You are opening a Pandora’s box of problems.” “A sea
change is sweeping across this industry…”
“Overall, we like the agreement, but this clause is a bone in our throat.”
“While most products of this kind are punched out cookie-cutter fashion, ours are custom-made.You will
instantly notice the difference. For example…”
“Asleep at the switch.”
“Play hardball.”
“Tip of the iceberg.”
“Roller coaster of emotions.”
The list is almost endless.
Mistakes to Avoid
As with all claims in your copy, don‘t exaggerate with metaphors. That reduces credibility and depresses response. Recently I saw
an online promotion for a bizop that ―sucks in money like a vacuum cleaner on steroids.‖ A little over-the-top for my taste. I find
myself automatically reacting, “Yeah, sure.”
Also beware of using ―mixed metaphors.‖ On page 178 of her entertaining grammar book, Woe Is I, Patricia T. O‘Conner features a
sidebar cleverly titled ―Metaphors Be with You.‖ In it she writes…
“If you‟ve heard it‟s unwise to mix metaphors, this is why: The competing images drown each other out, as in, the silver lining at
the end of the tunnel or don‟t count your chickens till the cows come home.
“Some people are so wild about metaphors that they can‟t resist using them in pairs. This may work, if the images don‟t clash:
Frieda viewed her marriage as a tight ship, but Lorenzo was plotting a mutiny. Since the images of tight ship and mutiny have an
idea in common (sailing), they blend into one picture. But usually when two figures of speech appear together, they aren‟t so
compatible. In that case, the less said, the better.”
Speaking about metaphorical gaffes, I heard one of my all-time favorites when a New York TV reporter was doing man-on-thestreet interviews about the meaning of Presidents‘ Day. She buttonholed a passerby, asking him, ―What would George
Washington say if he knew that his holiday has become famous for sales of mattresses, underwear, and used cars?‖ To which the
man somberly intoned, ―If George Washington were alive today, he‘d roll over in his grave.‖
To get better at coming up with metaphors, read John Updike‘s stories or Shakespeare‘s plays and
poems. Let me leave you with this magnificent example…
Libraries are lined with acres of bookshelves groaning with tomes on the nature of life. Most of these books will remain
closed, gathering dust for all their days because they‘re impenetrably long and boring. By contrast, marvel at how
economically Shakespeare captures a world of wisdom with this single metaphor…
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“All the world‟s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…”
Top Gun, when life gets you down and your days grow heavy with worry or crowded with idiots (or, as my Scottish
grandmother called them, “eejits!”), remember Shakespeare‘s metaphor and it will give you solace.
It‘s all a big play. Perform your role with gusto, but don‘t take anything too seriously, at least not for too long. Soon this act will be
over, the curtain will fall only to rise again, new players will assemble onstage in fresh costumes, and perhaps you will star in a
different role. Shakespeare‘s eloquent metaphor can change your whole perspective any time you think of it, which is exactly what a
good metaphor does.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish from your
life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
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Bullet 26
The #1 Strategy for Exploding
Your Productivity This Year
Dear Marketing Top Gun:Do you often feel that there is not enough time in the day?
Does your ever-growing list of things to do—fires to put out, crises to manage, people to help, chores to do, commitments to
honor, and deadlines to meet—leave you feeling like a bone-weary fox, panting for breath but forced to keep fleeing from a
relentless pack of baying hounds?
Do you wish you could crawl through a hollow log and escape into a serene new dimension where the mongrels of hot pursuit
can‘t follow, a world of calm, relaxed, unhurried, and massively increased productivity that makes you so much happier?
Would you love someone to write you a gift certificate worth at least two hours of extra free time every day—at least an extra 14
new hours a week of heavenly ―white space‖ in your schedule—to spend on whatever makes you more successful and fulfilled?
If your answer is yes to any of these questions, I urge you to start applying, every day of your life, the simple yet astonishingly
powerful strategy I describe here.
The Greatest Secret of Higher Productivity
I refer to the Pareto Principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule, or the law of the vital few and the trivial many. If you apply
it to your daily schedule as I will show, you will free up hundreds of extra hours this year, generally about two hours per day, but
many more if you apply it to everything.
You will not only be much more productive, but also earn a lot more money and be much happier because you‘ll have much
more time to devote to what really matters in your life, what truly produces the biggest results, both personally and
professionally.
Top Gun, this is one of the most important secrets you will ever read, a rare Silver Bullet that I hope you will heed.
A Momentous Discovery
for Achieving Higher Productivity
When you look back a year from today and relish your enormous gains in productivity, whisper a prayer of gratitude to
the obscure Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who lived from 1848 to 1923.
Although he is long gone, Pareto‘s greatest discovery is just now being fully understood. Let me tell you about what
he discovered and how you can apply it to leverage your productivity, income, and success to the max.
Today we hear politicians denounce how the rich are getting richer at the expense of everyone else. As liberal comedian
Bill Maher recently put it on The Tonight Show, ―The problem in America is that rich people are holding on to too much of
the money!‖
He is not alone in believing this. Legions of people decry that our economic system in America must be broken because too few
people have gotten rich while the vast majority makes little or no economic progress.
They have not read Pareto. If they had, they‘d know that regardless of the party in power or current tax policy, regardless of
whatever country we call home, regardless even of whether our government is capitalist or socialist, this lopsided inequality in
wealth has always been and almost certainly will always be.
Pareto studied the economies of many different nations in many different periods in history, and under many different types
of governments.
To his amazement, he found a universal principle. In every economy, in every country, in every time period, somehow—
remarkably!—the result was the same: About 20 percent of the people invariably control about 80 percent of the wealth.
Detecting this inexplicably universal pattern would have been momentous enough, but when Pareto and later economists dug
even deeper, they found a much larger, utterly staggering universality—that in virtually all human activities, a small percentage
of factors (the “vital few”) controls the vast majority of results.
For example, if you were to chart your every waking moment, you would soon discover, similar to Pareto‘s observations, that…
You wear the same 20 percent of your wardrobe 80 percent of the time.
You think the same 20 percent of your thoughts 80 percent of your waking moments.
You eat the same 20 percent of your favorite foods at 80 percent of your meals…and so on.
This mysterious law applies to all of us and is the factor behind such remarkably consistent phenomena as
these: Just 20 percent of the salespeople generate 80 percent of the sales.
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Just 20 percent of the authors sell 80 percent of the books.
Just 20 percent of the criminals commit 80 percent of the crime.
Just 20 percent of the movies make 80 percent of the money.
Just 20 percent of the music groups sell out 80 percent of the concert seats.
Just 20 percent of your customers generate 80 percent of your revenue.
Just 20 percent of your products produce 80 percent of your profits…and so
on. By the same token…
Just 20 Percent of Your Daily Activities
Are Responsible for 80 Percent of Your Success,
Income, and Personal Happiness
Now before we go on, please understand that it doesn‘t always work out to be exactly 80/20. Sometimes the pattern is 90/10,
sometimes 70/30. Sometimes it‘s even 99/1, where just 1 percent of the factors will give you 99 percent of the benefits. And
the identifiable factors don‘t always add up to a neat 100 percent.
But all that doesn‘t matter.
What is all-important is the underlying principle—that in virtually every field of human activity, this pattern of
lopsided results, triggered by just a few critically influential factors, rules with an iron fist.
And the opportunity this presents is enormous in whatever activity you happen to engage in. If you master the ―vital few‖
factors, you can generally reap 80 percent of the gains and far outproduce—in much less time—almost everyone else who is busy
squandering their attention on the irrelevant 80 percent!
I have been using this principle to great advantage in my own productivity and personal happiness for many years. But my
understanding of its universality achieved an enormous boost from the work of the brilliant consultant and investor
Richard Koch, who gives the best explanation of Pareto‘s work I have ever found.
Here is how Koch describes the Pareto Principle in his book, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More
with Less:
“The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually leads to a majority of the results, outputs, or
rewards. Taken literally, this means that, for example, 80 percent of what you achieve in your job comes from 20 percent of
the time spent. Thus for all practical purposes, four-fifths of the effort ― a dominant part of it ― is largely irrelevant.”
I Begged Them, “Please Let Me Write!”
Let‘s see how to apply this amazing secret in your own life for gigantic gains in productivity and success. I‘ll give you an example
from my own life.
If you‘re already successful at something, you know what it is. For my entire professional life, it has always been copywriting.
It‘s what I love to do and what has been responsible for my biggest rewards, both mental and monetary.
It took me a while to realize the importance of this.
When you work as a professional copywriter in an ad agency, believe it or not, it can be hard to find time to write! There are so
many meetings, strategy sessions, conference calls, new client presentations, plus all the usual office distractions. If you work
in close quarters, as I did at first, the ringing phones and incessant chatter of fellow workers can make it near impossible to
concentrate. To my dismay, I would often find my only time to write after hours.
Then I realized, ―No one ever praises me or gives me a raise for all the time I‘m spending in pointless meetings,
rambling conference calls, long lunches with colleagues, or water cooler conversations.
―The only glory I get is when it‘s announced that a client loves my ad or that the ad proves to be a winner. Yet I am finding
it ridiculously hard to get the time I need to write! This is insane!‖
That was my first inkling of what I later learned to be the Pareto Principle. Just one of my numerous daily activities
(copywriting) was responsible for virtually 100 percent of my rewards. Yet here I was giving that one all-important activity
only 10 to 20 percent of my time! All the other tasks—the meetings, the socializing, the long department lunches—were a waste
of precious time!
After I realized this, I became a fanatic about preserving and expanding my writing time.
I begged off meetings, citing looming deadlines.
I asked for a quiet office on another floor where nobody knew me or engaged me in conversation.
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When I was summoned to come up for air and meet with others, I avoided all forms of water-cooler socializing and fled
when co-workers gossiped about office politics.
If they didn‘t directly involve me, I gave office memos short shrift.
I skipped lunches and after-hours carousing with colleagues.
I cajoled my way out of wheel-spinning assignments on minor accounts.
I resigned from office charity drives.
I sidestepped go-nowhere ―team projects‖ where I wouldn‘t be recognized as the star no matter how much I contributed.
I pleaded not to have to train new people, a truly thankless job where I worked. If the trainees were any good, they‘d get the
credit. If they needed many months of training, it would be my drudgery to provide it. And no matter what, in six months the
only important question on the minds of the agency‘s top brass would always be, “What winners has Gary written for us
lately?”
Pushing the envelope further, I closed my door and hung a “Please Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob, as if I were living in
a hotel. If I was about to leave my hermit‘s cave but heard voices approaching in the hall, I‘d hide in my office like a fugitive
until the danger passed.
I did these and a dozen other things to free up more time to write.
At first I was regarded as a rather antisocial eccentric, a copywriting recluse. But that‘s OK. In ad agencies, ―creatives‖ are
allowed much leeway. You could arrive at the office each day wearing nothing but a barrel and suspenders and sing opera at the
top of your lungs on the elevator, but if you produced winning ads, you‘d be tolerated; kept far away from clients, but tolerated. I
also came to realize that in eccentricity lies great power to break with useless social convention, and this can be a priceless asset!
Can You Guess What Happened?
Within a few months, I came from out of nowhere to be the golden boy of the copy department because I was cranking out
so many ads that our clients loved. A fair number of my ads started winning in the marketplace, and I was a made man.
In the next few years, applying this same principle won me promotion after promotion which, ironically, wound up giving
me lots more employees to train, severely cutting my writing time once again.
Eventually I came to realize that there was no escaping this cycle of being promoted out of what I did best, copywriting. I saw
that I could achieve much more—have a lot more writing time and be paid a lot more money for it—by going out on my own. So I
went freelance, eventually negotiated royalty agreements, and then in short order became financially independent. All from
recognizing—and then giving maximum time to—what generates my biggest rewards!
I urge you to harness the same 80/20 strategy. Know what you do best, what will produce your highest financial and psychic
rewards, then do what you must to get more time to do it! Find the 20 percent of your life that yields 80 percent of your results
and happiness, and then pour into that 20 percent the most time you can! You‘ll be so much happier and more productive! And
you can do this on the personal side of your life as well as in your career.
3 Breakthrough Insights
Here‘s how Richard Koch puts it in another of his books, 16x—Real Simple Innovation for 16 Times Better Results:
―If you think about this, you‘ll discover three breakthrough insights for how to run your life or organization:
1. Knowing the best uses of your energy is much more important than trying harder or working longer. To get 16 times
better results, you don‘t have to do anything essentially different from what you‘re already doing at the moment. You
just have to do more of what you‘re already doing that works fantastically well.
2. Most of what you do is a waste of time. Compared to the few things that work fantastically well, it‘s dust in the scales. You
might as well stop most of what you do!
3. You can put less energy in, yet get far better results, if you just concentrate on the things that produce fantastic results.‖
Your ―Not-To-Do‖ List Is Even
More Important Than Your ―To Do‖ List!
Just as I did, you can safely and immediately start changing your life—and gain a calendar-full of new time—by dropping,
delegating, and by any means necessary avoiding the 80 percent of the pesky, time-consuming tasks that, when you analyze
their impact, are virtually irrelevant to your long-term success.
Delightfully, you will suffer no loss to your effectiveness!
It‘s just the opposite. As you will discover, less is more! When you drop or delegate anything outside your critical 20 percent of
super-productive activities, people, clients, products, etc., you can then transfer much more time and resources into your core 20
percent and trigger an explosion in your productivity and profitability. (It has always amazed me how often clients will pour
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© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
so much of their time, effort, worry, and money into saving a drowning product, while letting their biggest money-makers go
unattended for long stretches!)
―Lack of time is actually a lack of priorities‖
—Tim Ferriss
Tim Ferriss is the author of a wonderful bestseller called, “The 4-Hour Workweek.” It‘s become a fast favorite of entrepreneurs
everywhere.
As with Koch and me, Ferriss says the discovery of the Pareto Principle changed his life forever, freeing up vast portions of his
time for whatever he loves to do. Says Ferriss,
“Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective—doing less—is the
path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest…
“It‟s easy to get caught in a flood of minutiae, and the key to not feeling rushed is remembering that lack of time is actually
lack of priorities.”
How to Radically Reset Your Priorities
By Harnessing the Pareto Principle—
My 22 Favorite Tips to Multiply Your Productivity
Now that you understand the main principle, what are the best ways to apply this #1 productivity-boosting secret in your life?
This Bullet is already running long, and I promised to keep them reasonably short. So I have summarized my 22 favorite
recommendations from Koch, Ferriss, myself, and a host of other Pareto disciples and will present these, free of charge as
always, in your next Bullet.
I feel great about this upcoming Bullet because it shows you exactly how to add lots of pesky, time-consuming tasks to your allimportant ―Not-To-Do‖ list and free up small oceans of time for whatever you want.
For example, you‘ll discover the most important question to ask of every activity you face each day…how you can shed scores of
time-consuming tasks without hurting anyone‘s feelings…how to easily make ―no‖ your default answer when asked to do things
you‘d rather not…how to get rid of most of the biggest headaches in your life by hitting the ―delete‖ button on the 20 percent of
your employees, customers, products, and countless other annoyances and time-wasters that cause 80 percent of your grief.
You‘ll also read about the new scientific research proving that multitasking is fool‘s gold—it actually makes you dumber and less
productive! Worst of all, it cheats you out of one of life‘s greatest pleasures—the ultimate luxury of focusing on just one thing at
a time, a source of sublime bliss and much higher productivity. As Confucius said, ―Man who chases two rabbits catches
neither.‖ I‘ll show you the best way to accomplish the habit of single-minded focus.
And you‘ll read about the widespread “FLIT” virus that has already leaped from your computer‘s brain into yours, altering your
brain‘s behavior and devastating your daily productivity.
Finally, to whittle your email and information overload way down to a size you‘ll love, you‘ll see why you
must start downgrading information but upgrading wisdom.
Indeed, wisdom is perhaps the greatest time saver of all, as just a few pearls, held dear and applied daily, will save you from
countless misadventures, poor time investments, misguided partnerships, unproductive affiliations, and most devastating of
all, campaigns and products that bomb and waste many months of effort.
This is why these Bullets always focus on timeless wisdom of those few proven factors that invariably work best to boost your
response and success in copywriting and marketing—the core 20 percent of critical factors that catapult your success in
marketing and life.
So stay tuned for my 22 favorite tips to trigger huge gains in your productivity and success.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish
from your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
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© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 27
The 3 Greatest
Copywriting Lessons
I Ever Learned
Dear Marketing Top Gun:In the last Bullet I shot at you, I promised to bring you my favorite tips on how to multiply your
productivity. Well, I now stand before you to utter four words spoken (or at least thought) by every copywriter who has ever
lived … “I need more time!”
Characteristically, I plunged into this topic of how to leverage your productivity and have been busily researching the best minds
in the world on this subject, including renowned experts in psychology, creativity, goal setting, time management, and even
personal happiness (as that has a lot to do with how well you use your time).
What treasures I am finding!— remarkable secrets for boosting your productivity to an astonishing degree. Top Gun, I
promise that all these tips will be yours in due time, no charge, of course, as is true of all theseBullets. I assure you that they
will change your life and veritably explode your productivity, as you‘ll see.
In the meantime, however, it‘s been a while since I‘ve shot a Bulletyour way, so today I‘ve decided to share with you my answers
to several questions I was asked by another copywriter.
Truth be told, I receive an extraordinary amount of feedback from readers, usually after I send out a new Bullet. I try to read
each of these inquiries, but I don‘t have time to respond to all.
So starting today and every now and then, I will answer a representative sampling of FAQs in a special Q&A issue of
the Bullets.Here then are some questions I was asked by a copywriter who interviewed me not long ago. I‘ve never before made
these Q&As public, and I hope you find them instructive …
Question: You have achieved great success in copywriting. What unique quality in your writing was most responsible?
Answer: The short, self-serving, yet accurate answer is results. Once you get a reputation as a direct marketing copywriter
who can consistently win split-run tests against other top writers, your phone rings and doesn‘t stop. That‘s what happened for
me. In this business, as with the gladiators of Rome, winners are rewarded with survival and fresh opponents.
But I didn‘t become a consistent winner until after I was in the business for more than ten years.
When I got my first job as a copywriter more than 40 years ago, I didn‘t have a clown‘s clue how to generate higher
response consistently.
I‘m a slow but persistent learner, and it took me about ten years of learning from such masters as John Caples, David
Ogilvy, Dan Rosenthal, and a few others I was blessed to work with.
Question: What did you learn?
Answer: I had to learn three main lessons, the same three lessons anyone who aspires to successful direct
response copywriting must learn.
First, I had to learn that effective copywriting is salesmanship in print, not clever wordsmithing. Some writers never learn
this, but I was lucky to have a few ogres for copy chiefs early on.
My first one, at Prentice-Hall Publishing, made sure after my first transgression that I never again showed him a pun or joke in a
headline, or anything that I felt was so impressively clever of me. He hated ―clever‖ and assured me, in no uncertain terms, that I
am not the star of the ad. The prospect and the product are.
He told me that no one cares to see my verbal tap dance or ooh! andah! at my linguistic fireworks. Copywriters who seek
applause, as I did at first, have cost advertisers more money than the national debt. The more self-effacing and invisible your
selling skill, the more effective you are. Copywriters who show off their skills are as ineffective as fishermen who reveal the hook.
Question: OK, what was the second big lesson you had to learn?
Answer: The second thing I had to learn is that writing is not spontaneous creative combustion.
When I began, I‘d stare at the blank sheet of paper in my typewriter for days, not having any idea what to write, waiting for the
muses to alight on my shoulder and whisper something—anything!—in my ear.
I thought I must be suffering from writer‘s block or must have sinned against the muses, because they were giving me the
silent treatment. So I enrolled in an evening course in New York City on ―Overcoming Writer‘s Block‖—along with a motley
collection other hapless writers from various fields: aspiring novelists, copywriters, songwriters, and playwrights.
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© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
In our first class, to our dismay, our instructor cheerfully informed us that he was the most constipated among us, didn‘t have
a clue of how to cure this problem, and was actually hoping that we could help him, as he had a psychology book to write, not
to mention several articles, so how about we all ―meet once a week and share!‖
At each class we ―shared‖ and whined about writer‘s block, but no one had a solution. I soon dropped out and in time had to discover
on my own that ―writer‘s block‖ is just a symptom of a rather easily cured malady—‖LRS,‖ or Lazy Research Syndrome.
It took me a while to realize that the best copywriters are the most tenacious researchers. Like miners, they dig, drill,
dynamite, and chip until they have carloads of valuable ore. John Caples advised me once to gather seven times more
interesting information than I could possibly use.
I learned that good copywriters get to know so much about the product and the prospect and his or her wants, fears,
assumptions, and lingo that the copy soon wants to burst forth as if a dam is breaking. I learned that research is the
infallible cure for writer‘s block.
Question: And your third major lesson?
Answer: Finally, I had to learn how to leverage the power of my mind. This is where you get the largest payoff in advertising
or any other field.
For starters, I had to realize that great marketing and copywriting require thinking—the ability to keep turning things over in
your mind, in a relaxed way, probing, searching for better options until it all comes together.
Writing is thinking on paper. To do it well, you must be able to think things over before you put pen to paper or fingers
to keyboard.
That sounds simple, but most people, just as I did at first, will go to any length, surrender to any excuse, run off on any
suddenly urgent errand, and seize any flimsy opportunity to escape having to think.
Everyone wants to just cut and paste, not think!
But every situation is unique, and especially when the product or the marketplace is different from what has gone before, cutand-paste won‘t hack it.
To discover what will work, and then be able to write clearly and persuasively about it, you must be able to think clearly. And
to think clearly, you first have to be able to relax so that all the monkey chatter inside your head quiets down and you can have
an ongoing dialogue with yourself—a series of pleasant, quiet conversations about what makes sense for this market at this
time with this product.
After you‘ve had an ongoing conversation with yourself, sleep on it and then, each morning, let your subconscious speak its
mind. This is why writing soon after arising is so productive and why you should always sleep with a notepad and pen on
your night table. Keep a flashlight nearby, too, if you sleep with someone, so you won‘t wake the person up if you get an idea
in middle of the night.
All this goes to my third lesson, the importance of harnessing your mind‘s great power. Another way is to regularly and vividly
imagine yourself to be a great copywriter, to see and feel this as your identity even though you may not be there yet.
See yourself in the theater of your own mind winning new assignments, writing successful ads, collecting big bucks, feeling
the joy of financial independence, winning the respect of clients and colleagues, starting to build an industry-wide reputation,
etc. Envision the glory and independence that you want, the life of an in-demand copy star. First in mind, then in fact.
Doing this will inspire you to live out your vision. For one thing, it will inspire you to always keep learning. There are so many
things a copywriter can learn in order to be more effective, and I cover lots of them in these Bullets. But in a single second—right
now!—you can take a giant leap toward greater success by merely committing yourself to ongoing learning. View the abundant
knowledge you lack not as a threat but as an infinite supply of new abundance for yourself—rocket fuel for your rise in our
profession.
Socrates said it best: “The key to living is always learning how to live.” Applying this to copywriting, we can say, “The key
to copywriting is always learning how to be a better copywriter.”
I consider it a wasted day if I haven‘t learned something new. And I‘ve found that the three most rewarding sources
of copywriting success are the three foundation lessons I‘ve just covered.
To sum up, they are (1) your knowledge of good salesmanship …
(2) your thoroughness and tenacity as a researcher … and (3) your desire to harness the great power of your mind—to turn
ideas over in your head in a relaxed way; to noodle out and play with a range of solutions instead of just one; and, most
important of all, to vividly see yourself as the star you were born to be, to envision and feel yourself living a big life, not a small
one, a life filled with achievement, the respect of your industry, the security and freedom of financial independence … all the
rewards that copywriting, one of the world‘s most lucrative professions, can and will bestow upon you if you are willing to keep
drinking thirstily from these three inexhaustible founts of knowledge.
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© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
***
Here are a few of the questions I‘ll address in upcoming Bullets:
What is the first thing you do when you sit down to write a
headline? Do you have a checklist for writing strong headlines?
Can you recommend a formula for writing headlines?
What is the best headline you‟ve ever written and why?
Could you write a headline that would make even Donald Trump stop in his tracks?
Can you give an example of “rule breaking” where the results were so successful, they surprised you?
If you were to hire a copywriter to write an ad for you, whom would you choose (besides yourself?) and why?
What are the best books ever written on advertising?
How can aspiring copywriters land their first assignments?
What are the best ways for established copywriters to get new business?
Do you have other questions you‘d like me to answer? Write me at Gary@BencivengaBullets.com … and though I can‘t
answer each one personally, I will address those of greatest interest.
And speaking of being in touch …
***
A Housekeeping Note
Pauline and I will be traveling on a Mediterranean cruise for the next month and will be out of touch.
So while I began this Bullet with a sentence spoken by every copywriter who ever lived (“I need more time!”) … I‘m now going
to end with eight words never before written by any copywriter since the dawn of creation: Please don‟t order my product any
time soon.
I‘m referring to my ―Reveal-Everything-at-Once‖ DVD course (“Gary Bencivenga‟s 7 Master Secrets of Wealth Creation for
Marketers and Copywriters”).
You see, Pauline and I lovingly handle every little aspect of this product, including personally sending it out and warmly
welcoming each new customer as my officially deputized Top Gun.
So if you have been thinking of ordering this, please just drop me an email at Gary@BencivengaBullets.com and I‘ll let you know
when it‘s again available, as soon as we‘re ready to open our doors again.
Or if you‘d simply like to receive information about this course—no obligation, naturally—please drop me an email as well and
I‘ll email the info on our return. As of now, our website is closed. Gone fishin‘… (or more accurately, Gone cruisin‟). That‘s it
for now, my friend, so until we‘re back…
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish
from your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 28
3 Secrets for Multiplying
Your Productivity, Success,
Income, and Personal Happiness
as a Copywriter or Marketer
Dear Marketing Top Gun:We all have the same 24 hours in a day, yet some people achieve so much more than others. What are
their secrets?
To supplement my own insights about this, I‘ve researched the best minds in the world on personal productivity, including
experts in psychology, creativity, goal setting, time management, and even personal happiness (which has a lot to do with
how well you use your time).I‘ve found a wealth of fabulous tips, way too many for one Bullet, so I‘ll save some for future
issues. Today I‘ll focus on three of my favorites and how to harness them to multiply your productivity if you‘re a copywriter
or marketer…
#1. Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything
The key to massively leveraging your productivity, success, and fulfillment both at work and at home is not putting in longer
hours, getting less sleep, pushing yourself harder, or sacrificing those activities that give you pleasure.
You‘ll achieve much more—in less time!—by applying the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle or the law of the vital
few and the trivial many.
I‘ve written about this before, but for new Bullets readers, let me recap my thoughts…
This remarkably reliable guideline holds that roughly 20 percent of your daily activities are responsible for 80 percent of your
success, income, and personal happiness. These are your “big-payoff” activities.
Conversely, 20 percent of your activities, relationships, and customers are causing 80 percent of your wasted time. These
are your “low-payoff”activities.
So the best way to multiply your productivity is simple—always be looking to free up more time for your big-payoff activities
by ruthlessly eliminating the dozens of low-payoff ones that you unwittingly tolerate.
Example: One of the most successful marketing executives I know keeps a framed sign over his desk and carries an index card
in his shirt pocket with the same message—“Is this leading me to my main goal?” He checks that reminder numerous times a
day and saves countless hours each week by staying on track—getting out quickly from time-wasting phone calls, meetings,
gossip, etc., and relentlessly getting back to the big-payoff activities for himself and his company.
#2. Harness Your ―Hour of Power‖
As an advertising copywriter, my highest-payoff activity has always been writing. But finding quiet time to write can be
surprisingly difficult in an office setting. Here‘s what I did, and it triggered a gigantic boost in my productivity. I harnessed
my ―hour of power.‖
I rise early and the first thing I do, before showering, shaving,anything, is sit down at my keyboard and write for at least
one hour. I do this seven days a week, every day of my life no matter where I am. My friends and colleagues Dan Kennedy
and Clayton Makepeace, two of the most productive and successful copywriters of all time, do the same.
I love to write, so this starts my day off with tremendous satisfaction. Moreover, since writing is my highest-payoff activity, this
simple practice has proven to be my biggest income booster. If I achieve nothing else for the rest of the day, it won‘t concern me,
because I‘ve already socked away a big deposit in my ―productivity bank.‖
If I can go for longer than one hour (I strive for three), or if I can pick up additional productive hours later in the day, I‘m
golden, way ahead of the game. But no matter what, I‘ve made progress because I‘ve nailed that first hour.
Whatever your highest-payoff activity is, start each day with your ―hour of power.‖ If you‘re a writer, write!
If you‘re in an occupation where you can‘t perform your highest-payoff activity upon rising, say, if you‘re a salesperson or
merchant who won‘t be in front of customers until later in the day, invest your early ―hour of power‖ in learning and thinking
about how you can perform better.
The legendary management guru Earl Nightingale counseled that if you want to put your career or business on the
fastest possible success track, devote an hour each morning to thinking about how to serve your clients better.
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© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
―If you‘ll spend one extra hour each day in the study of your chosen field,‖ said Earl, ―you‘ll be a national expert in five years or
less.‖
Whether investing your time or your money, the same principle holds. You will achieve much greater success when you “pay
yourself first.”
With money, that means salting away at least 10 percent of your gross income every month before you pay your bills. This
forces your expenses to adjust themselves downward and assures that you‘re always saving at least 10 percent of your income. If
you can save 15 percent, so much the better.
When it comes to your daily productivity, ―paying yourself first‖ means making the first hour of the day your ―hour of power.‖
It‘s rocket fuel for your productivity, success, happiness, and income.
#3. How to Gain 6 to 8 Extra Hours of Productivity Every Day
Your second-most-productive hour is right before you go to sleep. This is a most opportune time to leverage your
productivity by letting your mighty subconscious mind solve a problem while you sleep peacefully.
While you sleep, your subconscious mind keeps your heart beating, your lungs breathing, and your brain waves waving, and,
in its spare time, effortlessly processes millions of complex cellular transactions while you obliviously snooze. Do you think
that this greatest computer ever created can handle an unobtrusive request for, say, a breakthrough headline while you doze?
Cake!
How to do it: just before going to bed at night, review a problem, question, or creative project you‘re working on. Since
headlines are the most important part of any ad, I like to hand off this task to my subconscious mind rather than knock myself
out. Here‘s my method…
As you get sleepy and the shop foreman of your conscious mind is about to turn over control to your brilliant but under-utilized
―night manager‖ (your subconscious mind), submit your request as follows.
Say to yourself, ―Great subconscious mind, I don‘t want to work on this matter too hard, so please just figure this out for me by
the morning, while I sleep peacefully.‖
Then forget it—let go of it completely—and drift off to sleep.
For example, if you‘d like to have a batch of potent headlines by morning, tell your subconscious mind very specifically what
you want. I always like to come up with at least 25 headlines before I choose my favorite, so I say, ―Great subconscious mind, I
don‘t want to work on this headline too hard, so please create at least 25 headlines for me by morning, while I sleep peacefully.‖
During my ―hour of power‖ the next morning, I find myself brimming over with so many ideas that, as I play with them and
superimpose them on ―classic‖ winning headlines from the past, I can usually produce 20-30 variations of interesting headlinesubhead-offer elements.
(I‘ll elaborate on this headline-producing process in my next Bullet and give you a quick-start list of my favorite ―classic‖
headline formulas for creating new winners with great consistency.)
The best part is, when I let my subconscious mind handle this task automatically overnight, I don‘t lose a wink of sleep!
You‘ll find this technique amazingly effective. It‘s like gaining another six to eight hours of productivity out of every 24. But be
warned:your morning ideas are slippery fish. If you don‘t net them immediately when you arise, they‘ll swim away forever.
So be sure you have paper and pen…or your trusty keyboard…at the ready!
More tips next time, Top Gun.
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
P.S. If you know any copywriters or marketers who would enjoy this Bullet, just send them an email with this
link:http://marketingbullets.com/
P.P.S. Your e-mail address will never be shared. And if you ever wish to unsubscribe, just let me know and I will vanish
from your life like a shadow in the night.
To Visit Gary's Arsenal (Bullets Archive), click here.
To Subscribe to these Bullets, a hype-free zone, click here.
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bullet 29
The Secret of How to Sell Anything
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
In this Bullet I share the secret of how to sell anything. It‘s a simple secret, and it works universally, no matter what business
you‘re in.
But before getting into it, I want to make…
An Important Announcement about These Bullets
I have always advised my clients to build their products, newsletters, books, and ezines squarely on their strongest proof
elements, namely their most persuasive and impressive credentials—including their strongest case histories, endorsements,
testimonials, ―reasons why‖ they offer better results and solutions, success stories, proven outcomes, expert status, areas of
specialization, reputation within their industries, and especially a spirit of candor and integrity that never fails to delight
clients and confound competitors.
When you make your credibility an essential, highly visible part of your marketing, persuasion can flow like silk because your
most commonly encountered enemy—skepticism—is largely swept aside.
So when I decided it might be fun to write an ezine, I chose to do it about copywriting, the area of my own strongest
proof elements.
A wise man once told me that the best way to learn is to teach, and I have certainly found this to be true in writing this ezine.
As I worked on the first few Bullets, I gained new insights about copywriting, even after forty years of doing it almost daily and
usually under the watchful eyes of legendary copy masters and many of the savviest clients in direct marketing.
One new insight I gained late in the game is that the most successful copywriters I‘ve ever known possess
mastery of two separate fields of knowledge…
1. Mastery of their craft
2. Mastery of success principles that trigger outsized achievement inany field, whether copywriting or anything else
Brilliant writers and marketers like Dan Kennedy, Clayton Makepeace, Gene Schwartz, Ted Nicholas, and others I‘ve been
privileged to know have not been just good, smart writers and clever marketers. They have also mastered the secrets of how to
manage their time; be disciplined about their copywriting practice; and maintain devotion to studying their craft even after,
perhaps especially after, they have hit the top of their game. They don‘t sit on their butts or their laurels and are their own
best motivators. They still act hungry long after their bank accounts would have persuaded less motivated colleagues to “stop
working so hard.” They keep their hand in, even if they don‘t need the money, because they‘ve come to love the game. Mastery
will do that for you—inspire an abiding love of what you do—once you know how to perform with consistent excellence.
This double-barreled mixture—tips on copywriting plus the secrets of personal achievement—became the gunpowder
of these Bullets.
Many, many readers have emailed me to say they love this double focus. But lately I have come to realize that both are so
critical that each needs its own in-depth treatment. So I have decided to separate these two subjects and write two different sets
of Bullets.
This will enable me to help you more, by delving more deeply into each specific subject.
So from now on, these original Bullets will be called Marketing Bullets, and their exclusive focus will be on the best techniques
I want to share about copywriting, selling, and marketing. This narrowed focus will allow me to get a lot more specific about the
best tips and tricks I‘ve learned from legendary copy chiefs and marketing masters I‘ve worked with, who generously shared
with me their secrets for creating ads that shatter response records and launch blockbuster new products.
And since the principles of high achievement are also critical to your success, whether in copywriting or any field, I will also
write a separate ezine called Success Bullets. It will focus exclusively on the latest scientific research, proven principles, and
best personal habits to cultivate if you want to rise higher and faster in your chosen field, become indispensable to your client
or employer, make a lot more money, and command industry-wide respect and recognition no matter what field you happen to
work in.
So your stock is splitting two-for-one, and you will receive both these ezines automatically, unless of course you opt out.
As always, both are free and full of valuable, scientifically based insights. Both will be short and fast, like bullets. And both will
be published on my own relaxed, free-floating schedule, which means I‘m not going to stuff your inbox with mountains of
mediocrity. You should hear from me about once every month or two and only when I think I have a gem to share with you.
As I hope you‘ve noticed, I demonstrate utmost respect for your time, attention, and in-box traffic. I resist the temptation to
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© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
send you anything less than top-of-the-line, highly valuable information.
Today‘s Marketing Bullet is a good example, which brings me back to my main idea today…
How to Get Anything You Want in Life
Back in Bullet #12, titled, “How to Get Anything You Want in Life,” I wrote the following…
―The great motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar, has said, ‗You can get anything you want in life if you help enough other people get
what they want‟…
―Ignoring this simple insight is the most common cause of marketing failure. Over and over, I‘ve seen otherwise sharp marketers
launch a product because they want to sell it, not because anyone wants to buy it.
―Top Gun, remember this always—you will easily avoid embarrassing failures and discover great riches only when you look at
markets through the other end of the telescope—not the lens of what you want to sell, but the lens of what people want to buy.‖
While I have never seen it labeled as such, thanks to those words by Zig Ziglar, I have always considered this the ultimate
secret of how to sell anything: “Find out what others want and help them get it.”
Imagine my delight when I recently came across a previously unpublished manuscript that took this same principle and fleshed
out the profound implications that flow from it, describing how anyone can use it to sell anything far more effectively and easily.
Harry Browne‘s Masterpiece on Salesmanship
This undiscovered treasure is called The Secret of Selling Anything: A road map to success for the salesman who is not
aggressive, who is not a „smooth talker‟ and who is not an extrovert.
This unpublished gem was written years ago by one of the most brilliant salespeople, investment advisers, and writers of
all time, Harry Browne.
I have no financial interest—zero!—in recommending it. I bring it up here because I am convinced that this is one of the greatest
little books (an ebook actually) ever published on effective salesmanship. If you could read only one book in your life on how to
sell anything to anybody, and do so without relying on high pressure, manipulation, exaggeration, or even an extroverted
personality, this would be the book.
Harry was a consummate ―big picture‖ kind of guy, a brilliant simplifier whose easy-to-read books on investing and politics
helped millions of people understand—with the clarity of sparkling spring water—any subject he chose to write about.
Famous for his ―live-and-let-live‖ libertarian philosophy, he ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1996 and
2000 and received a surprisingly large number of votes.
Harry made his living as a salesman, and he was so good at it, he was able to outsell virtually everyone else he worked
with, while putting in far fewer hours.
The reason for this was that he had discovered a remarkably powerful and easy method for selling anything. His approach was
so simple that he believed that anyone could fairly quickly become a master salespersonwithout being aggressive, manipulative,
dishonest, persistent, extroverted, glib, confident, or even hardworking.
And he proved it! When he recruited and trained his own salespeople, he preferred to hire shy introverts, not outgoing
backslappers, and he would teach them how to let his ―almost effortless‖ method do all the heavy lifting of opening and closing a
sale.
Harry died in 2006 without ever publishing the secrets of his much easier method of salesmanship. His widow Pamela recently
decided to create an ebook out of two unpublished manuscripts he had written revealing this selling magic. And thus was born
the ebook The Secret of Selling Anything: A road map to success for the salesman who is not aggressive, who is not a „smooth
talker‟ and who is not an extrovert.
Since advertising is nothing more than good salesmanship multiplied by a mass medium, this little ebook‘s insights are
worth their weight in gold.
Again, I have no financial interest in recommending this ebook, but if you‘re interested in owning it, I can think of no better
investment you could make in your career for such a small price. You can buy it directly from Pamela Browne‘s website for only
$9.75. The link is:
http://www.harrybrowne.org/
All the chapters are short and fast-reading. The first six chapters review Browne‘s libertarian way of thinking and how it applies
to salesmanship. But the good, specific stuff really starts to rock ‗n roll in Chapter 7 and every chapter thereafter, where
Browne spells out, with utter simplicity, the secrets of selling anything almost effortlessly. He tells you exactly how to allow
your prospects to tap into their preexisting motivation to almost completely sell themselves.
And the foundation of it all is…
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
His Secret of Selling Anything
Browne‘s secret is virtually identical to that of Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, who
said, ―The only way to influence someone is to find out what they want, and show them how to get it.‖ Browne puts the same
idea this way…
“The one rule that sums up the job to be done, the one formula that is fully in harmony with the real world, the secret of
success is: Find out what people want and help them get it!
“This is the way you separate yourself from the mass of people who just „get by.‟ This is how you make sure that your services
are always in demand. This is how you command a high price in the marketplace, by making sure that what you‟re offering is
what people really want…”
What a Surprising but Liberating Discovery—
You Cannot Motivate Anyone!
Browne believed that you cannot motivate others to want something they don‘t already want. You can‘t create motivation.
It must already be there, inside your prospect. If it‘s not, you‘re wasting your time and appealing to the wrong audience and
making your job of selling so much more difficult.
But when motivation is already there, and you know how to identify it, you can make your job so much easier by tapping into it
and using the prospect‘s own desires to open and close the sale so much more easily.
Here‘s how he describes this critical insight…
“It isn‟t what you want that determines what other individuals will buy from you—it‟s what they want. And that answer can
only come from them, not from you…
“Probably 99 out of 100 salesmen try to motivate their prospects. And that‟s their mistake. You‟re not capable of motivating
anyone, no matter how persuasive you think you are…
“Everyone is already motivated. The only question is „By what?‟ Your job is to find out what it is that motivates your prospect.
And then show him how he can get what he wants through your product or service. Only then will he buy…
“Most sales are lost because the salesman presented his product before he knew what motivated his prospect…”
I remember Dale Carnegie explaining this same principle by saying that while he loves to eat strawberry shortcake, when he
goes fishing he baits his hook with worms. He would detest eating worms, but he doesn‘t try to catch fish with what he likes to
eat, but what the fish are hungry for.
How do you find out what motivates your prospect? There are two different answers to this question, based on whether
you‘re selling person-to-person…or writing advertising to a whole marketplace at once.
In person-to-person selling, it‘s easy. Just ask! You‘re sitting right there in front of a live prospect, so sound him or her
out before you start selling anything.
Browne advises that you never assume that your product or service is right for every person out there, so don‘t be dishonest and
pretend that it is. That just turns prospects off.
Rather, when you‘re in front of a prospect and before you sell anything, probe for his strongest motivation. Browne gives many
examples in his ebook on how to do this tactfully. But a typical example would be something like, ―Mr. or Ms. Prospect, what is
your greatest concern about XYZ?‖ (For ―XYZ,‖ fill in the blank with whatever area of life your product or service is designed
to enhance.)
The basic rule is, don‘t start selling until you know what the buyer wants to buy. Otherwise you could start your
presentation selling benefit A, which is of little interest to your prospect, while he or she would have jumped all over benefit
B, which you never even thought to mention.
In advertising, the situation is different because you‘re addressing a mass audience at once. Nevertheless, you must still
discover what most of the buyers want to buy before you start to sell.
To do this, you can use surveys and focus groups. You must go out and talk with your current customers and find out what‘s
most important to them. You can ask your best salespeople what appeals always seem to work best in their presentations. You
should research which previous ads have pulled best and which have flopped. Best of all, you can use split-run tests as well as
multiple Google ads, each built around different benefits, and scientifically measure which pulls the highest before you roll out
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
with the best.
All these are necessary steps to execute the master strategy of salesmanship we are discussing here: “Find out what others want
and help them get it.”
An ―Aha!‖ Moment, Perhaps?
I hope that this Marketing Bullet gives you an “aha!” moment because fully understanding it will change your life if you sell for a
living. It will release you from the enormous burden of trying to motivate someone else, which is not even possible. It will make
persuasion—either in personal selling or mass marketing—so much easier because all you have to do is show people a good way
to experience fulfillment of a desire they already harbor.
In effect, you‘ll start tapping into the bubbling wellsprings of desire already in your prospects and letting them make the sale for
you. Think of what a relief that is—no more trying to browbeat and cajole unmotivated people into wanting what you have! That
game is for losers.
Says Browne, “The moral is simple: A salesman cannot change a buyer‟s desires; he can only demonstrate better methods
of satisfying them.”
It‘s the same in copywriting, which is multiplied salesmanship. Trying to educate and motivate people into wanting what
you offer is one of the most common and devastating mistakes.
It‘s so much easier to find and then appeal directly to an audiencethat‟s already motivated and let them do a big part of the
work of selling themselves!
A Quick Example
Let‘s say you‘re advertising a savings and investment program designed to help people have enough money to retire
someday. You could run a headline that says something like…
―New Survey Reveals That Only 1 in 12
Will Have Enough Money to Retire‖
On the surface, this seems like a good, smart headline. It factually and credibly points out a problem that millions of
people either have or will soon face.
But in my view it‘s a weak headline. Here‘s why…
The first rule of writing body copy is that your first few paragraphs should immediately pay off, or build upon, your
headline. Coming off the headline above, you‘d have to expand upon it and that means you‘d have to waste your critical
introductory paragraphs educating your audience about a problem they may face. In effect, you‘d be trying to educate your
audience into feeling a motivation. This doesn‘t work!
Whenever you find yourself educating your readers about a problem they may have, consider it a red warning flag! If you have
to educate people into realizing they have a problem, you‟re already losing the battle.
Now please understand an important distinction. I am not talking about educating already-motivated prospects, those
who know they have a serious problem or want, about the superiority of your solution. That kind of educating is fine!
I‘m speaking about educating people into feeling a motivation in the first place. In effect, if your headline and initial body
copy are saying something like, “Don‟t you realize you‟ve got a big problem here?”…you‘re already losing the battle.
You‘ll almost certainly trigger a far higher response by letting your headline identify people who already know they have a big
problem or want …and then using your body copy to fan their preexisting flames of desire. In advertising, it‘s a waste of money
to try to educate readers into having a motivation! The motivation must already be there.
How the Master Wrote It
In our example, look at how much more efficiently a copy master like John Caples cuts right to the chase, by using his
headline to attract the right audience (an already motivated one) to hear about a retirement income plan.
Caples‘ famous headline was written for a retirement income plan available from the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company,
the first client John Caples ever had in his capacity as an account executive at BBDO. The ad Caples created pictured a smiling
man, in his sixties, looking straight out at the reader while happily sitting in a rowboat, holding a fishing road and reel. Under
the photo, the bold headline said:
“To Men Who Want to Quit Work Someday”
Like a blast of trumpets, this headline instantly calls together the right audience—a motivated audience—of people who already
know they want to plan now for a comfortable, worry-free retirement. Caples‘ headline instantly assembles a group of already
motivated, prequalified prospectsfront and center in the courtyard of his announcement, where he can persuade them with
news about a solution they already want. He doesn‘t have to start a fire of motivation, only feed the fire already burning!
How well did this Caples headline work?
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.
As reported in the book The 100 Greatest Advertisements by Julian Watkins, this one ad, above all others tested by the
company, was ―a landmark of historic importance‖ for Phoenix Mutual. An executive at the company wrote, ―To our
astonishment, it produced nearly 3 times as many inquiries as its 25 predecessors had averaged. But most important of all, its
volume of sales was larger by 4 times!…[It] paved the way for the decades of successful advertising which followed.‖
There are many formulas for writing great headlines, and we‘ll explore my favorites (those that work most consistently)
in future Bullets. But there is one master rule you can take to the bank: Every headline you write should, at the very
least, assemble the right audience, one already motivated to hear the rest of your story. If it doesn‘t, your headline is weak
and will hobble response.
Another Example
Let‘s say you‘re writing a space ad announcing a new psychological counseling service for troubled teens. Please don‘t waste your
headline by merely announcing the name and location of your new practice! Use it instead to attract your target audience of
already-motivated prospects.Write a headline like:
“To Parents of a Troubled Adolescent.”
Top Gun, this is one of the most important copywriting secrets you‘ll ever learn, one that many copywriters never come
to understand, which is why they will always underperform those who get it…
Remember that in every medium—newspapers, the Internet, TV, radio, etc.—there are always two different audiences you can
choose to write to. One audience—the unmotivated 95%—couldn‘t care less about your message. Don‘t bother writing to them
because you will not succeed in motivating them!
The Real Reason Why Long Copy
Almost Always Outpulls Short
And by all means, don‘t shorten your copy because you or your client may fear that this unmotivated 95% won‘t read long copy.
Take it for granted that they won‘t and just write them off, as counterintuitive as that may feel.
The truth is, the unmotivated 95% won‘t read short copy or long! So if you shorten your copy in a misguided attempt to
get higher readership among the unmotivated 95%, you‘ll lose that unmotivated 95% anyway. But you will also deprive
the motivated 5% of the longer sales copy they need to make a favorable decision. You will waste 100% of your money if
you downsize your message to accommodate the unmotivated 95%!
Write instead only to the motivated 5% and upsize your message to include everything your most motivated, eager-to-buy
prospects want to know! Let your long copy sing out with all the benefits, proof elements, specifics, details, premiums,
and special offers that your motivated 5% will eagerly welcome as they carefully consider making an important purchase.
How Do You Apply This in a Recession?
OK, I know what you may be thinking…
This sounds terrific, but exactly how do we apply this idea during hard economic times like now, when sales are falling almost
everywhere, when prospects‘ motivations are changing and the usual copy approaches don‘t work nearly as well as they used to?
This Marketing Bullet is already running long, and I have promised to keep them fast, like bullets. So I‘ll reserve this
interesting question for your next Marketing Bullet. I‘ll explain why I believe that recessions are the best opportunities for any
copywriter to build his or her income and client base.
Recessions never affected my copywriting income. In fact, during recessions my client base always grew larger, my
workload even heavier. In the next Marketing Bullet, I‘ll explain why…and how you can achieve the same by applying in
your own marketing efforts Harry Browne‘s secret of how to sell anything, even in a recession, by tapping directly into your
prospects‘ preexisting motivations and letting your prospects almost completely sell themselves.
So until next time…
Sincere wishes for a good life
and (always!) higher response,
Published by Accountable Advertising, Inc., 100 Hilton Ave. #410E Garden City, NY 11530
© 2019, Accountable Advertising, Inc. All rights reserved.