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Todd:
The first topic that I want to cover is research. I want to cover what is it that you
guys are doing now from a research perspective? How are you researching the
market? What are you doing today that maybe you weren't doing before? What
are you doing differently today to really understand the market, understand what
makes the market tick, understand what moves the market? What are you doing
right now to keep your finger on the pulse of the market? How are you doing your
research today? What are you doing or what are you seeing that is working? Go
ahead, Kevin.
Kevin:
So as you know, I pretty much only write for my products. And what I've added is
I'll always send out a survey to the audience before an event to gauge their
interest in the topic. So it's kind of a nine word email type scenario and I usually
get about 80 to 100 replies. And that dialogue is always super valuable because
it's actual dialogue and some people will tell you their life story, other people will
give you a paragraph. And I would always take it and put it in its own document,
but that's kind of where it ended. It's a great source file for a copy and using their
words, all those things.
But after ChatGPT, I took that and I told ChatGPT what I had done and that I
wanted it to analyze all the replies to give me the themes that it saw. And as you
know, in a second, it listed out 140, 150 themes, different themes that it saw
throughout the copy, but a lot of them were repeating. So then I asked it to take
out the repeating themes and it narrowed it down to about 38. And then of course
from there you can go on and say, "What are the most passionate words? What
are the most emotional responses?" And then from there, then I ask it to, "Give
me five emails I could write based on those things." And it gives you topics and
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that's when it becomes your fun little buddy instead of... But having it do that
analysis and spit out to me 38 ready to go separate topics that I could write about
as content was really cool.
Todd:
Who else? Go ahead, Peter.
Peter:
Yeah, so regarding research, at least for me, because if my goal is to have some
of the biggest campaigns in the world, what that kind of is also subtly saying is
that your goal is to be at the top of the spy tools. So my goal is not... If I'm in a
niche, it should be already dominated and my goal is to dominate the niche, then
really what I'm just doing is being the best on the spy tools. So to me, the most
important thing is just who is at the top of the spy tools? And my ultimate goal is
to be better than that guy at the top of the spy tools. If I'm not there, then I'm not
really hitting it.
So at the end of the day, like spying, I think with Ad Spy for Facebook ads, PPI
ads for TikTok, and then for YouTube, all you could ever really ask for is to be on
the top of the leaderboards in your niche. So I think just studying immensely
who's at the top? What are the most proven promises? Also organically, if you're
in back pain, if someone Googles back pain and you search by most good back
pain video in the world, that is the most clutch leap, that is the most clutch
headline, that is the most clutch thumbnail. Whatever's in that thumbnail is the
most proven [inaudible 00:04:02]. So that's the only way to do it in my head.
Todd:
I know that you're big... Correct me if I'm mistaken, but you're really big on the
idea of looking at, like you just said, looking at who's dominating, looking at who's
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doing well and kind of reverse engineering the themes, like reverse engineering
what it is that they're doing. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but your approach to
research is much more about researching what the winners are doing in their
copy and what are the themes across those people that are doing really well and
then leveraging that. So you're really spending most of your research time
looking at who's winning and what they're doing.
Peter:
Oh, 100%. Yeah, I've created I think what I call the flow bible there's 20 huge
eight figure VSLs out there, but the problem is they're all 30, 40 minutes long. So
we've created what is the storyline of each VSL? And just by studying that single
swipe file, you're able to just gather the ideas on, "What storyline would fit with
my product?" So I just have a collection of Harry Potter and fucking this one and
that one and that one I figure out, "Okay, what is my product feel like that?" And I
follow proven paths, basically just what the rich people are doing.
And so talk a little bit if you can, because I was really fascinated when I saw you
talk about that because I think that it's interesting where most think of research
as researching the market, researching prospects, kind of going over there.
You're just saying, "I'm going to go and I'm going to look at who's already
crushing it, who's winning, and look for themes across the board." When you're
looking at the folks that are dominating in a niche and you're looking at their
marketing from a research perspective, what are some of the things that you are
looking for? What are some of the marketing elements that you're actually
looking at to learn from from a research perspective when looking at these
people that are dominating?
Peter:
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Okay, so the first one is the proven promise because there's a lot of things you
can say to help somebody, but there's one fucking sentence, the one benefit that
is going to fucking hit them more than anything. So the proven promise usually
exists, like whatever that specific one thing is. So that is a key thing also. And
then of course the big idea. So people are trapped in their pain, they don't know
how to bridge the gap. The big idea is the gap, and then how are they... Does
that make sense? What's the logical thing? Does that fit with my kind of angle?
Does my unique mechanism fit that kind of gap? But those are the core things,
like what proven promise, because the promises are what's remained the same
forever, forever. People always want to lose weight, whatever the key keyword is,
but the mechanism is always what's evolving. And then the authority figures and
their story is always what's evolving. So outside of that, that stays the same
always.
Todd:
Okay.
Very cool. Who else? Go ahead, Justin.
Wow, very cool.
Justin:
When you open that conversation, what kind of questions are you asking always,
like general big picture questions?
Justin:
I'm really just trying to get a vibe for who they are and what they're doing. So one
guy that was super eye-opening is your very typical Biz-op buyer. And he talked
to me... I just let him talk. He honestly probably talked 25 out of the 30 minutes, I
barely said anything. But he watches the whole internet marketing space like you
would watch a soap opera. He talked to me about, he's like, "Here's what Grant
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Cardone's doing, here's what Alex Ramonsey's doing, and this guy's doing..." It
was kind of shocking to see how he thought about the thing.
And he was a retired guy who... And we kind of got down to it and he's like,
"Yeah, if I can just make two grand a month, I'd be super happy." And just seeing
where a lot of these people where we make these big promises, but a lot of them,
I hear very similar stuff like that where it's like, "Man, if I can make two grand a
month, that would be life changing." And I feel like for me especially, I'm sure you
guys... The more successful you get, the further you get away from... I was that
guy at one point. Now I'm pretty far away from that. So getting back into that
every single week and just reminding myself has been really helpful.
Todd:
That's good, I think it makes sure that we don't fall prey to the whole curse of
knowledge, starting to thin. Did you tell the guy at least that maybe you can make
two grand if you stopped watching Grant Cardone and all these other guys and
actually did something?
Dan:
I mean, going along with what Justin's saying, obviously interviews take a lot of
time. I've seen very few people do this with the thank you page survey where
they've just purchased, they haven't even got the product yet and you ask them
one, maybe two questions and you're basically getting the same thing. It's like
your most interested buyer, what's going on in your life or why did you buy it, or
what were you expecting to learn? And then using that information to rekey the
front end, you can do that with every single person who buys as opposed to three
people a week [inaudible 00:10:46].
Rich:
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Along those lines, Matt StaffordTodd:
Hey, I was about to say that. Wait, wait, wait. Let me tell you guys about Matt
Stafford.
Rich:
Yeah, Matt Stafford gave me a question that I've used for a couple clients and it's
always delivered amazing results and it's on the thank you page and it's asking
people what almost made them not mine.
Dan:
What's the one thing?
Rich:
Yeah. And that's beenDonnie:
And that actually... To add on, that's how we're taking VSLs that we've been
running for a long time, that we're trying to resurrect, that question has allowed
me to figure out what I need to change on the front end. And then we're talking
about four upsells deep because these people aren't... The people who answer
that question, there's common threads behind what they're saying. And we've
taken that and quickly implemented it on the front and it's helped us keep offers
running much longer, one question.
Todd:
Wow, so you're using the answer to that to actually tweet from and copy.
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Rich:
Yeah, because they're telling you what almost... Because they're buyers.
Donnie:
Oh, no. The thing that we ended up changing is we were teasing the product way
too many times. So we're like this five minute simple strike sequence, five minute
simple strike sequence, five minute simple strike sequence was the thread all the
way through the VSL. So we took the mechanism tease completely out and just
put this technique, this drill, this... Completely took out the tease and all our
numbers went up. Not just stick rate but conversion rate and LTV after four
months. It was incredible how one little... The thing that... And we've struggled...
For me, I've always been like, "Why do we have to tease this name so many
times before we get there?"
And I never had an answer for it, but I'm like, "Okay, well, that's what he's been
doing for 16 years and all these other great letters that I've read are doing it, so I
must need to do it." But when we took it out and just put, like we were talking
about last night, caveman language, this, it, the thing actually drives more
curiosity to get them to the thing you're trying to tease them for later in the VSL.
Todd:
Yeah, wow. It's so interesting because it shows you that what could be stopping
folks from buying has nothing to do with a claim that doesn't have enough proof
or not having a specific benefit in there, but it's that you could be doing
something that's just annoying them throughout the copy. And so that's
interesting.
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Donnie:
And I have one other thing I'd like to add on to what Justin was saying. So we
have a distinction now where we have obviously our core products, our digital
courses that we're selling golf training courses, but now we're moving into the
physical product realm, a more branded play. And we kind of do a little bit of what
everyone said for the digital side. But for physical, what I've found is that once
we've done our research, once we've figured out what we think the bullets for this
product are going to be, we kind of have an idea of what the mechanism is, we're
always going to be competing with the Titleist, the Callaway, the TaylorMade.
These are the big four. So what I do is I'll actually not just get on the phone with
our customers, the people that I already know are sold on what we do and what
we're coming out with, I just go to random public golf courses where I can find
literally the exact avatar, the 60-year-old guy who worked all day who's coming
there to hit balls at 5:30 before he goes home. And I'll go on the range
organically, hit balls, and I'll just walk right up to him. And I've filmed this before,
I'll ask him, I was like, "Hey," I'm like, "I saw that you were struggling to do this
thing," which is directly related to the biggest pain point in the VSL.
And I'll say, "Did you see that new club by Callaway that actually helps you do the
thing that we're selling?" He's like, "No, I didn't see that." And then I'll just literally
start pitching him as if it's one of the big four's clubs and see how he responds to
the pieces. And then at the end I'll tell him, "Oh, it's actually not Callaway. We're
coming out with this club. Can I get your name and number?" And then I get him
to come do... Be one of the testimonials to test the product. I give him full access
to the site. And not one person has ever been upset that I was selling the idea.
And I tell him exactly what I was doing. I'm like, "Yeah, I was just trying to test the
way we're going to market this."
Kevin:
"Now give me your wallet.
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Donnie:
All the biggest... And I give it to him for free, send them the product, so that
doesn't happen. But it's like the lines that come out of those conversations
literally become the sales letter.
Todd:
Yeah, that's great. That's great. Now Kevin, real quick, didn't... Correct me if I'm
mistaken, but Paris talks about the biggest game changer for him was talking to
customers.
Kevin:
I don't know if I've heard Paris say that as much as someone like Marcella
Allison.
Kevin:
Marcella talks about, she was writing for an incontinence product. So she literally
went to the adult diaper aisle at the grocery store. And if you guys know Marcella,
she's the friendliest, chit chatty person in the world. But she said, just asking
them, she's like, "It's my first time in the... Just the intricacies of all the sizes and
all the things." And then she bought some and the embarrassment of the first
time of having to buy diapers, things that you might not think about when you get
caught up in the facts of the product and all that.
Todd:
Interesting. Very cool.
Donnie:
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Yeah, again, those are prospect customers, not actual buyers. That I think is the
big distinction for me because I had always been like, "Talk to your customers
that people have already bought," but talking to the prospect customers was
really...
Todd:
I also think in that kind of environment, they're being honest, they're being
authentic. It's not like they think their answers are going to be used for data or as
part of a survey, so they're not guarded. It's a little different. And so that's
interesting, man. Go ahead, Kim.
Kim:
So one of the things I look for, one of the main things I look for when I'm doing
research is, "What can I say that's unique?" We kind of have the cursive
sameness in so many promos and in our industry. And while it's important to look
at what's working, what's resonating and that kind of thing, I know that I need to
stop people on their tracks. I need to give them a reason to read my promo. So I
do the old-fashioned work. I mean, AI can give you some shortcuts. I've played
around with a little bit with research, but it's really the non-glamorous digging.
And I mean, I swear by interviewing customers too, I've done that for several
promos. I interview, like if it's a supplement, who formulated it? Who's the
spokesperson? I mean, I speak to multiple people and I dig and I dig, and I'm not
afraid of going through only the full tech studies. Abstracts don't give you enough
finding. Finding, "What does that obscure term mean? Let me Google that."
And I've been able to make bigger claims with bigger proof. I think I talked with
Rich Schefren about this once in an interview where I was looking for a new way
to talk about a nitric oxide boosting supplement with its immune boosting... It was
during COVID, so immunity was hot, hot, hot. And I found this one term in some
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research study based on the SARS virus, and it was too long. And I'm like, "Well,
what is too long?" It stopped the attachment of the viruses to cells by too long.
And I, of course, Googled that. I found out that was 100 times. I'm like, "Is that
not the perfect claim to be able to say something..." And of course, I had to do it
compliantly, but that one claim increased the revenue.
It was just for an email. The sales page was unchanged, it increased the revenue
by 33% of the sales page was just changing that email. And that was a huge win.
So those are the things. And ideally, you have a product that's a little unique, so
you've got to figure out, "What is that unique thing? What can I say about that
that's different from everybody else?" So yeah, I do the work. I mean, I spend
probably almost half the time just on the research and finding the really best
research because as Gary says, "He or she has the best research wins." So you
really have to put the time into it.
Todd:
And so can you give a quick two-minute overview of what your research process
is like today?
Kim:
Well, I mean, I obviously start with the customer. I do avatar research. I use this
technique that I learned from the late Clayton Makepeace, which is the prism
analysis. And it's just basically... I have a whole course on this. You don't have to
buy the course, I'm just kidding. No, but what are the greatest hopes, fears,
desires? And a lot of that, I've used AI. I do use that AI when I ask all those same
questions, obviously using AI.
But I also have done it where, at the same time, I still do it my old-fashioned way
where I'm going in the forums or I'm looking at surveys or I'm talking to actual
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real life customers. And I get more of what Kevin Rogers was saying or Justin,
that real perspective, like in their own words, that language. What are the words
they use? You don't necessarily get that with AI, but AI can also just be a good
checklist, like, "Did I miss anything?" Or there's 13 concerns, I make sure I get all
of them.
And then, yeah, I do just a lot of digging into the product. I mean, most of what
I've written has been supplements over the years, but I've written financial copy,
fitness, skincare, et cetera. So yeah, like what I just said, the interviews, talking
to repeat buyers of the product, going through studies, not being afraid of really
complex stuff that you don't understand, looking at the tables, the numbers. I
crunched the numbers crazy to get, "How do I get that claim to show 36%
improvement?" or something like that. And then I put it all together. I kind of let it
bake for a little bit, marinate a little while, and then I get into... I mean, all along
I'm obviously putting with headline ideas or possible themes, but then I start to
pull it together into a copy platform with five or six possible hooks or big ideas.
And then I just kind of start from there and just flesh it out.
Todd:
Very cool.
Sean:
So on that same note, one of the biggest difficulties that I've had relatively
recently has been coming up with unique copy angles because that's going to be
the thing that sells the absolute most. There's tiers to all of these things. And I
was trying to find a way to make ChatGPT give me something unique and just at
a technical level, it's incapable of doing that. I mean, it's trained on data from
years ago, so it can only ever give you, stochastically, what has been written
before on the internet.
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And so what I started doing was I actually started asking it for either research
angles or unique angles or hooks or pain points for customers. And I started just
asking again and again, "Give me 10 more, give me 10 more, give me 10 more."
And just aggregating lists of what ChatGPT produced, collecting it in a
spreadsheet.
And then what I started doing was I started reading books or looking at studies
that were released after the training data stopped, or looking at forums and
looking at message board posts after the training data stopped and then basically
just aggregating back in a spreadsheet and then just whittling it down and crossreferencing because anybody who's played with ChatGPT knows that at a certain
point, it starts repeating itself a lot.
And what you can do is then just whittle down to, "Okay, what are the core things
that everybody has already said about a particular subject?" And then you look at
your own more contemporary research and you go, "Okay, well, people are now
talking about this." This particular claim or this particular angle has sort of
morphed into this new thing. I'll give a specific example. I work in the financial
newsletter space, and so a lot of the old arguments for buying silver have to do
with the ratio between gold and silver and things like that.
But one of the things that has really started happening in recent years after the
training data for ChatGPT stopped is people in more right wing and more
conservative speaking spaces have started talking about how, "Well, yeah, the
liberals are going to win anyway. Solar panels are going to be a thing." And
guess what? Solar panels require 20 grams of silver per panel. And so all of a
sudden by just cross-referencing, like seeing how these claims, seeing how
these desires have morphed, you're able to get a real sense of, "Okay, these are
clearly the unique angles using, again, customer data to actually express what
can be unique and what can be said that has not been said."
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Kim:
Yeah, I Love that.
Todd:
Very good.
John:
So just another way to get it, but Kim, you said that you can't get some of that
from ChatGPT. And I don't know if this is an idea I stole from Sam or somewhere
else, but we started playing around with putting focus groups using ChatGPT or
Claude and basically feeding it four or five avatars very specific, especially when
it comes to psychographics of what they're struggling with. And then they say,
"Conduct a focus group, have this be a conversation between the people that
we've just fed it," and seeing what comes out. And a lot of it is garbage, but there
are some really, really good emotional phrases that will come out of that kind of a
conversation. I mean, we'll just... It'll run for a while and say, "Keep going," or
we'll feed it specific questions that we want to use. But I've been impressed by
20% of what we'll get out of something like Claude or GPT.
Todd:
I know we're going to come to John. I'd love to hear anything that you want to
share as it relates to research and AI and Sam as well. Before we do that, I know
Kira had a question. I think she stepped away for a second, okay. But I'd love...
Chris, I would love to hear, you're obviously a pro when it comes to emotional
copy.
Chris:
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I'm really bad at research. I literally don't do any research and all you people are
crazy.
Todd:
Well, this may be a short question then.
Todd:
Thanks, Chris. No, no, no. So one of the big issues that a lot of folks have is
really research to identify the emotional triggers. And so it's very different than
identifying the outcome, the result, the transformation that people want. And so
I'm curious if you're doing anything today that's different from what you were
doing before, if you could just share how are you identifying that punch in the
gut?
Chris:
By being human, people. You're fucking human. I see this in my course, I really
do.
Todd:
Wow, if his answer made Peter laugh, we really know thatChris:
People get so fucking intellectual about this shit. They're like, "Well, I saw
ChatGPT said this and it turns out that people want to lose..." Fuck you. You're
people, your human fucking beings. You all are human fucking beings. You've all
experienced pain, you've all experienced pleasure, you're all desperate about
something. Get in touch with your fucking emot... What did I say in the car, "May
not have been emotionally available."?
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In the course, I don't sell it anymore, but so much of that course is just about
generating your own or getting in touch with your own fucking empathy and your
own ability to realize that you are... I say this, you are not special and that is
fucking awesome. Nobody in this... We all think we're fucking special snowflakes
and all that fucking bullshit. You're not special. You're a human being. You have
all of the shit you need to figure this out inside you. People say, "Chris, how do
you write to 45-year-old women so well?" I literally get in touch with my internal
45-year-old woman. She is fucking beautiful, by the way.
Pauline:
She's got a nice mustache.
Chris:
She really does. She really does. Very sexy.
Kim:
But I agree, empathy is the superpower, the hidden superpower that every
copywriter needs.
Todd:
I would think though, Chris, in all fairness, you have phenomenal... You're very
good. You're emotionally in tune with-
Todd:
Yeah, I was going to say. Is this the lady inside talking right now or is this the
Chris talking?
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Todd:
Yeah, okay. So now it's a meeting. Now it's a meeting with that answer from
Chris. I like it. So go ahead. Kira, did you... Yeah.
Kira:
I didn't have a question, but I agree. I just try to be more human. And also, I have
shifted recently, this is more high level, but to selling the research and making
that a bonus for my clients. So they really appreciate it and I'm getting paid for it.
But what I'm trying to do is create a deliverable, but I could feed into Chat... Well,
not just ChatGPT, Claude, anything. So I'm looking for more ways to make it
really easy to feed the machine, but to get paid for that because it's taking more
of my time to create that now. So I'm interested in learning more about how do
we prepare that so we can feed it?
Todd:
Okay. Go ahead, Chris.
Chris:
Can I just say one more thing? What people were saying about learning all these
things about the emotional drivers, your market doesn't know what the fucking
emotional drivers are. I'm writing a lot of right wing copy right now. People might
be shocked, I am not very right-wing, we all know that. But the reason I can write
that copy as well as I can, I think, is because I understand the target market for
that are these 65-year-old conservative white dudes who are fucking terrified.
They don't know they're fucking terrified. They think they're big tough guys who
are defending America. I know they're fucking terrified because I'm able to get
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behind the wall of the actual emotion center and just taking what they're telling
you. That's just my soapbox.
Kevin:
Yeah. We'll circle back and it's obvious to us, but to get something decent out of
ChatGPT, it has to start with empathy and genuineness and honesty. I mean,
none of us could write good copy if we weren't empathetic people, I don't believe.
You can manipulate things and do all that, but it's the human connect... So the
reason I can get 80 responses that are really genuine and then work from that
database is because of history of empathy and all that. So I hear what you're
saying, but one thing I want to just ask you to clarify, you're a really quick read of
people. That may be a superpower of yours. Does that develop more because
you're so in touch with your emotions or is it vice versa?
Chris:
I mean, it comes from a long history of personal trauma, really. But like with
everybody, I mean, we talk about comedians a lot and it's the exact same fucking
thing. They've all gone through and that gets you there. I think you guys kind of
hypervigilant and you're going to [inaudible 00:29:57].
Todd:
Okay. Ray, did you have something that you wanted to add?
Pauline:
I was just going to talk about empathy because that is one of my superpowers. I
was a nurse for 20 years, and I think it really just comes down to giving a shit
about the people that you're connecting with and actually caring about them. I
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mean, I think we can sometimes put a wall up and just think we're removed from
them, but immerse yourself into their day. And as Chris was saying, I actually not
just read between the lines because when you read between the lines, you're
actually making shit up, and that's ChatGPT.
Read behind the lines, like if you think who hurt them and why are they hurt and
why are they saying what they're saying, if you just are reactionary to someone
who says they're a cranky 65-year-old man, hates the world, well, it's like why is
he a 65-year-old guy that hates the world and entered that world? And that's
where the empathy comes from.
Like, when I was a nurse, people are striking out, hitting me, biting me, whatever.
And it's so easy just to go, "Fuck you. You're a cranky old shit, you deserve to
die." But then it's like take a step back and say, "Why the fuck did you just bite
me? That's not a natural thing." Or "Why is a person flinging shit at me as when I
walk through the door?"
I'll tell you, this is a good lesson in empathy. I'm a nurse, I walk into a room,
someone just randomly throws a great big turd at me and it's like, "What the
fuck? That's not a natural response for anyone." But when I broke it down, this is
what was behind the lines, this is why they were doing it, was because they're in
a hospital bed, they had to wake up when they were told to, they had to take a
shower when they were told to. They couldn't go through the toilet until someone
took them. Their power had been taken away. The one thing that they had
powerful was to throw shit at someone and destroy their day.
Tony:
So why did you leave nursing?
[Laughter]
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Todd:
I was going to say, man, it only took us 50 minutes to devolve into a poop
throwing... Wow.
Tony:
I didn't know I had that option.
Todd:
Go ahead, Tony. Go ahead, Tony.
Tony:
Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything that you've said. A lot of the empathy
comes from connecting up to your own pain, healing, and doing that kind of inner
work. I also think tactically, everybody knows about talking to customers, but one
of the things I do, especially in crypto, is actually have those sales that comes
with conversations, but in text, because that's the native environment. So you're
going to get different responses. When you're face-to-face with someone or on
Zoom, you can have their full attention, but when they're reading a promo on their
phone, you never really have their full attention. So the response is can be
different if you're having a text conversation with them and getting their
objections or their thoughts in that way.
Todd:
Very cool. I want to go back for one second. Chris, you are, again, very
emotionally in tune. I think that that is probably a superpower, like Peter said, for
you. Regardless, I do think that it's a superpower for you. Is there anything that
you do, though, to confirm what it is that you believe about? So you said, let's say
in the case of the right wing guy that he's really terrified. How do you-
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Chris:
I confirm I'm good at that is that we show it to the spokesperson for that product
who really likes me because I have a mustache, and he's very, very right wing.
And he reads that and says, "Hey brother, who wrote this copy?" to my buddy
who liked the offer. And he says, "Chris [inaudible 00:33:42]." And he says, "Is
that the guy with the mustache?" And he goes, "Yeah." And he's like, "Yeah,
yeah, that guy gets it. That guy's a real fucking conservative." And we are
actually terrified he's eventually going to figure out that I'm not because of his
AR-15 named after him, quite literally.
But I mean, a lot of it is just learning to trust your emotions, learning to trust
yourself, learning to trust that... Like I said, you have all this inside. You just got to
learn to be brave enough to address your own shit, like your own fear. And
sometimes also we actually talk to the people, like with women particularly, what I
would do is I would have an idea and then I would just, at a conference, I talked
to Alex Catone or something and I would say a line which was, "You've been lied
to by every man you've ever met, every man you've ever loved, every man
you've ever trusted." And she started blinking a lot, so I knew it was the right
thing. [inaudible 00:34:28] times to do that. But you can see the emotional
reaction.
Todd:
And so real quick, before we go to David, so I know that you've got a strong
feeling about what Chris said just in terms of the dealing with your own emotions
and getting in touch with. And so is there anything you would add?
Rich:
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I'd just say that I've gotten some of the best shit that I've ever used for my own
journal just because we all do shit that we... Especially why we're still doing it.
We all have desires, we all... And so, so many of the times I just try to review
pages from my journal of the same shit that I know my customers are going
through. And it might be a different level at this point, to your point. Because I
was that guy too at one point, hoping to make like 2,000 a month. So I have
those journal entries, I can go back to... But there's other things that I desire
today and I could just... It's the same kind of issue. I struggle in the same places
just for different reasons.
And so as long as I can get back to that, and then we had a... We were talking
about it last night, but the other place that I used to get great information from
was my Q&A calls because people would wait for hours to ask a question. And if
they're waiting hours to ask a question, then you know that that question means
something to them. So it's not just a question, it's like, "What were they thinking
that that question was so important?" If they're asking that question, it's like that
question has bigger meaning to them than just the question. And so I get kind of
analytical about that kind of shit in a very deep way because there's no random...
They're not just there waiting three hours to ask a question. It means something.
Todd:
Go ahead.
David:
I think just to give a little structure to it too, a lot of it is kind of, for those of us who
don't have Chris's gift, is kind of a method acting. It's getting into the character.
And I think part of that is just the willingness to sit for 15 minutes and say, "What
must this person's life be like?" [Inaudible 00:36:35] used to sit in a dark room for
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a half hour before he wrote something and just become the woman that he was
writing to. What is it like? If you have arthritis and you envision yourself going
through the day and opening up, twisting a jar, "Ooh, that hurts because I have
arthritis in my wrist."
And you realize something and you become that character. It strikes me even,
Chris is kind of like... From what I know of actors who are really good actors,
Chris is kind of like that. His emotions are on the surface. And for those of us who
aren't, like the Marlon Brandos and just naturally can do that, we have to be the
Stanislavsky School of Method Acting of thinking about it and relating it to, "Oh, I
feel embarrassment when I do this. That must be like when they feel
embarrassment when they don't have a boyfriend," or whatever Chris is writing.
Todd:
Very cool.
Donnie:
Tony, what's that book? The method acting book? That's great.
David:
Oh, Denny Hatch?
Kevin:
That was a good one.
Donnie:
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 13:
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Yeah, Stanislavsky wrote the method acting and Denny Hatch wrote a book
called Method Marketing, which kind of puts them together.
Chris:
But so much of that is about... Method acting is about not just, "I can imagine
what it's like to have arthritis," but it's like, "I have been in pain in the past. I have
been limited in the past. I have not been able to walk for a while because I had a
broken leg," or something like that. And then you use your own experience in
order to create an analog of what the character is doing.
David:
Yeah. Even if it's only, "One day I stubbed my toe and I wasn't able to get around
very well," what is it like if that's every day, every minute of every day?
Chris:
Yeah, can you empathize with it and imagine what that situation would be like?
Kyle:
So I feel like I should contribute because I'm at this table. I'm trying to figure out
how to shoehorn my... I have this very... I'm very proud of my research
methodology and I can't figure out how to connect it, so I feel like I'm going offtopic. But I spend so much... Well, I write financial copy and it's like well, I've
been blessed with... I got the same dude, the curmudgeon old man for the last
six years, so I haven't really thought much about it. I kind of feel like I take it for
granted. And I spend a lot of time with the guru. So we always have an expert.
And the biggest challenge in our space, especially with more... The more
technical the guru, the more he is disconnected from all that empathy stuff. He
looks for the tea cup handle, he looks for, "Where's the X pattern? Bye."
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And there's no narrative, there's no emotion, there's no story, and he takes pride
in that. But you can't even sell that. So I actually spend two hours when I first
meet the guru and the first question I ask is, "What's your career goals?" And I try
to get him... Every time I do this, the publisher will be there. Me and the editor will
be talking and publisher will sitting in because they're like, "Hey, we're paying you
guys a bunch of money. Let's make sure you know what you're doing." And at the
end of the interview they'll always be like, "I didn't know that about Jack. I didn't
know he was coming on his 50th year in this and his ultimate goal was to do this
for 50 years and write a memoir."
And so in my research process, I'm trying so hard to figure out who the person is
that's coming up with these. Who's selling the Fibonacci sequence and that I can
tie his story to something emotional so the reader will think, "Yeah, I want to do
Kissinger crosses with that guy." So it's like I don't actually spend a lot of time
doing these customer service and I'm listening to everything. I'm like, "Well, any
minute now I'm going to get my chance to say my cool thing that I do." But I
spent a lot of time asking the person story-based questions so that we can tie
that sort of emotional pull, like he was eating shit one day, he was living under a
bridge and nothing was going his way.
Chris:
Why are you pointing to me about that?
Kyle:
Because you're an emotional guy.
Chris:
I have a very nice house.
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Kyle:
No, listen. Trauma bonding right now and you even know it.
Chris:
He's waving directly towards me over and over.
Kyle:
Man, when I meet a really fucked up individual.
Kyle:
But to your point is what my hand gesture means, to his point, I'm just looking for
some sort of emotional story that I can be like, "This is something that
someone..." When I'm talking to the guy and I'm just... That's what I'm trying to
get to is I'm in touch with, "What do I feel when he tells me that story about his..."
He had his wedding at his gas station where his dad owned the gas station, he
took it over. That's where he got the money for his first trade, which started him
on the journey. And he married his wife there with all the employees and all his
family. And it's like when he told me that story, I still remember it to this day, I'm
like, "I want to trade with that guy." So I'm just listeningChris:
You had that emotional reaction, you were able to trust the other people.
Kyle:
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Yeah. I'm like, "Write that shit down."
Donnie:
So are you doing that research just to find the best story to create a connection
with the reader or with the viewer of the VSL?
Kyle:
And when I ask the story, the big questions, and I just get curious. "Tell me more.
How? Do you have an example of that? What do you mean?" And I keep asking
that, there become these layers where it's sort of like Sean pushes up his
glasses and goes a spreadsheet with ChatGPT, and he starts cross-referencing
things. There will be these patterns where I recognize, "This is this person's
values. This is person's recurring themes, like thematic premises that he keeps
coming back to where he's like, 'I live my life by this.'" He doesn't even know he
has this code, but it's like, "Dude, every story you tell me, there's always loyalty,
hard work, family." Some people are more family-oriented, some people are more
independent.
You start to see the themes and I'm like, "Okay." I have almost like a
catchphrase, like, "Do what you want when you want." I had a guru basic kit and
he said that six times, "I just want to be able to do what I want when I want." And
I was like, "That needs to be in the promo all over the place because you don't
even realize you've said it six times in 90 minutes and I don't even know if you
know you're saying it this much." But I continually just dig at the same broad
questions, and at the end I will summarize back to them.
And I take all of this and I have the structure of a sales letter is I feel timeless and
I can sort of start staggering where that piece of information belongs. And then I'd
be like, "Here's what I'm thinking, Mr. Guru." And I'll go through broad strokes of...
And it's all from him. And so that is a really big client winner when it's like, "You're
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one of those copywriters that actually was listening. You didn't just have a shower
thought and start writing and then be like, 'Read this.'" And my research process
is heavily... It's also emotional, but I actually spend a significant, significant
amount of the time working with the expert and the editor and the guru and then
sort of gauging, "Where did I have an emotional spike? Where did I get really
bored and start tuning out of the interview?" And sort of isolating those stories
and making it... Then tying that to the reader and the markets.
Todd:
Go ahead, Peter.
Peter:
Can I piggyback on that idea? I was in a situation in Mindvalley where I had so
many fucking authors with badass stories and I was like, "I just don't have time to
fucking figure out what the..." And I didn't know interviewing back then or how
that kind of worked. But one of the ideas was I had this Silva ad that was
dominating so hard for the Jose Silva campaign and I was like, "Man, I wish they
could just fucking... I wish I could just ask them a question that could get them to
answer what this guy said, what vision says in the Silva ad."
So one of the tricks I discovered is whatever your best campaign is, if you look at
your VSL, what question would you have to have asked the authority figure to get
him to say that answer? And then I went through my entire VSL and came out
with literally 32 questions, that exact flow of the VSL that was specific for this
moment, and that turned out to be just interviewing. Didn't know I was
interviewing until later. But it was like, "Fuck, that's perfect. I just answered these
questions and I get a VSL and I can dig between all those lines." So super solid
researching process.
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Todd:
I love it. Awesome. You know what we're going to do? We're going to... Was that
good? Was there any question that I didn't ask or that... From top one folks, is
there anything related to research that I missed or that you didn't hear that you
think would be valuable to hear from these guys? I just want to make sure that
we are extracting as much... That we're getting out as much as possible as it
relates to research. Do you guys feel good about that? Was that helpful?
Donnie:
Yeah, that was good.
Kira:
I would just love to hear more, if we can, about surveying and just how... I feel
like we didn't touch on surveying. We touched on it and then we moved on, but
just how to value the messaging from a large survey because sometimes I just
feel overwhelmed often from the survey itself, so I'm trying to prioritize
messaging now.
Todd:
Okay.
Kevin:
And one other thing I'd like to explore is nomenclature. In a bar, the way people
describe products or the process of seeing a product is not at all how we think
about it or talk about it. And so how much do we need to meet them either in their
language or their vague understanding of what we're proposing and get it clear
and get them [inaudible 00:46:06]?
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Todd:
So who does surveys as part of the research process? So who feels they have
something... In the way that you do surveys, who feels they've got something that
would be insightful for the group? Go ahead, Justin.
Justin:
Are you talking about specifically for the words in the messaging?
Kira:
Yeah, exactly.
Justin:
Or more for the product to sell?
Kira:
Words and messaging, which messages to prioritize out of 500 messages.
Justin:
Gotcha. So mine's more on the product. Brian Kirks teaches, I think it's called the
Q method. He taught this four or five years ago where let's say you've got six
ideas you want to propose, if you just say... If you choose... Obviously we know if
you just ask people what they want, they never tell you what the actually really
want, but he taught me basically list out five or six products and then a simple, "I
would buy this, I would not buy this," underneath each one. I've done that for
probably my last eight or so courses. And the response on that survey directly
correlates to the sales. It's directly correl.
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The best ones always perform the best every single time. So it'd be like, "I'm
thinking of doing a copywriting course with Dan. We're going to teach our five by
five copywriting system that will help you do this, this, and this. Price would be 99
bucks. Would you buy this? Yes or no?" And they say, "Yes, I'd buy this," or "No,
I'd not buy this." I basically do that for... I'll throw out, like I said, six, seven ideas.
And if I get one that has over about 75% interest rate, then I'll actually create the
course and it's been pretty spot on.
Todd:
Is that what you use to drive all of the promos that you do? Do you use a survey
first to drive the topics?
Justin:
Yep.
Todd:
Okay.
Tony:
You put those six, seven ideas in the same survey or separate?
Justin:
All seven in the same one. And so I also make sure it has to be somewhere
above at least 70, 75 to actually create it. If all of them are below that, then I
won't create any of those. But I've seen... I started doing this background at my
health company and I noticed I came up with six ideas and I started just inserting
one idea in there that Brian was running with bottom line, like one of their
bestselling ones. And every single time the bottom line one would register 85%.
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And I was like, "That makes sense." We sold 10 like million copies. And so that
was a very just eyeopening thing to me that these really do directly correlate.
Because a lot of times survey data doesn't directly correlate with sales, but this
way of doing it that he talked, it works really well.
Todd:
That's great and simple.
Justin:
It was super simple.
Todd:
Simple and powerful.
Tony:
I would assume that people on your list know who Dan is. So how much do you
give them in the line about what you're thinking... How much information do you
give them about what the productJustin:
So I try to describe it like you would when I sell it. So I'll talk about the
mechanisms, so how to build a massive email list with low price, pocket change
offers. Basically, kind of like that. If you do it too general, it doesn't give them
enough info. So I tend to try to put the mechanism in there a little bit. One of the
keys is you also just whatever you're going to sell it for, that doesn't really matter,
but everything in there should be the same price. Be like, "I'll probably sell this for
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90 bucks," or whatever I'm going to sell it for. You don't want one to be 90 bucks
and another one to be 1,000 because that's going to change interest.
Tony:
Speaking of, what would be helpful, if you guys want to talk about this, getting
that information is awesome, but have you ever tried playing around with it to get
what you should sell it for? Because oftentimes when we're hearing things,
because let's say I'm doing an editing course for them, we all know how
important editing is to copy and those copywriters do. But the average person
might not know that it's one of the most important things you can possibly do
when you send a copy. You don't care who writes it, whether it's AI or Chris
[inaudible 00:50:01]. It doesn't matter, we all have to edit. So they don't know if
the value of it is X. So it'd be really good to find out how people are pricing it.
Todd:
Does anybody use any kind of research for pricing? So everybody is just
basically the best of the best right here. They're like, "You guys good with 49?
Let's roll with it. Sounds great."
Donnie:
Would you do that open-ended or would you make it like options? Would you
give them options, like 47, 67?
Tony:
I've given them options before and I don't think that's the best.
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Kyle:
You don't want to call it research, but you just looked at other people's courses,
"Oh, they're selling for that much."
Kim:
Right. But I mean, if you can, you do price testing, obviously.
Rob:
Yeah, or a name your price offer.
David:
One interesting thing to ask, I got this from Ben Mack, at what point would you
find it's expensive? At what point would you find it's so cheap you wouldn't
consider it, and what would you expect the price to be? It gives you a very
interesting range to look at.
John:
One more thing about what survey data that pay attention to, when I think about
how I fill out surveys and most of the surveys we take, my guess is you guys are
the same, it's like one word response. How good is this? It's fine. I think length
correlates to passion. Long answers are either going to be extremely happy and
they're telling you why or extremely unhappy and they're telling you why. And so I
think as you look through survey data, it's not always going to be true, but longer
answers are probably worth paying more attention to.
Todd:
I think and what's interesting with that, from my take, going back to what Justin
said, I think when you start to look at, "How do I make sense of the data?", where
my mind goes is, "Maybe our survey was a bit complex that we now have to
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figure out how to make heads or tails of the data." Like, Justin is asking a very
simple question in the data, the response, the answer gives him a clear direction
of what to do of what do next. And so I always favor simplicity, whereas what is
the easiest way to get the insight that I'm looking for? Real quick to kind of wrap
up this section, so Kevin, I want to see if we can get an answer to your question.
I just want to make sure that I fully understand what you're asking. Are you
asking... Is the question more about how close do we match our copy to the way
the prospect would actually describe the problem, the desired solution? Is that
really ultimately what you're asking?
Kevin:
No, I'm kind of asking does anybody have a really good method for finding out
exactly how people talk about a thing they don't quite know about yet? This is the
problem of talking about... You probably get this on the golf course. The way you
might describe an improved swing, they have a totally different language for it.
Donnie:
For sure.
Kevin:
And then I would love, if we have time, to hear insights into... I'm thinking of it as
we start there. We start broad, but then we got to get them into our world and
almost teach them our language. So then they feel indoctrinated and now we're
together.
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Todd:
Okay. And so you want to speak to that, Donnie? Are you using... So you said
that the way that you would describe the problem, the situation, the solution,
whatever, may be different from the way that the prospect would. So in your copy,
are you using the way you would describe it or are you using the way the
prospect would describe it?
Donnie:
Yeah, so we find in golf that the vast majority of golfers have a very, very, very
basic understanding of the golf nomenclature. So it's very basic. And we are
actively... Because there's such a high state of awareness in golf around the
problems and solutions, we are actively trying to increase their understanding,
their vocabulary, because that allows us to set ourselves apart just a little bit from
others.
But what I do is I have... My dad is the avatar, so I will... When I do what I talked
about earlier, go to the range, I'm kind of pre-framing to the person how I want
them to respond because I'm putting words in their mouth by talking about the
specific problem, I'm saying it in a specific way. And they will usually repeat that
back. But when I want to get new language about something that they might not
know exactly about, I'll go to someone like my dad who's the exact avatar, and I
will ask very, very, very, what we call caveman questions, like, "What is it? How
does it work?"
Literally, the most basic question you can ask, and then take very detailed notes
on how he describes it. And almost every time he will describe it in a way that is
like, "Gosh, that's way too simple. That's not interesting at all." But that's the way
that most customers will relate to the language that they'll understand. And I think
we've also found that if you put language in there that they don't understand, you
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can watch it on Hotjar. They're falling off, the drop-off rate's going because
they're looking for a reason to leave at all times.
Todd:
So to be clear, you're using the prospect's language. You're describing it the way
that they would describe it. You're saying as close to the way that they would say
it as possible. Chris, would you say that that's also for you when it comes to
describing emotions? Like, you're using the language that they would really use.
You're not filtering it through a copywriter.
Chris:
Yeah, you want to use lingo that they have.
Todd:
Okay.
Rich:
But just so that I'm clear, you start there, but then you're going to expand their
vocabulary by teaching them a little bit more, right?
That's how you introduce the mechanism, that's how you introduceDonnie:
Yeah, that is actually... Thanks, Rich, I appreciate that. Glad I spent time with
you.
Todd:
Want to tell us what he does?
Donnie:
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He actually can probably explain this way better than I can. He explains
everything I said way better than I can. I'm going to do my best at this, you
probably can summarize it. So I'll take something that... Basically, I would make a
bold statement that everyone who plays golf has heard of and everyone who
plays golf or 99% of the people who play golf have said this sentence, "Why do
you slice?" "Oh, my club face is open." So I'll take that thing that I've heard
everybody say. And then I will try to say it in a new way that is literally
Hemingway second grade level, like extremely, extremely basic and test if that
lands on someone. So saying exactly the thing that they already say that we
know they understand in a new very simple way. The best example of this is in
golf you say you hit the ball, then turf. You hit the ball, then the ground.
And so we just said it in a different way, which is the ball is not the bottom of the
swing. So if you hit the ball, then the bottom of the swing would be the ground but
it's not the ball. That was the way we reframed it. And it landed really, really,
really well. It was probably the thing that helped our business the most in the last
few years, that one little sentence, because it resonates because it's like, "Oh, I
kind of get that. I understand that enough," where they want to keep listening,
keep reading. But it's not so far out where they're like, "What the hell is this
guy..." We're not talking degree of angle of attack into the ball of how deep the
divot needs to be, where you're facing. You could go way into the new language.
Is that likeRich:
Yeah, I would say that so much of good copy is that. It's confirmation of the
thoughts that they were kind of having.
Todd:
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I think it's like you really said, it's starting where they are and leading them to
where you need them to be. You know what I mean? And so does that kind of
somewhatKevin:
I've got a great example. If I wanted some concrete examples of how we get their
current language and then how do we shift it.
Donnie:
Even if we're not saying something new, I think that's the thing. I'm not actually... I
didn't come up with some genius thing. It's not new at all. It is exactly what
everyone is saying. It is literally like the gospel about this specific issue in golf
just said in a new way. And I think in long form, anybody... We all are long form,
so that's the art is how many times can I say the exact same thing in a new way
and not lose you?
Tony:
All right, let me expand on this just a tad if I can. I completely agree with
everything you guys are saying. There's one point where I kind of deviate and if
you're having to teach something... For example, as you probably know, I've
written a lot in the fitness and wellness and nutritional space and sometimes you
have to use scientific jargon, you have to use scientific terms, and you want to
use a term that you basically want to teach somebody. So I have all these ways
of colloquially doing that. This is a $5 word that really just means something
really simple, blah, blah, blah.
But the studies that we looked at, but when we started doing this many, many
years ago, how many of you have ever taught a child new word? How many
times does the child use the new word the next day or the same day in all the
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wrong places is kind of [inaudible 00:59:13]. But the reason why that is is
because people feel really good about learning something. And if you can teach it
in a way that they feel like, "Wow, I can actually use this new golf term," or this
new fitness term or this new whatever.
P90X was a great example of this, muscle confusion. Muscle confusion was
stolen from Joe Weider back in the '80s, so they stole it from him. But the trick is,
is that you're using two words that people already understand. You're putting it
together in a new phrase that is brand new. So what I do with the unique
mechanisms, I always use words that they... Try to use words that they
understand. The example of that is when I came up with leptin resistance, which
is now you Google it, it's a medical term, but it didn't exist back then. So leptin
resistance, I had to teach someone what leptin the hormone was.
There's no way to get around that conversation. But if you do it in a way that
makes someone feel like, "Wow, I've learned something completely new today.
There's this thing called leptin and I had no idea it even existed," then they start
using it in every other sentence and then you can kind of win the game. So if you
can bridge that, and Chris is spot on with the you can't do this without
interviewing. You cannot do this without understanding not only from yourself but
also putting yourself in your avatar's shoes, that you're not trying to be a lecturer.
You're not trying to be some scientific genius. You're just trying to say, "There's
this new thing and it's called this, and really all this means is that." But then they
start connecting that to the pain and that's kind of like the one thing [inaudible
01:00:42].
Kevin:
I can think of that as you're copy making the dinner table.
Sam Woods:
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That's what David said. I think it's David, he said, this is always with me, is you
want your prospect to be like, "Honey, I finally figured it out. It's leptin resistance."
And into that one, "Dave, I know what the problem is."
Tony:
Yeah, I think Mark used to talk about this, that the investor buyer almost cares
more about getting something that he can tell his friends than he does actually
making money at the end of the day. That's it.
It's just a fine line. If you go too far, you're off the deep end.
Kim:
And if it's one of those $5 words, I always spell out the pronunciation because
people read it out loud in their head. So if there's stumbling over a word that I just
have to use, I spell it out phonetically.
Tony:
Yeah. So I've actually used it so it rhymes with this and you can remember it
because it rhymes with this word and it's just some silly word.
Kim:
Right, right. Anyway, I think Pauline's been trying toTony:
Hooked on phonics work for me as well.
Pauline:
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So I was going to say as well, I mean, to Kevin's point and also what John's
saying, you have to meet people where they are, but you don't have to stay there
and you don't have to dumb yourself down. What you need to do is simplify your
language, especially in the health space. If you can't have a doctor speaking at a
second grade Hemingway level, they don't speak like that. So if you do speak like
that in your copy, then you're condescending, patronizing. People feel dumb.
So that's where you simplify it. And you can still use the words, spell them out,
give them the definitions. But I think that's that gradualization that Schwartz talks
about, like you meet them where they are and then you gradualize them to where
you want them to be. Because as John was saying, you're giving them little
doses of dopamine, making them feel smart that they've learned something and
then they will buy it because they actually trust you. But if you have a doctor
speaking at a second grade level, I'm not going to trust that dude. That's like Dr.
Nick Riviera like, "Hey, guys," the Simpsons.
Kim:
And just to add to that, something I learned from Paris and since he's not here, I
will say it, but there's this magic forward phrase that it's, "As you may know." And
so it can be either, if someone doesn't know, they don't feel stupid, but if they do
know, they feel smart. So you kind of win either way. So it's a good little thing to
use that phrase rather than a definitive statement.
Kyle:
And to Pauline's point, my most successful financial promo of all time was a dude
the exact same age as me with long hair and a beard and a surfer guy sort of
thing going on. And so we get to this point, Orrin Klapp talks about a flash roll
where you do 100 to 150 words of jargon that's designed to fly over your
prospect's head to build that credibility and trust. I know exactly where that
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belongs. It belongs right before the offer, and then you hype it up. I say take them
to a million, like show them the most exaggerated result and then go into the
offer right then while they're at peak excitement. So I get to the flash roll and I've
got this 33-year-old no track record, no credibility fucking basement trader. And
I'm like, "All right, bring in a guy with glasses and a ponytail."
And so I have for our flash roll, instead of having the actual trader read what he
knows, because he just doesn't look the part, he just doesn't look the role. Like
you say, having a doctor sort of talking to you like a second-grader, having this
surfer dude explain technical trading patterns to you just doesn't compute. So we
have... Basically, I was like, "Tell me what you do. Now have someone smarter
looking than you read it." And so we had him come in and explain trading and we
did, we put them in front of the traders, six monitors set up with all the charts and
everything. And I was like, "Now explain how trading works." So we just removed
the less credible face just for that effect and put someone who looked a lot more
sophisticated.
Kevin:
Did you test the other guy?
Kyle:
What's that?
Kevin:
Did you test the real guy?
Kyle:
Nope. It was one shot and it was very much-
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Kevin:
Interesting. Side note, one of the worst instincts I ever had was to not let John
Rolly read his own VSL, because I was afraid his New York accent would be a
de-legitimizer. And we tested and his did much better.
Perry:
Back to John's thing about trying to communicate technical information and teach
people new stuff, so my book Evolution 2.0 took six years to write. It's a serious
science book. And it had to be rigorous enough that no molecular biologist would
say that it was wrong and it had to be understandable to a high school student.
And the way that I got that right is something, I call it poor man's peer review. And
what I do... I've done this with all of my books for the last 10 years, but you can
do it with anything. I go in Upwork or Fiverr and I hire people to read the book. It's
like, "Will you read this book for $50? And I want you to tell me two favorite
chapters, two least favorite chapters. Was anything boring or irrelevant? Was
anything confusing? Would you recommend it to a friend? Would you pay $13 for
this book?" And I only hire about three at a time.
And what most people don't realize is that most books, the first day they're
released have only been read by six or eight people. Your mom, your wife, your
editor, your friend. And all books have invisible speed bumps in them that the
average reader hits that none of your friends are going to complain about. So I'll
have three people read it and they'll give me feedback. Most of the feedback will
go back into the book and we'll fix stuff. I always find there's stuff where I was so
in love with chapter 14 and nobody had any idea what I was talking about. And
then I try to fix chapter 14 and they still have no idea what I'm talking. "Okay,
throw out chapter 14." And you just keep rinse repeating. In my case, anywhere
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from 10 to 30 readers, I'll higher and we'll just keep going through it and going
through it. And every feedback, I'm straightening stuff out, ironing out the kinks.
See, you only need to hire people who are at least peripherally in your target
market. You're not even really trained to get people that are square in the
bullseye.
In fact, it's almost better if they're not square in the bullseye and you know you've
really hit it when somebody says, "Well, I am just an English major and I do
editing work, and I would never read a book like this, but I really liked this and I
would definitely recommend this to my friend, Charlie. I would never read a
science book like this, but I really liked it." That's when you know you've hit the
sweet spot. And you could do with almost anything. You could do with a sales
video or a sales letter. I'll pay you $10 to read the sales letter and tell me where
you got hung up. I can't prove this because there's no way to split test it, but I
think it doubles the sales of a book to do that.
Kevin:
That's genius.
Todd:
Alright gang. So, great first session. Of course, it goes without saying, that
whatever you guys want, you want to grab something to drink, you want to grab
coffee, snack, whatever. This home is your home. Really informal, so don't be
afraid to get up at any point and grab whatever you want to grab.
That being said, I want to go into the next area of copy. And I want to talk about
big idea development or hook development, themes. I know that some of you
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have different approaches when it comes to big ideas and hooks and themes for
your campaigns. And I know that this is a big, kind of broad and almost general
question. But really, what I would love to hear from you guys is, what are you
doing today or what are you seeing today that is working from a big idea, hook,
angle perspective?
Is there something that you are doing or seeing today that is different from what
you were doing six months ago or eight months ago? And I want to be clear
about something. David and I had a great conversation earlier at the start. And
what I said to David was that if the answer is nothing, we're not doing anything
different. We're doing the same thing that we were doing eight months ago. Then
that's the answer. And that's the answer that I want to hear. So again, we're
ultimately in the search for truth, reality. I'm not looking for a whizzbang answer.
I'm looking for your answer, whatever that means. And so, in terms of what are
you doing to find hooks, big ideas? Are there different types of ideas that you see
working today that weren't working before? Are there ideas or idea types or
themes, models that were working that you don't see working today?
Now, to back up for one second. Rich shared something. Is it all right if I share
the taste tease thing? So, Rich shared something with me that kind of got me
really thinking about why it's important to hear from you guys on this topic.
Obviously, big ideas, angles, hooks...critical to a campaign, in general. But Rich
shared with me in one of his Steal our Winners episodes the...Who shared this
with you?
Rich:
Walter Birch.
Todd:
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So shared the idea of taste verse tease when it comes to the opening of videos.
Meaning that the typical approach that a lot of people teach, that a lot of people
talk about, is open up your videos with tease. Here's what you're going to learn,
I'm going to share the three secrets to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what he
shared was that actually opening up with a taste, with giving a valuable nugget,
with giving a valuable gem right away, right before teasing, giving some
information first, really had a radical improvement on the performance of their
ads. And so, that is a shift in the way that most people are approaching the
opening, if you will, of their ads. And so it just got me thinking, and we're going to
talk about leads, openings and pattern interrupts in one second. But I want to
start with who's got something to share, talk about as it relates to themes, hooks,
big ideas. Go ahead.
Rob:
So, I think for years I was stuck in the mindset of coming up with one name of a
hook after another and got somewhat known for coming up with different names,
and we were trying to come up with the names that sounded like in fitness and
health offers, this sounded mysterious and sexy and scientific or whatever. And
there's still plenty of room for that, I'm sure.
But last couple of years, for my own offers that are in marketing and copy been
playing around with. And Todd, you've been a huge influence in this. Coming up
with less of the name and more of the idea. And the way I've been toying around
with coming up with the idea that this offer we just launched a bullet for was, how
would I describe it versus how in trying to come up with something that sounds
like..it sounds too fancy, it sounds too lofty. It sounds too, it's like this magical
thing that sounds a little bit too bullshit like.
So for this latest offer, I sold a bonus that I've given away. No kidding, I've never
sold it before. I tell people they should always sell their bonuses. And this is one
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bonus I've never sold. And I've given this away for the last 14 years. So 14 years,
this has never been sold and given it away. And yet I figured out, I was looking at
the offer going, damn, this is a course. This is 20 videos and production. And
man, what the hell? Why was I giving this away? I mean, this is something I
should sell. Even though it's 14 years old. Right? So there's some stuff in it that's
dated and I was able to use that in a copy. It's like, look, some of this stuff is old,
but all the principles are still there. That's why I'm selling it for so cheap.
And then we ran a bullet from it and Grant did a five-figure week, which isn't
going to have me retire or anything, but it's like five figures coming out of
nowhere. Right? That there was something I'd given away just constantly. And
this is just one thing in the middle of the week that we're [inaudible 00:05:38].
But the idea behind it was like, okay, how do you create a product in 28 days?
So, that's not exactly a sexy promise. 28 days to create a product. Until you start
talking to your customer and realizing that, look, I'm working full-time jobs. I want
to write a book. I want to have an offer. I want to do something on my own. I just
don't have time to do it. And so I said, well, what if we do it just an hour a day?
So in 28 days to go from concept to cash. Would that be something you'd be
interested in? So people were saying they were interested in it, so it worked well.
But I started using the term digital stock. Because when I look at my own books,
it's like I still make money from Fit over 40. And that was literally 20 years ago.
Two days ago. So literally 20 years old. So that's like stock that never goes down.
It's just digital stock that sits on the internet and just makes money. And so that
concept became like how I described it. So, I started thinking in terms less in
terms of trying to come up with some fancy hook, and thinking in terms like, well,
how would you describe it in a way that sounds so attractive and so obvious to
people that they'll go, oh yeah, of course I want that. And so that's been how I've
been approaching it. Looks like trying to do it that way or more of an idea than a
phrase necessarily.
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Todd:
Pete, real quick. Peter, did you have your hand up? Were you going to say
something?
Peter:
I was before we started. But...
Todd:
Oh.
Peter:
No, that was awesome. Yeah. No, cool. Yeah, I mean like for...
Todd:
I mean would love to hear from you. I think that I want to just say you have a
unique...I think you have a unique, you know you almost view yourself as a VSL
producer. Is that fair to say?
Todd:
Right. See so, I did a little research on you to make sure that, like...but I think that
I'm curious to hear how you think about the theme of this VSL that you're going to
produce. Like the theme in terms of what's the storyline that we want to go with?
That we want to convey? How do you come to that today?
Peter:
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This is story-related.
Todd:
Okay.
Peter:
Story related, the question you asked.
Todd:
That's cool. Roll with it. That's okay.
Peter:
Okay. I mean, how do I come up with the story? I mean those [inaudible
00:07:49] are often those who needed it the most. So I am blessed to be a space
where people have their stories, so I don't really discover much. But just to cover
on, back to the big idea point, which because...I think the first thing we really
need to capture is clarity on what the fuck the big idea is. At the end of the day
someone has a problem and they need to bridge to their dream life. And they
don't know how to do it. Reveal the root cause of their problems and all the steps
they can take and the root cause solution that will fix the root cause of the
problem. Basically all the steps they take to do that. Whether it's ingredients or
course materials or whatever. That is the big idea. So it's the bridge, that can get
them out of hell and you have clarity on the steps they take across the bridge.
Then, they can believe that they do it and we see proof other people did it
[inaudible 00:08:31]. That's what I kind of figured out.
So, to me, having clarity on that big idea is really important because now it's like
a game of does this makes sense? If I'm in back pain, do I really think that if I
hang upside down like the bat and stretch my spine out, will that kind of I heal it?
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And if it's a yes, that's more like a green light. So in big idea world, I'm always
like...You know, one of the things that didn't work for me recently was I was so
stoked about like being the bleeding edge of unique mechanisms, because you
want to be the best in the world of mechanisms. That's what really makes a huge
offer win. So I bought Nature Magazine and I was getting this delivered to my
house, so excited to like be on top of science. It turns out I can't read a fucking
word inside of this magazine. Can't even a single headline. So that didn't work for
me, so maybe there is a simpler way to do this.
Perry:
Okay, so I have something on that. So, I wrote a scientific paper, we got
published in May. The lead author, I was not the lead author and they didn't write
it the way I would liked it to have been written. So it was very hard to read. But I
took the abstract and I fed it into ChatGPT and I said, please restate this in age
12, grade like, seventh grade language. That's all I asked it. And it said imagine
that you're building a city out of Legos and bullies are coming and kicking your
buildings down. Well, that's the paradigm of the old view of evolution. The new
view of evolution is that everything is cooperatively trying to work together. And
basically is the idea that viruses are in a symbiotic relationship with their hosts.
It's not like this arms race that the way that we normally think of it.
It was absolutely beautiful. And, in fact, the whole thing is on Evolution 2.0
website evo2.org. It was brilliant. And what I found is that you can take stuff at
that PhD level, you can feed it into AI engines and give it simple instructions like
reduce this to a age 10 or a age 12 reading level. May or may not need to prompt
it with some kind of use simple analogies or metaphors that will actually, I was
really impressed. It would've taken me...I don't know if I could have come up with
that myself. It was brilliant. And so your instinct to subscribe to Nature magazine
was not a bad one, but you just need to translate that over.
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And one thing that's true is...so it's one thing if a piece of scientific work is just a
bunch of jargon and nothing can save you if that's all it is, and a lot of scientific
papers are just a bunch of jargon. But if it actually has a coherent logical
structure, it is translatable to lower levels and it will work.
Peter:
So that's really cool. So back to your story question. At least in category five
market sophistication levels, like skin care or whatever. What worked for me on a
super high level was a breakthrough discovery in the unique mechanism story.
Right? So how did you guys mother fucking discover that there is a toxic protein
that's causing women to age? What's the story behind that? Oh, you were
studying children who were aging really fast, and had this like progeria disease
and they found out, it was similar. So those kind of like, a breakthrough
mechanism, the story behind that is [inaudible 00:12:36] money.
Todd:
Well, now let me ask you. Expand on that for one second. Are you saying that it's
a breakthrough in the mechanism that produces the outcome that the prospect
wants? Or are you saying that it's a breakthrough in discovering the source of the
problem? Right because when you said that we discovered that there's this
protein or whatever that's causing women to age or whatever it is. Right? You're
really identifying a different cause of the problem and then you have a solution
that addresses that new cause that you've identified.
Peter:
Correct.
Todd:
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So is that what you're saying is where the money is? That you discovering a new
reason for why they're struggling?
Peter:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, typically if you have a new mechanism, that means you
discovered the new root cause of the problem. And that means that this new way
is how you solve it because nothing else actually addressed the root cause of the
problem, at the end of the day. Right? And that is...you know my experience with
root causes of the problem was I was just selling stuff as an affiliate in the pain
relief niche and I was selling this...I had a store that kind of led really well and I
was like, it's almost like if you told an old guy like, oh, do you think that this could
fix it? No. Do you think that that's going to fix it? No. Do you think that you could
touch on the bottom of your feet and that would fix it? Oh, maybe that would fix it.
So it was almost like you said a couple things and some of them just lit people
up.
So its literally to me, people want to buy and the reason why they don't buy if
you're, as long as you're in a proven product, that's just they don't believe that it'll
work, at the end of the day. As long as they're getting someone's attention and
they're not buying it because they don't believe it, the number one reason why
they don't believe it is the road is not clear. They don't think they can pass
through it. You connect the root cause the problem and solve that and paint the
ingredients in the course. And then if you make that clear, then they just need to
see a couple people that have done it. But the money is in the breakthrough
fucking, it's like Apple, right? Cell phones were around forever. Steve Jobs was
bleeding edge on new technology, same thing they want, but like get it in different
format. And that was breakthrough. So that's the way I think [inaudible 00:14:41].
Todd:
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Very cool. We're definitely going to come back to that and talk more about that.
Real quick,
Kim:
What I was saying too. Even before ChatGPT, I would go to eighth grade science
or middle school science sites and I found those really helpful to...I was writing
about some type of inflammation with joint pain and just how do we break that
down? And then being able to come up with a really great analogy and again
caution with GPT, we don't want it to be too cliche of an analogy. I'm asking
essentially a cliche, but we're all copywriters so we should be able to come up
with some pretty good analogies. But what I was going to say just about coming
up with big ideas and new angles, it's basically kind of a classic way that I've
been taught from the beginning. In fact, I was in the room at Phillips Publishing
when Gene Schwartz came in and gave his daylong lecture. I was like five years
old but...
I'll never forget at the very beginning, he was talking about how he would read
every...would make sure he saw every blockbuster movie. He would read all the
best-selling books and novels. He would read the newspapers. He would read
National Enquirer because he wanted to understand the depths of which people
were willing to believe. So you constantly want to have that fodder coming into
your brain. And then when it gets to the point where you're coming with ideas or
angles or a way in, it's something that maybe has caught your market's interest
or they've heard before, but they haven't connected in a new way.
For example, I was writing for a detox supplement. And this is when the newer
light bulbs were coming out and they contain mercury, but a lot of people don't
realize they have mercury, right? So you're getting all this mercury exposure with
these new energy-efficient light bulbs. Another way in right? Or an anti-aging
supplement promo where you had the twin astronauts, Scott and Mark Kelly. One
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went up to space for a year or whatever, came back and he actually looked
younger. I was able to find a way to tie that to the mechanism of one of the
nutrients of the formula.
So, I also just want to mention Dan Ferrari was on one of my mentoring group
calls about a year or two ago, and you talked about how you found a really
breakthrough big idea for your Genesis supplement promo, which I think is still
running.
Dan:
Just got the royalties yesterday.
Kim:
Want to tell people how you came with that idea because I thought that was
really cool.
Dan:
Well, yeah, so that's what I was going to say is.
Todd:
Share the idea. And then.
Dan:
So the idea on that was.. Well here, let me start with more of the framework. So,
when I look at these promos, I'm asking myself, am I going in or am I going out?
In would be, is there something in the product or the guru's story very much
encapsulated in that offer that could be elevated to a big idea? Out would be
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more of like a macro story or a story from the outside world, which is what that
Genesis promo was. Which was an anti-aging supplement that concentrated on
telomeres and increasing telomere length.
And so in the research I found there was a Nobel prize for it. Well, I actually
found two very interesting stories. There was a Nobel Prize for an American
scientist. There was also, this was in the Cold War behind the Iron Curtain, there
was a Soviet scientist who made basically the exact same discovery. So, I wrote
two entirely different promos. One was about the American scientist who then
was at this sort of Hollywood fundraiser where a bunch of big power players and
celebrities were basically taking part in this anti-aging summit where she spoke.
So I turned this into a big, mysterious story. You know, all these Hollywood celebs
and Silicon Valley billionaires had a secret meeting to learn the secret of antiaging. And I talked about that in copy [inaudible 00:18:42] as well. But then
there's that whole other story, which is another outward looking story, which is
that Stalin was trying to create super soldiers and hired this guy to figure out, do
all these zombie tests and he made the same discovery.
So some other examples of how you can take this dichotomy. So, right now I'm
working on a fat loss promo for a fat loss supplement and the mechanism is
GLP-1, which is a hormone that is responsible for fat loss and insulin. So that's
sort of an inward direction that we could go. There's this new hormone that I think
they've really only discovered within the last 10 years and only really understood
since 2021. This Canadian award was given out. So that's sort of the inward
version. The outward version is that's the same mechanism that Ozempic is on.
So you have all this sort of high level conspiracy type stuff that could get tied into
Big Pharma or celebrities.
And I'll give you guys one final example. One of the real estate promos that I've
been working on, the inward version of that promo is the guru was sort of your
typical real estate story. Started flipping houses. Realized that it was a lot of hard
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work. The payoff wasn't there, the hourly wage when you do it as essentially
minimum wage. And so then he got into private money brokering, where he was
just the middleman bringing private lenders to the house flippers. He didn't have
to do any of that work.
So I worked on that two years ago and that was a very strong control just telling
that personal story. But then once all the banking stuff happened, I said, what is
he really doing? Is sort of acting as a middleman for private banks. And so now I
have one running that starts basically in 2015 in a Senate room where they
actually, where all these, so back up a second. All the deregulation of the
regional banks happened because they were lobbying Congress to reduce the
regulations for companies that had less than 250 billion dollars in assets.
And so, there was all this Senate subcommittee hearings going on in 2015 that
sort of started this ball rolling. And so that's the lead of that promo. Is it's a
voiceover, in kind of your classic Agora B-roll type thing for two minutes where it's
on March 15th, 2015, there was a secret meeting inside the Senate in a room
and no one was there because then I found that this was the same week that
Iran nuclear talks were going on. So it was like conveniently the rest of the world
was focused on what the D.C. political machine was doing with Iran. When this is
the thing that is actually going to impact the American middle class more than
anything.
And so I turned this relatively small story of a guy that just was not wanting to flip
houses anymore, into this massive here's going on with banks and how you can
cash in now that banks are struggling.
Todd:
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Now let me ask you, are you deciding whether you're going to go in or out
upfront? Or are you letting the research into the product and into the general kind
of marketplace determine that for you?
Dan:
Usually it's kind of a finger in the wind thing. With that real estate, I mean I had
the benefit that the smaller inward story was already running. And so I could take,
and I went to the client and I said, look, this is going to be a big shock because I
don't think any real real estate publisher has ever really gone the financial
publishing route. And I said, this is going to be a real estate promo masquerading
as a financial promo and it's going to be a big risk. And so they were aware of
that, but at that point we already have a strong control that's run for years. What
are you supposed to do other than take a big swing?
With some of this other stuff. And I can get into this further with testing. I'll write
promos in a way where I can swap stuff out, test my theory.
So when you were talking about tease versus taste, for example, something that
I'm sort of overseeing right now is a promo that's about tyrosinase being this
enzyme that makes dark spots happen faster. And so, one of the hypotheses
there is, oh, we don't want to reveal that right away. We want to bury that in. But
in the deliverables, we're delivering a way where I can basically say I'm testing
my own assumptions or I'm never going to get so high on my own supply that I
think I'm right all the time. And so we have leads where that tyrosinase is the first
30 seconds. The reason that you're getting dark spots is something called
tyrosinase. So, now I have all these ways where I can sort of, we were talking
about Teleb yesterday. I'm covering my downside in everything I do. Because I
know that everyone at this table, as brilliant as we all are, we're sort of guessing.
And so I want to make sure that when I make a guess, I have built in ways. I've
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basically built in put options on my own work where I can say if I'm wrong, I'm still
going to be right.
Todd:
Interesting. Go ahead Peter.
Peter:
Yeah, I want to [inaudible 00:23:49] that did remind me of because the whole
Nature magazine idea of being bleeding edge of mechanisms is cool, but it's also
like you might be far out from your, you might just be years ahead, but you're not
really going to be able to start making money immediately. One of the things that
I found was really effective [inaudible 00:24:04] making money immediately was
just interviewing manufacturers. Manufacturers are really on top of ingredients,
specialized ingredients. The cool stuff we found in our skincare brand, they were
already using that. And a lot of times just going around manufacturers being like,
okay, what's like the [inaudible 00:24:19] new dopest fucking ingredient? How did
that all start? And then you get a list of cool things and that's what we did. And
that's a really solid way to [inaudible 00:24:29].
Todd:
Would you say that all of your big ideas stem from the discovery of a
mechanism?
Peter:
I mean in skincare, I think it has to. Right?. At the end of the day. I mean in the
big niches. Because people tried everything. They just looking for something new
they haven't tried. So you kind of blame it off that.
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Todd:
Okay, good.
Rich:
Yeah, along those lines. And at least I've done this with information. I don't know
if it applies to other things, but looking at all the competitors' products and saying,
why aren't they getting the result that the person's ultimately after? What are they
giving? Because if prospects have been in the market for some time, they
probably bought some of that shit and they haven't gotten the result. Right?
So one way that when I wrote the manifesto, it was, okay, let's say these
marketing products are great, people are buying lots of them. Why aren't they
getting the success they want? What's still missing? Right? Or when I had a
theory of constraints courses. If these products that are being sold work, then
what's missing? Oh, they're all working on potential. None of them are getting rid
of the constraint.
So if you take the competitor's products as a brainstorming kind of tool to kind of
say, why doesn't this get the result? It opens up possibilities. And those
possibilities generally have two things in common. One, it's something they've
never seen before. And two, it explains a way past failure built in because you
started there. And that's always worked well for me, but I don't know if it applies
to vitamins and other stuff like that.
Donnie:
That applies to golf, for sure. Because when you told me that, that changed how
we found our big ideas. Because we're always battling against the market.
People are hype, like we said, they're hyper aware. So we went, started going in,
I still remember the day when you gave me that whole lesson, it shifted the whole
way I thought about how to come up with new, big ideas.
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Todd:
Well, it's really interesting to me because it really sounds like what Peter said,
and what you're saying is really along the same spectrum. You're looking to see
why don't all these products work? Well, because they don't address the real,
underlying cause. And Peter is talking about there's a breakthrough in, we've
discovered the real reason why you're struggling and we have a solution that
addresses that real reason why you're struggling. That's really ultimately the
same thing that you did. And so it's kind of really along the same spectrum. Tony,
is there anything that you would add to that?
Tony:
Yeah, I mean I think everybody knows this, but we read a bunch of eight figure
VSLs in like a week. And part of how we did that was being super root cause
mechanism, delivery of mechanism, kind of centric in our process. And then just
letting, we just found that the big idea would come out of that process super
efficiently. So, we would point all our research to the root. And I think the more
sophisticated a market becomes, the more diagnostic the copy has to be as well.
So looking at yourself as almost like a doctor of that niche and to use Rich was
pioneers of that, of here's just what he was just articulating. Here's what you think
is your problem, but then here's your real problem. And then based on that real
problem that you convinced him of, here's the actual way to solve that problem.
And then here's the way that we deliver the solution to that problem. It's unlike
anything that has ever existed before. And when all of that is clear, the copy just
writes itself and the big idea usually kind of bubbles up.
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Todd:
Wow. So to be clear, when you say the more sophisticated the market is, the
more diagnostic the copy needs to be. When you say diagnostic, you really mean
identifying the real root cause of the problem, showing them that what you
thought was the problem isn't the problem. It's really this, and that's why these
other products haven't worked. It's not your fault.
Tony:
If you look at golf compared to as golf has become more sophisticated, the old
Carlton was like one of crazy hooks, but a copy that works now is very technical.
And it's almost like if you had a doctor looking at their swing and being like, you
think that you're not hitting the ball flush because of this, but in reality this is
going on. You're diagnosing them in the copy. And then
Todd:
That's fascinating.
Rich:
So the copy is explaining why you haven't succeeded before?
Donnie:
Yeah. Doing it exactly what you said, by already using the things that they've
experienced.
Todd:
Well, it's really interesting to me. To me it's really fascinating. This is a selfish
question that I want to ask you, Donnie. The whole one-legged golfer, Carlton
headline, is that the type of idea that would flop today and explain why?
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Donnie:
It's funny. It just that it's still our winners [inaudible 00:29:35]. What we've found,
and as you know, to have a successful offer, we have to have successful ads. If
we don't have successful ads, we can't even get them to an offer. They may have
a potential to be a successful offer. We've tested a lot on the ads level and
generally what we find on the ads level correlate directly with the big ideas and
the mechanisms that work on our successful offers. I'm going to talk about ads,
but it correlates to what the big ideas and the mechanism. On our ads, we found,
I think it was roughly $60 million worth ads spent, 5,500 and something different
ads over 18 months. 14, 18 months. We found that a 100% of the ads that spent
over a $100,000 ad spent, were all education ads. In the first 15 seconds. We
were educating in some form or fashion.
Todd:
Yeah, I love it. I love it.
Donnie:
Diagnostic educational, right. So we weren't...
Rich:
One thing that you're leaving out, this is all Donnie's thing, but that's included on
social media too. People like, you would think that they're on Instagram to be
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entertained or chuckle or whatever, what he's saying still followed on those
platforms as well.
Donnie:
Yeah, that was across Facebook, YouTube, all across the web. Even on native,
that is the thing, even on native the same thing holds true. How that relates to the
Carlton question is that we believed that, I call it screaming benefits, where it's
like whether you're using curiosity to get them to see the big benefit in their head,
whatever method you're using to get them to think about that golden desire that
they want. We have always believed that that's the thing the golfer wants. They
want that big outcome. Or the opposite of that is you got to just jab the knife into
that deepest pain point that just destroys their status and makes them feel like a
total beta man out there playing with their banker golfer buddies. Those were the
two things we always thought were the most important pieces of the copy. In the
end, with testing with a lot of data, educating them on something that, diagnosing
them and giving them something that they actually learned that's valuable, beats
out what I call the screaming benefits every single time.
Todd:
Now, can I ask, and I know we're not in the why business, we're in the what
business to quote Bill Bonner, but would you say that that's directly because the
sophistication of the market is now, it's significantly more sophisticated today.
There's a huge lesson for just the coach. The teacher in me comes out, right? I
mean there's a huge lesson in this is why I'm such a big believer in keeping your
finger on the pulse of the market, because as a market evolves and becomes
more sophisticated, the ideas and hooks and angles that at one point resonated
may no longer resonate. You're seeing this, the reason why we're having this
conversation about what ideas and angles and hooks are working today is really,
if we look at the Carlton, that's a perfect example of at one point, when it was a
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different sophistication level of the marketplace, it worked really well. As that
marketplace evolved, became more sophisticated, those kinds of hooks don't
work anymore.
It sounds like the two of you guys are in agreement that as a market becomes
more sophisticated, you definitely need more education based diagnostic copy
hooks ideas. Is that fair to say?
Peter:
Yeah, that's what I'm saying too, the same exact thing. It's our skincare thing is
Asian protein discovered. Straight new root cause of the problem found out. We
just figured out the fucking elbows out, should be it. That kind of shit. Is that what
you're talking about?
Donnie:
Oh no, that's exactly what I'm talking about with education and that's a really
good distinction. I think a lot of times, this whole conversation started when I
watched the Walter Birch tease first case, they should watch [inaudible 00:33:52].
Todd:
You have a link? The subscribers/college/lifetime.
Donnie:
For me, because I was like, "Holy shit." Because for most people in there
probably don't know who I am, but I've only been writing copy for four years.
Granted, I've had incredible mentors. Kevin Trudeau, Rich is my best friend. I've
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wrote every single word a copy ever wrote, Tony's been on the call watching me
write it. I've had really great mentors, we've been super fortunate. But there's a
ton of things that I don't know that everybody in here is like, "Oh yeah, people
were teaching that 20 years ago." So when... Shit, what was the point I was
about to go down?
Peter:
The root cause of the problem.
Donnie:
The root cause of the problem. Exactly. When I watched that episode, I was like,
"Oh, I got to find a way to hide my goal." I've got this really sick mechanism that
we're going to teach in the course and then I want them to get 28 minutes into
our VSL, but I got to hide it and I got to find the most creative way to hide it.
When I saw that episode, he was like, "Take your best thing and put it right in the
very beginning and I mean the very first sentence." That shifted my thinking, and
then we evolved on that and we're like, "Holy cow, how many more good things
does the group..." because if you look at your courses, everybody knows tons of
stuff in a course that could be a mechanism, that could be the big idea.
You always have to find that thing that you want to use the one thing and now
we're in the stage of like, "I'm going to take every single great thing that my guru
says, I'm going to throw it in the very front of an ad, test the living heck out of it."
When it works, that's informing what I need to do as they go down the funnel.
Rich:
We've been playing around with this a lot, and YouTube organic is just great for
that because you get to see how quickly someone bails from the video. We have
found that it has to be upfront and it has to be quick. You can't go 30 seconds to
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describe this thing and they have to get it in 15 to 20 seconds to stick, and it was
funny because I had this deja-vu moment that I think for some of us will make a
lot more sense. I was talking to the guys that were doing my YouTube and I'm
like, "You got to take the most important thing that you want to hold till the end
and tease and you want to put it right in the beginning." They were like, "Well,
why would anyone want to watch it if you're giving that away upfront?"
I was like, "I used to think the same thing when I had a coaching program and I
didn't want to take my best stuff from my coaching program and put it in my front
end product." Then I heard Dan Kenby say, "No, that's what you put in your front
end product. That's what gets people to want to buy it," so this was just that, on a
micro level. Instead of thinking of a course or a product, it's like, "Okay, what's
the best part of the video that you're teasing?" Yeah, they'll watch the whole thing
even if that's what it's building towards at the end, if you put it up front.
Dan:
That's the way if you listen to a podcast now, it's got the good stuff that's right
there upfront. It is almost like, "Whoa, what's going on here?"
Rich:
I think my theory for it is that people are just putting a higher and higher premium
on their own attention. There's too many things competing for their attention.
Walter Birch said this thing in the episode that I thought made a lot of sense. He's
like, "What you're trying to stimulate is a fear of missing out." Like, "If I skip over
this ad, if I skip over this blog post, if I skip over whatever, am I going to miss
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something important?" If you give something right up front, there's a much higher
probability that you're going to trigger that thought.
Donnie:
Just one more supporting piece of proof on this, we're literally giving away the
mechanism in the first line exactly the way they said like, "Here's a fact and
here's the biggest thing that we need to tell you." That is the new breakthrough.
First line in the ad, we're going to talk a lot about it until we get to the, so we'll
have the root cause and then we have the mechanism solution and when we
give them the solution, we really go into that thing that was the first line and we
break it down. We've tested in the solution section having it be more of teasing
that solution, very much teasing copy, strong copy, and then making it just nerdy
golf shit about this solution and the nerdy golf shit crushed the tease. Even
though to me, I'm like, "Man, how after I give them that, do they not just leave?"
Because they literally could take what I just said and go practice it now.
Rob:
It's the same philosophy that we talk about in courses, that in a freebie, you give
away 80% of what you would sell and people will buy a course for the other 20%.
Rich:
You were going to tie that back to VSL though, then the add to the VSL.
Donnie:
Yeah, what I was saying is that we actually use that as a way to test the ideas
that we want to get for the big idea or for the pieces of our mechanism. What
Tony said is true. I've always struggled to understand, what the hell's the
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difference between the big idea and the mechanism. They seem to me to overlap
big time.
Tony:
Well. Yeah, the example of one the most successful golf promo is about contact,
because that's the biggest problem. The root cause is what he was saying, the
balls from the swing. There's specific, there's a mechanism solution, but then the
only purpose of the big idea, which was contact is everything.
Donnie:
Mm, contact is everything.
Tony:
The lead with that's the opening line. Here's a fact, contact is everything in golf,
and then it gets, but here's why you can't make good contact, then it starts going
to that. Even the way that big idea informs the lead and then goes into the
mechanisms, it's all interrelated.
Kyle:
Something that I think is really important because everyone, like what you just
said, this idea of like, "The big idea is somewhat loose." What is the big idea? Is
it a unique mechanism? I get stuff like this all the time because I deal with a lot of
beginner copywriters and these terms are thrown around and they're just like,
"What's a big idea?" I think I've gotten a way to start to conceptualize, or you
guys have talked around this, everybody's said it. The mechanism, the problem.
We keep throwing these words around. What I've been doing with my writers, I've
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always had this expression, does the equation check out? We'll get halfway
through a letter I'm like, "This doesn't make any sense. You're painting yourself
into a corner. It needs to balance the equation needs to balance." I think what I've
evolved in the last couple of months of this, is it looks like the recycling emblem,
where you've got these three triangular shaped arrows and where you're going to
find this big idea is describing this for your promo.
At the top you've got your problem. What's the problem? You need a narrative. It
could be like, "What's the story behind this problem? Where it originates. Who
figured it out? Who's it affecting?" All that kind of stuff. In this corner you've got
the mechanism. The problem feeds into like, "Well, here's how you fix the
problem." Then in this other corner you have what I call the force of nature, which
is, what is an actual element of force that's unbiased and naturally occurring that
the mechanism can exploit, which in turn solves the problem? You have this
proton accelerator thing that creates a black hole that nobody understands and
that is the big idea. It's like, "How do I describe this phenomenon, this circular
thing that keeps repeating itself endlessly in this loop?" The way you describe
that is a big idea. How do I summarize all of this shit, really in three words?
Donnie:
Didn't Evaldo has one sentence that does that? I'm trying to find it.
Kyle:
Yeah. It isTodd:
Well you know what, Sean, I would love for... I credit Mark Ford as the guy that
really gave me clarity on the big idea. I think that he's done the most amount of
work on the big idea, helped really develop what many of us at this table refer to
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as a big idea. Having worked side by side with Mark, I would love to hear from
you.
Sean:
I actually have an unpublished interview that I did with him specifically about this.
The first thing that I would say about this conversation is that if you surveyed all,
approximately 40 to 45 people in this room, you'd get 60 different definitions of
the big idea. Nobody knows what the fuck a big idea actually is.
Donnie:
That makes me feel a lot better.
Dan:
We know when we see it.
Sean:
We know when we see it, but...
Donnie:
That's great.
Todd:
Let's make sure we edit that part out of the video. None of us know what.
Sean:
Yeah. One of the things that Mark, and I'm basically paraphrasing Mark, he
actually interviewed me. He was getting very hot and bothered over how nobody
actually thinks about or understands like, "Can we be specific about our
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definitions here?" What he did was he came up with, "Let's be realistic for a
moment. We're talking about promotions, but we're talking about ads. There are
gimmicks, promises, there are just regular ideas," there's one that I'm missing
and then there's big ideas. So you go and you have a promise, "Hey, I can do this
thing for you." The primary promise, and it can be emotionally compelling. It
doesn't necessarily have to be, but promises are really working again. Credit to
Gen Z, but that is an unsophisticated market and I've been selling hell to them
and they are buying up promises. They ain't buying stories, they ain't buying
education, they are buying promises. That's an interesting trend.
Donnie:
Oh yeah, we're definitely not selling to Gen Z.
Donnie:
65 to 90.
Todd:
Like Teddy, that's the thing that I say all the time that, "Look, that's why there's
nuance to marketing," right? Because who you're talking to, the sophistication of
the marketplace, what they know, what they've seen, what they haven't seen, all
those things impact the type of message that's going to resonate with them. It's
not to say that one is right and one is wrong. They're both right in their respective
markets.
Sean:
Right. I remember the third thing, which was notions. There's gimmicks,
promises, notions, ideas and big ideas and Mark basically said that, let's talk for
a moment about the Marlboro Man commercial, what David Ogilvy meant when
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he said, "We need a big idea to sell." He said, "Well, if you look at the Marlbo," I
can't even pronounce it. "Marlboro man commercials. The notion that is being
tapped into is this notion of what a man should be or what a man should look like,
and a, oh, by the way, that man smokes Marlbo."
Dan:
Marlboro.
Sean:
They smoke cigarettes. He basically said, "That's not actually an idea." He really
credits... He himself said, "I never really sold a big..." He said that he maybe had
one or two packages his whole career that actually sold with big idea. Everything
else was gimmicks and promises. It's much easier to sell if you have gimmicks
and promises. He credits Bill Bonner with being the one who actually clued him
into what it really means to sell an idea and specifically, a big idea. He basically
makes this distinction, which is an idea is just a larger argument about a
mechanism or about a problem that people don't recognize. The idea is making a
specific argument that you need some particular product to overcome either
some particular problem, or tap into some other mechanism that has hereto for
been undiscovered. Then he said, "Okay, go one step beyond that to the big
idea." It's the same thing, but about a bigger, societally more important
conversation. Like say forDonnie:
Like End of America.
Sean:
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Exactly. End of America is a big one. Notions that debt create perverse incentives
in a marketplace. Actual heady, philosophical stuff about something larger than,
say somebody's stubbed toupeeing.
Todd:
I'll share real quick and then we'll go to Peter. The way that, what I took away
from my time chatting with Mark about the big idea was really this, that you're
looking for a different story. You're looking for a different angle that is both
emotionally compelling and intellectually interesting. You're looking at the market
and you're looking to see what is the market heard already? What have they
seen already? What's the story that they've been told already? And you're looking
for a different way to engage in a message that begins with something that they
see as new, different, unique, newsworthy. Sometimes it's contrarian, sometimes
it's controversial, but the point being is that it's new and different from what the
market has heard already.
Sean:
The only thing that I would add to that to like, because you touched on with
newsworthy, it just has be timely and relevant too. You take End Of America, you
plop it into any other historical moment, it might not resonate as well. It might not
work as well.
Speaker 10:
Absolutely.
Sean:
A true, big idea package, which most of us can get away without ever having to
actually write one and still make millions.
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Rob:
Sure.
Sean:
Those packages, they are of their time. They're of a specific, relevant moment
and can't exist outside of it.
Kevin:
Yeah. When I interviewed Mark years ago, as you know, and he talked about
that, he said people have been hammering away at that big idea for years. It's
just timing, and obviously Mike Palmer did an amazing job of writing it, but.
Todd:
You're so right. I mean they've talked about so many times the idea that they ran
with, call it versions or variations of End of America and it never struck, but at the
right time in the right context, it hit big. I think that it's important to recognize that
big ideas exist within a specific time and space. What was a big idea six months
ago may now be a commoditized ordinary idea today.
Rob:
Exactly.
Donnie:
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Really good point. That's something that we found that, I know you worked with
Jeff a lot before. One thing that Jeff encouraged me to not do is, he encouraged
me to go farther away from the timely big idea and move deeper into the
mechanism because he said, "Once you crack the code on the three parts of the
mechanism, we can replicate that across gurus and across products faster, and
they can survive longer and they can be revived later without having to retell,
without having to find a new timely story." Just now we're about to test our...
We're doing a very similar format to a Mindvalley format, which is timely and it is
a huge idea, but it's very current, and I don't expect this to last forever, but we
wrote it in a way where that big story in the beginning doesn't actually, it's not
laced throughout the entire promo. We could effectively pull it off the lead, put in
something in front of it, and it would still tie into that mechanism. That's a really
big distinction.
Todd:
I like that. Go ahead, Dan.
David:
I think you can't overlook too, not just timely, but the copywriter that's doing it,
someone else might have done that other than Mike Palmer, and it still might not
have worked, but the way he did it, the way he did it, so unhypey, right? There
was no big promises in there. It just got right under your skin. It's something you
would send to your mother and say, "You should watch this." She wouldn't go out,
"Oh, don't send me that hyper sales and shit." I think that big ideas sometimes in
themselves are not so big or interesting. The silence of the railroads or whatever
the Y2K thing was. End of America, it's like, "Oh, that's genius." No, it's not
genius. But what we do with it I think, is what can make it genius by connecting it
in a certain way and by dimensionalizing it.
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Rich:
Yeah, for sure. I think the four-hour work week is a perfect example of that, right?
It is the first person to really get that people wanted more time freedom than
money freedom and that's why it resonated so well.
Todd:
I think that's such a great point and I remember you telling me with your client,
we don't have to mention his name, but the idea that... I mean, look, the 4-Hour
Work Week is an outsourcing book. It's a book about outsourcing, ultimately is
what it is. At the time there were tons of books on outsourcing, tons of products
and people trying to sell things on outsourcing and nobody was really striking it
big. Then Tim Ferriss came along to me and it's just a great illustration of an idea,
the idea of the four-hour work week, that you can work four hours and you can
have an amazing life and all that, but yet it was still an outsourcing book. He
ultimately took the same topic that everybody else was struggling to sell.
Donnie:
The big idea is, that to me seems like that's mechanistic.
Rich:
Well, the mechanism is outsourcing. The benefit is the four-hour work week.
Todd:
That's a big idea. I think it's-
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Rich:
You want the four-hour work week, outsourcing is the way to get it right? And all
these other people were selling outsourcing and they weren't selling it well,
because they weren't selling the benefit of a four-hour work week.
Todd:
Is the idea. I mean, that's spot on and I think that what Rich said is insanely
powerful. The four-hour work week is not the mechanism, the mechanism in that
there was no unique mechanism if you look across the marketplace, because
there were tons of people talking about outsourcing. The difference is that the
people weren't interested in outsourcing, especially they weren't interested in
outsourcing without the context of the freedom that they would get from it. Tim
Ferriss came along with this big idea of this ultimate freedom that he described
as the four-hour work week and then introduced the same commoditized
mechanism that everybody else was talking about. But at that point, he had the
attention and the interest because he was talking about the ultimate outcome.
Kyle:
That's a really good point though. I was talking about the recycling analogy. We
got the three arrows and you said, "Well, isn't that the mechanism?" If you always
think of it in terms of there's a problem that's solved by a mechanism that taps
into a force of nature, you can begin to ask those questions. Is that the
mechanism? And you can say, "Well, does it tap into a force of nature? Does it
tap into a thing which would organically solve a problem?" Like outsourcing taps
into this ability to work without working, by you no longer are creating the work,
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and it solves the problem of your time constraint and it becomes this circular
thing. Whenever you start looking at it like that as a component and all these
things add up to the four-hour work week, they all add up to the four-hour work
week. You ask that question, is it a mechanism?
You can automatically reflexively ask, "Does it tap into a force of nature or some
greater force?" Does there's a four-hour work week tap into anything? No, it's a
name, it's a label. So then you can dig, and this is how whenever you're
constructing an entire sales argument, that's how you can get lost in the sauce,
because got this cool label and where does it fit in the puzzle? You start thinking
of it in those three components, they all of a sudden become more cohesive, and
you can start to understand like, "This is the construct I'm building, but it's not
necessarily the message I'm going to tell or use to get this cool idea across. I'll
come up my own labels," and you can create that excitement for the reader.
Todd:
Yeah, we'll go to Dan in a second. Mechanistic would be if we either came up
with a different type of outsourcing, a different form of outsourcing, or we came
up with something else that accomplished what outsourcing accomplishes to get
the goal, that would be more a mechanistic approach. Go ahead, man.
Dan:
Well, I was just going to say, I think this four-hour work week and End of America
thing, it's very obvious with the End of America that that's based on a societal
level of force. But 4-Hour Workweek took off 2007, 2008. To me, that book is
actually about control and the reason that it took off in that time period is because
people were feeling like they had lost a sense of control. They no longer want to
be involved in basically the system, because the system cannot not be trusted if
the most fundamental piece of that system, which is our real estate and our
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banking, are actually the most fragile of all. That book to me, is actually very
similar to the End of America. In that they're both about what's going on basically
outside of your life and here's a way to pull it all back in. I mean, even in the first
chapter, he makes this distinction about old rich and new rich. Old rich is the
people who just fucked us all. New rich is what you get to be without getting
fucked now.
Todd:
Yeah, it's a great way to put it and to me, part of, you describe it so well, I think
that's what made me fall in love with big ideas. That the big idea, that it resonates
on this emotional level because it is about freedom. It is about personal control, it
is about escaping the trap of the mundane and then doing it through the use of
outsourcing. But that's why I love big ideas, man, because they can totally
change the entire frame of something so, what was ordinary back then. I
remember Rich, I remember you talking to me about having a client who was
struggling to sell outsourcing stuff and there was all these books and all of a
sudden a book that really was ultimately about outsourcing, idea that made it
control, freedom, autonomy, boom. Shoot through the roof, just goes to show you
the power of a big idea.
Rich:
The way I was describing it to that client was like, "You are trying to sell
outsourcing, and he's marketing outsourcing."
Rob:
Right. Huge difference.
Rich:
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Marketing is making the prospect value your product, and that's the difference.
Dan:
I have another point. Something that is always in my head is the John Caple's
thing about curiosity, self-interest and newsworthiness. Any two is good, but if
you can get all three, that's better and they don't have to be direct. A lot of what
we're talking about is some of that stuff is insinuated under the surface, but really
does these big things. They tap into all three.
Todd:
Very cool.
Peter:
Maybe, because for me, I always wish that somebody would've explained to me
that a big idea, if somebody is living a problem and they want to be the dream
scenario, the big idea is the bridge, right? In the big picture, it's the bridge. When
you look at the bridge, the front of it is the root cause of the problem, and then
the end of it is the solution to that and then all of the fucking little steps on the
bridge are how they solve the problem, the ingredient. When I hear a four-hour
work week, I think people are trapped. They want to be free. Is the four-hour
work week, is that a system, a process that they can create? And that is the
bridge by everything that they need to do to learn that, that's the bridge at the
end of the day.
But everything is a brace for pain and pleasure, every single big idea. But the big
idea is too unspecific to say that. You have to be like, "The front of the brain is the
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problem. This is a solution to the problem." All the ingredients, all your course
materials.
Rob
There's a phrase I use a lot here teaching it lately, and that's, "create a believable
dream," that's a believable dream. What a one-hour work week be as believable
as for, probably not, a 10-hour work week sounds like not so much of a dream,
right? You have to find this little gap here, and if you can think in terms of when
you're marketing anything, what is the dream? You have to know your avatar,
obviously back to empathy, back to understanding avatars. But how can I make it
so believable and so compelling, but it's still a dream. If I could say, "Hey listen,
can I help you make another $100 a week?" That's very believable, right? And
you have to know your avatars, right? Like Justin was saying, it's like... Well, I
think it was you Justin saying your avatar wanted make a couple grand a month,
and that was the dream for this person, right?
Todd:
Yeah.
Rob:
Knowing that, changes the concept of how you might present a big idea for a
copywriting offer or whatever you're selling in a major way. Who cares if it's a big
idea or not. It's a big idea to n a major way. Who cares if it's a big idea or not? It's
a big idea to that guy.
Kevin:
Basically, it's like for some people it could be life changing, but if you can do that,
why can't you do 10 or why can't you do a hundred?
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Kevin:
That's a bridge in itself, right?
Todd:
Yeah. Let's do two more. I'd love to hear from you, Chris, because you're again,
and please don't say that it just comes naturally to you.
Peter:
You guys don't get it?
Todd:
Just be a human being. Okay? No, so you have a knack for the... What was the
Text Your...?
Chris:
Yeah. Text the Romance Back, Text Your Wife In Bed, Make Him Worship You.
Todd:
And so I want hear from you and then I would love to hear from you, Justin,
because I think that you're also great at just coming up with ideas. That
resonated, it was different, it was unique, it seemed easy. Where did that come
from?
Chris:
The sext the romance back thing?
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Todd:
Yeah. How did you discover that idea?
Chris:
So the first one was Text Your Wife In Bed, that was the first product I did years
ago, and that was because I was single at the time and really good at sexting
and sexting is marketing basically, right? So that's actually a copywriting product
that gets you laid in this country. But the big idea behind it was simply how do I
take sexting, which I knew was a thing that's kind out there in the world and turn
it into something that is not dirty. Which is where Text The Romance Back, and
that's how I got television with it, but also I was like, the big idea of that was
honestly that the cell phone in your pocket is basically a magical portal into your
most personal thoughts and your life.
So that basically texting a man in that case is essentially having telepathy where
you can access this thing and blah, blah. So the letter is largely about why texting
is a powerful, and then it says, "Here's the magical psychological secrets that
allow you to do it." The big idea behind that really is you can have this kind of
push button way to basically enter a man's mind without even really knowing it,
using the evolutionary triggers and it can follow you through.
Todd:
And why did you believe that that was going to be an effective idea?
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Chris:
As far as the telepathy aspect of it, because I know that my market, that's what
they really want. What they really want is to be able to not manipulate the man or
make him do anything, but get him to want to be romantic to her. I think it's
because I spent a lot of time in that market more than anything.
Todd:
Okay.
Chris:
It's an interesting niche to work in.
Todd:
Very interesting. Justin, what would you add to the big idea discussion? I'd love
to hear from you, man.
Justin:
It's funny that you picked me out because I kind of feel like Donnie, where it's
always been this big confusing thing to me and when I hear someone like Dan
explain it, I'm like, "Shit, man. He really gets it way more than I do." Yeah, I mean
for me, I tend to look at just what angles haven't been used before. So when we
did our Patriot Power Green supplement six or seven years ago that I just knew
the market, which was all these older conservative men and women, and I was
like, "What hasn't hit that I know these people are really in love with." At the time
there was some Ronald Reagan promo and I was like, "Oh, that's a great idea."
They had such an affinity at that time for Ronald Reagan. There was a lot around
religion. I think there was an e-comm offer or economics offer on a Bible Money
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Cure or something like that that was crushing. So that one I was just like, "What
is the other thing that this group has a huge affinity for that has it been tapped?"
And the military is one of the biggest ones by far, and nobody's used that as the
hook on their offer and so really we was creating this greens powder and I know
the greens powder would sell because it just kept hitting my mailbox with direct
mail. This was before Athletic Greens was around, before Organifi was around, I
was like, "Why don't we just do the same thing, do a military angle on it, talk
about how this was used with elite military units?" Which is what we actually did
do the testing with and that angle just instantly was a home run.
Todd:
So a big part of it for you is really identifying what's not being said in the market.
What angle hasn't been used yet that you can tap into?
Justin:
Yeah. For that one, I really just tried to think about who the avatar was and what's
something they really have a big affinity for that's not being used, that is in this
kind of the zeitgeist of what they really care about and think about. Yeah, that
thing just turned out to be huge. That's kind of what you talked about with the
inward and outward, that really had nothing to do with the inward ingredients in
the product. The product was the same as every other greens powder out there.
Speaker 13:
But you also have that, what was it like the V8 hook that you had on one of those
emails? Where you talked about the sodium content? That would be an example
of how you could still use the same product and offer, but look inside and how
that creates a whole other hook.
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Todd:
It's interesting, man. That's cool. Go ahead Tony.
Tony:
Just one more thing to add I think one of the differences between a true big idea
and a big benefit or a hook is that a big idea is generally paradigm shifting. So if
you look at, Rich, End of America, and I think even more specifically, it's like a
paradigm shift that either reinforces something that they believe or they want to
believe. So End of America was a paradigm shift that they already believed
America was decaying, America was dying, and then it's like it put them over that
shift. Four Hour Work Week, they didn't believe that, but it's something that they
want. It's a paradigm shift that they wanted to believe and I think, like Rich's...
Internet Manifesto was like a paradigm shift for people.
And that gives them, like something we said earlier, it gives them that
conversation that they get to have and share with their friends. It's like, "Oh my
God, my paradigm shifted. And I'm deep into crypto, Michael Saylor has gotten
more and more and more popular. If you listen to him talk about Bitcoin, it's like
the way that he describes it actually shifts people's paradigm around Bitcoin and
it's like people become... They buy in on a different level after they listen to him.
So I'm actually using some of his language and his arguments and sort of his
ideas even in crypto copy now because it's very much proven.
Rob:
Something that we haven't touched on with it, is that it gives newfound hope. So
on Bitcoin if they think that it's already passed them, the opportunity, you have
to... Your big idea has to give them newfound hope.
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Tony:
Yeah, you listen to Michael Saylor and well, most people think they missed
Bitcoin, but because of Michael Saylor Bitcoin is going to five or 10 million
because of all the ways he's explained that. He's like, "Oh, I'm actually way early
right now."
Todd:
Very interesting.
Peter:
One of the most important things for hope is just clarity because it's like they're in
a dark tunnel. Hope is a light in the tunnel. It's possible to get out, but if they see
a fucking... It's like murky water but if you paint the picture on every step of the
way out, they see clearly and that's hope that it's possible. Clarity brings hope.
Todd:
I think it's also important to realize that, which hasn't been mentioned yet, that we
look for ideas, hooks, angles to get attention in a marketplace and the more
saturated and crowded a marketplace is, obviously the more difficult it is to get
attention, right? So, to me, one of the first things that Mark really drilled into me
was the idea of you need to bring something unique. You need to bring
something different. You can't say the same thing. You can't try to say the same
thing that others are already saying and just try to wordsmith it. Just try to change
the adverb, the adjective, try to make it sound... You have to bring something
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new and different to the marketplace to get attention. The more crowded and
saturated marketplace is the more essential that becomes in order for people to
engage with your copy. So with that, let's do this, let's shift to the next area.
Obviously a discussion of copy wouldn't be complete without talking about
headlines. I don't know maybe if we will combine headlines and leads, campaign
openings.
Has anything changed for you guys in terms of the way that you craft headlines,
the way that you craft campaign openings? We talked a bit about the opening of
ads in terms of taste verse tease, and for you guys in a sophisticated market
leading with education, leading with a gem. I'd love to hear who's got... And if the
answer is nothing different, then that's the answer. So headlines and leads.
Kyle:
So for leads, one thing that I've started doing more and more, I think they had
said something about this, but with my writers, the first couple pages we're super
vague about what it is. I used to be a lot more specific. I used to have a teasing
section where you would kind of give details or you'd go a little bit more in depth
and I started to realize... I have this term 'Insecure Copywriters', which is you're
giving away everything or teasing hardcore because you think whatever you
were just saying, you didn't think it was enough to say, "This mega-trend. This
new revolution." So we have a promo that we're putting into legal this week and
it's all about A.I., but we don't even really talk about it until page twentysomething and we instead say something in the second line is, "This new A.I.
Development, it's going to make a lot of millionaires, it's going to make people a
lot of money, it's make people very rich," something like that.
We just say this new A.I. Development and we don't really give you any clues
beyond that. So it takes a certain level of security and confidence that that's good
enough. I used to have it like, "Well, you got to give more concrete breadcrumbs
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to get them really hooked to believe this is real or believable." I think the
timeliness of this idea, "This new A.I. Development is going to mint a lot of
millionaires." Then we sort of go into just check out what's happening in the world
today, check out some of the stocks that are already on the move.
Then we spend most of the time focused on the result and elaborating on the
result and framing the result in different ways and talking about all the people
who are so excited about what's happening in the world. Ultimately, the big shift
that I have made is going more towards caveman... that's what you kept saying,
caveman words. Where it's like I have to tell my writer, "Quit trying to tease. I can
tell you're getting insecure here." You feel like, "Oh shit, I better say something
about A.I. Or they're going to leave." And it's like, "No, said it in line too. We said
this new A.I. development, forget about it. They're hooked." And now you have to
have that confidence.
Now we even had the copy chief of the publisher, "Don't you think we should
have mentioned this?" And I was like, "Your reaction is actually the reaction I am
trying to provoke. When you were like, "I was waiting for you to talk about A.I."
and it's like exactly." Now do you see? It's working. Because you came back with
your feedback, "I really wanted more A.I. Stuff earlier." And I was like, "Exactly. I
want you to think that because you're going to be forced now to keep reading and
sticking around and the fact that you sent that back as feedback means I have a
tight line of tension and I've got you." You do have to sort of understand where
your market's at and what's interesting to them. Is this strong enough? But you
have to also have this really strong sense of confidence that that's good enough
and I'm not going to oversell it here.
Todd:
Okay. Let me ask a more specific question and I know that this is really market
dependent, we've already kind of established that, but are you using more
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promise-based headlines? Are you using more mechanism-focused headlines?
Are you using more third-party rather than straight explicit promises? Are you
using more third-party headlines? Is there any difference today? Go ahead,
Peter.
Peter:
So my version of the headline is the first fucking seven seconds of a VSL. That's
all I get to play with at the end of the day. Now, when I was very beginning, I was
like nightmare stories were the way to go. Car crashes, fucking this guy broke,
this that did that. How many people can die in the first five seconds?
Todd:
You know how much copy... I see copy and it opens with a horrific car accident
scene and ultimately it leads to the sale of olive oil, and I'm like, "What the hell
olive oil? I don't even understand."
Chris:
It's a big idea.
Todd:
Yeah, what the heck isChris:
Everyone's ripping each other off.
Todd:
Yeah, no, that's the-
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Chris:
I know the guys that are writing those offers. They're literally taking the
opponents offer and just writing the exact same thing.
Peter:
I was stoked about that idea. I thought until I saw myself evolving, trying to outdo
myself, I was like, "People like break a nail and it's more tragic than the whole
family being murdered or something like that. So I think I'm missing something
here." I was talking this lady who owns like, Fuck Cancer, and she was talking to
me about how those people who are trying to raise money for orphans or
whatever, and they come to you and they show you pictures of dying orphans,
right? Sure, they don't trip you to buy, but the next time you see them you just run
away because you've associated so much pain with them. You really hate them.
So she taught me that that kind of nightmare kind of leads was actually bad for
branding because you're associating this pain.
People are going to remember how you make them feel, so if you want them to
come back to you, you don't want them to make them fucking hate the feeling
they're seeing you. So I started pivoting off of... I just looked at what's the worst,
most tragic thing that can happen to what is the greatest transformation this
product has seen? This person has ever seen? This unique mechanism has ever
seen? So this Helene Hadsell lead with Mindvalley about was like, "Helen
Hadsell was able to win every competition she set her mind to," so that was the
opposite. We went on a search for that and then just crushed it.
Todd:
I think it's really look, I mean if you really boil it down, at the end of the day what
we're talking about is finding a story that is compelling enough to hook people,
and we've seen enough nightmare stories to know that they hook, but there are
other stories besides a nightmare story that people find wildly compelling and
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that's ultimately what we're looking to do at the beginning is to turn that attention
into engagement, to hook them in and a story, whether it be a nightmare story or
the other side of the equation is one tactical way to do that, right? My point in
sharing that is just realizing the purpose and the aim. I think that to Chris's point
when he said that people are knocking... They don't even understand why they're
doing what they're doing. They don't even understand the strategic purpose of
let's say the nightmare story. They think I have to have this bad story in here at
the beginning, there's some magic to thatChris:
They're seeing it as math. They're just like, "Oh, we do this, this, this, and this,"
but there's no through line, there's no real connection. Let's just take all of this
data, massive numbers of clicks and do the same They up with these
Frankenstein letters that I think hit a ceiling pretty quickly. They're all the exact
same thing.
Todd:
Well, and I think, right, they end up with a Frankenstein message because they
ultimately don't know the strategy behind what it is that nightmare story was
originally doing. They're just copying for copying's sake without understanding
the purpose and objective of these different chunks of copy.
Chris:
I think also those stories that all, and I've written some of these things for people,
there starts and it's a car crash or you go to the hospital, whatever. I think that's
people that are going for shock instead of empathy and they don't really know the
difference. So they're like, I want to cause an emotional reaction. So they're like
real intense drama. People are exploding. There's a gun involved, all this kind of
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shit. When I'm writing, it's more like you were in bed with your boyfriend and he
asked you to you talk dirty and you had a panic attack, which is much more about
an experience they could actually have versus just super-duper dramatic
exclusions to get attention that way. I think it's more effective actually.
Todd:
As well in the end of the panic attack in bed when your boyfriend asks you, you're
not selling olive oil. So you know what I mean? So there's some congruence.
Rob:
Just I thought there was something interesting that you were talking about last
night, Donnie, the idea of that since so many people are on mobile now, writing it
for mobile first and then going to desktop as opposed to recognizing that that's
the primary platform. That has to change everything.
Donnie:
Yeah, and that's the first thing for me, that nobody ever really taught me, it's like
what's the format that this headline is being used for? Is it on a forced watch
VSL? Is this on a page? Is this an e-comm page? Is the button going to be...? I
start from there because then that informs what the headline needs to do and
how they're going to experience that headline and where are they coming from to
see that headline? Are they coming from an ad or was it a search ad? Was it a
native ad?
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Our headlines are all different for all those different platforms because they each
have a different purpose and I think one of the biggest things we've found for the
VSL specifically because where most of our customers come through is that we
eliminated the headline so when you land, all you see is maybe some credibility
badges and the video, but then the headline is actually below the video and we
took out all of the, Laurie and I were talking about this, fancy design and really
made it just black and white, all the big bold impact font that Clayton loved, that I
loved. I always loved the impact font because I saw that, we took that out and
made it. It's not 36, it's like 14 and the little guru's name, it almost feels more like
native YouTube niche, I would say.
Jon:
Can you give some examples of how you change it? How to change headline like
actual examples that you've done?
Donnie:
What's the best one to give here? So for the VSL, we have no headline up top,
we have the video and below it we'll have the very first... You how in the middle of
the headline we would have, "Never Slice Again," those would be the huge words
that that's below the pre-head, which we assume they see that and then maybe
they go back up, read your pre-head, read those lines again, and then maybe
read the sub-head and then moved down. So what we did is we took those...
What's that called?
Tony:
Deck? The deck copy.
Donnie:
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We took the deck copy and instead of having at 40, we turned it down to 14 and
made that the first three words underneath the video, then took the pre-head and
put it after that. So we basically took the order , and we put it in the order that we
believe they actually read it in rather than making them bounce around and
creating a sense of confusion or let them read it in the order that they want to
read in. But on a hybrid page where we have a VSL and then a page pre-pop
below that, we assume that they're going to read more of this headline because
they're...
John:
Because they're on a desktop at that point or...
Donnie:
Yeah, even if they're not on desktop, the way we design it is designed to push
them to read that headline. I think that's another big thing, which I just can't wait
until Laurie starts speaking because I think she's the best in the history of the
game. You can use design to really get people into your copy. I think in the old
long form pages, I see it on hot chart, people just land and they're like, subhead,
subhead, subhead, subhead, price. Maybe they read a section or two and I'm
like, "Damn."
All that juice that's in here, that's telling the story, that's doing the selling, that's
getting them motivated to make the decision we want to make, they're missing
and you can see it on the hot chart. So it's like, how do we get them in? The way
we've been getting them in starts with the headline, which in some case means
no headline. Watch the beginning of this video, what I want you to see, and then
have a ton of white space below that so it doesn't look like there's anything else
there to see and then when they scroll have a big giant subhead that is there that
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you want them to read and then give them another section and then another
huge giant space of white. Do you know what I mean? So they have to go into
the sections of the page that you want them to read and the idea is that it's
almost creating from the headline, we're almost creating a VSL on a page
experience, where when you're watching a VSL you're taking them through, they
go through the lead and then itRob:
So is there enough white space so that each section is almost like a thought?
Donnie:
Exactly.
Rob:
And nothing is competing with...
Donnie:
Nothing's competing. You can't have two overlapping.
Sean:
The website builder are you using to do that though?
Donnie:
It's all custom. It is in-house custom.
Todd:
Interesting. That's really fascinating, man. I'd love to come back and talk more
about that. David, I know you've been waiting to share.
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David:
I just wanted to address what you said in the beginning about what's working
better. Is it promise or this? More and more, I just test, I have five things that I
want to test. I want to test a benefit headline. I want to test an overarching benefit
headline and then one that's more specific. I want to test the story. I want to test
three words, like a Sugarman type headline or just short. Eventually the headline
will kind of grow and grow and grow. So I want a three word one, and I want
something that's just off the wall out of left field.
Like, "I don't think this will work, but if it does, it's going to be huge," because I
can do that now. I grew up in direct mail and I had to plead with boardroom,
"Please give me another panel to test." They're like, "No, no, they're like $50,000
each to do another battle." "Yeah, but I got this other idea." And now it's so easy
that... Like Dan, I think in terms of game theory, right? Wait a minute, if my odds
are 80/20 of getting a control, if I test three things, my odds go up to 90/10 or
something like that, right? So why not do that?
Todd:
So is that part of your process that you're always... When you're testing
headlines, you're not testing variations of the same headline, you're testing
radically different headlines?
David:
Oh, it drives me nuts when people do that. They'll be like, "Here's five different
ideas for a headline-"
Todd:
And it's really like they changed the adjective-
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David:
Just like tweaking the words.
Todd:
... from the 'amazing' to the 'incredible'.
Dan:
So I can throw in some of the systematization that I have in testing in that regard.
So I have this concept of what I call T-testing, which would be horizontal versus
vertical. So everything you're talking about right there is a vertical test. You have
your winning headline, now you're just changing the verb.
Todd:
Optimizing.
Dan:
Changing something minor inside and so that would be a vertical test. When I
start, I'm testing very horizontally because at that early in the game, I have no
idea what's going to really win. So I'm trying to throw sort of multiple big ideas at
it, like I was talking about going in, going out. All these different things, and then
once I have my winners there, I'm going into the vertical element, which to the
point of teasing... I might have one lead and now I have variations of that lead.
One of them is way upfront, one of them is very leading, one of them might be a
short version, one of them might be a long version. I have one that has tons of
claims, one that has very few claims. So now I'm starting to be able to very
systemize all these incredible variables that we all encounter with every one of
these promos and putting them out in sort of a phased methodology where I can
start on the stuff that I have no idea about. That's the horizontal level. I have to
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get that information first and then I can go deeper into the promo and deeper into
these more kind of technical type things that are still very much dependent on all
the things we've talked about like, where's the market? What's the format that
they're viewing this on? All these endless things that you could do.
Todd:
So it sounds like almost you're using horizontal testing, if you will, to identify the
theme, the approach, the angle to the headline, and then you're using vertical to
optimize once you've identified that headline type. Is that fair?
Dan:
Yeah. So one of the things that Aaron Winter showed me very early on that really
explained this to me is he basically drew an hourglass and he was very early in
the promo or very high up in the top of the funnel. You're at this hourglass where
you want to be very wide with what you're testing, the ideas you're throwing, and
eventually it comes down to this point where no matter what those ideas are,
they're all going to sort of come to the same thing and then deeper into the
promo, you start to sort of expand out again. You might give another set of
benefits, you might have these escalations and, to me, that thing, once I've been
able to apply that to sort of every different level of the business or the creative,
it's just been mind-blowing in terms of going wide and then going down.
Todd:
That's awesome. Great. I think you and David-
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David:
So you're saying kind of the T actually widens again at the bottom in a certain
way. You start testing more broadly?
Dan:
So the way that I look at it is almost like one of those photos that's made out of a
million other photos is every level of your promo could have a vertical aspect and
it could have a horizontal aspect. So your subject line, you could test a hundred
different elements horizontally and then a hundred different elements vertically.
Then the body copy of that email and just deepen it down, and I think I said this
to Tanner, is like, you can actually do this on the whole business level of, "Okay,
we're going to start testing outside of our playbook. Here's the stuff that we're
really good at," and so your whole business might be in this sort of vertical
context and you're not even aware of it, and that's when you have to start doing
stuff that's the more high risk things because once the vertical thing is running,
you have the ability to take bigger risks, and that might be just throwing
completely different formats, ideas, maybe you do VSLs and switch to webinars.
That, to me, explains almost all direct response in one little thing.
Todd:
Great answer, man. Go ahead, Sean.
Sean:
This is less strategic, less high level, and it's more tactical. It's just something I
kind of noticed, and you sort of reminded me of this when you said, "Yeah, got to
test that one lead that's sort of just off the wall and you have no idea if it's going
to work." I did the same thing and what I started doing for text-based sales
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letters, and then I started doing it for VSLs, throwing a meme at the top. It's so
dumb, and it's worked every single time I've tested it. 80% of the copy I've been
writing for the last five years has either been going to elderly Japanese people or
to Gen Zers and, for whatever reason, you throw a meme at the top of a sales
letter and it hits.
David:
What do you mean by a meme?
Sean:
So just a really weird or bizarre image with white text with a black background
around it that plays like an internet joke and for whatever reason that's been
working in financial and selling marketing courses.
Tony:
It must connect the copy though in some way, right?
Sean:
Yeah, of course it has to connect to the copy in some way, but even having the
lead play off... This is a joke about some larger thing. I'll give a specific example.
I had a systems promo for James Altucher and the whole premise, the
mechanism was basically like, so the larger force of nature that's happening in
the world right now is that Wall Street's algorithms are doing mass just piling on
selling off stocks and as a result of that, well, these algorithms, when a stock hits
below a certain threshold, typically defined by some sort of technical indicator,
these algorithms are hard coded to jump back in. So you see these dips and then
they pop back up. Well, you can just code an algorithm to detect when these
other algorithms are piling in.
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So that was the premise of this promo worked really, really well. So I tested a
bunch of different leads. We tested different guru leads. We tested different
credibility leads, we tested different things. Here's the lead that worked the best.
Wall Street is playing a sick joke on you, and then there's a meme and all it was
was a server bank and the white tech simply said a quick picture of traders
crying-
A quick picture of traitors crying over their losses. That's it. That was it. And that
be everything else. It was so stupid, but it worked. So test it, it might not work, it
might work.
Rob:
But have you tested what comes under the meme? Just classic headline?
Sean:
So just an explanation. So it was classic headline deck copy. Take a look at this
joke I found on the internet. Meme, explanation of the joke.
Rob:
So social speak kind of vibe.
Sean:
Exactly.
Rob:
Social media.
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Peter:
Really the way to find memes are on TikTok under your keyword. That's where I
go to find video memes. I'm using that stuff tool. I found one, AI Slack, a person
as collect.
Sean:
And so have you been using these meme formats to actually craft some of your
sales messages? Or at least a couple?
Peter:
Yeah, so I've used some more like scroll stoppers, right? So one of the really
good leads that I really underestimated a few years ago was questions like the
power of really fucking gangster questions. So with Maya Valley, we came up
with a question, why are some people blessed by luck and other people not so
lucky? That one sentence, we have endless memes, viral hooks of somebody
getting lucky, barely dodged a car hit or whatever. Endless memes of people
getting hit by goats or whatever, right? People not looking, and combining that
with an endless amount of different ways we can keep our vsl fresh.
Todd
I'm curious, did you have iterations of that question? Did you test multiple
versions of that question or no?
Peter:
We test a lot of different ideas for sure, but that one really was a solid question
that, I mean, you want to test questions, but you want to test really good shit. You
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don't want to test bad shit. So that one just was the highlight that really explains
the root cause of what we were technically selling. Just getting lucky.
Todd:
Okay. Okay.
Peter:
It's almost like why are people bad benefit? Why other people have the winning
benefit you want? That's the question. That's a really good one. A lot of people
think about.
Kyle:
Did you ever do the, what if I told you, question?
Peter:
I never asked for that. Another really huge hook that was dominating Facebook
ads, but this is why I'm throwing blank in the trash. All my meme buying friends
were like, go try it out. All of us had winners. This is why I threw this in the trash.
Throw that in, any fucking problem.
Todd:
And I'm curious of, again, I know we're not in the why business, we're in the what
business, but I'm curious, why do you think that that worked?
Peter:
Why?
Todd:
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Yeah.
Peter:
Well one, it's a really good scroll stopper. To see someone dropping something in
the trash, that's really interesting. If I said, this is why I'm throwing Chat BT in the
trash. Yeah, what everyone wants to at least understand, why. Why that, right?
Oh, because it sucks balls and didn't really do the task, right?
Todd:
And so does anybody else have anything again, and I want you guys to drive
this. Does anybody have anything else that they want to share about what you're
doing today with headlines, leads, anything different, anything new?
John:
This is the other answer to the question I'm asking, is I see a lot of copy and I
probably would defer to others who have done way more copy reviews than I
have. But the number one problem with copy is that promises aren't big enough,
but ideas aren't big enough. The gimmicks aren't gimmicky enough, the notions
aren't notion enough. Everybody plays small, maybe not so much around this
table, but with products, the copywriters that we work with, thinking big is almost
like a skillset that you have to develop. The first idea is never big enough, never
big enough. The 10th idea is usually not big enough. It takes time and effort to
get there.
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David:
Don't you just want to say to people sometimes, what if your life depended on
this, right? Is this what you would go out with. No, make it bigger.
Todd:
It's also an interesting note because I certainly can make an argue and seeing a
ton of stuff come across my desk that some stuff is just so big and outlandish that
like...
John:
Outlandish is not big.
Todd:
Fair enough.
Peter:
Big difference.
Kyle:
So you said if there's nothing new that you're doing, say nothing. So he said, take
a look at this. And he had the question's thing. I believe there are three types of
openers for a sales message and they are a visual pattern interrupt, a question,
pattern interrupt, and then a breadcrumb pattern interrupt, which would be like
the most sophisticated, more difficult one is the breadcrumb, which is like, he
never mentioned this when he was running for president, opening sort of that
intrigue breadcrumb, but it's going to drag you down.
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Todd:
So an open loop.
Kyle:
Yeah. But John did an AI training for the copy squad, John Mohale. Who does
media buying and he's very sophisticated AI guy, and he was talking about
setting up leads and prompts for ChatGPT to open with, and he went with to take
a look at this and I kind of stopped the training and I was like, everyone pay
attention to this? Everyone always tries to complicate the first line and have the
new whizzbang tactic, but take a look at this, just directing their attention. That's
kind of what these memes and these gifts and these other little things do. Like a
visual pattern that just says, look at this and gets them to sort of adjust and focus
for just a second is one of the most timeless time-tested.
Dan:
Joe Sugar.
Kyle:
I've just seen it across the board. Take a look at this is the most, if you don't know
what else to do, it's like old faithful in any...
Todd:
I was going to say, you actually gave a presentation probably a year ago or
something like that at top one on this exact. And so you're still seeing great
results with that. You see his picture, you see what he's holding in his hand or
you see what's behind him here in this. Interesting.
Kyle:
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We can't help but to look at it. Whatever that is.
Todd:
Very cool. Anybody else?
Kim:
One thing that's still working after all these years is having a bigger, faster
mechanism enlarging the mechanism. I think a lot of us are still pretty much in
the fourth stage of market sophistication and I have peak many of control over
the years just by going with that stronger, better mechanism that delivers some
kind of speed as result. And having a bigger promise and obviously digging out
the bigger proof to back it up.
Todd:
I love it. That's a great segue, really. I want to talk, since everybody is obviously
solid believers in the value of a unique mechanism, and we've talked about really
making the unique mechanism the star in many cases, making it part of the big
idea. I would love to hear from you guys how you are today identifying unique
mechanisms and is there a different criteria that you're using today for unique
mechanism development, identification that you weren't using in the past? Let's
start with Peter. What do you do to, how are you finding the unique mechanism in
new products?
Peter:
I call it the kindergarten simple pitch. Just speak to me like I'm original. Does it
make fucking sense? Okay, I have this, okay, I have this problem. Okay, now
explain to me in literally seven words how this root cause of problem is root
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cause of problem. And then is that a green light? Does that check or does it
sound like bullshit? We were going off to start a new skincare brand that was all
about plant-based topical set skin cells. And I researched forever, I couldn't find
anything on it, but my buddy wanted to go with it and I just couldn't crack it. And
I'm really diving into this. I'm like, okay, women are aging. So this plant-based
stem cells, it says that you have stem cells in your skin. This bubbles doesn't
create skin cells, right? But that skin cells get kind of old.
That's the process to get to, the top gets old. We're all shedding so the skin you
see is very old. Okay, that's how it works. So what's my problem? The problem is
that, okay, your skin's just not bubbling up fast enough. So if you speed that up,
that can have more fresh skin because this is good service. Oh, that kind of
makes sense. Well, how does my product solve that? Well, you put this fucking
plant based stem cell on top of, it'll increase the fucking stem cells instead. Well
that sound like a lot of horse shit, that was just a red light to me. But the fucking
lady at the manufacturing plant got huge tests and my buddy wanted it to work
really bad, so they decided to work. I had to balance. But that so just came to
understanding on kindergarten level and it has to be a green light. Is it? At the
end of the day it just has to kindergarten simple.
Todd:
And are there, yeah, where do we go from here? Always afraid to ask follow up.
Yeah. Are there criteria that you're looking for? What do you consider to be a
good unique mechanism compared to a mechanism that you would say, nah,
that's just not a good enough mechanism from a marketing promotion
perspective?
Peter:
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I mean honestly for me it is, this will make sense on kindergarten center. I'm
here, I want to get across the bridge. Do I actually think that if I step on this log,
it'll hold me and I won't fall through and die? So does it make sense on the
kindergarten level?
Todd:
So for you it's easy, it's simple, immediately understandable.
Peter:
I'm talking to massive America. You're trying to make the biggest campaigns on
earth. You've got to be fucking sophisticated. Real simple level, right? No big
words, no gymnastic linguistic fucking tricks. Right?
Todd:
Right.
Peter:
Dead simple. Trump level speech. Believe me, great idea. Back heel, step up,
turn upside down, spine stretches out, you're healed. Oh my god. Got it.
Todd:
Got it. John, how about you? I mean, you're great at mechanisms. What's your
process for identifying the unique mechanism today?
John:
Sort of what I said earlier with the concept of I'm just asking myself, is this
something that is believable, but also is this something that I really, this dream
that my avatar has? What is to understand, to really have a visceral
understanding of your avatar's hopes and dreams and fears. Super important.
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We all know that, but can I make the believable dream come true? In other
words, does this sound what Peter was saying, if I have to get from this side or
the other, is the law going to hold me? Right? The dream is to get to the other
side, the believability part, is the log going to hold me?
So you have to combine those two things together. And I still find the best way to
do that is use two words that they already know. It is a cheap trick. It really is
because I'm not into necessarily branding a unique mechanism. You don't have
to have the leptin resistance or whatever as a hook or the muscle confusion or
whatever. But do they know the two words or if there's one that you have to teach
them, can you teach it to them in a way that makes them come away and feel
more empowered? So that's been the thing that's been working.
Todd:
Okay. It's interesting that you guys approach it the way that you approach it. And
so it is what it is. It's interesting that nobody's mentioned. First and foremost, I
want a mechanism that demonstrates that this addresses the problem or fixes
the problem in a different way than everything else. In other words, hence, I
mean the unique mechanism.
John:
Can I speak...
Moderator:
Sure.
John:
To that for one second? So yeah, that's my own bad for just assuming that's a
given. So that's definitely not a given, but yeah, the unique aspect of that, when
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I'm thinking about the dream and getting somebody to believe it, that it has for in
my own head, a definition of it has to be unique. Otherwise, if I say, oh, well you
can get over there by simply saving money. Okay, saving money is not a unique
mechanism. It may be true, but it's not a unique mechanism. So yeah, I'm kind of
a...
Todd:
Fair, I just wanted to make that, I think that...
Peter:
Super important.
Todd:
... For me, and then we'll go to Tony real quick. And then Kyle, it's important to
recognize that look, if your unique mechanism doesn't address a new problem.
So like Peter talked earlier about the discovery of this is the real root cause if you
will, of why you're having your problem. And here's the solution to that. When you
have a mechanism that doesn't include a new cause, a new root problem, I
believe that your unique mechanism needs to also demonstrate superiority in
some aspect. So it's not only different from everything else, but the difference
makes it superior to all the other solutions in some aspect. So it either needs to
be superior in terms of speed of results that it delivers, or reliability or safety. So I
always say that the difference is what gets attention.
The superiority is what produces the conversion, right? Because just because
something comes in a red bottle doesn't make it better, it might make it different,
but that difference doesn't make it superior. People want the superior solution.
They don't want the, again, not many searches. I always joke around, not many
searches for the second-best way to lose weight, right on Google. And so people
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want the superior solution. So if you're addressing a new root cause that's one
thing, but if you're not addressing a new root cause then you have to
demonstrate it's not only different, but it's superior. The difference in the way that
this works is why it's superior and it's superior in this aspect. And so go ahead.
Tony:
You sort of touched upon it, but yeah. We always start with, is this a compelling
new diagnosis? And then the mechanisms always an extension from that. So it's
a fundamental question, is how compelling is this new diagnosis to their
problem?
Todd:
And so it's interesting. Let me ask you this to expand on that. So are you striving
to always show that the problem that they have is not the problem that they
thought they've had? Are you always striving for that?
Tony:
Typically, but it can be one of the most successful promos that we did around
slicing. Is what he was saying. They know that their club being open causes a
slice, but we just refined it slightly to be like it's open relative to the path of their
swings. We added one element of the diagnosis. It's like you think it's open, but
it's actually not your real problem. It's that it's open relative to the pathway that
it's moving in. And that was a compelling enough diagnosis and then the
mechanism just fixes.
Todd:
Yeah. See, I love that. I think you heard the phrase in there, but what did you
say? You thought that that's not your real problem. You said something, but that's
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not your real problem. That's that you thought it was this, but it's really this.
Everything else is solving this. We have a way to solve this. Yeah, you're
ultimately creating,,,
Tony:
We are not solving problems, we're creating problems.
Todd:
And then we're solving. That's absolutely a brilliant way to describe it. That's a
brilliant way to describe it.
Kyle:
I guess something that I was going to touch on just a minute ago, when you
were... I'm trying to figure out, I forgot how I got there, but I always look at it with
that whole analogy now that I've been describing over and over of this sort of
cycle of how these things all relate. So sometimes when you're looking for the
mechanism, you don't look for the mechanism or if in technical trading it's so
complicated and it's like how do I explain this shit? And instead if you sort of look
at the frame around it, which would be like instead ask, when you are placing this
trade, what market phenomenon are you tapping into? What is the force of
nature? So instead of the P90X exercises, I love P90X because it fits this model
so well. It's like it doesn't really matter the exercises. I'm not selling you this
workout routine. I'm selling you the phenomenon you're tapping into, which is the
force of nature.
And therefore the whole narrative is structured around, well, the problem is you
plateau, skip mechanism. You need to reverse the plateau with muscle
confusion. So then all of your emphasis and time is on the force nature itself. So
whenever you're speaking to an expert, which I generally am like I'm trying to
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figure out how to take your knowledge and give a argument besides I'm the best,
which is what every guru and expert says, well, why wouldn't they want from me?
I'm the best. And it's like, well, that's not very easy for me to sell. So I can usually
come at them with two different angles. I can say something like, okay, you trade
this pattern, what do you think is actually happening? Why does this pattern
form? So instead of asking them this 35 criteria that go into their trading system
methodology, they go, first I do this, then I filter down with this, then I do this.
And it's like, that's really hard for me to package and sell, but if you tell me at the
end of all this, why do it this way and not that way, what are you tapping into in
the markets? What's the weakness? What's the thing that you're exploiting at this
moment in time? Then I simply label that glitch or that thing that they're
exploiting. And then the mechanism is just the way, so I can set it up like, oh,
there's this thing that happens in the market, you never know about it. It happens
exactly 11:15 AM every day or whatever, some sort of unique thing about what's
happening in the market.
And I say, only you had a way to take advantage of this hidden glitch in the
market. So then I can just label the way. And what's cool about this is through
educating them about the glitch. I never have to sell the unique mechanism. I
simply educate, educate, educate. They're like, how do I find that glitch? How do
I take advantage of that glitch? And I go, funny you should ask. I actually have a
system that is a glitch spotter. All it does is spot glitches all day, every day. I send
them a newsletter out once a week and it'll give you the glitch. And people are
like, give me that. Give me that. That's how you get people to buy some like a
newsletter they don't actually want.
Todd:
I think one thing I'll say real quick, and then again we'll go to Tony, is look, I think
for those of you that work with experts or work with an editor, it's funny that
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merely asking them, why do you do it? Why do you do what you do? Your
system, why do you do what you do? Why do you do it the way that you do it?
Why do you do it in the order in which you do it? What would happen if you didn't
do this step? Or what would happen if you didn't do this step, allows you to
identify the mechanism and the underlying reasons and ultimately can get to
what's the new problem that this is addressing.
So you do these five steps. Well, what would happen if you didn't do this first
step? What would go wrong? What wouldn't occur? What would happen if you
did it out of order? What would happen if you did it this way, right? And why do
you do it this way? And that line of questioning for us always just gives us the
bulk of what it is that we're going to use to educate on the unique mechanism.
And so Go ahead Tony.
Tony:
The other thing I'll say, I think a lot of the times, the problem with the mechanism
is that you need maximum freedom. There's a novelty component. You need
maximum freedom. And so this isn't almost possible for copywriters bringing the
product to you and so created. But for entrepreneurs it's always controllable. You
never create the product until you know the mechanism in advance. That's super
important. Fran, which was here, that was one of the things that I saw it really
well in supplements. He would do all the root cause and the mechanism stuff
before he would select the ingredients for the products so that the ingredients
would show that the star ingredient of the hero ingredient of the supplement
matched the root cause and the mechanism perfectly. So we create products, we
do, we talked to the guru, we come up with all of that stuff first and then we build
the course.
Todd:
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How smart to engineer the product in the most marketable way, right? How smart
to...
Tony:
Yeah. You're not down otherwise if you create and then you have to work within
some...
Todd:
Strengths.
Tony:
You shouldn't have to battle.
Todd:
Yeah, well said. Go ahead.
Rob:
I was going to say there's an element here, and it's probably why I wasn't too
specific about it, but there's an element of implied uniqueness, implied benefit. In
AI, not to go down in the AI rabbit hole, but I have a term that we use called
implied command. So there's not necessarily a command prompt that you're
giving at the end of this long pre-prompt, it's implied. And so Chad figures this out
because it's solving facts. Pretty straightforward, simple.
Sam:
Go ahead, finish.
Rob:
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Oh yeah, so we can talk for hours.
Sam:
I was going to piggyback on that because what I do, or one of the things I do is I'll
take whatever the offer is of a competitor and let's see just four of them, and I'll
drill down on what the benefits are, the promise, whatever they have as a unique
mechanism. I'll take my offer and then I'll upload it to ChatGPT advanced data
analysis, and then I'll ask you to analyze and tell me what's not stated but
implied.
Rob:
Right.
Sam :
About the promises, about the mechanisms, about the problems. So what I want
to know is what's behind the text?
John:
Yeah.
Sam:
When people read it, they get the implication, but it's not stated in the copy. And
then I'll get a list of things that are right at the tip of their tongues, that if I then
bring it to their awareness, then they connect with it. And so there's an implied
mechanism, there's an implied promise, there's an implied problem. And if you go
for the things that are not obvious and ask for Claude or ChatGPT to tell you
what those are, those can then in turn be flipped into stated promises, stated
mechanisms, stated benefits. That puts you right on the edge of it being
believable because it's implied, but it's new enough that it becomes a new
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thought, a new frame, a new problem that's created and a new solution that then
you got.
Rob:
Yeah, and the twist on this is, I have to give a specific example. So my own AI
that I was going to release on Thursday as a demo for the first time here,
because I have no choice otherwise I'll be in Italy. But the hook for that which we
had trademarked is prompt plus AI. So that's a unique mechanism hook,
whatever the fuck you want to call it. I don't care what you want to call it, but for
those of us who were in AI who built software around this, we understand that
there's a lot of things that, that's an implied benefit. The people hate the idea of
becoming a prompt engineer. So I'm saying, well, Benson is completely prompt
with AI. And they're like, well, I don't know what that is, but that sounds really,
really good. So that's an implied uniqueness because it's something that they
haven't heard before.
Tony:
They equate prompting with effort.
Rob:
Exactly. So this is prompt. But what's interesting is that all that means is that
we've actually done all the prompting for you and put into dropdown menus. Now
it's the same thing Tim Ferriss did for Four Hour Workweek. He never mentioned
one time in the cover of the book, if memory serves, that this was a book about
outsourcing. So this is again, we're not creating a problem here. There is a
problem. People don't want to become prompt engineers necessarily, but we are
exacerbating and blowing up the problem to make it bigger and then solving it
with implication.
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Tony:
It's a pretty example of sophistication. If you just said easy AI, it wouldn't sound
that good. Because the market is a little more sophisticated.
Rob:
Exactly.
Tony:
Saying they know what prompt less means easy.
Rob:
Yeah.
Tony:
Then we have this...
Rob:
And we've been using that term, Tony for a year, and the first six months of using
it, people were like, so what? Now everybody's like, really? So what was funny,
six months from now people would be going, so what everything has it, right?
Tony:
Yeah.
Rob:
So I've got a window...
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Todd:
But then you'll be able to say that you were the first.
Rob:
My trademark.
Todd:
But the other thing, the other nuance in what it is that you just said about the
difference between easy and prompt less is one is a descriptor and one is a type.
And so you know what I mean? One is a descriptor and one is a type. And that's
a huge difference.
Todd Brown :
So great job in the morning sessions, we covered a few things. I think that that
was insanely valuable. So, thank you guys for your willingness to share. Let's
keep it going. We have a couple, a few more hours, maybe two and a half more
hours to go. I want to be respectful of your time. And so we're going to try to
finish up by 5:30 at the absolute latest, so that you guys, like I said, I want to
respect your time, your schedule, your agenda. So we do have a bunch of stuff to
attempt to cover in the second half of the day. I want to start with, what I want to
cover is formatting breakthroughs. And so this should be a fairly kind of simple,
straightforward discussion. It shouldn't take us too long. And then after that we're
going to go into offers and we're going to talk about offer construction.
We're going to kick it off with Justin and then we'll go around in terms of kind of
breakthroughs in the way that you construct, engineer offers. So with that, like I
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said, I want to talk about formatting. So we already heard from Donnie who
mentioned the formatting change that they've kind of implemented on their VSL
pages. Does anybody have anything to share as it relates to a change in the way
that you think about formatting, formatting long-form sales letters, formatting
VSLs? Is there anything that you're doing different today compared to in the past
in terms of formatting?
Peter:
I think you'd have to be an absolute psycho not to rip somebody else's format,
right? Because if you look at all of the biggest ad campaigns in the world and you
look at like, here's 20 different VSLs that did eight figures in sales, that means
that nothing else worked. Out of the million, billion people on this planet, no one
ever created anything that is that good. So you must fucking break down all of
these and that are your only tools to really make formats off of because
everything else did not work. So you can try to beat everybody, but.
Todd Brown :
So are you part of your, again, going back to your research where you're really
focusing on the winners and what they're doing in terms of their copy chunks and
blah, blah, blah, you're doing the same thing with the formatting on their pages?
Peter:
Right. So I broke down all my 20 favorite VSLs of all time into just step-by-step,
scene by scene, right? And that lets you know like, "Oh, this might copy fit with
that, it's copy for the...", it's called the VSL Flow Bible for the Flow Show. And it's
a really simple way to just look at like, "I want to tell my story like this", and then
you can dive into that person's VSL and reverse engineer it like that. But to think
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that you're going to just beat something that has never appeared, right? It's like
that's not, I don't know...
Todd Brown :
So that's carrying over from page layout also into the style of VSL that you use?
Like B-roll, music, no music, audio only, on-camera, you're modeling from
beginning to end?
Peter:
So I mean, that's a different subject. But how the whole flow of a movie is going
to go, like how Harry Potter fucking goes, right? You shouldn't invent any new
storylines like Harry Potter. You should really model the hero's journey. But no,
just that structure, right and if you were going to scene by sceneKim Schwalm:
Kind of like the big beat out line or something.
Peter:
... this was amazing. And it all started because of when this person, that guy went
on a journey and discovered this. Boom, people tested it and now buy shit today,
right? That flow has to be so foundationally rock solid. Yeah, that's what I think.
That's just me.
Todd Brown :
Anybody else? So basically the formatting of your pages, VSLs, long-form sales
letters hasn't evolved?
Kim Schwalm:
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When you say formatting, are you, because it sounded like Peter was talking
more about the flow of the copy or the outline of structure, are you talking about
that? Or are you talking more aboutTodd Brown :
Well, Peter gave a great answer to a different question, but I like that
nevertheless, I appreciate it.
Peter:
I was confused. I'm just making sure.
Kim Schwalm:
Yeah. Okay, that's where it was kind of throwing me off of it. So you were talking
more about the design?
Todd Brown :
Yeah, and that's why I said I thought that this would be a fairly quick discussion.
Really I'm just looking, is there anything that you found, I know Rich said
obviously earlier, he talked about obviously formatting for mobile first before
desktop, talked a little bit about how you guys have different headlines for
different pages.
Donnie French:
Yeah, we actually, I mean this is a big shift. I mean the most difficult for thing for
me is to take a VSL and then turn it into a long-form. That's always, "What do I
keep? What do I take out?" So I would always leave everything right? That's how
we've always done it, and just change the wording a little bit to be more friendly
for on page experience. But what we've started doing now is we actually, we
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talked to Lori about this, but we create the copy doc in a mobile format from the
beginning.
So we don't just take the VSL, make a copy of the doc and then start the longform. We start a fresh doc in 3.5, make it mobile formatting and then move the
pieces of the copy in that we want. And what it helps me do at least is it really
helps you use economy of words. You can see it on the page that that long
sentence with six ellipses is just not going to work. So you can really cut it down
to make it a more digestible message.
And I think the biggest breakthrough for us is just... You have to, I know it sucks
because it slows page load speed, but you have to run some Hotjar on your
pages to see what people are doing. Otherwise, we're just testing, effectively,
we're testing the copy, but really, on page experience is more about how people
interact with the copy and what's on the page, more than it is actually the
messaging and the flow of the messaging. And that's just the world I think we're
moving into now with the social media. It's like if you're going to give the person
the ability to scroll, you have to use every tactic and strategy we have to measure
what you're doing, to get in and see how people are interacting with your
message and watch them on Hotjar, literally, and then test specific elements in
the formatting to get them to digest the message that you want. And for us, that
means that a 50 page VSL document turns into a 12 or 13 page mobile formatted
hybrid.
Todd Brown :
So you're really, for mobile, you don't just have a mobile version of the sales
page, you have a mobile page that is designed for mobile that maybe doesn't
have all of the copy elements that the regular desktop version has?
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Donnie French:
There's very little of the copy on it, yeah. And we've also, and just to be super
clear about this, we have never had a text page beat a VSL, ever. And we have
tested a ton, we've never had it beat a VSL for a digital product. For physical
products, what we've found is we cannot get the VSL to beat the page. And our
hypothesis, which this is still not data driven, we have some data, but the
hypothesis is if we show the product, even if it's hidden in plain sight, right? If I'm
not saying this is like Coca-Cola, but you see everybody in the ad has this thing
in their hand and you know that we're talking about this thing that's hidden in
plain sight, they automatically are going towards, "What's the product?"
Donnie French:
This is a thing that's going to arrive on my doorstep and when they get to the next
page, they're just looking for price, main bullets and they want to get through. So
the experience is a lot faster. So the hypothesis is, if you show the product in the
ad, you better do all the selling you want to do in the ad because when they get
to your page, they're looking for the price very, very quickly. And that's why we
use, like I was saying to Sean, the caveman strategy, which is basically sell them
in the ad. The ad does the heavy lifting when they land on the page, it's
caveman. It's like headline, video, what is it? Literally huge words, no sexy
formatting. It's align left, not in title case. What is it? Tell them what it is in oneTodd Brown :
So, is it fair to say for you guys, I mean, and this is an important distinction for
everybody, that you're doing the heavy lifting, the selling in the ad. So what the
page needs to do is wildly different for some other people that aren't selling in the
ad, right? In other words, you're generating a highly qualified click?
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Donnie French:
Highly qualified click. If we don't, our AOV is crushed, the quality of the customer
is not near as good as when we actually do the selling in the ad. It's about
compatibility.
Peter:
I want to push on that just a little bit because some of my students, they're like, I
have one pair of students that did $6 million bucks last month and are on track
for $9 million this month, and all they're doing is Facebook and native ads. And
they're running a 27 minute VSL direct on Facebook with a spokesperson that's
very ugly, which looks like their fucking camera is on their computer and they're
just reading it like this, very ugly spokesperson. And when you click, it goes to a
very long-form advertorial. So it's 27 minute VSL to long-form advertorial, to longform sales page selling like a knee brace.
Donnie French:
Yeah, I think that's perfect, actually. I think that actually matches with what I'm
saying.
Peter:
So that's my favorite funnel right now.
Todd Brown :
Say that again. It is long-form video on Facebook, to an advertorial, to a longform text advertorial, to then a long-form tech sales letter.
Peter:
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So if you go on Fox News right now and you scroll down a sponsored post on
one of these articles, you'll see a bunch of native ads. One of them will be a
really badass advertorial, like you rip that page and you use that after your VSL
on Facebook. So super solid funnel and these guys have badass checkout page,
three upsell things in down sell. So is a very mature sophisticated funnel that I
think most games surround.
Kyle Milligan:
What do you call this word count? When you say in a long-form advertorial, are
we talking above a thousand words?
Peter:
I don't know.
Donnie French:
Advertorial is like 1500 to 3000 wordsPeter:
Something like that.
Donnie French:
... in VSRs.
Peter:
Anything on Newsmax, a bunch of advertorials on Newsmax, you can find a
bunch of winners there.
Pauline Longdon:
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There're the kind of advertorial that doesn't look like a traffic driver. They're
actually, they look like content.
Donnie French:
Informative.
Peter:
Correct. Yeah. It's not a TSL, it's not a text sales letter, it's an advertorial.
Pauline Longdon:
Yeah, exactly.
Peter:
Very different.
Todd Brown :
For any of you, does price drive or determine the format? In other words, for
lower price products, are you using long-form text-based sales letters and for
higher price you using VSLs? Or are you guys, do you primarily just always use
VSLs, Peter?
Peter:
Yeah.
Donnie French:
And it's all digital.
Peter:
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I'm obsessed with them.
Todd Brown :
Right. Does anybody else, I mean Chris, do you primarily just use VSLs?
Chris:
Yeah, usually VSLs, and then we do a text version as well, and we usually get
10% to 15% of our sales from the long-form, basically.
Donnie French:
Is that on desktop or mobile?
Todd Brown :
When you use the text version, you use what? If they go to exit the VSL, you'll
give them the ability toChris:
Yeah, we'll do that or we'll have a, "Skip the text," presentation button or
something like that depending on the offer.
Todd Brown :
Got you. So you're giving them an alternative path to consume the message?
Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. And that usually, like I said, we usually get about 10%, 15% of our
sales from that.
Donnie French:
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Is that from paid media orChris:
Pretty much any traffic source we've tried. It's been about 10%.
Donnie French:
What's the percentage of people that buy on desktop versus mobile?
Chris:
It's definitely much higher on mobile. I haven't looked to that stat in a while.
Todd Brown :
And how about in terms of formatting? Are you, so Donnie, when you guys use,
let's say VSL is the rest of the funnel also VSL? Like upsell one VSL and so
whenDonnie French:
Up to upsell two, generally, and then in upsell two, it goes to page.
Todd Brown :
It goes to text page?
Donnie French:
In some, it depends, yeah. I mean we really are focusing on to get to the upsell
one, down sell, that's really where we're heavily focused. After that the rates,
we're not getting a lot of sales, so we plug in different offers back there, but the
AOV is made by the time they get to that first down sell.
Todd Brown :
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Yeah, for sure. Is there anything Justin, that you would add to that?
Donnie French:
It's all Justin's strategy.
Todd Brown :
I know it is.
Donnie French:
I went to Copy Accelerator.
Todd Brown :
All you in some way, shape or form trace back to Justin.
Donnie French:
I'm not joking, our whole funnel is literally Justin Goff. And nobody has been able
to beat his OLOF upsell one strategy and I have tried. I've probably spent $300K
on copywriters trying just saying, "Your only goal is to beat his upsell one
strategy. If you do you have a job full time, this is it."
Todd Brown :
Wow.
Donnie French:
Nobody can beat it.
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Todd Brown :
We need to get you that clip, man.
Donnie French:
I'll give you the clip right now.
Todd Brown :
Look at the camera and say that again.
Donnie French:
I will. I will literally, I'd give him that any day.
David:
How would you describe that upsell one strategy? Just concentrating on upsell
one with a good video?
Donnie French:
Do you know his OLOF strategy? Have you ever seen it?
Justin:
So it stands for; offer, length, opening, and format. Offer being the most important
part by far. So how congruent it is with the front end, that to me is the biggest
thing that people don't really, most people just try to put something in there that
they just have laying around, and that's obviously a terrible idea. But because, if
you can hit all four, the opening really just trying to congratulate them on what
they just did, but really making them feel good about it. I mean a good, at least a
minute, minute and a half just on that talking about how future facing, how great
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things are going to be. Because they're still not sold on that previous purchase
they just made. That's something I always really hammer home.
Todd Brown :
I think that was one of the big things that you taught that was was a big, "Aha,"
for me even, taking that call it minute, minute and a half, whatever you said, to
really kind of resell them on the value of what it is that they just bought. To really
future pace that.
Donnie French:
And I think there's a key piece there that I don't know, well, I know we've never
talked... I've talked to you through many people, but never directly. One thing that
we did test that goes with the OLOF is we tested not having the big stop button
that said, "Wait, your order's processing, please watch this important video
update from the guru," something like that. We tested taking that away and it
killed conversions. So the hypothesis is that most of these, again know your
market, 55 to 90-year-old buyers are like, "Shit, I just hit buy, now it says wait,
okay, let me wait right here." And they wait because they're like, "Oh, now he's
telling me congratulations and then dah, dah, dah," and you don't know you're
being sold. It's like, "Congratulations, this was a great decision. Do you know
how many people saw this offer? And you had the guts to say yes to this and that
was a great decision."
And it goes on like that for a minute and a half to three minutes and it very
sneakily shifts you into not even a motivated buying state. It shifts you into this
state of mind of like, "Holy shit, this guy actually has something else that he
tweaked about the front end offer that's going to help me with my very next
problem that I'm going to have after this front end offer does the thing it says it's
going to do for me."
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Tony Flores:
The problem created by the success.
Donnie French:
It's created by the success of the other, which is another great thing I learned is,
and another thing that, dude, I'm sorryTodd Brown :
I got to be honest with you, the best part of that explanation was the voice that
you used for the 55-year-old buyer. Is that what you think of the 50 plus market
demographic? Oh my God.
Justin:
It's true though. Someone who's 55, 60 who's not like us buying shit online all
day, they think the order is over. That's their general, they buy something on
Amazon, it's done. So you really do need that at the beginning.
Donnie French:
You need that. And the shift into the thing that, so there's two pieces to this, one,
I don't know if I learned this from you or for someone else that was commenting
on the strategy, is on the front end offer in the front end VSL or the page
wherever, not from the page. We've only seen this work well with a VSL, a force
watch VSL and then a VSL force watch for upsell one. In the VSL I start preframing what's coming in the upsell. We will create the problem that we're going
to solve in upsell one within the VSL, I'm sure that's very basic, everybody's
doing that, but if we don't do that, it hurts conversions on upsell one.
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Donnie French:
We've tested taking those lines out of the VSL because I wanted to make the
VSL shorter. You need those lines. I don't think they directly remember, but it's a
big enough problem. It's like you hit a slice off the tee box right here that hits that
house. I fixed that for you. Well now you're in the middle of the fairway up there
and you have to hit it to that green. If you don't know how to do that, what good is
it that I just fixed your slice? Cool, you look good, but you can't score, which is
the ultimate thing you want." So it takes them down to their next problem. So
having thatDavid:
And how do you then sell them onDonnie French:
The next thing?
David:
Not the next thing. How do you... You're sort of leaving, why would I buy the
product then if I've got a problem?
Donnie French:
Yeah, so the way it's framedDavid:
At the end of the VSL, how do you close the sale?
Donnie French:
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The front end, it's very subtle. On the upsell one basically the way it is, so we get
a lot of emails from guys like you that, copywriters from guys and gals that are
super successful. They learned how to write great VSLs. But we also get this
other email where once you write a great front end, you want to be able to do the
same with your upsell one. And if you want to have a high AOV, then you need to
have a good front end and a really strong upsell one.
So I've actually found a really interesting way to tweak my front end VSL strategy
where you can apply it to your upsell one and it gives you all the benefits you
want for your AOV and your LTV and then they're like, "Oh, let me hear about it."
And you don't have to go into the big whole technical pitch. It's just very brief,
because they're already sold on the guru, they're sold on technique, they click
the button, they've been here for an hour now or at least 35, 40 minutes, they've
been sitting around watching your video. So there's a pretty good buy-in, and
then you make it an irresistible offer at one click of a button with the same
guarantee.
David:
And that's in the upsell one? What do you do in the VSL to prep them?
Donnie French:
Mm-hmm.
David:
Now what do you do in the VSL to prep them for that?
Donnie French:
Oh, yeah. So in the VSL we will drop lines like little lines about being able to...
We'll talk about the problem that we're solving. So it'll be like, "Have you ever
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stepped up to the tee, hit a drive into the house, pulled another ball out of your
pocket, hit the second drive into the house, and you got so frustrated you decide
just to put the ball in your pocket and drive up to the fairway? But then you get up
to the fairway and you pull out your hybrid and you hit another ball in the house
and you want to quit golf and when you quit golf, your friends think you're a
loser."
And so we've already told them that is a problem and then we just go back to
solving the first problem and don't ever go back to fixing the second piece for
them. But I believe, again, I don't have data for this, but what I believe is that they
get so excited to fix their biggest problem, which is the slice, that they think for a
second it's also going to fix the next problem. Then they buy and then they
realize, "Oh shit, maybe it's not going to fix my other one." And we have a very
good reason why what you just learned doesn't automatically fix it, but with this
one small minor tweak to what you just learned, you can fix it.
Todd Brown :
I would think that you have to be, you're very gentle in the way that you do that.
There's a fine line between not doing enough, therefore not setting up the sale,
but yet also going too far where you could potentially scare them off from buying
and so impacting conversions.
Donnie French:
Exactly. And the way we do it is, "If you just did what you learned on what you
just learned, the mechanism that you just learned, you're already light years
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ahead of where you were before. So maybe instead of hitting six balls out of
bounds on your second shot, you'll only hit one or two, and you can play great
golf for the rest of your life, only hitting one or two." But if you want to future pace
them to be the person that they really want to be and to beat the friends that they
really want to be and to do the things that they really want to do, then you need
this one small tweak to the one shot slice fix, which is going to also do it for your
hybrids. And it converts at, we're talking about 30% conversion rate on an upsell
one for years and on 20 different offers.
Todd Brown :
And what's typically, I'm curious real quick for you, and then I would love Justin
for you to finish explaining the OLOF method. What's the price point on your
upsell compared to your front end offer?
Donnie French:
$47 on the front end to $147 on the upsell.
Todd Brown :
Got it. And so you have a 30% take rate on the $147 offer? Okay.
Donnie French:
And just one other piece that this is, if you have the tech stack to do this, this
works every single time on every single offer, dynamic upsell pricing. So we have
built into our order page where if they take the basic selection on the page, they
see a reduced pricing on upsell one, not $147, they see $77 because we know
they don't take this, right? If they take the pro-edition, which I know you've seen
all our stuff, so if they take the, I think pro-edition was your idea actually, to
[inaudible 00:21:41]. If they take the pro-edition, which is the basic plus, and they
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take the bump offer on the checkout, they get a $207 upsell one. So upsell one
pricing changes based on what you pick on the order.
Todd Brown :
Is just the pricing changing?
Donnie French:
Just the price changes. I don't change anything else. Just the price changes and
it has boosted AOV by six to eight bucks.
Todd Brown :
Okay. Got it.
David:
So you charge them more if they've proven themselves to be hot buyers?
Donnie French:
Yeah, we know the people who hyper buy on the checkout page are going to buy
for the next six months.
Todd Brown :
So if you spend more on the front end offer, you pay more for the upsell?
Donnie French:
Yeah, because they're going to buy it.
Todd Brown :
Yep.
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Donnie French:
No matter if it's $207 or $147.
Todd Brown :
Got it.
Donnie French:
Or $77.
Todd Brown :
Got it. Got it, got it. Okay. Wow. Justin, go ahead. Did you want to, just because I
know that David was really interested in OLOF.
Justin:
What else you want me to add?
David:
What was the second O?
Justin:
Length.
Todd Brown :
No, what was the second O?
Justin:
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Oh.
Todd Brown :
Formatting.
Justin:
Opening, format. Opening too is also not just a copy, it's also how it's presented.
So someone on camera versus are we just doing old school PowerPoint style.
When I did my thousand buyers a day day course, my first up sell, so I was going
from $197 to $497 and I converted at 44% the first up sell. So 3X price point,
great conversion rate. But one tweak I did on that opening, because doing it to all
marketers who I know are like, "Okay, here comes an upsell." It was super hard,
breaking reality with me and two beautiful women popping champagne and
throwingDonnie French:
I remember that one.
Dan Ferrari:
Out of all the marketing I've seen, I remember that one.
Justin:
Okay.
Donnie French:
In the backyard? In the backyard in at the pool, right?
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Justin:
Yeah.
Donnie French:
Yeah.
Justin:
So depending on that opening is really, really important. And there's a lot you
could test on that. I remember at Four Patriots when we tested a lot of the
survival stuff, they used to have some old conservative dude who's the target
market and they tested this woman who's overweight, but really friendly, who
looks like your next door neighbor and her stuff just crushed on the front end. So
I think that opening part, being able to test different people, different kind music
to add energy to it.
Todd Brown :
When you say opening, is it the person presenting the whole offer? Or just an
opening that it switches formula?
Justin:
I'm talking about basically the lead of the upsell video, right?
Todd Brown :
Right.
Justin:
So that first-
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Todd Brown :
But does that stay consistent, like the woman, does she give the whole pitch or is
it start with her and cut to lay text on?
Justin:
Usually, I've always done the first upsell is always video.
Todd Brown :
Yeah.
Justin:
I just found that works.
Todd Brown :
Regardless of whether the front end offer is long-form text or not?
Justin:
Correct.
Todd Brown :
Okay.
Justin:
Yeah. That may obviously vary by niche, but just everything I've done that seems
to work the best. Even when the front end is just long-form text.
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David:
Niche question. I always read your recaps, which is awesome.
Justin:
That's nice.
David:
But it doesn't sound like you have upsells in these offers.
Justin:
I currently don't. Yeah, I probably left a lot of money on the table.
David:
Any conscious decision?
Justin:
Simplicity.
David:
Yeah. Retired Justin, semi-retired. I like it.
Rich Schefren:
Aaron Fletcher used the OLOF method, remember I was saying?
Justin:
Yeah, I do, yeah.
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Rich Schefren:
And it was a $500 upsell on a $100 front end offer had a 37 some odd percent,
totally changed AOV significantly. And then just for shits and giggles, he sent his
list, just the OTO offer, and he made another $75K just on that using the
[inaudible 00:25:36]. Great.
Donnie French:
We do that. All the people that don't buy it, I email it to them.
Todd Brown :
Yeah, we don't always do that, but we'll usually do a second chance offer
sequence, so before they skipRich Schefren:
This is just an example thatTodd Brown :
Oh, wow. Okay. Wow. That's when you know you've got something good, that's
legit.
Todd Brown :
Yeah.
Todd Brown :
I'll pick it up, man.
Peter:
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Upsell copy is really cool. Upsell copy is really amazing. I mean, when I
remember from coming from an affiliate just having no backend data, having my
own offer, I found out I had the worst AOV ever. So I did natural, "Let's build the
upsell, upsell, upsell," but still I couldn't get the crazy AOVs that I was hearing
other people were getting. Then I went to Copy Accelerator, listened to this guy,
he's talking about. My problem was I didn't know it, but I was inspiring people to
buy the least amount possible on the front end.
Peter:
Which a lot of people do when you have really shitty call to actions. They just dip
their toe in the water, when you can just add an AOV close and you can get them
to buy as much possible on the front end. I found that AOV was actually before
they buy and then after they buy, that's a full AOV stack. And that was huge
difference before they buy is the AOV real booster. So money close, I found that
the Resurge close is the best for supplements, super solid close that they have. I
tested money, I tested Resurge, I tested a lot of stuff.
Todd Brown :
So you're talking about the angle of the copy that you're taking?
Peter:
So when you go for the close in your VSL, it's just about inspiring them to buy the
most amount possible right away. Really going for that three to six month
package, really going for that year long package if you're Mindvalley. And it
makes all the difference. For sure, before and after. Pay attention to both.
David:
So where does this term research close come from?
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Peter:
Oh, so Resurge was one of the biggest diet offers on ClickBank in 2020 or
something. Resurge.
David:
Oh, Resurge.
Peter:
It was a huge ClickBank VSL. All the ClickBank VSLs follow this format now, but
we tested the close that they did versus the money close. And that was a big
difference in AOV boosting. It's very casual, telling them to push for the three to
six month, "Works best when you try it for a long time." So you really likeTodd Brown :
They were the first to do, right, the full page VSL?
Peter:
Yeah, full size.
Todd Brown :
The whole thing was VSL?
Peter:
Yeah. Brad Howard, I was talking to him, I said, "Brad, what's more likely to do
$10 million a month or whatever?" Because he pushed those numbers. I was
like, "Is it four VSLs? Four different offers or is it one banger?" He is like, "It's one
fucking banger. If you're doing a thousand sales a day, you're one split test away
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from 4,000 sales a day." So the one banger is always just going for fucking
serious home run territory will dominate everything.
Todd Brown :
How about, do any of you use a different dimension video on mobile compared to
desktop? Are we changing dimension of the video at all?
Donnie French:
Yeah.
Todd Brown :
Yeah, you guys are?
Donnie French:
Yeah.
Todd Brown :
Do you find that is...?
Donnie French:
It's not. It doesn't make a... It's tested extensively and it was a lot of work to make
it vertical for mobile and we didn't get... we got a lift, but based on our CRO guys
calculation, it's not a significant lift.
Peter:
Not worth it. Yeah, same thing.
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Todd Brown :
Okay.
Donnie French:
Not the same with ads. Obviously your ads, you need to make themPeter:
Four by five for Facebook.
Donnie French:
... make them match the platform.
Todd Brown :
Okay. Anybody else have any final comment or any insights or anything that you
want to share in terms of formatting, front end offer, upsells?
Justin:
I don't know if anyone's had this experience, but a client just shared this with me,
so I don't really have a lot of data or anything like that, of just using a Zoom
landing page for webinars and having a significant bump for that.
Todd Brown :
That's similar to what, when people used to use the GoTo webinar style. So make
it look like it's a Zoom registration or it legitimately use a Zoom?
Justin:
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He uses Zoom, yeah.
Todd Brown :
Got it.
Dan Ferrari:
Close to what I was going to say, which is my rule of thumb, is when in doubt,
what's the thing that they're most familiar with? What's the most native
experience they have? And that's a perfect example of that. Some of the direct
mail stuff that I've involved in, mainly we just send them blank envelopes, no
headline. And then the letter itself has no headline either. And it just goes, "Dear
Bob, I'd like to you tell story." It's completely [inaudible 00:29:40].
Todd Brown :
Yeah, it's legit until they're midway through and they're like, "Son of a... Got me".
Dan Ferrari:
Another thing on the AOV, so Austin Maryi does this, I can't take credit for it, but
they found that everything has a reaction. The highest AOV customers were the
highest refunders, and so they just started doing outbound calls. Anybody who hit
a certain threshold that their statistician found, $200 bucks whatever, they called
those people and cut their refunds in half. They weren't even doing anything
other than congratulating them.
Todd Brown :
So it was just a customer service call [inaudible 00:30:14].
Dan Ferrari:
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Just, "Hi, we're really excited to have you."
Todd Brown :
Interesting. Go ahead, Joe.
Sean Macintyre:
Stupid thing. I'm still testing, just trying to figure it out. I had a number of just
small, just a pocket of digital products I just didn't have copy for. And so what I
did was, and this is so dumb, and I still need to test this and figure it out more,
but what I did was rather than do a sales email, which all the numbers on that
were terrible. I took the product description from the actual page, put it onto a
Google doc, wrote the email as of just a standard lift, very teasy, very intriguebased, lift onto Google Doc, product description, lots of social proof, I embedded
gifs in there, stuff that Tarzan Kay is doing right now, linked to the very same
product page, with the same product description, 30% boost on the last two
campaigns I've tried with this.
Todd Brown :
Have any of you used Google Docs for the delivery of a sales message? I think
we need to talk about that. And did you see a difference?
Kevin Rogers:
I didn't compare, but compared to previous events, it's a different circumstance.
But with this one in particular, it's true the event just happened and so I was
adding people to the page all the time, and I needed that flexibility. And so I
would tell people, "The page is updated, H.F. Walker is on there now."
Todd Brown :
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Okay. And so you guys... Go ahead.
John Mcgee:
Joel Erway was saying something interesting at lunch. I don't think he's in the
room, but he's saying that he takes his copy from the Google doc, runs it through
ChatGPT and says, "Highlight, bold, underline, italicize the copy where
appropriate, paste it right back into the document." You've seen his stuff, the
formatting is killer.
Todd Brown :
Who else? The folks that have used Google Doc to deliver their marketing and
sales message, did it produce a significant increase?
Donnie French:
We do it for our high ticket golf camps. It's all Google Doc.
Todd Brown :
That's the sole way to deliver the message or primary way?
Donnie French:
Email to Google Doc.
Todd Brown :
Only? There's no regular Webpage to go?
Donnie French:
No.
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Todd Brown :
Is there a reason for that?
Donnie French:
Because the positioning of the golf camps is that, and it's actually real
positioning, is that they fill up really fast. We don't have a lot of them. These
coaches can only take 10 students at each camp. And so we're literally getting a
coach who's... Like right today outside I got a big coach who wants to do a camp
and he wants to do the camp February 3rd and 4th. We're filling 1,015 golf camp,
golf school spots. So with only two sales reps doing it, they don't have a ton of
spots to do it. So they just throw it in a Google Doc, email it out.
Donnie French:
By the time you make the webpage we're sold out.
John Mcgee:
If you've got to limit and you see there's 30 anonymous whatevers, you're going
to [inaudible 00:33:16].
Rich Schefren:
That's right. There's a time-based thing, you would expect a webpage. If it's long
term you expect a Google Doc. If it's more short term, you're just doing this
quickly, and if you mail them, it sends out the email. Because when there's a
Google Doc, it's actually gives you a little bit more in the Gmail. It actually shows
the doc attached.
Todd Brown :
There's even this feeling of that the person behind this is that confident that this
thing is going to sell out because they just threw it up into a Google Doc.
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Sam Woods:
Google Doc with comments on the paper, that also works really well.
Tony Flores:
Leaving the comments on you mean or just leaving your comments?
Sam Woods:
Leave them on, so if you look at your Google Doc there are comments going on.
Donnie French:
Really good idea.
Tony Flores:
Google Doc with the comments.
Sam Woods:
From the guru commenting, "No, I'm actually going to have them out there for
four hours on the course." Holy shit, that's a great idea. Oh my gosh.
Todd Brown:
We really make our customers an extra million. Please don't send us an
[inaudible 00:34:48].
Donnie French:
It's like a piece of paper on a Google Doc, comments on a piece of paper and it's
like a director's commentary.
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Tony:
And you make the next comment, "Please make sure the comments are turned
off before we get this signed.
Sam Woods:
Exactly.
Donnie French:
You can leave comments up and then make the doc only... Because you PDF it,
you don't see the comments.
Sam Woods:
If it's view you scan.
Donnie French:
We literally leave it in Google Doc format and we just make it so that they can't
edit or comment. But if you leave it in comment only, they could technically
comment themselves.
Sam Woods:
It's dangerous, but if you have it then print it, then they can't comment on the
page.
Donnie French:
There's got to be a hack for the Google Doc, to leave the comments and then
make-
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Sam Woods:
You can make an HTML version of Google Docs. It looks like Google Docs with
all the comments in and they just can't comment. That's the development clone
on Google Docs
Kevin:
Have you seen whether there's a mobile format?
Sam Woods:
Mobile formatting is bad.
Donnie French :
Yeah, Google mobile format with Google you actually have to click on the
comment and it pops up at the bottom. But even that, if the word is highlighted,
they're like, "Why is this highlighted?"
Sean:
I was just going to say that, I tested that Google Docs idea after I spoke to you
over Zoom and I was just shocked that it worked. It just massively reduced
production time. It massively increased deliverability and it massively increased
conversions over just a stupid, stupid format change.
Justin
Format's huge.
Sean:
But that one in particular was stupid.
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Justin Goff:
In my opinion, I think it works really great for the backend part. I think for that
type of stuff, especially when you're talking to a higher level audience.
Sean:
Why? Is there a reason why you think that it works for those kind?
Justin:
It's obviously different. It feels more personal. Other than that, I don't really know,
butDan Ferrari:
I think it's the authenticity of it.
David:
Because I don't have time to do a fancy-schmancyDan:
For our thing we had a 70 person hot list that was basically close contacts of
ours. And so it made more sense for this that we put this together for view to a
small group of people. We didn't have to pull outKevin:
It'd be suspect if you had hired a designer.
Todd Brown:
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All right, let's transition into a big area which is Offer Creation and Offer
Engineering. And I would love to hear from you, I think that Alex Hormozi really
got people thinking on a different level about offers. I think certainly, he's
impacted the type of offers that some people strive to create now, really making
them the performance-based, demonstrating ease and speed and all of that. And
so I would love to hear from you guys and gals what you're doing in terms of offer
engineering. Let's kick it off with Justin.
Speaker 14:
Yeah, so I asked Todd if we can talk about this. So for me, at least in the last
year, probably the biggest thing that's changed for me is that my focus has really
been on these offers, not as much smaller stuff like headlines or leads, literally
just, "Is the offer hitting that sweet spot of my list." And this really came about
because I've been promoting a bunch of workshops to my list where I'll do... I
think I've done four or five this year, I sell them for a 197 bucks. I don't do a sales
letter. I literally just send them straight to a checkout page. And so I realized
really quickly when you have no sales letter and all you got to pitch is what you're
pitching in the email, the offer matters so much more because there's nothing to
really convince them.
Justin:
And I've seen basically anywhere from a lower-end promo does 30 grand, where
a high-end promo does 90 grand. every other variable was the same. The emails
were all written by me. The checkout page is the exact same. The only thing
that's different is, "Is this offer more appealing than this offer?" This is obviously
something we all know, the offer's the most important part. For me at least, it's
just really driven home since last year, just seeing it over and over and over
again, how important the offer is. And it spoke to what you guys were talking
about with the mechanism of creating it beforehand. And then I definitely look at
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the offers a lot more like that now where it's like, all of that comes about from the
mechanism and then how am I going to promote it with some of the testing I
spoke about, with the surveys and stuff like that. I'd love to hear what you guys
are doing in terms terms of the offers. It's been just a big, big mind shift for me, I
put way more time in that.
John:
One comment on, when you said no sales page, you said your emails are very
sales savvy.
Justin:
Yeah.
John:
So you're doing a lot of selling and you're selling to a warm audience, you're not
selling to cool traffic.
Justin:
Correct.
Kevin:
Question, Justin, your offers are all pretty much just the workshop, right? You're
not going to big bonuses andJustin:
Yeah, it's very simple. Just the Zoom call about that workshop.
Kevin:
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So when you say you're thinking a lot about the offers, essentially the same
deliverable each time, you're just thinking about positioning?
Todd Brown:
I would say, if I'm not mistaken, that what Justin's saying is that he's spending a
lot of time thinking about offers because they're really important. His offers
happen to be very simple, straightforward based on where he's at right now.
Justin:
When I did a course on list building that hit all three and that was the best one
I've ever done. I did another one on how to run these kinds of things that I did,
that one only did 30 grand. So it did a third of the list building ones because that
wasn't anywhere near as appealing to the copywriters because you have to have
the list to do it.
Speaker 10:
So getting really clear on how do I hit all three segments of my list with each offer
I'm putting out, that's just been a big thought process for me and really studying
the data of like, "Okay, I promoted this list building offer, that worked really well.
How can I do another list building offer with a new mechanism on it?" I promoted
Stefan's copy system and that did really, really well. How can I find another copy
system from someone who's got... I've been trying to get Dan to do a course,
because I'm like, "All right, Stefan's crushed my list. I guarantee if Dan did his
course, I could promote that and that would crush." So really studying the data on
the exact topics that are working and just keep hammering home on those.
Todd Brown:
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But you're really talking about, and again, correct me if I'm mistaken, but just for
clarity purposes, you're really talking about the hook for the event. You're looking
for the hook that'll appeal to the most amount of people on your list. The offer is
the offer, is the offer. It's 197 for the Zoom, they get the recording and they get
handouts and all that. So in this case for Justin, the offer is the offer, is the offer.
You're just looking for the different themes that are going to resonate with the
most amount of people on your list?
Justin:
Yeah. I'm thinking of it more in terms of what's most highly appealing offer, that's
what connects with the most people.
David:
The offer is the hook in a way.
Dan Ferrari:
It's product development, really.
Kevin:
Then I was just wondering, because I know you just did the pocket change offers
for the second time, you didn't do as well, which could have been fatigue or
whatever, but have you thought about rerunning an offer with the sales page, just
to see?
Justin:
Yeah. So I'm going to do that next year. For me though, in terms of just the offer
creation, I've just seen it with everything, it's like we were talking outside about
professional athletes where if I sit there and do all the same workouts and shoot
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all my free throws, I'm never going to make it to the NBA because I don't have
the genetics to make it to the NBA. Whereas LeBron James has the genetics, we
do all the same workouts, his ceiling is here, my ceiling is here. And I feel like it's
the same way with the offer. It's like we do all this stuff with the copy, the ads,
everything, but it's like if the offer doesn't have that ceiling to get there, it's never
going to scale.
Todd Brown:
Go ahead, Peter.
Peter Kell:
I go back to my original idea of all you can ever do is make it to the top of the
slide tools. So at the end of the day I'm like, "Tech is certain keywords in the slide
tools." And what's the biggest campaign in the world right now? Oh, if there's
something like Biz Opp offers type of income, just studying these specific, why is
this as interesting? They're not affiliate marketing, not this. What is it? Oh, it's a
Biz Opp offer that allows someone who's a beginner, who doesn't have any
experience, doesn't want to part with any money. Those are the ones that's
making to the top.
So when I'm looking at offers, I'm not trying to make an offer. I'm trying to get to
the top of the fucking Ad Spy tool because that's where all the money is. That's
where all that was going. Just what offer are they presenting? And that's the
proven promise they're looking for it. They're just looking for something, in that
case, that can enable them to get out of the job they hate and get into a job they
like and not have to have any money or any experience to execute on that.
Speaker 8:
Todd Brown:
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Got it. But to be clear in this context, what you're really also talking about, is
what's that hook? What's the angle? What's the promise? What's the problem
that I'm solving? You're not talking about price point. You're not talking about, is
this a hard offer, a soft offer? Guarantee. Bonuses. You're not talking about any
of that. You're talking about the hook. What's the hook that's going to get the
attention?
Peter:
No. So that is an offer. So what offer are they selling? What offer did they deliver
to the market that they're buying so much? Do they have bonuses? How do they
build it out? How is that priced? They filled this certain gap and my offer should
solve the mechanism at the end of the day.
Todd Brown:
Again, you're looking to the people that are winning right now. And have you seen
a change in the offer in the way the offers were constructed, specifically price,
terms, guarantees, bonuses? Have you seen any change in those things? Forget
the hooks, the angles, the themes, the appeals, just in terms of price, in terms of
bonuses, in terms of guarantees. Have you seen any change there?
Peter:
I have seen that a lot of the top guys are still doing webinars in that specific
space. Anything over seems to be $1000, webinar style, seems to be the price.
That's in terms of offer creation, that's where you're going to go.
Kim Schwalm:
I want to bring up more of a problem rather than saying I have it all figured out.
But one thing I've seen with my own list, with my own products, but also just over
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time with clients, one I've been working with recently, very, very big company, is
it's very easy to craft a really appealing offer to get that first time buyer in the
door. You're discounting or maybe you've got a really low autoship offer to get
them in, but getting them to become a buyer at the regular price... So I've seen
big companies, they're pretty successful companies, but literally, everybody
becomes addicted to constantly buying at a discount. And so I think that is a
challenge as marketers. And do you always discount? Is anybody having
success selling at more of the full price and getting people to purchase at a full
price or are we just constantly doomed or destined to just have to keep offering
discounts and more appealing discounts to get people to buy again? And I'd love
to hear any perspectives on that.
Justin Goff:
I've seen that with people... So how you get them on the list is how they're going
to behave once they're on the list. The discount buyers never stop being discount
buyers. You send them regular VSLs with regular prices they don't buy. Same
thing, Paleo Hacks with David Sinick's list is all free plus shipping buyers. Free
plus shipping crushes to those people, higher price stuff is a little harder. There's
not as much AOB in it. I mean, they still do great. But definitely with discount
people you literally attract discount. That's who they are. So if you're not putting
discount offers in front of them on the backend, they're not going to buy.
Kim Schwalm:
Right. I mean, there's ways to create high-priced offers, for example, my very,
very best customers have been people who came in on a high-priced, $1000
bundle. And then they will just buy again and again and again. And then I look at
people who have some pretty premium supplements, but yet they're just
constantly discounting, and then on the backend too.
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This is years ago, when I was running the Healthy Directions business, we didn't
have to discount that much, we'd bring people in and then we would get the
reorders mostly at the regular price because it's like, give them the incentive to
try it, guarantee, remove all the risk, et cetera. And then they're happy with the
product. They are happy to pay the regular price. I'm on subscriptions for various
supplements and other products and I'm happy to pay the full price once I've
proved that, "Hey, this is a great product." So I'm just curious, how do companies
or businesses overcome that challenge or hurdle to convert people into being a
full price buyer?
Justin:
I think it's a mistake from the start to discount it on the front end. You don't need
to discount it to get people in. There's all kinds of VSLs and sales pages running
on full price offers. I mean, you can definitely do a lower price, like 39 bucks or
27 bucks or whatever it is. I would not be doing... Like I said, the discount it just
is, especially in supplement space, I've seen it with people who do that on the list
where it's like, "Oh, buy one, get three free." That's exactly who that buyer is for
the rest of the time.
Todd Brown:
Now, maybe positioning for us, we're not obviously in the supplement space. First
of all, I can't recall ever running a front end offer that was a discounted offer. We
will run high-value offers that are lower priced. So we might run a bundle of
products at a lower price, but we don't present it as a discount. So it's a bundle of
stuff at this price.
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Kim Schwalm:
So you wouldn't say this is 2000, $2,500 worth of product?
Todd Brown:
Well, I wouldn't say this is a 50% on the front end. I can't recall, and don't hold
me to that, but you're getting a 50% discount off of the retail price. We just don't
present it that way.
David:
Justin, do you think that you're turning a regular customer into a discount
customer by offering a discount? Or do you think you're attracting customers who
wouldn't have bought at full price?
Justin Goff:
I think you're attracting discount customers when you offer a discount.
David:
And do you not want them? I'll just play devil's advocate. Why would you not
want them if you makeJustin:
You might want them, I don't want them.
David:
You're not making money from them, you're saying.
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Justin:
Because that's what they're going to buy the rest of the time. I've seen there's
people in the supplement space who have those discount offers, the buy one get
three free, that's all those people buying on the backend. It just really limits what
you can sell them on the backend.
Rob:
But you're not saying... Just to be clear, just making sure our terminology is
correct, you're not saying you don't have some sort of, either a scarcity play or
some sort of a price deduction on an offer page. Are you're just saying this is the
price and this is it? When you say you don't want a discount buyer, meaning in
other words, if you do a total retail price of X and we're going to sell it for Y, is that
a discount buyer?
Justin:
No, no. I think more of what he's talking about is where it's... Supplement space I
feel like is the best thing where it's likeRob:
Just making sure we're on the same page.
David:
Yeah, I'm just saying, if you're not losing money on them, why would you not
want them?
Justin:
In terms of, if you're running a normal offer as well and that offer, then yes. Me
personally, I'd rather just run one offer.
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Rich:
You wouldn't want to go negative than those buyers.
David:
No, of course not. But if you wouldn't have gotten them anyway, it's great.
Rob:
I mean, it's hard enough to get one off the scale.
David:
It's just bandwidth.
Justin:
Yeah, for management, it would just be a bandwidth thing.
Tony:
Does this apply to pay shipping, free book situations and things like that too?
Justin:
Yeah, those buyers, they definitely... I mean, free plus shipping buyer is going to
be worse than a $9 buyer. I've just seen that with the data on the backend.
Anything with free definitely attracts freebie seekers, freebie buyers. If you're
going to keep promoting free stuff on the backend it works. They will buy higher
stuff as well. But when you look at the data, someone like Paleo Hacks, their list
is like 1.1 million people, all free plus shipping buyers. But they make around 5
million a year off that email list. If I had a one million person email list, I'd be
making way more than 5 million a year off of it. So it's pretty low customer value.
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But on the flip side, those offers are a lot easier to run. You don't need a plus
Gary Pennsylvania level copy to make them work.
Todd:
It's interesting looking around the room and looking at how many of you operate
in spaces outside of, let's say the coaching course creator space. The reason
why I was really curious to hear about what's changed with you in terms of offers,
is because as I said in the coaching business development space, marketing
space, we have really seen an impact from Hormozi. And so when you're selling
a course, or were selling a course or a program for $2,000 on how to get clients
into your business, let's say, and multiple people come along and roll out an offer
that is like, "I'll get you 10 clients or you pay nothing." Well, now that offer of the
$2,000 course to get clients that used to work now is dead in the water. And the
offer has to evolve as offers in the marketplace have evolved. And so it's just
interesting for us to see that in the space.
We have certainly seen in our space as a whole the impact on high price courses
due to people coming along and creating these offers. And remember, look, if
you're selling a course or a coaching program, you're competing with people that
are offering a service to get prospect clients. Because at the end of the day,
people buy a course or a coaching program, they want more clients. They would
go to a service to get more clients. So your coaches, people that are selling
coaching courses, they're competing with people that are willing to go out and get
you the clients. And when somebody comes along and says, "I'll get you 12
clients where you pay nothing." Well, now you selling or marketing a $2,000
course on how to do the same is not really an exciting proposition.
Rich:
Because you have to do the work with the course too.
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Todd Brown:
Hence the offer needs to evolve and change or you're going to beJustin:
So you guys have noticed a big impact?
Todd Brown:
Well, certainly a tremendous number of our clients and students are in that
space. And what I have seen with them coming to me, and this is the brutal
reality of it, is that they're clinging to what worked a year ago, not realizing that
the market has evolved and changed. Just because something worked a year
ago or just because something built the foundation of the business, that's not an
argument for why they should continue using it today. And what was once a great
offer in the marketplace... What's a great offer is ultimately determined by the
marketplace. What's available to the marketplace, what's not available to the
marketplace. What was once a great offer is now in the landscape a terrible offer.
And so the answer is yes. Absolutely. And we're seeing a lot of people that are
resisting that. So yeah, Hormozi certainly had an impact on in that arena.
Peter:
One of the coolest things I saw at Mindvalley was they had just switched from
having 50 different courses to sell to one subscription. And that is a very painful
thing to do because then you have nothing else to sell once you get someone on
a subscription. So we came in and started doing the VSLs and started split
testing to get people to buy the yearly subscription. And we started pulling some
pretty sweet numbers on that whole thing, and then all of a sudden 12 months
went by. And all of a sudden the yearly people who are buying the yearly, all of a
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sudden 60% of those people are just rebuilt. And they're just prigged in all of a
sudden, just going from a ton of courses to one subscription.
I mean, I was told with my AI stuff, "Pete, if you sell courses, your valuations is a
course company. If you sell AI, your valuations is AI. So give away for free and
just put it on the course." So I'm in that transition role I have as an AI to sell them,
versus all the courses are free. But I mean, in terms of value for the company,
that's the highest value thing and those yearly rebuilds aren't the same.
Donnie:
Like I asked you on our first call, my question to that, for us is the amount of
customers that we would get at the, whatever, say 299 a year or 399 a year
versus the $47 front end with a forced continuity with the opportunity to sell them.
We would get a significantly less number of customers in the door. And again, we
would've to see the data. My question is, what does the business revenue look
like if you're getting less customers, even if the AOB is higher, that's their LTV
because they're not buying anything else. For 12 months they're not getting billed
for anything else.
Peter:
Basically.
Donnie:
Basically. If we made that number, let's say higher than our current LTV, how
does that balance out from bringing in customers at the $47?
Todd Brown:
That's the whole... Because you have to be careful that, look, if you... And I've
seen this mistake made multiple times, that if you optimize for lifetime value, but
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now you get one fifth the number of customers, you could have just shot yourself
in the foot because now your company makes less money.
Donnie:
Like I said, I'm making the golf version of mind value VSL right now that we're
about to launch. And I created a version where we want to optimize for lifetime
value and sell the annual membership up front. And my whole team's like,
"There's no chance. The numbers don't make sense. It's just not going to..." Just
running mock data on how it would have to convert. It would've to convert way
better than any other VSL in historyDan:
To beat that.
Todd Brown:
Then there you go. That to me, I would tell you, "There you go." I mean, at the
end of the day you want to be careful you're not... Look, for me, at least for what
it's worth, and if somebody disagrees, chime in. Lifetime value is a tool that you
use to grow your, call it your bottom line, if you will. You're not optimizing for LTV,
you're optimizing ultimately for bottom line. You're using LTV to do that.
David:
Well, LTV times the number of customers.
Todd Brown:
That's what I'm saying. That's why you can optimize for LTV and shoot yourself in
the foot at the same time if you're not acquiring the same volume of customers. If
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you optimize for LTV and you end up with one fifth of customers, who cares?
You'd be better off with the lower LTV and the greater the customers because
what you care about is the overall impact of the business, not just the one metric
of LTV.
David:
And it's easier to do what the streaming people did instead of people going to
movies and TV shows. It's one price.
Rich:
Anyone have experience with the difference between monthly billing and annual
billing? Have they seen a difference?
Peter:
I mean, I have two SaaS companies, so yeah.
Speaker 18:
No, I think we're talking about selling individual.
Speaker 12:
I'm just asking, does anyone haveRich
As far as retention goes?
Sam Woods:
I thought that was a business decision based on the VC.
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Peter:
No, I don't know why they prefer yearly. I mean, I was just like, "We could just
stack monthly and the rebuilds." But the yearly thing just turned out to be a little
better. I don't know if it's because they just had more time to engage with the
Mindvalley community and really become cult.
Rob:
So Jonathan, one of my advisors in Vincent and he, he's like, don't go yearly,
man. Just absolutely go yearly on the software. No, no, we're talking software.
Sam Woods:
Would you say that go yearly or go don't go yearly?
Rob:
Go yearly.
Rob:
At Kajabi they were completely focused on get a thousand people, $1000 dollars
a year. Let's get the baseline metrics and then we can grow from there. Right?
But they were interested in that $1000 a year price point for people more than
anything else, and more so than monthly. Not the 97 a month, but the 997 a year,
which is odd considering you do a year. How many people fall off the map in a
year, credit cards change, all this other stuff. But it depends on what you're
wanting to do. If you're wanting to get income, it's one thing. If you're wanting to
get valuated to get sold, it's a whole different value. You have a much higher
valuation if you're getting...
Perry:
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I've been playing both of those games for a long time. We have a membership
called the Renaissance Club, and for years the offer was $99 a month or 999 a
year. And so just as stated, the monthly people had a retention of about five to six
months. The yearly people would renew at the rate of 60%. 60% of the people
would renew the following year, which makes them almost three times as
valuable, and they would also make better customers. They would buy more
stuff.
What we've always done is we incentivize people to renew by... So, you can buy
one course that we've created this year as a bonus for renewing, and my
salespeople will reach out to them and say, "Hey, your renewing is coming up in
November 1st. And if you renew, you can take your pick of some stuff. And
seeing what you bought this year, you saved $500 on this thing. You saved a
thousand dollars on this thing because you're a member."
And as often as possible, when we sell a $2,000 course, we'll say, "Well, it's
$2,000, but it's $1,500 if you're new Renaissance member." So, we'll pay an
extra 500 bucks. Pay 2,500 and you'll get a year of membership and you'll get
discounts on all of this. And we recently raised the 99 to 199 because we're even
less interested in the monthly people. They're just... They're not as committed
and they're not as good.
Rich:
They're not on a year commitment instead of monthly?
Perry:
Right You can sign up monthly, but it's 199 a month.
Peter:
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But it's not so equal to the yearly.
Peter:
Mind Valley does something very similar. It's $99 a month or for 399 for the year.
So, it's like basically buy three, get seven free months or whatever. So, similar
thing.
Todd Brown:
So, for Kevin, you wanted to ask... Kevin was really talking about an annual
payment plan. So, in other words, they're buying the year, but they're just paying
it off monthly. So, it's not like they can't cancel anytime they want. They're paying
it monthly for the year.
Peter:
I've never tried that.
Peter:
I wouldn't try it.
Kevin:
We have a 95% retention rate in our membership.
David:
95?
Peter:
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You say you absolutely have to pay 12 months and then DocuSign and you get
95%.
Kevin:
Oh no, we don't DocuSign. When it really saved us was during COVID, when
people were panicking, we had very low cancellation. Look. We're a small
company. If somebody comes to us and they're in great heartache, it's fine, we'll
cancel them. But then, what we find is, I don't know the exact numbers, but the
people who pay on the monthly plan are much more apt to keep going. We just
had one of our biggest cancellation events from our annual sale. So, we did 888
a year ago and they just came to renew. And there's two factors. One is it's 800
bucks you weren't expecting on the rebuild. Right? If they're not engaged, that's
always the biggest problem in the community is keeping them engaged.
I could go into the whole thing about communities and the value, but we had an
affiliate as well who sold a lot of them. And 58% of the cancellations were from
the affiliate. And only 13% were from us, on an 888. But maybe there's
something to the fact that they bought on a sale, because it's normally 1490 for
the year. So, it's not our normal buyer. Right? So, we're learning to factor those
things in when we do yearly anniversaries. What I always did before that, it's
worth noting, is I would always just bump the price. Every big join event I would
have was the price is going up by $200 annually. Get in while you can. And I kind
of wish I had never abandoned that becauseKyle:
You wish you wouldn't have done that?
Kevin:
I wish. I wouldn't wish I would've stopped doing that.
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Kyle:
Okay. That's what I'm about to do.
Kevin:
Because now, I'm doing a discount big anniversary event and we're seeing now
the cancellations are way bigger.
Kyle:
What's your guarantee or your policy on that?
Kevin:
30 days.
Donnie:
So, if you're paying monthly for the whole year and you want to cancel on the
eighth, ninth month, you just get 30 days back? You don't get the rest of it back?
Kevin:
You don't get anything back.
Donnie:
No. You have 30 days to cancel.
Kevin:
You get to stop paying.
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Donnie:
30 days to cancel. That's it. Okay. Got it.
Kevin:
Yeah. 30 days to cancel.
Donnie:
Got it.
Kevin:
Yeah. 30 day trial basically, no risk trial. They still pay upfront. And then... But...
Yeah. But the reRich:
I just wonder, did they test those numbers like 97 a month? 399?
Peter:
Yeah. There are, like, 15 fucking price tests. Yeah, it's what I was telling you.
Yeah, I went to the moon on that. I was like, "Yeah, let's test it all. I got a VSL, I
got endless traffic going to an offer page, fucking test every price that you could
possibly think of." I was selling mine out for $2,000 for a year.
Donnie:
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And remember, in that VSL, again, I haven't seen the drop-off, but when they
get... they don't... The price is not revealed in the in feed VSL. It's very soft, scroll
below, get all the details. And then, the next page they see is basically... It's like,
"Hey, you get that course I just... I sold you on? But really, what I want you to see
is this entire..."
Rich:
So, what number of people, percent, ballpark, take the $97 offer versus the 399?
Peter:
I thought it was 75% take the yearly, which is what you want. That's the highest
AOV you could have, essentially, on that.
Rich:
And do you market aggressively after they buy the 97, apply the 97 to the 399?
And do you catch a lot of those people or no?
Peter:
I think they're dead to me now.
Rich:
They ruined your metrics. Fuck them.
Peter:
Right. And I got an upsell page if they don't.
Todd Brown:
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We bundle those with Justin's discounted folks. Send them over to David. Q
Justin:
I'm curious. So, we were talking a little bit about front end offers. Todd, one of
your offers you had on... I think it's on email opening lines, I remember seeing it
on Facebook, caught my attention. I'd be really curious to hear from you guys on
how you come up with the front end offer that's going to put people on, because
that determined so much of what they're going to buy on the backend, what type
of buyer it is. I really loved that offer, because I remember when I looked at it, I
was like, "The only person that's going to buy this is an offer owner or someone
who's in there writing emails every single day, a high level email marketer.
There's not going to be any newbies buying this thing."
So, I'd be curious how you guys kind of think of that in terms of bringing in the
right type of person. Because that, compared to an offer of I know how to make
two K a month as a copywriter, is going to bring in very, very different people.
Todd Brown:
Yeah. I think the truth is that we're not very good at that, really. It might seem like
we are, but I don't think that... I think we went from... We had a lead magnet or
whatever. We don't run a whole lot of lead magnets. That was one of the lead
magnets that we ran. It was email opening sentences. We gave that away. And
then, we brought them to 21 email persuasion triggers or something like that,
which was a program that I recorded years ago. And I don't remember what the
conversion-
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Yeah. That didn't perform that well for us. And I think that we've talked about
how... Let me back up. It's a great question because I think that what a lot of
marketers and copywriters do is they think in isolation. They'll think about what
lead magnet can I offer to the marketplace that would drive people wild and get a
ton of opt-ins and leads, without really thinking of the strategy and congruence of
what's about to happen next. And really, the right way to really do it is not even to
think about what do I need to have next, but it's really to start with that thing.
And ultimately then, this is the thing that I want to sell. Therefore, what would be
a lead magnet that is perfectly congruent with this gets the right hand to raise
that would also perform really well out in the wild. We've been very, over the
years... We don't do any lead magnets anymore, I don't believe, but we've been
really haphazard with that. So, the question really... If anybody wants to... The
question isDonnie:
It's not admirable for your business, but I mean I have an answer for the golf and
I don't know if you canJustin:
I would love to hear what you guys are doing.
Donnie:
Yeah. So, for us... And we were clueless about... We didn't think about the impact
of the type of person we were bringing in from physical products versus digital at
all. We were just sell everything we can sell in front and get as many customers
as possible. But what we found over this year of selling physical now for the first
time is that it's bringing completely different type of buyers. And the people who
are coming in on our physical products are not buying our digital products when
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they're on our list at all. They don't buy anything else. So, it's a very different type
of buyer. And we've had to restructure our offer cycler and what happens on the
backend for the different types of buyers.
So, if they come in on physical, they need to stay in physical for a period of time
until we can ascend them into a digital path. And we're still working on that. So,
that's the first piece. The other piece, which kind of goes back to the beginning, is
about the offers. To me, offers are... I obviously read Hermozi's book. And we
stack our offers big time. We have the course you're getting, and then I'm solving
another problem with another free course you're getting, and then another course
you're getting. And then, you're getting our course continuity scratch club
membership trial that you're getting. Plus, you're getting into a drawing for an inperson experience. We'd stack it heavy.
And one thing we found recently is that, instead of... And this is where I was
confused about the whole discount conversation, but I think, John, you guys
answered. It's like we have the total value, total price, and then the price you pay
today. We have stopped... In the VSL, we don't talk about the value of the
bonuses at all anymore. So, we just tell them what the bonus is, the problem it
solves. Right? So, it's like... Yeah. So, DeBolt. So, I think he was one who said
this to me is, if you have a weight loss offer and the guy's going to lose it's going
to lose a ton of weight, what's the very next thing that's going to happen? Well,
none of his clothes are going to finish. So, his first bonus was like how to
Rich:
That's that's me from 12 years ago.
Donnie:
That's you 12 years ago.
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Rich:
I'm hearing a lot of bullshit in the room right now.
Donnie:
Ask Herb. Thank you.
Rich:
That's one of my favorites.
Donnie:
I also used to credit the VSL to 10 other people.
Rich:
Yeah, please don't do that.
Donnie:
I fixed that. I had to fix that.
Donnie:
But the point is that really helped us with our offers, is whatever course we're
giving them, make sure that these next bonuses are very much solving other
problems. We don't have to sell them on how valuable they are. And on our offer
boxes, on our pages, we're not even putting "This is worth 297 free." We've
completely eliminated that. So, it's just like you see a picture of the whole offer.
You see another picture of the bonus with the copy, picture and copy, picture and
copy, and then one line that says the total what you're paying.
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And the only thing that wasn't the same, the way you were saying, is we actually
do put underneath it, and we tested this... We tested having you save the amount
today. We put the amount there versus the percentage that they save today. And
percentage wins every time versus not having anything at all.
And then, the last interesting piece for anybody selling anything physical is like,
with clubs, golf clubs, nobody gives bonuses with clubs. You buy a club or you
buy a training and that's what you get. So, we found that stacking our physical
products with digital behind it, which is... and everybody in the room does that,
really worked well. We're getting better conversion rates. But then, nobody's
logging into the digitals on the list. So, the thing we're trying to crack right now is,
how do we sell physical product, give them digital and then actually get them to
use the digital because the digital will help them have better results with the
physical.
Rich:
Have you tried getting them to opt in?
Donnie:
Getting them to opt in?
Rich:
Yeah. One time Michael Cage and I were at a boardroom and they had this big
list of health buyers, but they didn't have them by any problem, any issue,
anything like that. And just by sending out offers for diabetes, for this, for that... It
totally renews the relationship when someone opts in. So, if you get them to opt
in for information, it might... Right? So, if you have special reports that then would
lead into those products, getting them to opt in starts them trying to consume
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information, as opposed to trying to sell them information first, trying to get some
special report or something that sounds really sexy that would make them want
to open it.
Todd:
Are you talking about, so somebody buys a club and you're giving them access
to a digital product and they're never logging in for the digital product. So, when
you send out the club, let's say, do you have a sticker on the box or something
that's...
Donnie:
QR code. I've got a pamphlet in there. I've got a thing that's wrapped around the
grip. I've got a text message sequence that goes out. I've got a personal video
from the guru that says, "Go log in."
Todd Brown:
Maybe we need to find something else besides the digital. It sounds like you've
really done...
Donnie:
I've done everything to get them there.
Justin:
That, to me, it's like that it's probably... That's not their thing. Their thing is buying
the physical thing that does it for them.
So, they're a club buyer or they're a whatever the thing you put on your arm is to
make it stay straight.
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Speaker 24:
Trainer?
Justin:
Yeah. They're a training kind of buyer instead of a digital buyer, which is like, you
see that in health where it's like the info product buyer who bought the ebook on
the recipes is very different than the supplement buyer. The supplement buyer
wants just the supplements to fix the problem.
Donnie:
They don't want any information.
Rob:
They're different.
Ben:
Donnie, have you tried asking just as an order bump that you give them the...
Granted it's free, right? It's a bonus for getting the product, but just ask them, it's
like, "Hey, would you rather us mail this to you? Just cover our shipping costs of
$4.95."
Speaker 31:
Ben, you're the third person to suggest it. So now, I got to do that. [inaudible
01:17:10].
Kevin:
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What about the scarcity of it, or urgency, like the value of a ticket? You know how
when you give somebody an actual ticket to a webinar or something, they're like,
"Oh shit. This is..."
Donnie:
With the physical product, so...
Your access expires.
Kevin:
Yeah. Access expires or...
Todd Brown:
So, your question really is, how do we turn a physical buyer into a digital buyer?
Justin:
The digital people on your list buy the physical?
Donnie:
The digital people on the list buy the physical. Yes.
Justin
Okay.
Donnie:
And they usually... This is very crazy, but they usually buy it on cold traffic. So,
they're returning customers on cold traffic making us pay for them. Again, that's
another problem.
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Justin:
So, is it worth it to have physical as a front end, if you're not attracting those good
people?
Donnie:
Yeah, I am at that crossroads right now where I'm like, "Shit. Maybe we should
not have the physicals on the front end" because it's so, so expensive.
Justin:
But you're ROI positive.
Donnie:
We are.
Justin:
Yeah, on the front with the physical.
Donnie:
Oh no, we're not.
Justin:
On the physical.
Donnie:
Oh yeah, yeah, sorry. Physical on the front. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Justin:
It's tough to say no.
Donnie:
Yeah, it's tough say no to that.
Todd Brown:
Cool? And is that good? Does anybody else have anything to add? Go ahead,
Sean.
Sean:
I have a question, which is in your... So, this is a dumb question that's going to
lead me to two things that a friend of mineTodd Brown:
There are no dumb questions.
Sean:
Oh, I have tons. What does blue taste like? Things like that.
Perry:
I can tell you.
Sean:
There you go. Where's the acid? Anyway, do you... In your digital products, the
bonuses that you give along with your physical products, do you have admin
space add, insert links to your actual paid digital products as well?
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Donnie:
Sorry, I'm not following you.
Sean:
I buy a widget.
Donnie:
Yep.
Sean:
It comes with a special report.
Donnie:
Yeah.
Sean:
How to use the widget to cure your butt pimples.
Donnie:
Oh yeah. They areSean:
I go into the report and there's an actual link like "By the way. And if you have a
major problem with your butt pimples..."
Donnie:
You mean you can go into the digital.
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Sean:
And then, it has a link to some other offer.
Donnie:
That's a good idea, because they actually... All their... I see what you're saying.
Yeah, because what we're doing now is they actually have to log in to watch a
course. Nothing is just like click button, downloads, get information. And that
could be a lower barrier of entry that we could literally send the PDF to their
phone. Yeah. That's a good point.
Sean:
So yeah, both in financial. And then, I was working with a friend of mine. He was
doing... Before he moved into SaaS, he was doing subscription boxes for dog
toys and dog treats. And I was just like, "Bro, do the thing that e-comm people
aren't doing, which is add digital bonuses to your stack, to your offer."
Donnie:
Right.
Sean:
And then, when you actually add those digital components, have that be part of
the funnel, have those link off to your other digital or even other physical
products, because what you find is that people just sort of meander and go into
your reports and find that way. And then, he was having the trouble of the same
thing that you're having, which is nobody was reading the digital products. So,
the people that did, that massively boosted lifetime value, but he still was having
a limited number of people actually accessing those digital assets.
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Sean:
And so, what I said was, "Well, have you tried paying them?" And he basically
tested an offer where he was like, "Okay. If you actually use this report, and then
use it with your physical product, and then make a Facebook post about it, let us
know. We'll send you a $50 gift card." And just even telling people about that had
a massive uptick in people downloading the reports, even though a lot of them
never ended up...
Donnie:
Doing the Facebook post.
Sean:
... doing the Facebook post. But it's still massively increased their LTV.
Rich:
And just to piggyback on what he said, have you ever just sent out an embedded
link with the password and the login in the link...
Donnie:
Yeah.
Rich:
... so that they don't... If they're older people...
Donnie:
Just click it and go... yeah, we tried it.
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Rich:
... they... so that, yeah, they don't even have to deal with the login?
Donnie:
We've tried that, yeah.
Rich:
You tried that? Does it work? Wow.
Todd Brown:
No, I love it. No, I'm kidding. I'm joking. It was great. Let's switch gears. And
we're going to keep the rest, because we have about an hour. We'll keep it,
probably move through categories a little quicker. But I would love to hear about
copy for ads, so ad copy and anything that you're doing. So Tony, you just shot
me a smile. Is that you have some wealth of-
Tony:
Well, he just did... They just did a whole episode [inaudible 01:22:46].
Donnie:
I'm done talking.
Todd Brown:
I was teasing. I was only teasing.
Tony:
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They just did a whole steal our winners on that.
Rich:
Yeah. Well, we talked about the education angle. Yeah.
Todd Brown:
And so, we'll kick it off here. So, you guys, you already talked really about the
much more educational angle. And for you guys, you're also doing a lot of the
selling in your ads. Peter, you talked about running the VSL on Facebook,
sending to advertorial. That's like what you guys do. You run the full VSL on
Facebook, sending to an advertorial and then sending to a long form text-based
sales page.
Peter:
I mean, the biggest campaigns in the world were ads. VSL is the ad, hands
down, between... Typically, from... I mean, I never wanted to make fucking 40minute ads. Who wants to do that? I wanted to make short ads. And then, I made
them longer. And then, they did better. And then, I made them longer and they did
well...
Todd Brown:
Is it ultimately... It's just the VSL that you're running as the ad on Facebook?
Peter:
I mean, if you think about why... Here's why I think VSL is the best way to do ads
online, because it is the least friction thing, in terms of the gazillions of people
scrolling on their phone. They scroll, they watch, they're hooked in. They don't
have to click, they don't have to opt in, they don't do nothing. They're sucked in.
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And then, by the time they're done, they want to buy. Right? So, I just have you
do that.
Todd Brown:
Okay, very cool.
Rich:
I thought this was really interesting. I did a steal our winners recently with
Maxwell Finn. And he's moved his agency mostly to performance marketing and
does a lot in the no tropic space. He has a lot of different clients that they pay his
agency like 10 grand for him to vet their offer. And then, if it hits the metrics that
they want, then they'll promote it. Right? So, he was showing me that he has built
an audience through no tropics on Facebook. And what he does is he takes two
minute to three minute videos to create an audience.
There's no commercial intent in those videos. So, he takes something like Joe
Rogan talking about supplements. And because there's no commercial intent,
there's no buy button, no nothing, it's just a post with Joe Rogan talking about the
supplements that he likes or something like that. And anyone who watches a
hundred percent of that gets put into an audience. Right? So, he's using big
name people, but there's no commercial intent, there's no sale button, there's no
nothing. He's just using that to segment an audience.
Todd Brown:
So, it's Kurt Molly's belt, but using highlyRich:
Big names...
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Todd Brown:
... big name people as top of funnel.
Peter:
Yeah. And I thought that was really interesting.
Todd Brown:
That is interesting.
Peter:
Using credit card data is better than that.
Todd Brown:
What?
Peter:
Credit card data. You can buy data from Amex of main phone number/email of
people who buy certain things. So, my hack as an affiliate was, like, I'd go to the
advertising because they knew me. I'd be like, "Hey, send me to 5,000 people
who bought this brand Saturday."
Boom. I take that, throw it in Facebook, looks like audience. Now, the only reason
it doesn't convert is my ads. Targeting is perfect. Right? But of you can't do that,
second-best thing is you go to these companies to buy data, a list of data from
people who bought something very similar to what you have. And yeah, you get
this list of 5,000 people for not a lot of money. Just upload that.
Kevin:
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Well yeah. One advantage there though is you know they're consuming...
Rich:
Yeah. Like, you take right from Hermozi, like if you're selling internet marketing,
you take a two-minute Hermozi spot, you just throw it up. And anyone who
watches the whole thing, they have to be interested in that thing. Right? It was
just like a smart way of creating a segmented list by leveraging celebrity.
Todd Brown:
Yeah, that is really interesting, man. Being able to leverage Rogan to identify
people that are interested in those type of supplements, and then use the people
who consumed 100% of that Rogan clip, then put a middle...
Speaker 26:
The funny way that we just get to steal that shit...
Todd Brown:
It's crazy. Right?
Peter:
Or it could be like V shred and do your interview with the Rogan-
Todd Brown:
So shady. Or like the TEDx talk, the things are meant to look like a... All you see
is the X. You don't see the rest of it's... And so who else? I know that it's the end
of the day, hang strong, we're almost done. We're in the final stretch here. But
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who else has anything interesting that they would share an insight as it relates to
what's evolved? What's changed for you in terms of copy with ads?
John :
Oh, ads. I was just...
Todd Brown:
Were you going to throw something else out? You want toJohn :
Totally.
Todd Brown:
Go. Go for it, man. That's cool.
John:
Totally different. Yeah. I just want to say one thing I forgot to say last time. I got a
ton of coffee offers as you probably know. Maybe you don't.
I have a lot of offers in the copy space, right? And probably I guess 30 some odd
offers now, quite a bit over the years.
And the one thing that we've noticed over the past year, implementing what this
man helped us do over the past year, these bullet campaigns where we're just
shooting out different campaigns once every week or two or three, however
many works out, is that we're targeting the same thing only for my YouTube
channel. So, I know this is sort of not ads and sort of ads, but we're running ads
on my YouTube channels for my own channel. So, in other words, we're doing
that. That's being very effective.
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And the guy that's working with me to grow the YouTube channel, it's a weird
problem because we can't figure out where the income is coming from. We just
know that they buy one thing, two things, three things, five things, 20 things. And
they end up in the funnel and then they just keep buying. So, we're getting about
a four to five ROI right now on YouTube, which is pretty damn good. But it's
confirmation that, when it comes down to building products and offers, I think that
you should go this full wide range of products. So, we start at $19 and go all the
way up to in the thousands. So, you just don't know what they're going to buy.
ButRich:
So, you're saying that you're advertising your YouTube channel, right? On
YouTube, people are on your channel, they get on your list, and then they're
buying several bullet campaigns. Is that...
John:
Yeah. Yeah. And the crazy thing is that... And this is what sparked this and why...
I'm sorry, I was eating, I didn't have time to come over and say it, but you asked
about Todd's offer. The one offer that's working the best right now is chat bullets.
So, talk about an offer that only a sales copy person would ever be interested in.
Sales bullets? I mean, that's about as weird and specific as possible. I put it out
just as a mention in a video once. And the video had like 700 views and we
already made $2,000 on a $19 product.
I was like, "What the hell is going on with that?" I mean, why on earth are they... I
know that we got a big copywriting following, obviously, but... So, those are small
numbers, but then you extrapolate them to larger audiences. But people are
coming in from that offer and then buying other things. So, you never know what
the offer's going to be. So, if you just do something cool and something very
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niche, very targeted, I think it can be a cool little proving ground, pretty
successful.
Todd Brown:
For context, for what it's worth, bullet campaign is... It is extremely simple. We
were ultimately looking to... We wanted to make regular offers to our list, like call
it... We wanted to be able to roll out a new offer every week. We had so many
assets, so many products, so many trainings that we were doing nothing with that
were incredibly valuable. But we also, at the same time, didn't want to burn out.
The list was just promo after promo. So, the way to think about a bullet campaign
is it's really two email sequences, two separate email sequences that are linked.
The first part of the email sequence is ultimately us lead generating out of our
own list. So, this is not a front end campaign. This only goes out to our house
spot, our email database. And so, we'll send out this first email sequence. And
the first part, the first email sequence, is ultimately designed to get people to
raise their hand and identify themselves as being interested in the topic or the
core promise of the product.
And at any point that they engage with any one of those emails, they then get
brought over to the sales page. And then, they're put into a conversion sequence,
a sequence designed to ultimately sell them the prop. But if they never engage
with that, if they never raise their hand and identify themselves as interested in
the topic, they never see the sales page, they never get the conversion scenes.
So, in other words, we're putting out a promo on a weekly basis. Every single
week, we have a promo, we have a deadline, we have countdown, we have
conversion emails. But those emails are only being exposed to people that
express interest.
Rich:
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By clicking on the link to go check out the sales letter?
Correct?
Rich:
Yeah.
Todd Brown:
Correct.
*footage ends*
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