Month: November 2020

Free Will vs. Email Marketing (No Contest)

by

Has anyone ever told you how evil you are?

Oops.

I mean how evil they THINK you are?

As a marketer, it probably happens more than you think.

(Civilians don’t really understand what we do.)

I remember sitting in church with my family a few years ago… when the preacher — who happened to be my father-in-law — started railing on the vile schemes of marketers.

Free trials, for example.

Marketers know some people won’t cancel before the free trial is over, so why do we “trick” people into spending money that way?

That part of the sermon probably only lasted 2 or 3 minutes… but it seemed much longer.

I know marketing isn’t evil — I dealt with that false belief long ago.

But it was still uncomfortable.

Good thing the preacher didn’t call me out by name.

The church is full of civilians who don’t understand what I do, so I’m pretty sure no one knew he was talking about me.

He probably didn’t even know he was talking about me!

Has anything like that happened to you?

(If you have a good story, please reply to this email and share. I’d love to hear it.)

Let me clear up a few things.

Copywriting and marketing are NOT evil.

You probably already know that or you wouldn’t have signed up to hear from me.

Marketing is leadership… and I know you’re using it to improve people’s lives

Better marketing = more lives transformed for the better.

If you’re selling something that helps people, promoting it aggressively makes the world a better place.

Free will always wins.

We marketers can’t force anyone to act against their own best interests.

We can’t make them do what they don’t want to do.

All we can do is paint a clear picture of a specific outcome our should-be buyer already wants… and make it as easy as possible for him to say “yes”

Jonathan Edwards, an 18th century preacher (which makes him a little older than my father-in-law), wrote that people…

“…always act according to the strongest inclination they have at the moment of choice.“

You make the big bucks when you can create moments of choice where the reader’s strongest inclination is to buy your offer.

Email gives you the best opportunity to create moments strong inclination… over and over

I recorded a video describing a few of my best techniques for doing exactly that.

One of the strategies is what I call intense opportunity curiosity…

Which was the real secret behind the $218,337 5-email campaign I told you about last week.

This video training will be exclusively available to Inbox X-Factor members.

No big sales pitch. I still haven’t written the sales page.

But if you’d like to learn more about how I’ve been making MORE money with email instead of less (which so many people are complaining about these days)…

You’ll want to see the video I’m uploading tomorrow.

Plus, you get weekly email plans… winning subject line templates… and more.

$99 a month (no contracts) is a small investment to help you make your email list significantly more profitable — and to spend less time doing it.

Just one of the ways I’m striving to make the world a better place. 

The Best Way to Spread a Virus

by

We have a tendency to make copywriting (and persuasion in general) more complicated than it needs to be.

A lot of the blame can be placed on the countless “experts” who make it seem complicated…

I fear I’ve fallen into that category at times.

Today, we’re going to simplify things.

At it’s core, copywriting is helping someone make a decision that will improve his life in a specific way.

Humans make most of their decisions — not counting habitual “autopilot” programs we run for so many parts of our lives — based on emotion.

You already knew that.

One of the most effective ways to make another human feel emotion is to feel it yourself.

Emotions are contagious like a virus — and symptoms start showing up FAST.

When you sit down to write, start out by feeling the feeling you want you reader to experience.

Excitement…
Fear…
Hope…

Let those feelings bleed into your copy.

You already do this in face-to-face conversation — and even more so when it’s someone you care about.

Your emotions are transferred to the audience to some extent.

And when he’s feeling the way you feel, you have the opportunity to lead him where he needs to go to improve his life in the specific way only you can deliver.

Make sense?

Have a heart-to-heart conversation (through your copy) with your readers this week.

It will make all the difference in the world.

I Believe… Help My Unbelief

by

The odds are stacked against you as a marketer.

Your should-be customer or client has developed a sophisticated system for NOT buying from you.

(The system is deadly effective, even though he was hardly aware that he was building it.)

One of the main components of this system is disbelief. No surprise, right?

But what most marketers don’t consider is that disbelief comes in two flavors:

1. Disbelief about your or your product/service

and

2. Disbelief about his own ability or worthiness to experience the transformation you promise.  

In other words…

Your prospect can believe that you help save marriages… and disbelieve you can save HIS marriage.

To neutralize this part of the anti-buying system, you have to

1. Prove that you can deliver a result

and

2. Prove that you can deliver a result FOR HIM.

I want to talk about #2

How do you do it?

Identify the B.S. stories he tells himself… about himself.

A significant percentage of your prospects will never buy from you — not because they don’t want what you’re selling or because they don’t believe you’re good at what you do…

… but because of their limiting (dis)beliefs.

A Prospect's reason for not buying is the B.S. stories he tell himself 57.1% of the time.
*All figures are estimates

Some generic B.S. stories include

  • “I’ve failed before, so trying again is pointless”
  • “I’m not smart/handsome/wealthy enough”
  • “People who look like me don’t/can’t do that”
  • “I haven’t paid my dues yet”
  • “I don’t deserve to be rich/happy because I did XYZ in the past”

You can uncover more specific crippling B.S. stories by talking (or having your team talk) with people in your target audience.

Get on the phone.
Send surveys (but take responses with a grain of salt).
Spy on them online (social media, Reddit, Amazon reviews, etc.).

You’ll gain fascinating insight you can to overcome objections in your copy.

Showcase People Like Him Who Got the Result

Once you know some of the B.S. stories, find examples about people who contradict those stories.

The more unbelieving prospect see himself reflected in your marketing messages — including his dreams, challenges, and B.S. stories — the more your message will resonate…

And the weaker his disbelief will become.

Leverage A Unique Mechanism

Position your offer as a special, proven approach your prospect has never seen before.

Show him why it’s different — and why other solutions fail.

Your unique solution helps him understand why he may have struggled in the past. And it can give him hope for future success.

Make it Ridiculously Easy to Take the First Step…

Offer a sample. A free or low cost trial. A 7-day challenge.

One of the main reasons people fail is because they never MOVE. Get them to take the first step and you unlock optimism and even confidence by default.

That confidence can force your prospect to re-examine his disbelief — especially if you…

Give Him a Quick Win

Provide information or action steps that will give him some forward momentum.

It only takes a little… and you can deliver it right inside your marketing copy if you like.

This give the prospect more confidence and trust in you. More importantly, it builds confidence and trust in his own ability to reach his goal.

An obviously you’re the person best equipped to help him do it.

Now, there’s something to be said for not convincing anyone who’s not already sure he wants to work with you.

But no matter how you approach your own business growth, it’s helpful to identify the disbelief and B.S. stories that hold your prospects (and customers) back.

You can work that knowledge into your marketing or use it to improve results inside your paid offers.

I hope this helps you grow in one way or the other.

Have a productive day.

P.S. Overcoming a prospect’s disbelief in this way is part of  “killing them softly” with their own song.

This Weird Halloween Ritual Made Me Famous

by

Every Halloween, my family freaks out trick-or-treaters with an unusual ritual.

Some people think we’re crazy.

Others love to play along.

Either way, it’s a tradition that’s made us semi-famous in each neighborhood we’ve lived in over the years.

(Actually, it goes back further. My wife’s been doing this since she was a child.)

On the morning of October 31st, we start putting up Christmas decorations.

As you can imagine, kiddies in their costumes are confused and delighted.

Teenagers and parents snap pics and stop for conversations.

We love it.

But we do get some pushback, though. A good percentage of people tell us…

“It’s too early to start thinking about Christmas.”

Which brings us to today’s marketing lesson.

How early is too early to ask for the sale?

This is a question that comes up a lot when I speak with entrepreneurs and budding marketers.

The answer is… probably sooner than you think.

So often, we’re conditioned to believe you have to get someone to “know, like and trust” you before you’ve earned the right to ask for the sale.

Or we’ve been told that we have to GIVE before we ASK.

Something about jabbing… jabbing… and more jabbing before anything else.

There is some truth to those concepts.

But people don’t buy just because they know, like, or trust you. Otherwise most of us would give all our money to our mothers.

No, people buy what they desire.

If you’re selling a product or service that:

  • relieves their fears and frustrations…
  • solves their pains and problems…
  • helps them reach their dreams and desires…

You don’t have to wait long to give them an opportunity to buy.

It can happen in the first email in a welcome sequence.

It can happen directly in a Facebook ad.

Don’t be fooled.

When you make the right offer to the right person, the right time is probably now.

Keep this in mind…

The classic AIDA formula still applies.

You have to get attention and interest before you can direct desire toward your offer. (That can happen faster than you may think, too.)

In the same way that you can start decorating for Christmas much earlier than many people think… You can start selling before you’re done throwing Gary Vee-style jabs.

After you’ve grabbed your should-be buyer’s attention and started generating interest in what you’re talking about, it’s safe to start moving toward the sale.

Let’s get it!

P.S. I just recorded a video diving deeper into this in the Inbox X-Factor membership.

I honestly believe it’s one of the most valuable trainings I can share right now. 

If you’re aggressively growing your email list, these insights could be worth millions of dollars for you.

You can check it out inside Inbox X-Factor.