29 Copywriting Secrets: (FINAL) Part 3
Rich Schefren shares copywriting secrets on offers, deadlines, and risk reversal. He covers how to craft compelling guarantees that flip the risk to the seller, why artificial deadlines work even when people know they're artificial, and the specific language that converts skeptical prospects into buyers.
And here's the story, right? I invented the automated webinars, gave it to Russell Brunson. At that time, Russell's challenges were very significant. He owed the government over a million dollars. So I gave him the automated webinar, and within 30, 60 or 90 days, he had made the million plus. He was really proud. And I watched it, and it was converting like crazy. And I really, literally thought it was the worst webinar I had ever seen in my entire life. Like, literally. There is very little value here. I was like, okay, wow. But then he got to the offer, and the offer was so good. I quickly came to the conclusion the webinar is just an excuse to get the offer in front of people, at least the way he was doing it. So offers are insanely important. They're pretty much the most important thing when it comes to direct response. Offer trumps everything. That's the way I look at it. Today we're talking about copywriting. We're talking about these notes that I took over 20 years ago at my very first Dan Kennedy and my very first copywriting seminar that I ever attended. And from there, I wrote my first sales letter. And that sales letter brought me back 200 and, like, $87,000 in a week after I wrote that sales letter. And from there, I wrote a few more sales letters. Over the years, they've done okay. Don't consider myself a copywriter, because I've never had to get into the head of a prospect that was not part of the market that I was in. But nonetheless, even as a business owner, being able to understand copy, being able to write copy, being able to judge copy, is incredibly important, and it impacts everything else that you do.
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My writing style is based on the way I speak. That didn't score me any points when I was in high school or college. However, it is the type of writing that most easily is read. And because of that, my reports have done very well and other things like that. So, anyway, so we're talking about copywriting, and what was your reaction to the 287,000? Well, so here's the deal. There were 35 hypnosis centers in the world at that time. Mine was the most successful by a lot. I decided to get out of the hypnosis business after 9 11. So I wrote a sales letter to the 35 other hypnosis centers, or 34 right in the world, offering them a information product of all the secrets that I learned about how to grow my hypnosis business for $10,000. Now, of course, it didn't exist. And I wasn't sure I was going to do it. And I was only going to do it if I got enough people to say yes, it was $10,000 or it was three monthly payments of 5,000 each. I'm not really sure how we got to 287. I just remember it was 287. So maybe someone got a special deal or something, right? Or someone paid it one payment and then accelerated. I don't remember. But that's what was collected. And I sent a FedEx of the sales letter with a FedEx return envelope with my already pre made out to put the order form in and FedEx back because they had one week to make a decision. Because I told them, like, I haven't made this. Here's what I'm going to put into it if you want it. Like it's 10,000 or three payments of 5,000. So I gave them a week. And by day six, I had one order. And one order, $10,000 was not enough for me now to spend a considerable amount of time teaching all the stuff that I had to teach. But on day number seven, I got 26 more orders faxed to me. So I sold a total of 27 out of the 35. And that money came in very handy because after 9 11, I had lost a lot of money. So my reaction was, thank God, right? And then the next reaction was, oh, crap, I need to get a merchant account because everyone paid my credit card or maybe one check or two, or someone wired money. But I then I had to find a way to process it. So it was crazy, but it was fun. And yeah, one of these days, maybe I'll pull out that sales letter. I'm sure I'd be embarrassed by most of it at this point. I'd like to believe my skills are a lot better these days. But it worked, right? Cool. All right, so as you can see, I have my notes here. And just a quick recap I guess would be the way to parse this and then go further. So we're on crafting offers, but let's just quickly scroll back up for a second here. I can. So here. Okay. So we covered. And it's not that important to be able to read this because I'm going to tell you where to get the notes at the end. But right now I'm just recapping. So we covered all the things that you need to do before you write.
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So if you suffer from writer's blog or you're not really sure it's probably because you didn't do these elements. Establish authority. We talked about how to do that. We talked about telling them what it's not.
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Another process, right. Fear and anxiety, like leveraging fear and anxiety and how that is more powerful than just the benefits.
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Guilt. We covered secrets, reason why and that's a really important one. Attention getting devices.
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Grabbers. I think I pass 1. Qualifying Prospects. Benefit driven sales copy and bullets and crafting offers. Okay, so that's where we were. We're on crafting offers. And I've shared this in numerous Steal Our Winners episodes. And I might have even shared it here. And that is I became a really good marketer because I didn't really fully get the importance of offers. And that wasn't very clear to me until Russell Brunson sent me a webinar. And here's the story, right? I invented the automated webinars. I gave it to Mike Filsane and Russell Brunson. I also taught at in my continuity program at that time called Founders Club. I wrote a report back in 2007 laying out the structure that most people use today and built the software that then webinar Jam and everything else had been based on.
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But internally, like it wasn't for the public. And at that time, both Russell and Mike were having some challenges. Russell's challenges were very significant. He owed the government over a million dollars in back payroll taxes because his business, all of a sudden they lost their merchant account. They had big problems. And so I gave him the automated webinar and the report I wrote on it taught him about it. And within 30, 60 or 90 days he had made the million plus. So he was able to pay off the government and move forward. And he was really proud. And so he sent it to me kind of like you taught me this. Here, check this out. And I watched it and it and it was converting like crazy. And that's why he sent it to me. And I started watching it and I really literally thought it was the worst webinar I had ever seen in my entire life. Like literally. There is very little value here. It was about high ticket selling secrets. That was the name of the webinar. And the three secrets were you make more money selling high ticket than low ticket. Okay, That's a secret. You don't need that many people to make good money selling high ticket. And you don't have to get on the phone yourself to sell high ticket. Those were the three secrets. And I was like, okay, wow. But then he got to the offer. And the offer was so good that what I quickly kind of like came to the conclusion, the webinar is just an excuse to get the offer in front of people, at least the way he was doing it. Whereas every element in my webinar was designed to make an offer that is not credibly compelling, more compelling based on the context around it. Right. And what made Russell's offer so good was me learning, because I really had never thought about it like this before, that your offer is not only like, you pay me X and you get Y, but it's also what now this customer or client has to do with Y.
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So Z is what they have to do to get what they ultimately want.
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So your offer doesn't end with you, right. Like your offer, in fact, built into it unsaid is everything that the prospect has to do or the customer has to do now to get the outcome after they've made the purchase. So it's one thing to tell you I'm going to sell you a course on how to sell high ticket products, right? That's one thing. It's a whole nother thing to say I want to sell you this course that I created on high ticket selling secrets. And listen to what I'm going to give you. I'm going like, I'm going to give you the script, I'm going to give you the page on our website where people apply for our high ticket. You can put that on your website tonight. I'm going to give you the script we use to close people and you'll have to modify for your business. But it's a great start. I'm going to give you the ads and where to place them to find a full commission salesperson. I'm going to give you the questions to ask that the people that respond to that ad and I'll give you a half an hour with my call center manager to either help you screen train or what have you. I'm also going to give you the training that my salespeople go through. Right? So everything started to be put in that offer that made me feel as a buyer or a prospective buyer that if I bought this today, by tomorrow I could be selling high ticket with very little work. So your offer extends past the purchase and actually incorporates everything that that person's going to have to do to get the outcome at the end of the day.
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Very big difference between me selling you something that then you have to learn and do versus me selling you something that does it for you.
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So Offers are insanely important. They're pretty much the most important thing when it comes to direct response. We can argue that. Point is list more important than offer? Is offer more important than list. Personally, offer trumps everything. That's the way I look at it.
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So that's why offers are so important. So offer structure, right? This. Remember these are my notes from 20 years ago. So it might not be in there and if it isn't here, then I took these notes and quickly forgot about this point. Offer structures small, medium, large, good, better, best.
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Or things of that nature different A or B B that includes a value build. Then discount, straightforward price, discount product primary, bonuses secondary. That's the way most people online sell. That's the way most info marketers sell. Bonus primary product secondary. That's how Agora sells.
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That I've explained that countless times. Guarantee part of author right? Like I had a headline that for my one of my first online products called Consumer Revenge, which was the headline was I promise you with my own money that you will get a refund and an apology from any business that's wronged you. Guarantee part of the office degree of emphasis on payments Continuity, force continuity. Okay. Irresistible offers. It's important to grasp that while people love to buy, they also initially are reluctant to buy for a long list of reasons that have nothing specifically to do with you or your offer. That is why direct marketers live on a small response percentage under the best of circumstances. But it is also why we must advance an impossible to resist offer to get people over all the obstacles to buying. Irresistible offer keys well stated target and a message to market match, right? Or profound interest, right? At least part of the offer being perceived as free piling on and you get this and this and this enormous value to cost discount justified. In other words, reason why, right? Believe it must be acted on now or lost forever. Sales. If you don't give people strong reason to buy right now, they most likely won't. I've never seen anything move people more than a deadline. Even in the story that I just told you earlier about the copy that I wrote, my very first sales letter, I told you that I got one one order in the first six days and on the seventh day, the deadline day, I got the all the other sales whenever I've done webinars, right? Here's the graph of sales, right? The webinar is live on let's say Tuesday. And then we didn't pull it off the market until Monday at noon. So on Monday we doubled sales again. So we doubled sales on. We doubled all, all sales on Saturday, doubled all sales again on Sunday, doubled all sales again on Monday. And the only reason why is because of the deadline. And in fact, when I launched that program, I mentioned at the beginning of that program how surprised I was that I've always known that deadlines spur action. But I was shocked to see this line just keep growing and every day the sales doubling.
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Not doubling the day before, doubling all of the days before. So when I said that I had, I don't know, maybe I had a hundred people on that coaching call. I'd say I Remember at least 10 and 10 probably is reflective of more told me the only reason they bought was because of the deadline and they didn't want to not be able to get it later on. Okay, yeah, incredibly important, right? Deadlines believing it must be acted on now or lost forever. The cumulative impact. Why wouldn't I do this? I'd have to be an idiot not to do this. And that's where I always try to lead people. Like almost a crossroads. This is not an offer, this is an intelligence test, right? An offer you can say no to. If you're saying no to this, you failed the intelligence test. And some immediate gratification like there's gotta be something that they get right now in their hands. When you call, we will send out the same day X and when you arrive for your free consultation, you'll get this and this and this and this and this. That was just an idea that I put down for myself related to the hypnosis centers.
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Because that's what business I was in when I actually took these notes. Premium bonuses, right? Relevant versus irrelevant things desired but they would not buy for themselves. The premium that will drive the sale multiple better than single tiered different bonuses based on order size. These are all really good ideas and these are just things to stimulate your thinking. So let me check in with you guys. Gary Halpert said the offer is everything. I'd rather have a crap webinar with a great offer versus a great webinar with a crap offer. Yep, limited number is better than a deadline. According to Cialdini. I attended two sessions with him this week. If you see him again, tell him I say hi. Known him for a long time. Ideally, right. When we're talking about digital products, it's often hard to have a limited number. Although you could have something else that made it limited. Ideally you do both, right? So I used to end my webinar with a deadline and also trying to think A fast action bonus. So there was extra stuff that you bought you would get if you bought like right away. So that was one thing. But I. I think it depends on the environment. Yeah, interesting. I'll have to ask him that. Jejini said it was due to fomo. Yeah, I could see that. I could see that. After the deadline date set, do you turn off the offer? I've seen people promote deadlines and I checked the website a week later and the same offer is still there. Is this good or bad? I'm guessing bad for integrity, but good for those who missed the deal. Does that depend on different situations? Peter, what you really want to do is you want to maintain integrity.
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You don't want the same exact offer there, but you can have the basics of the offer be the same, but the premiums be different or something.
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So if you take 2 of the bonuses out, it's not the same offer anymore.
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So that's the kind of stuff that you can do to make the offer to be telling the truth, but yet get make sure that you're getting people to not procrastinate. Deadline drives decisions. Yep, that's what I said. Maxwell Finn in the house. What's up Max? How often did you email about the deadline? Three times a day. When sales are coming in that much as frequently as people will open them. They're both scarcely related. Scarcity related. Yes. I noticed in a James Clear email today that he offers if you share three times you get his greatest speech collection. Great talks that not many people have heard. Gives tracking URLs too. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, I dig it. Hey Rich, what's the best course to learn copywriting? There are many good courses out there. It's really about doing the work. So at the end of the day it's about doing the work and there's many paths there. And I also would say that you gotta go with like the copywriting teacher or marketer, whatever you wanna call it.
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That really resonates with you and really depending on where you wanna go with it. So there are some copywriting courses that are written by copywriters who primarily have sold information products most of their lives. That would be someone who to study if that's what you your intention is. There are other copywriters who are more kind of like well rounded and that might be useful for different type of copywriter. There are people who want to learn copy, who are entrepreneurs like myself who don't ever really see themselves writing like Full blown sales letters, but need the ability to write copy. And for someone like that, for that you want more of a John, like John Carlton's old course kick ass marketing secrets of a copywriting Rebel or something like that. Something like that. But. And then you get more comprehensive ones like Clayton Makepeace, right. Who is like teaching you how to write at an A level. There's a lot more stuff to know. So it really depends on what your goals are as far as what the best copywriting course is. However, what I would say is, is that there are some. There are also great books, right? So one of my favorite books, which I really I need to reread because I haven't read it in forever, is the Robert Collier letter book. Amazing. Like what this guy like wrote at the time. If you've ever heard enter the conversation in the mind of your prospect, that comes from Robert Collier. So I thought Robert Collier letter book was great. Claude Hopkins, John Caples, right. David Ogilvie. There are so many. And what ultimately you need to do is you need to get the skill right. So there's a certain amount of knowledge, but once you have the knowledge, the skill is what's most important. And that just takes practice. And the way I like to do it, Peter, is you should read those books. They then start writing copy. Take sales letters that have done really well and now rewrite them. Try and change as few words as possible, but rewrite them for your product in a different niche, right? So now it's forcing you to change some words, but by, by immersing yourself in the copy and having to change it. But make it still follow the same patterns and we'll train you to understand how to write copy. That would be the advice I'd give you. And if you wanted to buy a really relevant, timely book, Peter, this one's really good. You can't get it in printed form yet, but seven figure marketing copy, this is a galley and this is by Sean Vossler. And we were talking about this last, last live stream and the one before. It's one of my favorite copy slash marketing books these days and it is a great read. Hey Rich, what's the thinking behind a guarantee that lets a prospect go through the whole program and if you don't like, you get a refund. Plus keep it all. Sounds risky, but I hear it works. Yeah, there just really aren't that many dishonest people out there, John. And I hate to admit this because it doesn't say good things about me, but I think I've Evolved as a person. Share it anyway. But when I first came across a Jay Abraham ad for a course that was. I came across something at Jay's got on his list, right? This is pre. This is like pre Internet days or Internet wasn't a big thing at that point. Jay had a program called PEQ and it was $5,000 for a set of videotapes. And I just couldn't. Like this, like, this is the first, like, really expensive info product I bought, right? This is pre me writing my own sales letter and going to a Dan Kennedy event. This is. This precedes this by several years. And I just couldn't believe that videotapes could be worth five grand. So I bought it. But I had every intention, and this is the part I hate to say, but it's the truth. I had every intention to watch it and return it. My curiosity was so piqued. I wanted to know the answers to some of those bullets. And I wanted this knowledge. I just didn't think it was worth five grand. So I bought it and I was copying it. I had this two videotape machine and I was copying them and I was watching it as I was copying it. And it was so good that I was like, there's no way in the world I can return this. This is so valuable. Thank God I didn't return it either because then I became a client of Jay's, then a partner of Jay's, client, friend of Jay's. I've made millions in my relationship with Jay. None of that would have happened if he didn't offer that guarantee. If I didn't think I was going to take advantage of that guarantee and therefore buy it and then keep it. The it also depends, John, I'd say, on what product it is of yours. Let's say you have only one back end. If you have only one back end, they either buy that or they don't. Then I might pay to position things without a guarantee, right, because you're not selling them anything else. But in general, guarantees like that are effective. You don't want to extend out and make yourself, like, have trouble.
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But. But most people are honest and I wouldn't. So that's what we do. Like when we did the mystery box. The mystery box, which lots of people now have copied. But when we did the mystery box, we told people, I'm going to send it to you. I'm going to tell you what's in it on the live stream, even if you decide not to, that you don't like it. I'll give you if it's not worth at least 30 times what you paid for it, it's not worth $3,000, a hundred times what you paid for it. Ask for a refund, I'll give you your money back. Keep the box. I don't think we had any refunds, but I could be wrong. And if we did, it was so de minimis, didn't matter. So it's if the economics work, John, it makes total sense. If the economics don't work, then you gotta be careful. And what I mean by economics don't work is that you don't want this big looming amount that at any point could be cashed in and would tip you over. I love breakthrough advertising. As do I and Martin. Hopefully you've had a chance to look at my notes on breakthrough advertising. If you have, great. If you haven't, my notes are in the Facebook group and many people tell me that my notes on breakthrough are the best notes on that that they've ever seen. Today on magnetic marketing, no BS Facebook group, there are giving away Dan Kennedy's Chinese menu Copywriting acceleration tools. Free PDF Dan's headlines, opening paragraph subheads, bridges to the sale.
Cool.
Oh wow. Very cool. I want that. Where do you find great sales letters, Raquel? I would say that the first place to look would be anything that got you to buy because that is a great way to understand, like, what is it? But if that isn't going to work for you, right, then the next place to look for great sales letters ideally would be in the niche that you want to go into. Because if you're going to learn a structure, if you're going to learn like certain word choices, those would be best, not just generic ones, but ones that are targeted to the niche that you are targeting. And then for that you'd want to find the people that are doing the best. Now if you can't do that, then you want to go to Direct. You want to go to direct response companies, right? Like a company like Agora. Now Agora doesn't generally go by the name Agora, but they go by Stansberry Research, Legacy Financial, Oxford club, money, maps, St. Paul research, three founders, God knows how many more. But anything by an A level copywriter, which would be. Or anything from Golden Hippo. So you can go to the Golden Hippo site, look at some of their stuff and then find some of their brand names. Halbert said the decision to refund is made before they buy. Look, I made that decision and then I went back on that decision because it was that damn good and. But I would say that that's somewhat true. Not always. I like conditional guarantees. As a buyer or as a seller. Andrew, I'm sure you'd like him as a seller. Chet's book, the Ultimate Sales Machine is a classic. I never read that book. Oh no, I did read that book. But the PQ course was. I bought the box. Very cool. Sharing in my group live event marketers. Thank you, Troy. Thank you so much. De minimis. First time I've ever heard anyone use that in a casual way. Ivaldo's book is a great start. Yeah, I totally forgot about that. Totally, totally forgot about that. The 16 word sales letter. Is that what it was called? What is it? The 16 sentence sales letter or something like that? That's. That is one of the best books really, actually, because from a beginner standpoint, it tells you pretty much everything you need to know. I love that book. If someone can tell me the name of Evaldo's book and actually I might see Evaldo on Saturday. I got a text message from him today. Invited me to a barbecue. Yes, Evaldo's book. Let someone tell me what it is. And so this way I can give him props.
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Seller. Yep, that's what I figured. All right, so should we continue? And for those of you who are in Steal our Winners, what I would say is that many top copywriters and top marketers, like for example, even Todd Brown told me that Steal our Winners episode with Caleb was amazing. Like that could be sold, that offers are hot in the market right now and what Caleb delivered was insane. So we have two really good Steal our Winners episodes on offers. They are Caleb o' Dowd and they are Kenneth Yu. Then we just released in this month, this past month, the March edition because we drop at the end of the month. So the one that's currently out, Kevin Rogers, copy Chief live, he does a really good breakdown of a overall, like what's necessary in a sales message and goes into the offer a little bit. And then we have two great upsell offer segments. One by John Benson, which is in this month, and another one by Justin Goff that's off the charts. And that's like a few months ago. Anyway, so premium bonuses stacking based on order size.
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If you buy this, you get that. If you buy this, you get that. Plus that. If you tell. If you get. If you buy this you get this plus this plus this.
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We used to do that with tell a friend emails.
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If you Told one friend, you got this. If you told three friends, you got this. If you told five friends, you got that. For the attention age doctrine too, when we did that, we added 60,000 names to our file. 60,000 names that we wouldn't have gotten that came through that referral process tied to offer order size, speed of response for the first time response, the premium that forces the deluxe purchase. That's an interesting idea. And warning, do not give bonuses, short shrift and copy. It's a grave mistake to think since you are giving it away free, you need to not persuasively sell it in instances of limited time or space. There is virtue in bonuses requiring nominal explanation, instantly understood from photo or very brief description. But still, there is a difference between rich Corinthian leather, hand stitched by old world artisans and leather. And there's a lot of truth to that. You have to convince them that you are selling them money at a discount.
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That's what we do. Anyone in the marketing world, copywriting world, ultimately, that's what we're doing. We're selling money at a discount. All right, let's make sure that we get credit to Evaldo. The 16 word sales letter. That's it. For anyone who doesn't have this book, you should get it. You can get it on Amazon. It's wickedly cheap and it's well worth the issue. Hello, Rich Efren. I am finding Copywriting Secrets by Jim Edwards to be a good read too. Just started reading it. I believe you have worked with him in the past. I have. In fact, at. Let's see if I can find this real quick. Let's see. Jim gave me a wonderful testimony and then for some reason, like when he hooked up with Russell, even though Russell worked with me too, he told me not to use it anymore. So I don't use it anymore. But I was looking for the video testimonial I have where he stood up at big seminar, told everyone that before he met me he was thinking about quitting the Internet. And then I changed all that for him. But Jim wasn't a copywriter. Just laid out there, great marketer, I guess now he is a copywriter. Sixteen word sales letter. John Ford might expect you to mention great leads. Yeah, I would say great leads, but great leads is when more for an advanced audience.
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Like you. Like you don't really need to be thinking about lead structure and stuff like that until you already can do pretty much everything that's in Evaldo's book. All right, so presentation of price you can get away with and you should huge price differentials. Whenever you should push it to the max and then justify it whenever you discount, you must have a reason why to justify what's happening. The better the story, the better the response. It's not how good the sale is, it's how good the story of the sale is.
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So someone having a fire sale because they had a fire is more believable and therefore more believable that there are going to be deals there than just a sale. Reason why automatically bumps up the believability. And most people don't charge enough and a lot of people find that out. So a lot of times when I'm working with an entrepreneur and I do this too, I say what are all the things that you're currently doing for customers that you wish you never had to do again? And then we price it accordingly so that those things, if you still want me to do it, like this is what I charge for that and to charge a high enough price that you're. Then you're happy to do it. And what. So this is what I do and I've taught and I've worked with enough entrepreneurs over time. And what consistently happens is is that they think they're going to be doing a lot less. And the first couple times they bump up the price to what they think is absurd. They're really not doing that much less. They're just making a lot more money. So most people undercharge. That's been my experience. Not necessarily all the stores that I shop in, but certainly most of my clients they undercharge. Price, presentation decisions. When do you bring up price, Acknowledge and brag about the high price. Right. We're not the cheapest. In fact, we're one of the most expensive. But we're one of the most expensive because of what we deliver. What you get what this right claim load is price value first, price second, price first, value second. How much sticker shock is there to deal with?
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What are they expecting? What are they going to see? Price or payment? If options low to high or high to low. Different price packages versus main item and add ons, apples to orange comparisons.
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So that's if you went to Harvard Business School, it would cost you $200,000. And you can join my coaching program whose alumni reads like a who's who of the successful people online more so than Harvard for just a fraction of that price, for 1% of that price, for whatever.
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But my coaching program is not Harvard. So why am I Comparing the two apples to orange Comparison how to make it free Once you've made your first sale, this entire program is absolutely free. Odd numbers versus even number breakpoints, disguising price language, stuff, et cetera.
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Discount. The bigger the better. In most cases. Separate may separate and present multiple discounts. Each discount must be justified, like why are you giving that discount? And care must be taken not to destroy the value or the believability of the discount. Reasons not to respond. Let's take a closer look at this. People don't do enough building the list of all the reasons why they won't buy. What are the reasons they will not respond? In reality, this should be dictating the entire approach to copy. And it does. So we call it copy boarding. And hold on a second, let me show you something. So these were some of the things in the mystery box. There was a lot more, but this was some. So this one, the secret copy boarding system.
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And it was written by a boss of mine, Joe Schreifer. And basically you write out every objection that you think your prospects would ever have and then you answer those and throughout the sales letter. And this is a way of doing that with post it notes. Let's go back here. Sit down with a group of people who are not familiar with your product and ask them why they wouldn't respond. And come up with at least 40 reasons. The most important thing a copywriter can do is identify, catalog and understand each and every conceivable reason or excuse someone might have for not responding. My problem is. My problem isn't that bad. My problem is beyond hope. I don't believe you. I don't believe in myself. A gazillion one.
Right.
This is difficult because it always difficult to put ourselves in someone else's mental emotional position. Answers and objections. Q and A to answer all reasons why they may not respond. When you acknowledge when something is wrong and you deal with it, you end up gaining their confidence even more. In other words, surfacing the objection before they surface it and then countering it is more powerful than waiting for them to surface it. And counter. Little blue handout comes from a book. I don't know what that is. The Closers buy it. Blue handout. Okay, so I read that book the Closers. Remember, there are always lots of reasons not to buy, which leads to risk reversal. You ought to guarantee what you sell. The only question is how big, bold and dramatic guarantee you are willing to make the biggest and boldest guarantee that you can possibly do. And at the end of the day you don't want dissatisfied customers. And this was advice Dan Kennedy gave a long time ago. And I took it to heart. Like, look, at the end of the day, even when someone's not entitled to a refund, if they're gonna make enough noise, it's just a cost benefit thing at that point. And they might not be entitled and they shouldn't get it, but they can do a lot more damage than one product sale. And that's what, like, when you recognize that, yeah, you don't want upset customers. Like, pretty much every coaching program I ever saw or program or whatever you wanna call it before I did mine. Like, when it was a price, you paid the whole price. They might've given you a payment program, but you were on the hook for all. We developed our own ELE platform back in the day, back in 2006 that dripped out content so that I could sell people a pay as you go. And you're not committed. You can cancel at any time. Because, like, in some of those older programs, I did some with Jay Abraham on those. Like, we had some people who were, like, didn't want to be in the program anymore, but they were committed to the payments. And then they were just really difficult to deal with. And I don't like dealing with people who are difficult. I'd much rather them be gone. So I'd rather give them their money back and go on their way. Okay, so where are we here? Okay, From a competitive standpoint, you want to do things that make your competition think you're insane and that you'll go out of business. What risks do your customer face? Risk of financial loss. Risk of losing face. Right. Being embarrassed. Risk of loss of time. Risk of inconvenience. Risk of hassle or intimidation. Risk of unsatisfactory results. Risk of disappointment and frustration. Risk of injury. Risk of job loss. Risk of ridicule from spouse or from friends. How do they rank in importance to your customer? How will you make the relevant risks go away? How to add sizzle and impact to guarantees. Language, naming the guarantee. Extending or plusing the normal expected guarantee. More than your money back. Keep bonuses. Competitor challenge. Copy countering risk other than financial. Explain how much at risk you are. Escrow or reserve account. Get copy of Harlan's new guarantee. So I think I told you guys I used to be friends with Harlan Kilstein, and I brought him as my guest to his very first copywriting seminar, which was my very first, because I told him he should become a copywriter. But wrestle with pigs, you get Dirty. So, truth be told, we are all in the guarantee business, because if you have a very loud, annoying, dissatisfied client, you will probably refund the money, right? Don't go home and begin writing. Go home and build your template. Make it so that all you really have to do is fill in the blanks. That's a note to myself that I highlighted. So think about that. You want to write from a template, and it should be your own template that you've created, right? Based on the templates of others, based on, etc.
Right.
Based on the common objections in your field, etc. Enemy in common is the best means of creating instant rapport, right? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And, yeah, nothing bonds a bunch of people together than a common enemy. Every group has a common enemy. The most successful fundraising pitches are always enemy in common, as opposed to positive. The question is, who or what can you attack that your marketplace will go along with and applaud you for doing it? If you don't have one, you should invent one. Every group has enemies. Hatred is one of the most powerful emotions, possibly the most powerful. So Romancing the Stone. This was something I was already familiar with. One of the few things right in these notes. It was familiar to me because, like, when I had my. When I was in the. When I was in the fashion business, we used to romance the stone all the time. We told the story of every garment, like how it got on this to this store in Manhattan. And we saw half the store was vintage, half the store was new, and we brought in new brands like Diesel and stuff like that. And I think you've heard me say the gazillion times, we were the first store to bring in those brands into the United States. But the vintage also I've got from Europe. And so the vintage that we had was very different than every other vintage clothing store here in the States. And so I would be selling, like, the slalom ski sweaters from, I don't even know, from the 60s, 70s. So we would tell the story that these were worn on Swiss slopes, like, 40 years ago by the world's top, like, solemn skiers and blah, blah, blah, blah. We had these black leather sports jackets, right? But black leather, like, from the. I think they were from the 50s, from Europe. And so once again, like, telling that whole story of who wore them, when they wore them, when they were popular, stuff like that. Romancing the Stone. We gave the backstory of the product, which therefore makes it sexier. So here we're talking about Romancing Stone. Same thing, right? It's the story of its discovery, the science or faux science. Right. Sharks never get cancer, so therefore eat shark cartilage. Okay, story. I'm giving you an example of faux science. Story of its inventor, author or maker. Story of its users or champions. What it represents, the age, the amount of effort that went into it, how it's made. Story of the process. Limited edition light and sound technologies. What it used in my hypnosis center. So that's why I just put that there. Asking questions could be used to state facts that you don't want challenged. What is it about the Swiss that makes them look so happy and healthy? Study Peterman. He is truly the romancer of the stone. Other strategies 5 Sensing, imagine vivid word pictures, et cetera. Key reasons why people buy the romance stone to join an elite club. Admiration of others, appeal to the opposite sex. Ego and pride. One upmanship of others to make a statement to keep with their self image, to identify with and to boost self confidence. Hey, Discovery used in supplements all the time. Found on some small island in the at the foot of a volcano.
Right?
Blackie from horse from horse betting. Story of a guy who finds out a successful method from some person who made the discovery years ago and is dying with no heirs to pass it on. The person has it and feels guilty and just wants to pass pass it on.
Right.
First person before, after Charles Atlas, which is one of the best ads of all time. The story of the troubled prospect.
Right.
So on and so forth.
Right.
So I'm just going to tell you what else is here. I'd rather have a conversation. I'm. I'm getting tired of reading these notes to you, so I'm going to tell you where they're at. Let's have a conversation. Ask me some questions. If you've got a website you'd like me to look at, we can talk about that too. Elimination of competition, right? Validate alternatives, testimonials, quality issues, quantity issues and uses of. And there's a lot of information here, really good that I got to review. Timeliness, urgency, take away selling, copywriting, voice lead generation. Okay. This is more related to stuff like with lead gen and free screenings which is what I had in my hypnosis centers. Whoops. Get rid of that. And riches and niches. Copywriting for direct mail sequences, formats that are appropriately and effectively present direct response copy and advertorials. So those are all the notes.
Right.
And that's going to be posted in the Facebook group. That's where it's going to be posted. And I said in the last live stream I was going to take a picture of me. I don't think you guys got to see it. Let's take a look. I'm going to make this as big as I can. This is me when it's got to be 1990 something. Don't look that much different. Have about the same amount of hair there that I have now. A little bit less. All right, so let's see. Okay, so how would you go about using these notes to write and test an offer? One thing I would do is one, I would realize that it's over 20 years old, so there's obviously not going to be anything about the Internet on there at all. But many of those things still apply. And these were my notes from a three day seminar that I also brought back the binders and all that kind of stuff. I don't, I don't have those anymore. But these would be good to review to think about how this applies to your situation. Which things do you think you most need to get better at based on what you've written so far? But I wouldn't say that this is a complete guide. This is all you need. Not at all. I wouldn't say that. I think this is supplemental. Jason. So all these notes were from Dan Kennedy 20 plus years ago. Amazing. Yeah. All these pages were from one weekend.
Rich.
If you have to choose one person to learn copy today to write VSLs, who would you learn from? One of the partners of Golden Hippo. Craig Clemens is who I would learn write VSLs from. That's who Evaldo looks up to just to give you a perspective. And Golden Hippo is a billion dollar company. Interesting. How would you go about testing an offer and for how long would you go about testing it before selling? Raquel? I would test an offer before I even had the product if I could. And so one thing you can do is try and sell an affiliate's product that is the same.
Right?
That's the first test. Let's say that goes well. You can dry test. And if you don't know how to dry test, I want to share one of my first presentations with you guys. And maybe I'll do that. I got to figure out how to get it set up here. But back in the days where I was actually like in the thick of it, I showed like my, the first, the first website I really created which was on baby modeling because both of my daughters were baby models. Fun fact. Ava, my oldest, was the face of Downey. So any box bottle, any TV commercial, anything had her in it or her picture in it. Right? Because she was the. She was on the box and the bottle for five years and that was $100,000 contract with Procter and Gamble. So anyway, I have this one book, I had this one book called Baby Modeling Secrets and that was the very first website I ever created and we dry tested it and I can show you what dry testing is. Dry testing though, Raquel, is where the customer thinks they're ordering and you think you're doing market research. So I never collected the money but the customer thought that they were going to be giving me money and so it was a really clever way of testing it. And I'll share that, Raquel, you might have to remind me, I might forget because I was thinking about flow, but I'd love to show that Rich. I watched the Caleb o' Doud about killer offers valuable information. By the way, what would be your advice in order to implement those ideas? Is there a program I can join where you apply those principles and turn them into an action plan? I did check Caleb program but it's not cost effective for me. I think you got to do that yourself. Miguel, if, if a couple thousand dollars is out of your price range, I don't think you're going to find someone to coach you through all that for less. Benson. Benson is the creator of the vsl. So normally you would default to the creator, but look, I'm the creator of the automated webinar and I'm not the right guy to teach you how to sell on a webinar. There you go. I don't even make the list. Let's be honest, right? There are people who weren't even alive when I invented the automated. No, almost. They were in like elementary school when I invented the automated webinar and they still can create better ones than me. So just the fact that John was the creator of it doesn't necessarily mean he's the best. I think Craig Clemons is the this and partly because I think Evaldo is amazing. And for Evaldo to look up to somebody else and study his stuff tells me all I need to know. What are your thoughts on digital marketing agency as a startup business model? Is it saturated or are there opportunities for targeting specific local niches? I asked this because there seem to be a lot of AI based software that makes fulfillment part of the service a bit easier. Damon. All right, I'm gonna get real here for a second and I'm gonna tell you more about Edwards and I'm gonna tell you how it relates to this. Okay? So I've told part of a story a bunch of times. And part of the story is that before I launched, before I wrote the manifesto and did all that, I told another Internet marketing guru that I was thinking about doing a launch. And they said, are you crazy? That so played out already. And there had only been two launches. There was Mike Filsane's Butterfly Marketing and John Reese's Traffic Secrets. Those are the only two.
Right.
Then mine came and did three and a half million. But that guru was like, oh, that's so played out before I did it. And that guru was Jim Edwards. Okay. So anyway, there's my revenge. Why do I bring that up? Not to get back at Jim, the fact that he was so off base. So off base. The reason you're seeing it a lot is because it's a very easy model to make work. Okay. It's one of the easiest right now, Damon. There are a lot of digital marketing agencies, and it's really like a biz op at this point. Like opportunity being sold to have your own. But assuming that you're not buying a stupid course like that.
Right.
Having a digital marketing agency is not a bad path for many people.
Right.
Because it's like this, Damon.
Right.
In other words, there's a bigger difference in knowledge, in what you know versus what? Like somebody who doesn't know our world knows versus me versus you. So anyone who has been online for a little bit could. Is going to be enough of an expert in comparison to a local business? Yes, Damon. I think it's. I think it's still a place where. Where there's opportunity. And if I was trying to figure out a way to make money, that might be something I'd do. Is Ivaldo still one of the top five copywriters at Agora? I don't know. Right now I'm a little bit less plugged in because I'm less involved. I'm still a consultant to Agora. Have been for like 17 years. When we were partners, I was much more involved in the day to day. Now I'm back outside, right? Can be inside anytime I want, but I made the choice to be outside. So I don't know. I know that Evaldo is now more at Legacy than Agora Financial. Legacy is right down the block here. If he had open access to the best gigs, than he would be. He's now at Legacy, so he's got to work his way up because there are copywriters there that have been there a long time who get like the best webinars and things like that. But yeah, it's hard to say. He's definitely one of the best, that's for sure. For the person looking for the good VSLs, look up those of Dr. Gundry. It's golden Hippo's most successful client. He's not a client. He's their personality that they use. So yeah, that is one of Golden Hippo's offers. They also like if you remember those cartoons that were all over the Internet about 10 years ago about gut bacteria, that was them too. Never heard of dry testing. This is very interesting. We'd love to see what you have to share. Cool. Hi Rich, you brought up Caleb o' Dowd earlier. I was thinking of getting one of Caleb's o' Dowd's program, but there is not much information about his programs. Do you recommend him? I do. He's very knowledgeable. I've learned a lot from him. I don't know which program you're thinking about, so it's hard for me to necessarily endorse it. But Caleb is a good guy and so yes, I do recommend them. You know what, if you guys are patient here or want to throw me a question, I can answer it while I try and find this presentation from early 2000. It is a presentation that I did at a J. Abraham event. Found it. Okay, so this is my presentation from God knows how long ago and at least like it's close to 20 years ago. And I don't know if I can actually advance the slides here, so I might have to move this a little bit. Yeah, there we go. All right, so infopreneuring on the Internet. Okay, so this was me advertising that we're going to create a book. But we want to know your questions about getting your son or daughter to be a baby model.
Right.
How old is your child? What's your biggest question about modeling then? These were the answers I got. This was the age of the babies, their questions, et cetera. Registered domain. Right. This is the process that I went through.
Through.
All right, then follow these simple, easy to follow step by step instructions. Your baby can be a high paid top model almost overnight. Our daughter Ava holding one of her cover shots and that was her on Parents magazine learned from the same parents whose baby was delivered on TLC is a baby story and who has graced the covers of Parents magazine and many others. This was before she was the face of Downey. So this was a whole long sales letter. They would get to this Page, Right. Risk free acceptance. And so this is the order page. And they would click on the order page and yes, Debbie and Rich, I want to download a copy of Baby Model Secrets.
Right.
Full name, address, city, state, zip, county, primary email address. Right. This is the order form. Do you notice what's missing? Any payment information?
Right.
So they think they're going and now they're going to input their credit card information on the next page. But when they get to the next page it says, we apologize, but we can't take your credit card information currently because we are in the process of updating Babymolic Secrets. We apologize for the inconvenience, but as a token of our good faith, we will alert you when the book is available again, approximately two weeks from now and provide you with a unique page. To purchase our book for half the price that everyone else is paying then. I was at that time I was testing two price points and I hadn't created the book yet.
Right.
So that's the point. Like before I created the book, I knew it was going to do well and I knew it was going to do well because of dry testing.
Right.
Hopefully, Raquel, that kind of shows you what's possible and it makes a lot of sense when we're working with a bigger budget. With supplements, we have seen huge differences in conversion rates based on packaging design. So in general it's always better to do some dry tests, if you can, with different product packaging images so that before you go produce the product, you have it in the version that's most likely to sell. So anyway, that's dry testing. There's no reason to write the book to do all that work if it's not going to sell. There is no greater waste of time than building a product that nobody wants. So there you go guys. What did you find works better in terms of packaging designs for improving conversion rate. I'm plugging with supplements and really sometimes the medical version will outperform, like making it look like a prescription bottle, sometimes making it look super clean and sleek and modern. It all depends on who the target market is. Thanks Rich. We'll split test those. We do a lot of anti aging products so I'm thinking that more older design will work possibly, hopefully. Clivex, you were on the last livestream I did where I talked about using upwork to get all the testimonials replaced for a supplement with MD supplements and how much that increases conversion. That's standard. It always works. Learn that from Caleb. You won't find it in a course. It's really more like one person telling another person, like one marketer to another. I'm sharing it with you. It is extremely valuable. If you go to Upwork, you can do doctor reviews, MD reviews. You'll find them and you pay them like 200 to 500 to review your product, let's say 200 and you then use those, all the good ones as testimonials and you will get an increase in conversion by having MD testimonials. Where would you platform wise dry test today? Oh, you mean where would you get traffic from? Maybe push networks because you're never going to run into a policy violation there. Probably also YouTube, you could do that. Facebook's very guarded so I don't know that you want to do it with Facebook. Thanks Rich. My pleasure. I'm going to end here. It's always a little painful for me to say goodbye to higher profits beyond Rich Chefrin, over and out.
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