Brent Hodgson, Copywriter

Had dinner last night with the Peter Williams at Romeo’s Italian Restaurant in Toorak Village.

Pete went as far as #3 in the 2008 list of Cleo Australia’s eligible bachelors and he’s an all-round-nice-guy… but on top of this, he knows more about Google Adwords than anyone I know, he’s a publicity guru (writing a great publicity book on successful guerrilla publicity tactics), runs a successful “offline” business too, and is known for “Selling the Melbourne Cricket Ground“… *phew!*…

And somehow, in amongst all of this, he managed to jet off to Paris last week, and celebrated his 26th birthday on Wednesday Night! (Happy Birthday Pete!)

As always, we talked a lot of bull, but we got onto the topic of sales copy - and Robert Cialdini’s 6 influence tools.

I’d been writing an article on using these in online sales copy to boost conversion rates (which I’ll post up soon) and was having trouble with coming up with concrete examples of using some of them in online salesletters…

The 6 influence factors are:

• Reciprocation - When people receive a favor, they feel the need to return that favor;
• Commitment and Consistency - When people commit to an ideal or goal in some way, they feel the need to honor that commitment;
• Social Proof - When people see other people doing something, they become more likely to do it themselves;
• Authority - When asked to perform an action by an authority figure, people will usually comply;
• Liking - People are easily persuaded by people who are similar to and/or liked by them;
• Scarcity - (My favorite!) Perceived scarcity in supply will create an increased demand;

The two which I felt were difficult to achieve online were “Authority” (how do you establish authority online?), and “Liking” (how do you get someone to connect with your identity through a salesletter?).

In particular, I was struggling with “Liking“… “Authority” can be as simple as having esteemed experts provide testimonials, or establishing that credibility as an expert for yourself - which is achievable, but sometimes difficult.

Then Peter made a comment to me… and the lightbulb went off above my head.

Did you see Frank Kern’s recent Mass Control launch? It was a massively successful launch, and a really great technique Frank has… We’d both heard Frank present it previously at the January 2006 Underachievers event he held with John Carlton and Ed Dale in Melbourne.

Pete made the observation that a lot of the techniques Frank used were based around liking - and it was something he used in the launch too.

In the Mass Control launch videos, for example, we saw Frank driving to work just talking about his online business, his copywriting and his Mass Control product.

This was true “over the shoulder” selling.

Over the shoulder selling is a type of inclusive sales pitch which just engages people - not as sales prospects, but as people.

Over the shoulder selling works like this:

“Here’s what I’m up to. It’s pretty cool stuff.. That’s because it achieves THIS result. Not bad, hey? Yeah, it’s pretty cool! What I really want to achieve is THIS. It’s not hard - I just need to take a few steps - like this, then this, and now this… And, there we go, it’s done - see? It’s easy!… Oh, you’d like a go too? Well.. I guess you can, if you want… Surely if I can do it, there’s no reason you can’t do it too.. OK then. Here you go. You can try it yourself. And I’ll give you some pointers along the way to help you out. Just order below..”

It’s as if you were showing a friend what you’re up to… Like they’re looking over your shoulder, and you’re just sharing with them.

People who run an “open book” internet business (like Frank Kern, Ed Dale, Dan Raine, Jason “Profit” Moffatt, Michelle MacPhearson, Alice Seba, Aaron Brandon - and even James Brausch) all use this tactic (either subconsciously, or very deliberately).

…And if those people are successfully making money using “liking” and “over the shoulder selling”, surely you can too.

Brent

P.S. - Want to see a great, recent example of the “Over the Shoulder” selling technique in action? Check out Michelle McPherson’s “30 minute backlinks”. It’s a great vid!
You’ll see why this technique is so effective too.

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