Brent Hodgson, Copywriter

Everyone knows testimonials give your marketing a “social proof kick” which boosts sales.

That’s because if you say how good you are, it’s just bragging… But if someone else says it for you, it must be true!

The problem with getting good testimonials is how do you:

• Get other people to say how good you are in a way that sells well;
• With as little effort as possible?

So how do you attract really powerful testimonials, without investing a huge amount of effort?

Here are some techniques that I’ve use to get thousands of really powerful testimonials for my clients, with practically no effort.

Testimonial Tip #1 – Ask for Feedback, Not Testimonials

The easiest way to get testimonials is to ask for feedback.

(People feel more comfortable giving feedback than providing a testimonial - and they’re practically the same thing anyway.)

The two best times to ask people for their feedback is when they’re most committed to their decision - at the point of sale, and at the point of delivery.

Robert Cialdini speaks about this in his book Influence: The Power of Persuasion.

If you have the book, read the chapter on Commitment and Consistency. There’s a story there about a study conducted on people placing bets at the track.

People were interviewed about their chances or winning - both immediately before, and immediately after placing a bet. What the researches found was immediately after they committed to their decision (i.e. - placed their bet), people were more confident in their chances of winning - even though nothing about the race itself had changed.

Use this piece of psychological ju-jitsu to your advantage!

Ask customers for their feedback on their previous purchase (after they have made a repeat sale), or when they are taking delivery of their product.

This is when customers are most committed to their decision, and it’s the easiest way to “glowing” testimonials.

If you run seminars, the best time to ask customers for their feedback is at the end of the day, while they’re still “taking delivery” and buzzing full of new ideas.

By all means follow customers up days, weeks or months later for testimonials - but if you’re not striking while you’re at the forefront of the customer’s mind, chances are they will have moved on and forgotten about your product, or forgotten how good it felt when they purchased from you.

Testimonial Tip #2 - It’s Not Just WHAT You Ask, But HOW You Ask It…

If you’re soliciting testimonials (er, feedback), how you phrase your questions will affect what people tell you.

Asking for the person’s name and contact details are a given - you should always do that. And in some cases, having additional information about the customer’s background is testimonial gold (their occupation, what they were doing before they found your “magical” product, etc.)

But whenever I ask for feedback for testimonials, I ask three specific questions…

These questions “train” the customer to start thinking in a way which will give you great testimonials.

I always put them on my feedback forms because they’ve been so successful eliciting great testimonials in the past.

Brent’s 3 “Feedback” Questions For Getting Killer Testimonials:

• “How, specifically, did [the product] change the way you [achieve the benefit the product provides / do whatever the product does] previously?”
• “What would you say to a friend who was thinking of investing in [this product] - but wasn’t sure?”
• “If you feel it is warranted, feel free to leave us a testimonial in the box below:”

Each question asks essentially the same thing - but it does it from a different angle, and targets a different testimonial “style” - the Before and After story testimonial, the buying advice from a friend with no vested interest testimonial, and the glowing feedback testimonial.

This gives you three chances at hitting the killer testimonial jackpot.

In most cases, you’ll end up with something that you can work with (or rework - but I’ll go into this a little later).

When you’re reading through these feedback forms, look for testimonials which stand out.

The best testimonials are precise and exact and clearly relate the benefit that the customer received in purchasing your product or service. Or, they should read like a tabloid headline - full of intrigue, scandal or human triumph.

Remember John Carlton’s formula for a testimonial - it should be “specific, short, spicy”.

Testimonial Tip #3 - Ask Permission

This is one instance where I disagree with the saying: “ask forgiveness, not permission”. It’s so easy to do, it will save you so much trouble, and it will avoid “burning” an otherwise happy customer.

When you do receive good feedback or testimonials, make sure you have permission to use that feedback on marketing materials.

If you don’t, it’s only a matter of time until you get a phone call from a shocked customer, complaining that you’re leveraging on their good name to make money.

I’ve never had a customer say “no” when I’ve asked them if I could use their comments in marketing materials - but I’ve had several call and complain when I haven’t asked permission.

Fortunately, they were testimonials which were published online. If they had have been printed, we might have had to pay to reprint our marketing materials.

(I’ve included the email I used to use to ask for permission to use feedback from seminars as testimonials below. This email worked a treat!)

Testimonial Tip #4 - Don’t Be Afraid to Rewrite!

If you’re collecting testimonials offline (particularly with handwritten feedback forms), chances are your customers won’t remember exactly what they said on the feedback form they handed in.

So if you see an opportunity to add a bit of “spice” to the testimonial, rework the testimonial before asking the customer’s permission to attribute the reworked testimonial to them.

Hi {Name},

I was going through the feedback from last weekend’s event, and I came across your feedback form!

Your feedback was so great that I’d like to use what you said as a testimonial on our website - would you mind if I did this?

Here’s how I’d like to quote you:

—
{Place their testimonial here}
{Name}
{Town, State, Country / Website / Title of significance}
–

(Feel free to edit this if there’s something in there you don’t like)

Of course, at any stage if you wanted to “withdraw” this testimonial, just let us know and we’ll take it off all of our marketing materials, with the exception of printed materials (such as brochures - we’d need to wait until the next printing run to do this.)

Anyway, let me know if it’s OK to use this in our marketing materials.

Thanks again for your great feedback - I’m glad you got a lot out of the event!

Brent

Note: Make sure you keep the bit which says “Feel free to edit this..”. Fewer people will want to change their words if you say this. Go figure. I guess you’re putting them at ease.

Testimonial Tip #5 - Sow Back After You Harvest!

Finally… It’s handy to have a few “freebies”, little free giveaways, on hand to give away as thank-you’s for testimonials.

You don’t have to tell people they’re going to receive it when you ask them for their testimonial (usually they’ll say yes anyway) but it helps to feed goodwill back into some of your most valuable customers.

When I was a young (er, younger) marketer promoting real estate courses (often worth thousands of dollars), when someone gave me an unsolicited testimonial or some nice feedback, I’d post them a $20 audio CD on real estate investment.

They’d open up their letterbox a few days later, and be so surprised and euphoric that call me immediately, and give me yet another glowing review - this time even better than the first.

Invariably I’d see these people at seminars months later, and they’d introduce me to the friends that they’d brought along.

I can’t say with any certainty that one little $20 gift lead to two $500-$10,000 sales months later - but it did feed enough goodwill back into some of our most valuable customers that they wanted to come back again, and bring their friends too!

—

Of course, you’ll still need to do the “little 1%’ers” if you want to get positive testimonials from customers.

But if you’re delivering results, these tips will help to get the word out about your great work.

Brent

Popularity: 12%

Hello Copywriters!

For the last few months, my copywriting work has been neglected.

I’ve been focussed on other “stuff” - systemising Keyword Research, scaling up my Google Adwords and SEO capabilities, dealing with new clients, and getting Tracked.to ready for beta.

But now I have a backlog of copywriting work, several deadlines approaching, and a whole pile of notes covered in “Urgent!” Post-it’s.

“Aahh!”

I needed to do something to motivate me to get this work done… So I figured I’d add a little external motivation.

“Huh?… How?”

Well… If you’re interested in looking over my shoulder while I work, leave a comment on this post.

If I get 20 responses by this time next week, I’ll do a series of short screen-cam videos the week after showing you each copywriting step I go through as I go through it, what I’m thinking at each step, and how you can duplicate my process to create your own salesletters. I’ll then upload these videos to my blog.

The process that I apply uses some of the more successful techniques from names like Gary Halbert, Frank Kern and John Carlton.

How do I know they’re some of the more successful techniques?

In one case, I used it to write a salesletter which generated $560,000 in orders in under 24 hours… On a niche product… With the offer targeted to Australians (only) who were interested in this niche. So I guess they’re kind-of successful.

Hrmm… I probably need some rules for this…

The Rules

If I receive 20 comments to this post by 00:00am AEDST Thursday the 13th of March, 2008, I will create a short series of videos which demonstrate my process for writing a salesletter, and upload them to this blog for people to access for free.

But the 20 comments must meet the following conditions:

• No SPAM! - one comment per legitimate person please. SPAM will be deleted.
• Appropriate trackbacks will count towards the total.
• Comments in moderation will be counted towards the total too.
• Forwarding this post to a friend and encouraging them to comment is OK.
• Commenting on behalf of a friend is NOT OK (i.e. dulicate IP addresses).

Having a stack of blog readers harassing me to show them what I’m up to will motivate me to finish these salesletters sooner.

However, video takes a lot of time and effort… and I’m lazy.

So if there’s not enough demand, and I end up with 19 comments instead of 20, I’m not going to feel obligated to bend the rules and make myself do more work. If I don’t get 20 responses, that’s fine. If I do, that’s fine too. But 20 comments is the minimum.

If you’re interested in seeing me butcher the English language (on video and in text), and maybe making a few sales, leave me a comment below.

Brent

P.S. - 20 responses by Thursday the 13th of March doesn’t sound like a lot, but so far the maximum number of comments I’ve received on a post is 16.

So forward this post to buddies who are into Internet Marketing, give me a thumbs-up on StumbleUpon…

If I’m going to put the effort in to record, edit, produce and publish my copywriting technique, do your part and give me a bit of support.

Popularity: 4%

Do you have a great internet marketing idea that you haven’t told anyone about?

Do you have a new or unique idea for a product which you’re keeping to yourself until you commercialise?

A common theme I notice among a lot of internet marketers is that they want to hold on as tight as they can to their “intellectual property”.

Big deal. Keep it.

Intellectual property isn’t worth the brain cells it’s stored in.

Ideas don’t make money - action does.

There are plenty of highly intelligent people who are sitting on great ideas, smart products, and brilliant innovations…

…Many are wondering why people with simpler ideas and dumb “been done before” products can make money, when they can’t.

The truth is, it’s because of two factors:

Lack of consistent action - Talk is cheap, ideas are cheaper, and actions speak louder than words. I’m running out of cliches here.. But my point is, it’s not the people who have the brilliant ideas who make money - it’s the people who don’t give up, who keep working even when it’s tough, who put a little bit of effort in every day - they’re the people who become successful at anything.

We’ve all heard the story of the overnight success - see if you can find one who wasn’t working for years beforehand. Becoming an overnight success takes years of preparation, and a moment of opportunity.

The product is seen to be more important than the business model - this is literally “cart before the horse” thinking. It’s your business model which drives and sells your idea (or product). Don’t get caught up in your own “field of dreams” - if you build it, chances are they won’t come - you’ll need to find ways to take your idea to the customer first!

Take this one from me on personal experience - personally, I’ve had several ventures fail because I was more worried about the “idea” or the product than the marketing - and it’s a crushing feeling when a product fails to sell. (I highly recommend you avoid this experience.)

At the same time, I’ve marketed boring products which became phenomenal successes - because most of the focus and effort was around the business model, and making the marketing work!

Make the time, and effort, to concentrate on your marketing and really work out how you’ll take your product to your customers. Don’t expect them to find you.

Forget about your million dollar ideas. Chances are they’re worth more if you just give them away. Focus on the action you take, not the thoughts you have.

Brent

Popularity: 3%

I received a trial edition of James Brausch’s new newsletter “Testing” on Saturday, and enjoyed poking through it over the weekend.

It was the first issue, and contained 15 pages of really heavily detailed real-life multivariate testing data.

Not something for the feint hearted!

The data presented looked at each individual element tested in one of James Brausch’s most profitable salesletters. It showed everything from what elements were being tested, to how successful each variable was, to the exact visitor value each variable could be calculated to be valued at.

This was serious detail - even to someone who works with this stuff regularly.

A few of the “finer points” could have been explained better, such as the significance of the use of the sigma: what is a good sigma, what is a bad sigma, what is the minimum sigma that James Brausch’s interns look for in positive test results, etc.

Not having a mathematics bent, lists of stats, figures and numerical data are the type of thing that generally make me zone out and fall asleep.

However, I did take a few new ideas out of the newsletter.

One of the most interesting parts of the newsletter was some data on a unique way of accepting payment which turned out to be more profitable than Paypal or Credit Card Payments.

Also interesting was seeing how many variations of each element James Brausch was testing - for most elements, it was a single variation tested against “nothingness” - and in many cases “nothingness” won.

Would I recommend “Testing” to you?

If you want to take a voyeuristic peek inside a successful internet business, and see real life sales, conversion and split test data, then James Brausch’s “Testing” is for you.

Don’t expect it to be any more or less than promised - it is, in essence, split test results - statistics. Be prepared for words that come out of a University Statistics textbook - like “sigma” and “standard deviations”.

If this isn’t your style, you might better off grabbing a copy of MuVar, putting a salesletter up, and test it yourself. It’s $300 once-off for MuVar, or $300 per year for a subscription to “Testing” - so they’re both in the same price range. James Brausch’s data will give you some valuable insights, but what could be more valuable than your own test data.

Popularity: 3%

I’m a subscriber to James Brausch’s printed newsletter - the James D. Brausch Letter.

It often has some great tips - some issues you really pick up a few gold nuggets, some issues are fairly simple and common-sense - but overall it’s been worth the money.

(I’m using one of the more controversial tips from the January 2007 newsletter right now to test a salesletter)

If you want to find out more, or subscribe, check out:

http://www.jamesbrausch.com/letter/

(Note: not an affiliate link)

In the August 2007 edition, one of the 3 articles in James Brausch’s newsletter was about Traffic as a search engine ranking factor - during a statistical test on SEO factors, he found a correlation between Alexa rankings and Google rankings.

I found this particularly interesting - and it’s something I’ve been noticing myself in the past few months.

I disagree with his assertion that Google must have a back-door deal with Alexa (even though he showed why he didn’t believe it was simply a correlation between traffic and rankings) - I think there’s a much simpler explanation.

Google has their own toolbar they use for gathering data, plus they monitor clicks from their search results. In all likelihood, the same types of people who install the Google Toolbar are also the same types of people who install the Alexa Toolbar (webmasters, SEO’ers etc). This would create a correlation between Alexa rankings and Google rankings.

But I don’t want to get bogged down in the detail. Whether it’s caused by the Alexa Toolbar or the Google Toolbar - this doesn’t worry me.

Traffic is an important ranking factor for SEO - and Google does seem to monitor click-through rates from Search Results, and web-site visitor traffic in general, as weighting factors to affect rankings. This is something I’m noticing in my clients’ sites increasingly.

One client I have has 8 of the top 10 sites in Google for a particular keyword. One of the 2 sites here that he doesn’t own gets a huge Click-Through-Rate - because that site has a title tag which reads “such-and-such product is a scam”. Of course this gets a HUGE click-through rate. Just have a look at Rich Jerk’s ads - he uses this type of hook too - because it gets clicks!

What’s most interesting is traffic (as an SEO factor) can be self-ratcheting.

You SEO a site to increase traffic… Then the increased traffic is a positive SEO factor… which increases traffic… which is a positive SEO factor… which increases traffic… which is a positive SEO factor… Which.. ahh… I think you get the message…

Interesting, isn’t it?

Anyway - if you want James Brausch’s newsletter “The James D. Brausch Letter“, it’s currently $25 per month, and to date I feel my subscription has been money well spent.

Brent

P.S. -  James Brausch just launched a second newsletter - Testing - and he’s offering one issue for free in exchange for honest reviews. This newsletter is different from the James D. Brausch letter in that it focusses solely on split test data from James Brausch’s sites. Find out how to claim your copy here. I’m interested in having a look for myself (and have made sure my WHOIS data is up-to-date ).

Popularity: 4%

I set myself a goal this week - I wanted to grow the number of visitors to my blog..

More specifically, I wanted to increase the number of visitors to my blog - and beat last months’ figure.

I was running behind time - there were only a few days in the month left, and I would need to actually work (*groan*) at it if I was going to hit the mark.

I started posting franticly. I needed fresh, new content (and quality content too). I was waaay behind where I needed to be if I wanted to beat January’s stats.

The good news - I made the mark!

I would have missed my target it this month if it wasn’t for the leap year - a few nice things that happened on the 29th of February which pushed me over the mark.

1. James Brausch gave me a really nice compliment, specifically mentioning my blog in a post of his. (He has some pretty strict standards on who he links to - which you can read here.)
2. And Ed Dale came by and commented on my blog too - and where Ed goes, the people follow.

Thank-you again guys!

Both of those things boosted my February Stats (unique visitors) up above January’s level.

Here are my actual stats:

February unique visitors: 493
(January unique visitors: 428)

You’re probably wondering about that big spike in April last year? (2,178 unique visitors) How did that happen?

Well.. that’s around the time that I was last blogging consistently.

Fresh, quality content, and a regularly updating blog will grow your traffic stats - there’s no doubt about it.

…But once you stop writing new content, the traffic will gasp for a while, and then die (see traffic death in October).

If you’re wondering where, specifically, I was getting traffic from in April…

…Here’s where the traffic came from:

Search Engine Optimisation - What can I say? It’s the big kahuna. Even while I wasn’t blogging, people were still finding my blog through Google. Searches on Viral Marketing, How Twitter Makes Money and Google Adwords Quality Score are consistent referrers - but it’s all long tail stuff.

StumbleUpon - This was (and still is) one of my biggest referrers to date. Long story short, I wrote some good content, and asked some people if they’d leave honest reviews of my site - and I ended up with a steady stream of traffic (which is still going - even if it is now just an occasional trickle rather than a big rush).

Web Pro News - I had an article on Google Adwords Quality Score featured in WebProNews - almost one year ago today! That was great for credibility, and gave me a nice bunch of traffic.

Technorati Tags - This was one thing I did early in my blogging which immediately made a difference to my traffic levels. I installed the (now defunct?) SimpleTags tagging plugin, and started tagging my posts. Almost immediately, I started receiving visitors from Technorati blog searches.

Official Adwords Blog - Because I keep up to date with the latest Google Adwords news, I occasionally blog about changes to Google Adwords Strategy. In those posts, I generally link to the Official Adwords Blog - which gets me a trackback (link) from that post.

I’ve found that if I have an interesting title in my post, if I’m one of the first people to blog about that post on the Google Adwords blog, or if I’m one of the last people to blog about that post on the Google Adwords blog, I end up getting a bunch of visitors from the Google Adwords Blog.

Shoemoney - For a while, I was featured as a top commenter on Shoemoney’s blog. That gave me a few dozen visitors, but I wouldn’t recomment people spam the poor guy’s blog. Spend time there if you’re interested, by all means, but don’t go just to spam comments.

Blog Comments - Just keeping an eye on what’s happening in the world of Internet Marketing, and commenting on other peoples blogs, invariably gets a few visitors. These are usually other commenters, or the blog owner themselves.

Trackbacks - Similarly, mentioning other peoples’ blog posts in your blog post, and getting trackbacks, will give you a bit of traffic.

In one post I made, I was catching up on my RSS feeds and decided to make a post on the interesting posts other people had made that week. I linked to a stack of posts, got a lot of trackbacks, and ended up getting a lot of traffic.

I’m sure hosting Blog Carnivals would have a similar effect.

I hope this has given you a few (free) strategies to boost the traffic levels to your web-site.

Brent

P.S. - I know I said StumbleUpon was great for traffic… but James Brausch’s post mentioning me is catching up quickly… It’s been around for just a few hours, and already it’s my #4 referrer. (Thanks again, James!)

P.P.S. - Goes to show the amount of traffic James Brausch must be getting… If he can leap from nowhere to my #4 referrer in just a few hours…

Popularity: 27%

Hello Twitter’ers,

Ever since I made a post looking at “How Does Twitter Make Money“, I’ve had a steady stream of visitors to my blog from people who were looking for answers to that question online.

In my original post, I promised I’d show you about how you can make money using Twitter.

…But I never did.

Honestly, I’ve just been lazy… and didn’t post for 9 months.

But if you’re reading this now, I want to show you three cool reasons ways Twitter can make you money..

• Mind Share; (The same strategy Coca Cola uses)
• Broadcast Announcements; (A way to quickly and regularly monetize Twitter)
• “Over the Shoulder Selling” (My favorite!… You’ll see why…)

So let’s begin!
Mind Share

Mind share is a relatively new marketing term. Almost every second of every day, people are bombarded with advertisements - and there’s no way that they can possibly remember them all.

Mind Share is all about getting people to “think” about your company, your ads and your offers enough times that people automatically think of you when making buying decisions.

If you’re able to achieve this, then making the sale (obviously) becomes easier.

Twitter can work the same way.

If someone is regularly receiving your Twitter “tweets” about what you’re up to, where you are, and your latest business news, you’re “capturing mind share” - and if they want [whatever it is you sell], chances are they’ll think of you automatically when they go to buy.

Mind share is something Coca Cola invests a lot of money into. Do you know how many hundred Coca Cola logos and advertisements you go past every day - just driving to and from work, and when you go to buy lunch?

Is it any wonder why people automatically reach for a Coke?

Broadcast Announcements

This is a great strategy used by several companies…

One in particular is Woot.

They run a deal-a-day site, promoting a single product each day, every day.

People love getting a bargain - and visit this site daily, just to see what’s being sold. (Plus, they use scarcity exceptionally well - they only have a limited number of each product, never say how many that number is, and never repeat an offer!)

Each day, Woot sends out a Twitter message announcing their product of the day…

And each day, as the product sells out, they also send a message through Twitter announcing that the product is sold out (reinforcing the scarcity, and training their customers to act fast - or risk missing out next time too).

It’s brilliant!

They have a passionate, enthusiastic following who just laps it all up.

It’s all part of the buying experience.

But even if you’re running a more “traditional” online business, sending broadcast messages to your Twitter followers about your latest blog posts, articles, special offers, and product launches is a great way to keep your customers “in the loop”.

“Over the Shoulder Selling”

I’ve kept this to last, because I only just discovered it myself - and I don’t want too many people getting hold of this concept… So if you’ve made it this far, you’re going to stumble on something unique and powerful.

A few blog posts I first mentioned the concept of Over the Shoulder Selling.

Twitter is a great way to really engage your customer in this “Over the Shoulder” way.

Ed Dale is the prime example of this - and one of the most fanatical Twitter’ers around. (See his Twitter Feed here)

Ed also posts the most random collection of weird and wonderful crud into his Twitter feed (and blog!) ever - everything from horrible nappy-changing accidents during Christmas BBQ’s, to what web-site’s he’s visiting, to product announcements and blog posts he’s writing.

By reading his Twitter feed, you are practically reading over his shoulder and seeing whatever he’s doing at the time.

Random? Perhaps.

Useful?

Well… Before I answer WHETHER it’s useful, let me take a backward approach and explain WHY and HOW it’s useful first…

What happens in your customer’s mind (when they’re reading your Twitter “Tweets”) is this:

“Look at Brent. Look at what Brent’s doing. Aww, Brent’s with his family! Brent’s on Holidays. Brent’s celebrating his birthday. Brent’s doing normal stuff. I do normal stuff. Brent’s like me. I could be like Brent. I am like Brent. Whatever Brent does, I can do”

It’s not just about having someone look over your shoulder - it’s about building a rapport, and a liking with someone.

It’s about making yourself similar to other people in your market - with some of the same struggles, joys and mundane day-to-day life. It’s “mirror marketing” - allowing people to see themselves in you.

It makes anything you do seem achieveable.

If you’re a guru, and you’re like them, your success becomes within their reach. It becomes achieveable.

And it’s not just about people having that rapport - it’s also about having something attractive that people want for themselves.

(Read that again - make sure it sinks in)

Do you think this would make more people want to buy from you?

hrmm.. Interesting isn’t it…

Unconvinced?

Here’s another article I wrote about Over the Shoulder Selling, and how it works.

Brent

P.S. - If you’re interested, subscribe to my Twitter Feed here. Find out what internet marketing information I’m looking at, as I’m browsing, and more. Yes, you’ll probably find out what I’m eating for breakfast occasionally, and what I’m writing about on my blog too.

P.P.S. - I’m writing this at 4:14pm Friday February 29th, 2008.. An hour ago, I posted my first article on “Over the Shoulder Selling“… And it’s already been indexed by Google… I’m impressed!

P.P.P.S. - Pete Williams has been a great sounding board for these recent posts. He’s had a lot of great input, and plans to post about this “Over the Shoulder” theory in the coming days on his blog.

Popularity: 6%

Just watched a video Ed Dale posted on using 3″ x 5″ cards for writing sales copy (…or at least his Mac software which does the same thing… Those crazy Mac geeks…)

Check it out here: http://tubbynerd.com/2008/02/28/oh-yeah-my-blog-is-back-check-this-flv-goodness/

He makes a particularly good point which I thought was worth mentioning (around the 5 minute mark)

When you’re writing a salesletter, (or any sort of copy) don’t stop - whatever you do.

If you need to research a fact, or get a sales figure for your salesletter, or insert at testimonials - DON’T.

Just keep writing.

If you stop, you interrupt your flow - and if you interrupt your flow, you lose your momentum and focus and what you end up with is going to be poorer quality.

Just keep writing…

Spell-checking, facts, figures… whatever - keep all of those distractions to the end.

Ed mentions he was taught this 3″ by 5″ card strategy by the (late) great Gary Halbert as a way to write quality sales copy - faster. It’s by far the easiest way to get all your main points together for salesletters, and really get your flow… before ordering all your points in a logical way.

I found out the 3″ by 5″ card system as a result of Gary Halbert sharing it with Ed… (Gary taught Ed, Ed taught it to Eugene Ware (the internet marketing guy nobody knows, but everyone should) who then co-authored the original Underachiever program (with Ed and Anthony Fernando), and Eugene in turn taught it to me.)

(Hassle me in the comments below if you want to know the exact strategy, and I’ll video it and show you how it’s done in a future blog post)

For writing content (like this), or short copy, I just use Jdarkroom - it’s a cut-down text editor which is great for keeping focus when you’re writing. It removes all distractions from your computer, and seems to transport you back to 1986 as a result. The 3″ x 5″ card strategy is really worthwhile when you have a lot of thoughts to compile.

But again, just like with the 3″ x 5″ cards - I just write until I’m finished… and then go back and do the “detailed” stuff at the end.

Brent

P.S. - Ed’s video is another example of the “Over the Shoulder” technique in action.

Popularity: 7%

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.

Popularity: 7%

If Work Sucks, You Have To Stop Working.

I don’t mean “drop out of life, and stop earning money”. I mean “stop selling your life short”.

You can still be productive (earning money is a necessary part of life) but if the only thing that keeps you working is the money, then you need to stop selling your life away.

Every moment you’re “working”, you are literally dying. A piece of your life is being taken away. You’ll never get that time back - it’s gone forever.

That’s why it’s so important that you do something with your life that you enjoy doing.

Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, months turn into years, and years turn into your life…

Life isn’t about how you spend your years - it’s about how you spend your days.

I’m in internet marketing consulting today because I started off doing something I enjoyed and was passionate about. And because of this passion and enjoyment, I consistently applied myself to my work - worked harder than I would if I did something I hated - and talent naturally followed.

But even today, I have to be careful to guard my passion…

I readily “fire” clients who take away my passion, or rob me of my ability to enjoy my life.

These are people I don’t want to deal with - because they are murderers.

I don’t use this language lightly.

Sure, they’re not like traditional murderers - they don’t take away the “end” of my life - instead, they take away the “middle” of my life.

If you’re serious about living too, you need to avoid these people in the same way that you would avoid murderers.

Don’t find yourself wishing for more life at the end of your lifetime - when you gave away so much of it in the middle.

And be careful about how you spend your days - because days quickly turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and years into a lifetime.

Popularity: 3%