Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
April 12, 2010
Issue #904
Dear Business-Builder,
My dad was old-school all the way. As a male chauvinist of epic proportions, he firmly believed that men were created to give orders and that women and children were created to take them.
And because Mom was an old-fashioned gal, she was pretty much OK with that.
And by “pretty much,” I really mean, “NOT AT ALL.”
Sure – she’d follow Dad’s lead so long as she agreed with him. When she didn’t agree, Mom used what she called “psychology” on him, exercising copious amounts of persuasion and a fair share of stealth tactics to get her way.
And every once-in-a-while, when all else failed, she’d get “that look” in her eye. There would be a certain inflection in her voice and a set to her jaw that made it clear to everyone – Dad included – who was really in charge. (What can I say? She was a redhead!)
I called that look “The Eye of The Tiger” – and whenever I saw it, I knew I was just one false move away from seeing a mild-mannered, middle-aged minister’s wife go ninja on my ass.
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
February 22, 2010
Issue #58
In this issue:
- Why persuasion is the most valuable skill you could ever acquire …
- How to seduce prospects without ever explicitly naming a single benefit …
- How acknowledging and validating your prospect’s core beliefs and values gives you an almost unfair advantage in sales copy …
- How to use rhetoric to bypass prospects’ brains entirely – making it virtually impossible for them to refuse the impulse to order NOW …
- And MUCH MORE!
Dear Business-Builder,
Whether you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, marketing pro or copywriter, this issue is going to be extremely valuable to you.
We’re continuing last week’s ramblings on persuasion: Without a doubt, the most valuable skill any human being could possibly develop – and I am not talking about just in copywriting or sales either.
Persuasion makes the world go around:
- Persuasion is at the heart of every government system you can name. In democracies, politicians gain power by persuading perpetually gullible citizens to vote for them. Once elected, the peoples’ representatives debate each new bill before it becomes law, each side attempting to persuade the other.
Even in monarchies and dictatorships, domestic tranquility – and in many cases, the very survival of the regime – is assured as the masses are persuaded that the monarch was divinely appointed … that the dictator is the nation’s destiny … or at the very least, to abide by the law of the land (often at the point of a gun).
- The world’s legal systems operate almost entirely on persuasion. Trials are little more than contests between two sets of attorneys to determine which will better persuade the judge or jury of its point of view.
As the OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson trials graphically demonstrated to many, the guilt or innocence of the accused can be irrelevant: If you have the most persuasive lawyer, you win: You can get away with the sickest behavior imaginable – even murder. On the other hand, if your lawyer is less than persuasive, you can be as innocent as a lamb and as pure as the driven snow – and still wind up on Death Row.
- Every religious movement owes its existence to its abilities to persuade converts that its holy script – and therefore its precepts and doctrines – is authentic, accurate and reliable (and by extension, that contradictory ones are frauds).
- In our personal lives, many (if not most) of our marriages and life partnerships are rooted in persuasion. Whether by passive seduction or aggressive pursuit, one of us persuaded the other to commit to an exclusive long-term relationship.
- Raising children is a Herculean two-way exercise in the art of persuasion. Parents use every persuasion strategy at their command to produce desired behaviors and discourage undesirable ones – and kids are past masters at figuring out what needs to be said or done to persuade Mom and Dad to give them their way.
- And of course, persuasion is an essential component in every business success story. Every day, banks and investors are persuaded to bankroll new businesses … quality employees are persuaded to join their teams … workers are persuaded to perform in productive ways …
… New customers are persuaded to make their first purchases … existing customers are persuaded to make new purchases … unions and vendors are persuaded to accept companies’ terms … and executives persuade other businesses to enter into alliances and joint ventures and to concede to mergers and acquisitions.
Heck: One of the greatest business empires of all time began with a simple act of persuasion. Microsoft was born when Bill Gates persuaded IBM to pay him a royalty on every copy of MS-DOS software installed on its machines!
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Posted by:
Daniel Levis
December 23, 2009
Issue #826
In this article:
- The real reason your prospects whip out their plastic and BUY NOW!
- The silent connection that bonds you to your prospects …
- What you must do with your landing pages to turn visitors into buyers …
- How your own self-image is both your secret copywriting weapon, and your marketing Achilles heel …
- How to supercharge your creativity, making your writing time infinitely more productive …
- And more!
Dear Web Business-Builder,
Why do your prospects buy from you?
I often ask my consulting clients this very question. And the first answers I get usually look something like this:
- Because we’re the most affordable
- Because we offer the best service
- Because our product offers the best value
- Because we have a superior reputation in the marketplace
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
November 20, 2009
Issue #473
Dear Business-Builder,
You could write faster.
Scratch that: You SHOULD write faster. Especially your first few drafts.
Because the quicker you get a solid first draft into your greedy clutches, the more time you’ll have to get to draft #21.
You know; the draft that actually makes your copy good.
Plus, as a general rule, the faster you write, the more money you make. Write twice as fast; make double the money.
Simple — right?
So are you ready to get greasy-fast?
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Posted by:
Daniel Levis
April 22, 2009
Issue #657
In this issue:
- Why almost everybody marketing online today has targeting wrong, wrong, wrong …
- An innocent little mistake that once corrected, instantly spikes the response to virtually any webpage …
- How to determine the intent of Web searchers who insist on using “ambiguous” keywords — so you can sharpen your message-to-market match and grow your business faster …
- And more!
Dear Web Business-Builder,
When Gene Schwartz wrote Breakthrough Advertising, back in the 60’s, the Internet was just a glimmer in some computer scientist’s eye.
Little could Gene have realized the massive implications this new media would have for the craft he loved so dearly and plied with such mastery.
Yet, most of what Gene wrote in that watershed book is just as applicable in today’s fast moving wired-world as it was then in the cumbersome days of typewriters and typesetting.
Some of what Gene had to say is even more applicable today than it was then. The chapters on market awareness and sophistication in particular …
Gene observed that different states of market awareness and sophistication required markedly different approaches to copywriting.
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