Cashvertising Summary

key lessons from the book ashfurtising one of the main objectives that you have as a copywriter is to take people from being Lookers to actual buyers from Windows Shoppers to people that open up their wallets and buy things and how do we do that how do we get people to actually buy well we need to change our thinking and we need to realize that people don't really care about our products what they care most about is themselves so what that means is it's not so much your product as what your product does for them how

it makes their lives better and what's going to help us understand this is desire there are eight types of desires that are fulfilled through our products first is survival the second is food the third is Freedom From Fear pain and danger fourth is sex the fifth is Comfort sixth is superiority or status the seventh is care and protection of loved ones and the eighth is social approval now the key to really getting people to understand how we're able to fulfill one or more of these desires is through Visual demonstration of our product inside people's heads

and we use specific types of copywriting to demonstrate the product in a visual way by using specific visual words you can give your audience a sense of what it's like to actually interact with your product or enjoy the benefits to demonstrate its use inside their minds long before they actually buy it this vicarious pleasure is where persuasion begins because the first use of any product is inside the consumer's Minds now here's some example of a copy where we're creating that visual enticing desirable experience so go to the kitchen open the oven and pull out the

freshest crispiest most delicious hot pizza you've ever eaten go on yourself a big hearty slice now there's a key formula for desire and this is really fundamental to the psychology of being a human being desire is really what's driving so much of our Behavior day to day so it starts with tension there's some sort of tension and that tension creates desire and then that desire creates an action to satisfy the desire this is something for example that Buddhist monks realize is that desire starts with some sort of tension you feel the tension in your mind

you feel the tension in your body and then you're gonna act on that you have to go seek out something to relieve that tension and fulfill that desire of yours what you want to do is make your prospects believe that your product actually delivers so it's not just about creating the desire or talking about the desire it's establishing credibility so that people believe that your product will help make them be successful and one of the easiest ways to do that is to get an endorsement by a person or group and here's an example of some

copy that does a good job of that why do more local bank presidents choose Fort Knox security to protect their own homes than anyone else so what you're doing here is You're leveraging The credibility of those local bank residents because they should know about what security is really like and that's giving credibility to your brand that you're actually able to fulfill the security need another easy way of establishing credibility is through symbols or visuals the interesting thing about this is you don't necessarily need some sort of seal from an official organization you could pretty much

just make something up or you could start an organization and use some sort of credible imagery it's more of the heuristic of understanding that people will put trust in your product when there are some sort of seals ribbons Etc on it so in a good example of this would be the Good Housekeeping seal here you see 15 years of Excellence for this company and another example is highlighted by the author where it's the national Guild of hypnotists now has anybody ever heard of that probably not but it doesn't matter it's the the impression that it

makes the aura of credibility that matters more than necessarily the substance of credibility and when you establish these visual cues of credibility uh people are less likely to question what you say or your sales arguments later on let's look at some examples of copywriting that do a good job of establishing credibility Eucerin the number one dermatologist's recommended brand for dry skin so we're establishing credibility by talking about dermatologists Mr Heater America's most popular brand of portable heaters another key trick that you can do is you can simply find an authority so I like to use

a tool called spark Toro to identify key influencers you can also just go to Facebook groups and talk to the admins and pay some sort of authority figure influencer to make a video and that will give you some degree of instant credibility that you can use in your marketing promotions one thing that you want to do is you want to link your product to the roots to bribes and there are three types of groups that we're interested in here the first is aspirational groups the people who want to be members of associative and disassociative so

ones that people want to distance themselves from and you can easily look at politics to see what people do associate with versus what they don't want to be associated with at all and if we look at the book red marketing which was in collaboration with the CEO of yum brand so young Brands is the owner of Brands such as KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell one of the key things he tells us is that one of the main drivers of somebody buying a product is basically to join a tribe you buy Nike because you want

to be identified as a runner as a fast runner or you buy other products because you want to be associated with being in a cool click or being sophisticated so this whole idea of member Association is very important in your copywriting and you want to piggyback off certain types of groups and get endorsement by those groups another key tool in copywriting is that fear sells and the reason it sells is because fear creates stress and then stress rise people towards desire thing here is you're not trying to create new fears you're not in the malicious

business of making everybody afraid what you're doing is you're tapping into existing fears and providing solutions to people's problems so let's look at a couple of examples of this in copyrighting missing a big sale causes the stress of loss choosing the right tires can cause the stress of concern for personal safety so the fear of missing out is an important thing to drive short-term sales uh the sale is about to end so you better buy now or having poor performing tires in Winter ice is going to lead to accidents so you better act now and

and get some newer tires to protect your family specific believable recommendations for reducing the threat that are both credible and achievable are going to be the best ways of tapping into fears and creating copywriting that is really going to entice people that have an interest in your product now let's walk through perhaps one of the most important aspects of fear appeals and that's tying into scarcity now specific language that you're going to want to use here limited offer one day sale only while supplies last first come first served please read before 9 30 or just

simply having a stamp in red on your envelope or in your email that says urgent uh this is something that's extremely effective I notice some people that are very good at sales uh do this all the time they create a sense of urgency uh just make sure that you're not lying that you're not artificially driving people to something that really isn't urgent you don't want to be deceptive in your marketing so let's look at some coffee here some a copy my cash fertilizing Workshop has very limited seating and is very difficult to buy tickets for

so essentially you better book now before it books up another example Steve is finally available to accept three more clients but hurry because once this roster is full his Services won't be available for another two years now looking at Amazon we can see an example of these headphones available for 8.99 now the sense of urgency here comes from this red text here only one left in stock order soon when you're writing your copy one of the things you want to do is to appeal to customers at various stages of knowledge so the author details five

key stages which I'm summarizing here and rewording so the first is people that aren't aware of your product so certain copy is going to resonate with them the second is people that thought about using your product already so there's a copy that's going to resonate with this group but not with that group third is people that are thinking about buying but they need to know more they needed more to know more specifics about uh your features your benefits perhaps some of your guarantees Etc the fourth is people that are actively buying so they just need

to know where to put the credit card in ETC and then the fifth is going to be people that repurchase or who want to you want to entice to get in the habit of rebuying your product so those are the stages he's built out now I have my own personal framework that I use for this and it starts with tofu top of funnel mofu middle of funnel bofu bottom of funnel and I say well the first group you're trying to appeal to is brand unaware people then there are problem unaware people and in the middle

of the funnel we have people that are not not familiar with the product category that you're in and there are also people that are not familiar with your specific products so maybe they're Vaguely Familiar with your product category but not in your product and this is where they need product education and then at the bottom of the funnel which is really where a lot of people put a lot of emphasis especially in copyrighting I noticed a lot of copywriting is really obsessed with the bottom of the funnel and there aren't that many copywriters that talk

that much about the the upper funnel stuff this is where you're talking about authors things like free consultations free demos uh free trials this type of thing that that's really where the bottom of the funnel rubber hits the road and then there's the paid offer unaware people so people don't know your pricing terms your guarantees your your money back guarantees Etc so I like to design copy in an ideal marketing campaign that caters to all of these six groups of people based on their level of knowledge now there's a specific technique that's recommended in this

book called The inoculation method and the way it works is there are three steps first is warn of an impending attack then you make a weak argument an intentionally weak argument and then you encourage the reader or the prospective customer to have a strong defense to counter you so here's an example come to think of it maybe we could get away with using choco wax by adding a little extra cocoa to our recipes so what you're trying to do there is get people to react and say no no you can't do that that's not good

enough what we really need is a product that's specifically designed for what we need something that has extra cocoa and then lo and behold that happens to be the product that you're selling so you're intentionally getting people to react that way here's another example our competitors tell you how convenient their home delivery service is they don't tell you that their average delivery time is over an hour Paulie's Pizza Delivery Pizza delivers in 28 minutes or your pizza is free so you're basically discrediting the competition and then presenting yourself as a better alternative this is one

aspect of the copywriting book that really resonated with me and it really helps us understand what marketing and advertising is really about so it's easier to strengthen or weaken an existing belief than it is to change it so a lot of people when they get started in copywriting or marketing don't really understand what it's about sometimes they think it's manipulating people or making them demand something that they never had a need for before but it's actually incredibly difficult to do that in fact it's incredibly difficult to change people here period so really what you want

to do is you want to work with people's existing beliefs and their existing needs and you're simply tapping into that and providing uh Solutions and answers to things that they already recognize so it's easier to reinforce or undermine rather than completely change people so how do we do that well we do it with stats reports studies testimonials or examples these would be success stories or case studies we give people more of what they want to hear so for example maybe somebody wants to buy your chocolate shake but they're worried that it's not healthy well you

just tell them why your product is healthy tell them about the Protein that's in it tell them about the vitamins that are in it tell them what they want to hear and one of the key things is you don't want a negative reaction you don't want people to get defensive and disagreeing with you go uh with the flow rather than against the grain our goal is not to fight with our prospects we don't want to tell them they're wrong so we'll avoid those things are gonna that are going to turn into debates so when we're

trying to change people's minds uh there are two routes to Attitude Change now if you want to learn more about changing people's mind I recommend checking out the Catalyst reduce framework this comes from Jonah Berger of the Wharton Business School but focusing on this book there are basically two routes that we're going to look at first is the central route so this is where we're going to focus on facts statistics evidence testimonials studies reports and case studies and the second is peripheral so this is where we're going to use colorful and pleasant images humorous or

popular subject matter and the sponsorship of celebrities key influencers Instagram Stars Etc so evidence is going to be most effective when we're dealing with important or expensive products so that's when people are really going to dive into the details here uh whereas with cheap products it's just kind of like well I know what ketchup is I know what beans are uh you know just show me some cool photos and maybe a celebrity that I recognize and I'll buy it the purchase is not that involved the other personal comment I would add to this is that

this kind of stuff may be more important when you're trying to do long-term brand building because you're trying to embed yourself in people's long-term memory whereas this is going to be more important in the short term when people are actually evaluating products on the features and benefits of those products I do in your copywriting is really spell out why you're better than competitors I know when I'm talking to sales people I what I really want to know is why should I buy from you and not Joe Blows product um so if you know why you're

better don't be afraid to spell it out I think people are a little bit timid and they're worried about getting into some sort of war with competitors well if you're better people deserve to know that and they deserve to know why another effective tool is simply to give people free stuff I've had a lot of success with this I've seen so many case studies we're giving people things is really established rapport with people to get sales meetings and to get sales so one thing is to offer freebies with your first order one thing is to

give people just cheap pens like if people get anything for free it it almost lowers their defense barriers so I know a very effective salesperson and he said one of the keys to his success was just giving away free pens uh and free stationery and people would come to him asking uh almost jealous that other people receive these items and they didn't even though it's just almost worthless financially another key trick would be to put something like a one dollar bill stapled to a letter uh when you send out a direct mail piece that's really

not a significant cost you can give people gift certificates for example somebody's new to your neighborhood and you run a restaurant give them a certificate to come in your door you can give away free samples such as a free slice of pizza offer 30 minute consultation for free offer free lessons for piano or language or whatever and a tool that I've used a lot is gift cards so 100 Amazon gift cards you can promote these in direct mail pitches you can promote them to key influencers when you DM them or when you send them emails

say I'm going to give you a hundred dollars for your time to give me feedback on my product or a hundred dollars to take a sales meeting very effective because it really gets to the what's in it for me which is what people care about they care about themselves another trick that we can use in copywriting is to try to stimulate a string of yes responses to build momentum especially with long copy now full example of this is I I recently went into the bang Olufsen store and the manager uh asked me this very peculiar

question he said do you like BNL and I thought it was very odd because obviously I I like being an Olufsen he saw that I had two other products I was in the store so it was it was very clear that I liked the brand but why did he ask me that question he asked me because he was just trying to get me to say yes he was asking me an obvious question where the answer was easy because if he got me to say yes to the first question then I'm trying to say yes to

the second question uh which was to come check out this other expensive product that he had this limited edition product so I went with him into the the separate room where he showed off his products it was interesting little sales trick now let's see how this is demonstrated with copyright are you afraid to walk uh the streets alone don't you wish there was an easy way to protect yourself against muggers and other low-life scum who prey on innocent people wouldn't it be great if there was a safe effect of an easy way to stop thugs

cold at the push of a button introducing the Tesla Sizzler the world's first anti-mugging microwave force field so basically this is a string of questions are you afraid don't you wish wouldn't it be great uh you're just trying to get people to say yes yes yes yes yes yes oh okay then maybe I'll say yes to this product as well anything to keep in mind is that generally speaking examples are going to beat statistics so anecdotes are going to be broad-based statistical evidence and this is particularly true when you're trying to convince somebody who is

sticking their foot in the ground and saying you know what I have a complete opposite belief as you the easiest way to persuade them is to tell a personal story about perhaps somebody that suffered because they held that opinion as well now let's walk through some copy examples of this it's a motor car like none other with a gracious parlor-like cabin that beckons your entrance except its invitation swing closed it's vault-like door and prepare yourself for a Driving Experience so that's copy one copy two is six thousand seven hundred fifty nine CC 6.7 liters V12

front Engine with 92.0 millimeter bore 84.6 millimeter blah blah blah so it's very clear that the first the example or the the more of an anecdotal story is going to beat uh just throwing a bunch of stats at people the example causes you to test drive in your head and again that's one of the central roles that we have as copywriters is to create a visual experience inside people's heads of trying out the product or experiencing the benefits of the product most ads or testimonials and endorsements rather than facts and figures and and that's why

it's more psychologically impactful so uh as much as statistics can be boring and lists of stats we also find it boring when we just see the same ad over and over and over this is really an issue with radio ads the frequency is just too high and one way to overcome this is just to create different versions of the same ad so you can have the exact same plot line but maybe instead of a mother you have a father in the ad or you instead of one animal you have a different animal just tweak them

a little bit and that way you're able to not change everything still be impactful but without being completely boring and repetitive another cool thing is to use rhetorical questions so when I was growing up being taught formal writing academic writing we're taught that rhetorical questions are not suitable they're not appropriate but in advertising copy you do you want to be casual and you want to do a lot of the things that we're taught not to in school so let's go through some examples of this aren't you glad you use dial don't you wish everyone did

who else wants a whiter wash with no hard work how do you spell relief what would you do for a Klondike bar that's my one of my favorite examples here because that's in green in a lot of people's heads the slogan so one of the reasons that rhetorical questions work is because in order to respond to the question even if it's just in her head we have to understand the question and that means that we spend more time processing what you're saying now I think this last one is super effective because it has the brand

name in it so what would you do for a Klondike bar you're constantly processing the brand name along with the question another key thing is to use heuristics so people are going to look at cues and come to judgments based on those cues without necessarily parsing through all the information so one example is when you have long ads with lots of facts and figures um that's an example when we see that long copy outperformed short copy when you're doing direct mail letters if you have pages and pages of facts and figures demonstrating why your product

is the best then people sort of jump to the conclusion that your product is the best even if they don't read and pass through all of that information in fact there's a quote here from the book not one in one thousand readers do any fact checking so just the fact that you have all those things listed uh is gonna form a certain positive impression in their minds another example is when you have lots of testimonials maybe they they only skim two testimonials but the fact that you have three pages of testimonials shows that hey uh

maybe I should jump to the conclusion that this product is the best another example is having photos of happy customers if they're happy maybe you'll be happy too and I have this visual here sort of showing how a long sales page or a long sales letter uh going through all the benefits your product can be quite persuasive thank you when you're doing your writing you really want to write so people can understand this isn't highfalutin academic speech this isn't poetry so that means using short words mostly one syllable words in fact short sentences and short

paragraphs it also means using specific nouns names verbs Etc because when we use specifics it's easier to process whereas when you make generalizations people really have to think to to try to come up with specific examples that are more tangible so let's go through some examples now a bad example of copy might become financially successful well why don't we convert that into something that's more specific so that it's easier to understand you'll make 2496 dollars every week oh okay well that's much more believable an example a copy that I wrote that was very effective was

sell websites for fifteen thousand dollars each short words short sentence very specific information another example men do you want a Rippling rock hard stomach very specific very short in fact the first word is the sentence itself it's just a one-word sentence another key advantage of shortness is it keeps people reading because the first line is just two words then you can easily jump to the second line and the third line and so on so let's see some examples of this dear Bob would you like to know a secret way of making money by simply watching

TV I thought so now let me explain so we have this uh paragraph here that's basically just three words and then we jump to the next one it creates this momentum where they want to easily just keep reading and reading and reading and I compare it to treats that you get at Halloween it's easy to have that little candy and then once you have that first one well okay I'm gonna have a little piece of chocolate I'm gonna have the little piece of this and before you know it your stomach's full another example is opening

up your ad with something like SWAT teams use them that might be your first sentence then you get into more details about how durable your product is you also want to use lots of pronouns and one of the reasons this is so effective is because people are obsessed with themselves so if you keep using the word you they're going to realize this is for me this has been personally written one-on-one to me so use you me I he she him they them don't talk in generalities like you're broadcasting your message to everyone a good example

of this is Bill Clinton in one of the presidential debates really speaks to a person in the town hall debate directly as a human being rather than trying to broadcast his message to everyone in the audience it has a much more tangible persuasive appeal uh good example to copy do you can you would you should you can I get your opinion you can also use repetition you learned acts you learn why you learn Z and so on and so on key thing you want to do with your copy in some cases is bombard your readers

with benefits and you really want to put your biggest benefit in your headline and let's look at some good examples of copy here award-winning interior designer Louise Taylor turns her house into a gorgeous model home for less than you ever dreamed possible okay so we have somewhat long headline here now a second one is very short giant film sale in your copy what you want to do is select your audience you want to call out your audience this is a trick I use a lot for example attention chocolate lovers now sink your teeth into the

eight and a half pound fudge devil volcano pie absolutely free so you can see here we called out attention chocolate lovers attention SAS Founders attention whoever it is that is your or your customer you want to provide people an incentive to buy now this is one of the biggest barriers you have in copywriting when you're trying to generate short-term sales is people are going to procrastinate they're going to put it on the back burner I'm going to say well I'm kind of interested but I don't need to act now so some copy that is effective

at this all before April 5th supplies are strictly limited price expires May 15th price guaranteed only until August 3rd seating is limited to 50 participants good only for the first 50 callers buy now now when you come up with a compelling headline it's going to focus largely on your main benefit but and we need to lure people into the body copy and how do we do that well there are lots of ways but I just want to highlight two cool examples according to communication psychologists R Butler Sinclair there's no need for anyone to feel intimidated

by the high pressure tactics used by blah blah blah so this is an example where we're starting the copy with quoting on Authority and using that to segue into the the rest of the copywriting now let's look at a second example when we first received the manuscript from the author we were skeptical but some of us in the editorial office actually tried some of Sinclair's tricks and we were absolutely blown away so this is where you're opening up your copy with the story of skepticism foreign specificity I have hired numerous copywriters and I would say

recently what I've noticed is that one of the differences between a a decent or uh mid-level copywriter when a great copywriter is just how specific they are with their copy so let's walk through some examples as an example instead of saying ingredients say Italian ingredients and let's get into more detail here when we're doing ingredient selling we make our bread fresh every day golden and crispy our pasta is made from scratch we use only the fresh herbs in all our recipes only pure cold pressed 100 virgin olive oil you see how much different that is

from simply saying oil or olive oil even if every other hardware store in the city carries the same exact merchandise no one else says it so if you're in a hardware store you could simply list out all the products that you offer and by simply getting the specifics getting into the details you're going to have an edge over the competition who doesn't mention any of this another good example I'll return your money by PayPal within 48 Hours makes your guarantee more believable more tangible because you've gone through the specifics about how you're going to refund

them and the time frame in which you're going to do it it helps people feel more secure in buying your product here's another example would you like to know a simple five-minute trick that guarantees to improve your memory or double your money back lots of great specifics here uh five minutes uh and double your money back so you've learned a lot about how to do copywriting but how do you really get started well the easiest way to do that is to start by simply listing all your benefits and rank them in order of importance another

key thing that you want to do is you want to be positive upbeat youthful exciting and personal like a good salesperson who doesn't sound like a robot your copy is basically a one-on-one conversation or at least trying to mimic one and making it a personal message to the individual that's reading and in your copy you want to use powerful visual words crisp luscious Beauties each one carefully hand-picked by my 73 year old mother mouth-watering sugar sweet hand-picked apples rake in 2 750 cash weekly one of the most effective marketing tools especially in business to business

is going to be special reports so let's see some key advice here so one is using very effective specific copywriting like this one printing expert reveals how to make your resume 325 more reflective than knock out your competition a special report prepared by Drew Eric Whitman another key thing is that in your reports you can include a coupon to promote something that you're actually selling so the report itself may be free and then you upsell them later on perhaps on a course or on buying your products or getting a free consultation something like that a

really cool trick discussed in this book is using something called Grabbers so these are just little quick things that uh I would say are kind of the equivalent of having a clock at the beginning of a video so some sort of flashy thing that gets people's attention so perhaps in direct mail or a letter you send out to prospects you include a penny or a nickel a dime a quarter or full dollar bill if you're in the photography business you could include an example of a horrible wedding photo uh that's really going to help you

stand out from generic junk mail by including a photo a grotesque photo you can send people a savings certificate you can send them a fake NSF check if you're in the financial business you can include a wrapper for a chocolate bar perhaps one of the best chocolate bars your best seller real cool tricks to get attention now I spent a lot of time doing public speaking and one of the most effective tools I used was I didn't start my presentation with just introducing who I am and some boring monologue what I did was I would

start with something flashy like bang I was walking through the store and suddenly a boulder hit me and that type of thing or start with a surprising statistic 98 of people don't know blah blah blah these are hooks these are Grabbers another cool trick is to write your copy as though it were a newspaper article instead of an advertisement so for example local hypnotist announces new way to quit smoking in 48 hours guarantees are going to be the one of the most effective rules that you have in your copywriting Arsenal especially at the bottom of

funnel when you're trying to get people to buy so cool examples of guarantees are ones that are over the top pay you back twice what you pay that's incredible and very few people will probably take you up in that offer so it may be profitable to offer it it really build confidence in people that you really believe in your product when you offer a strong guarantee and uh one trick they say is offer the longest strongest guarantee in your industry and it'll help you stand out from the pack