“Gary Bencivenga’s
7 Master Secrets
of Wealth Creation
for Marketers and Copywriters”
“I will never be able to share these seven secrets in
the Bullets, for reasons you’ll understand in a moment.
“But as my retirement legacy,
I will share all seven with you …
if you can meet the
four qualifications spelled out in this letter.”
- Now available via DVDs and expanded, illustrated transcript for the first and only time—my never-to-be-repeated “Reveal-Everything-at-Once” Seminar.
- Only 2,000 sets available.
- Tightly restricted and limited distribution … you must be able to meet the four criteria spelled out below (no exceptions).
- Reveals every secret I’ve ever learned about how to boost your advertising response and become independently wealthy as a copywriter or marketer.
- Based on more than $1 billion and 40 years’ worth of scientific direct response tests.
- Includes everything revealed at my one-time-only Retirement Seminar, hailed as “historic” … “phenomenal” … “life-changing” by industry leaders … plus much more material that’s been added to make this the ultimate “Master’s Program” on breakthrough marketing and copywriting.
- Featuring scores of the greatest direct response ads of all time to illustrate every principle … plus “Gary Bencivenga’s Greatest Hits”—my all-time best ads, sales letters, magalogs, bookalogs, and more that you can use to guide your own marketing and copywriting.
- Guaranteed to be worth 50 times its cost … or you pay nothing.
- Free bonus if you respond now—”Da Bomb!” … probably the most powerful tool ever discovered for systematically boosting your response in every promotion you’ll ever run.
Dear Marketing Top Gun: I am looking for an elite group of men and women determined to be among the most successful and highest-earning copywriters and marketers in the world.I am retiring now and want to share with this select group of stars and future stars what I believe is a priceless legacy—my seven master secrets of wealth creation for copywriters and marketers.The truth is, I can never reveal these seven master secrets in the Bullets.Why not?
From the start, I promised to keep the Bullets short and fast, like bullets. But teaching these seven master secrets takes more time. For example, my #1 master strategy, The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®, has eight parts. It takes about two hours to teach and another two hours to bring you to mastery. Anyone can master this, and once you do, your ability to boost response on demand soars. You immediately take a giant leap forward in your ability to write copy with the hand of a master … and evaluate it with the eye of a jeweler. But the unavoidable problem is, it does take four hours to acquire mastery of the eight steps and how to string them together, mainly because you must first unlearnseveral things you’ve been taught as gospel about how to generate maximum response. You see, almost all copywriters and marketers today are using the same old-fashioned techniques. But the world has changed, and the consumers you’re trying to influence have grown increasingly immune to these conventional headlines and approaches. In today’s overmarketed, overhyped world, the “same old” techniques for generating response may occasionally work, but not nearly as well as they used to. This is why most direct marketers are seeing their response rates decline every year. And this will inevitably continue, as consumers grow increasingly immune to an ever-rising flood of these same tired, overworked approaches. You need something new that works better. And that is why the advanced secrets I teach are so much more effective. They show you how to clearly and dramatically stand out from the clutter and trigger maximum response in any medium, for any product or service.
Record-Shattering Ads The other reason I’ll never teach these secrets in the Bullets is because they require lots of real-life examples of the advertisements that are shattering response records in every field in which they’ve been applied.
All this takes a seminar to deliver … the very seminar that I have called my one-time-only, “Reveal-Everything-at-Once Retirement Seminar,” which I gave recently to 100 of the world’s top copywriters and marketers. This treasure trove of knowledge is based on more than $1 billion and 40 years’ worth of scientific advertising tests. It’s nothing less than my legacy to the most ambitious and dedicated men and women in direct marketing today. When I gave this seminar training live, I promised the 100 attendees that I’d create a free set of DVDs for them. To my embarrassment, it took me many more months than I ever imagined to produce them, mainly because I wanted to enhance the program by including a deluxe illustrated transcript featuring scores of ads and visuals as well as additional response-boosting information—everything I could possibly teach about how to improve your advertising results. Finally it’s all done. And, in addition to the 100 sets I’ve produced for the seminar attendees, I’ve run off an additional 2,000 sets of both the DVDs and illustrated transcript. These are theonly 2,000 sets that will ever be available anywhere at any price, and after these 2,000 sets are gone, they will be gone forever. But please don’t feel pressured into buying immediately just because only 2,000 sets will ever be made available. Candidly, this supply will last for at least several years. That’s because I am not looking to trigger a fast wave of mass “panic buying” from lots of people, which would inevitably include many less-than-qualified candidates. My aim—expressed in the value, scope, and extraordinary content of this DVD course—is just the reverse. And that is to restrict distribution to a tiny slice of the copywriting and direct marketing community—exclusively the most ambitious stars and future stars who are hell-bent on being among the richest, most in-demand, most consistently successful Top-Guns on the planet. And that, by definition, is a very small, elite universe. The only reason to act now—and this is important—is so that you can start putting these breakthrough wealth-building, career-advancing copywriting and marketing techniques to work immediately, allowing you to experience complete financial security and independence much sooner than you could ever achieve otherwise. No matter what, you must meet four rigorous criteria to qualify—no exceptions. More about that later. First let me tell you about the DVD course itself…
“Always Be Thorough” One of the principles I teach is that champions are always thorough in their preparations, and this certainly holds true for copywriters and marketers. In that spirit, and because this course represents a significant investment, I’m going to be quite thorough here and give you a complete description of everything this training will teach you. Let’s start with …
Four Words to Live By The seminar that is the basis of this course was held in what is probably the most elegant meeting room in New York City, the glittering penthouse of the St. Regis Hotel.
Why did I hold it there, when I could have hosted it anywhere and saved considerable expense? The reason relates to my four-word approach to everything I teach about life, about marketing, copywriting, and acquiring whatever you want in life. Those four words I urge you to live by are, Why not the best? Why not the best—in the copy you write, the products you market, the results you trigger, the reputation you build, the fees and royalties you command, the wealth you accumulate, and all the perks you’ll get to enjoy? After all, why should the best in life be reserved for others and not you? Why should you ever settle for anything less than a big life, a life full of major achievements, exceptional wealth and income, and a reputation as one of the most respected stars in your chosen line of work? The truth is, there are only two things you need to experience such success. The first is knowledge of how to achieve it, and the second is thededication to acquire and apply that knowledge. And that is the opportunity represented by this DVD course. If you supply the dedication, I will give you the knowledge. As you can read in the beige boxes sprinkled throughout this piece, the secrets I reveal in this DVD course have created so many blockbuster campaigns and breakthrough products for so many clients that I truly believe that these clients have gone overboard in their praise about what I’ve done for them. I honestly don’t believe there’s a “world’s best copywriter,” any more than there is a “world’s best actor” or “world’s best centerfielder.” In each case, you can make a good argument for any of several outstanding practitioners. But I do confess to being enough of a copywriter to gratefully accept (and run like a burglar with!)their over-the-top praise.
The truth is, it’s really not me they’re praising, but the creative techniques I’ve developed for triggering extraordinary results. That’s what they love, the results, especially the consistency of breakthrough results I’ve always been able to give them. And anyone who uses the same techniques can achieve the same results. This is why, before the seminar, the legendary Prince of Print, Gary Halbert, wrote in his newsletter …
“You know, as you walk through life, you cannot help but be aware of all the corrupt businessmen, thieves, sex offenders, crooked politicians, warlords, murderers, greedy religious leaders, lying CEOs, and just plain jerks. But, every once in a while on this path through life, you come across ‘a Gary Bencivenga,’ A Person Who Restores Your Faith In The Decency Of Mankind!”
A much faster way to become “a serious, big-money copywriter…” As you’ll see on the DVDs, on the second day, toward the end of the seminar, Gary Halbert took the mike and told the audience how appreciative all in attendance should be for the astonishing amount and quality of the information that had been presented. He said that it amazed and inspired even him. Later he summed up in an unsolicited written testimonial the impact this seminar could have on your own life—and the speed of your success—in this way…
Indeed, afterward, the seminar was immediately hailed as “historic” … “phenomenal” … “life-changing” … and a host of other superlatives by these very superstars who attended, including Ken McCarthy, Brian Kurtz, John Carlton, Richard Stanton-Jones, Peter Stone, David Deutsch, and other top marketers and copywriters. You can read their comments about me and these secrets here, as well as on the Internet. But you will not find anything on the Internet revealing the techniques themselves, as all who attended were sworn to secrecy at the seminar … just as you will be if you order the DVDs and illustrated transcript. Again, more about this later. What I want to emphasize here is this—with these techniques, I guarantee that you will achieve unprecedented consistencyin your ability to produce breakthrough copy, generate record-setting response, chalk up an impressive array of control ads and direct mail packages, be in hotter demand than you’ve ever enjoyed, and launch blockbuster new products at a success rate you’ve never experienced. And that’s true whether you write the copy yourself or retain others to do it for you.
But You Must First Qualify . . . . If you qualify to receive this training and agree not to share it, as I’ll explain below, I will guarantee you an effortless learning experience that you will look back on as a turning point in your life, when your knowledge of your craft comes together as never before … when you see a new universe of opportunity with a new, inner vision … when your ability to convert your marketing knowledge into major wealth takes a quantum leap … when you know in your heart that your future financial independence is secure because of the life-changing knowledge you have just acquired. So settle back for a few minutes and read my rather thorough explanation of what is so different about what I teach … and the difference it will make in your own success.
Master Secret #1: Just about 40 years ago, I broke into direct marketing working with two Hall of Fame legends, John Caples at BBDO and, later, David Ogilvy at Ogilvy & Mather. With these two masters as my guiding lights, and others in the decades since, I have never escaped the direct marketing copy department.
As a result, for 40 years, I have written and methodically supervised well over $1 billion worth of scientific direct marketing for many of the smartest and most successful direct marketers in America. And even though I am retiring now, I still stay in touch and share advice with these top marketers, always keeping a weather eye on their latest test results. This $1 billion+ worth of testing has revealed, clear as day, eight critical factors so influential, I call them the eight overwhelmingly dominant factors of generating maximum response. I’ve woven all eight into what I callThe Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®, which makes it very easy to apply each of the eight critical factors in your every marketing message. Never before revealed, until this seminar, to anyone except my clients, this Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®is, in my view, the most consistently successful proprietary formula ever devised for creating breakthrough advertising … boosting response, traffic, and revenue … and gaining an overwhelming advantage against your competitors—be they other copywriters, products, or services.
The eight elements of The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® are like puppet strings, and once you know how to pull on each, you can make the marketplace move to any melody you want to play.
It Took Me 10 Years and Millions of Dollars in Testing to Piece This Puzzle Together Actually, it took me the first 10 years of my career and tens of millions of dollars’ worth of testing to put the pieces of this puzzle together. In those young and heady days, I and my partners were wildly “test happy.” We liked to test everything that could possibly—even remotely—influence response. That included all the usual suspects, such as headlines, designs, prices, premiums, offers, and so on. But we also ran quite a few “oddball” tests that most direct response ad agencies would never even think of trying, including some very unusual headlines and approaches to the writing of body copy. To our surprise, we discovered that certain of these headlines and body copy treatments were mysterious anomalies—they “shouldn’t” have worked very well at all according to conventional direct response wisdom. Yet every time I and my partners created headlines and layouts built around these “inexplicably powerful” factors, response would soar. After more years of further testing, it all came together and made perfect sense, at least once you know The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® and how the eight factors reinforce one another and make the whole so much more powerful than any one part in boosting response. The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® works for any product, in any market, for any piece of advertising you’ll ever run. It’s so reliable, it will let you know with almost unerring precision—even before you test!—how strong your advertising message is going to be. If your message is weak in any of the eight key areas, you will know it instantly—just by reading your ad and seeing if each required element is present or not. That’s how easy it is. This means you can now know exactly where and how any piece of copy needs to be strengthened to crank it up to maximum pulling power. As I say, it took me a long 10 years of trial and error to piece this formula together, and then the next 20 years to refine it. I Was Just an Average Copywriter I mention this because, for the first 10 years of my career, if truth be told, I was really just an average copywriter. But, once I based my copywriting and marketing on the Gibraltar foundation of The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®, I became almost unbeatable, winning about 85 percent of the time, usually against the best copywriting competition in America. (And you needn’t take my word for this … as you can tell from the supporting comments in the boxes of this letter.)
There are some major marketers for whom I’ve never lost a split-run test, even when tested repeatedly against several of the best copywriters in the world. To put this in perspective, one of my ablest competitors over the years, the superstar copywriter Doug D’Anna, has written …
“If a copywriter beats the control one out of four times, you’ve got a really good copywriter. If he beats it two out of four times, you’ve got a great copywriter. If he beats it seven out of eight times, you’ve got Gary Bencivenga.” I’ve often been asked how I’ve been able to win so consistently. Until now, I’ve never revealed the secret. Why should I, when I’ve had to compete for royalties against the fastest guns in the West, East, North, and South? I wish I could say it’s my writing talent. But, as you can tell from my plain, graceless sentences, I write with none of David Ogilvy’s eloquence, nor Gene Schwartz’s emotional fire, nor Gary Halbert’s drama, nor Ted Nicholas’ infectious optimism, nor John Caples’ storytelling magic.
But that’s the liberating, “common-man” beauty of The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®. You don’t need to be a great writer to create blockbuster winners. That’s because …
The Real Secret to Creating … knowing exactly what to say to your target market to trigger breakthrough response. It is not how eloquently, cleverly, emotionally, or creatively you say it, although those qualities do help make your ad more enjoyable and appealing to read. But for triggering response, those qualities are vastly overrated. The most critical factor by far in being able to generate record-breaking response is knowing exactly what to say. It’s the same as in personal selling. You don’t need a silver tongue to be a selling superstar, either in person or in print. In fact, the great majority of the highest-paid superstars of selling in every field are not the best-looking, smoothest-talking, or most creative people you’ll ever encounter. They are surprisingly ordinary souls who know how to do two things exceedingly well—
In short, they know what to say to very effectively open the sale and then to close it. And that is precisely what The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®teaches you to do in your own market, regardless of what product or service you sell. Best of all, The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® grows directly out of my own personal philosophy of how to succeed at anything in life, which is …
Master Secret #2: I don’t believe in hard. Nobody sticks with hard very long. I believe that those who’ve achieved incredibly difficult feats, such as Lance Armstrong, have found ways to make the extremely difficult a lot easier. And that separates them from—and allows them to outperform—those who never find ways to make the difficult easier. Do you ever find marketing and copywriting hard? If so, you’re not alone. Marketing can be a brutally tough way to earn your living, if you don’t know a few simple secrets of how to make it much easier. Believe me, I know. For roughly the first 10 or 11 years in this business, I found copywriting and marketing not just hard, but agonizingly, tortuously difficult. Sometimes my frustration made me depressed and brought me close to tears.
In my early years as a copywriter, working for Madison Avenue direct response ad agencies, many a late night would find me trying to stare down a blank page in a battle of wills. I was always the first to blink. I could produce nothing, not even a first line of copy. Picasso once said that all art is merely the artist’s reaction to the first line he paints on the canvas. But I couldn’t even get my first line! I smoked cigarettes back then, and I’d light up one after another. I’d curse my deadline. Curse my fate. Curse the stupid product I was trying to sell. Rearrange my desk drawer. Make a phone call. Read a magazine. Grab a snack. Wonder what else I could be doing at that moment and, for that matter, with my whole life. This would go on for hours, sometimes days, until my copy chief would inquire, “What the #%*! is taking you so long?” In time, mercifully, I developed my Make-It-Easy System for marketing and copywriting, which I also reveal in the DVDs and expanded, illustrated transcript of The Bencivenga Seminar. I learned, during these years, to look at every aspect of successful, breakthrough marketing and ask, how can I make this process easier? In fact, that’s how I came up with The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®. It happened when, at age 30, I was appointed copy chief at Callas, Powell, Rosenthal & Bloch, then a highly respected direct response New York ad agency owned by copywriting legend Dan Rosenthal. I suddenly found myself in charge of an elite, fast-growing copy department and had to teach others the art and science of creating breakthrough direct marketing. I quickly concluded that I couldn’t teach an art—it’s too subjective and intuitive. I realized I had to turn the teaching of marketing and copywriting into a science, a repeatable set of principles that, if followed, can be counted on to yield the same predictable result of breakthrough response. So I systematized the process and, most important, made everything about successful copywriting as easy as I could possibly make it … so that even a wet-behind-the-ears kid just out of college could quickly learn the system and start creating breakthrough control packages virtually out of the gate.
This is exactly what happened with my staff. With just one regular weekly class of training in this method, every single writer in our copy department was soon belting home runs …
No, We Didn’t Win Every Time Sometimes a client came to us with a new product that, after testing, proved to have little marketplace appeal. We learned that when a new product is so flawed that few people want it, even the most brilliant advertising won’t sell it. But with long-established products, where the only variable was the pulling power of our advertising, we almost never lost. All thanks to a system of proven success factors made easy to apply and use. And that’s how I’ve always approached copywriting and marketing—how can we make it easier?
For Example, in the DVDs and Expanded Transcript
Master Secret #3: As you can see, I have tried through my whole career to take what’s difficult about marketing, break it down, and make it a lot easier. Now, one of the most difficult challenges in marketing, perhaps the hardest but also the most financially rewarding, is launching a successful new product.
Some experts say that, on average, only one out of seven new products succeeds. So the odds are normally overwhelmingly against you. But if you beat those odds, you can experience the marketing equivalent of hitting the lottery. I have found a way to dramatically increase your odds of success in launching new products that can make you or your company much wealthier. This astonishingly effective, easy-to-use, and truly secret strategy is different from anything ever written in direct marketing. Until this seminar, this strategy has never been revealed publicly anywhere on the planet or published in any book. And everyone at the seminar—as with all the information I shared—was sworn to secrecy never to publicize it. As you’ll fully appreciate when I give you this strategy, you will want to preserve it—just as I do!—for just the few of us who know about it. That’s the enormous competitive advantage this strategy bestows upon anyone who knows it.
I learned this secret from the legendary Joseph Segel, the mega-millionaire founder of The Franklin Mint, when he and I worked together on one of his projects. If you are planning to launch a new product and try this secret just once, you will be blown away by the difference it makes in response, often 100–300 percent or more. What’s so beautiful about this little secret is that it is equally powerful and reliable no matter what you want to sell—books, newsletters, golf clubs, videos, music club memberships, collectible plates, financial advice, e-books, land in Arizona, anything. This one secret is worth many times the price of this whole program, and I guarantee you’ve never heard it from anyone else, ever, no matter how many books you’ve read or seminars you’ve attended. With this one strategy:
I know, you may be thinking that any product can be knocked off. Not so! Certainly not if you launch your product the way I describe. Do it this way and you will build a moat around your new product that can’t be breached by those slick knockoff artists who slither through the weeds, waiting for a chance to cash in on other people’s hard-won success. (I really dislike knockoff artists, and this strategy foils them as surely as a mama lioness guarding her cubs. Yet it has nothing to do with lawyers or legal roadblocks.) Please understand, I’m not talking here about the “USP,” the well-known principle of the “unique selling proposition” first formulated by the great Rosser Reeves and popularized by Jay Abraham. No, this goes beyond the “USP” and is much more powerful. It’s an advertising strategy so important—and so unknown—that if you follow it, it will literally change your whole approach to marketing for the rest of your life and make an enormous difference in your success and personal wealth. So priceless is this strategy that you must agree in writing never to publish or reprint it anywhere, as I’ll explain below.
Master Secret #4: Speaking of building wealth with new products … What’s the easiest and surest way to get rich in our business, as either a marketer or a copywriter?
Commit these five words to memory:“Wealth is an income stream.” This applies to both marketers and copywriters. Let me start with marketers. The smartest marketers I’ve ever worked with—Tom Phillips (Phillips Publishing) … Marty Edelston and Brian Kurtz (Boardroom) … Allie Ash and Walter Pearce (KCI) … among many others—all know and practice this principle. If you’re not applying it yourself to build your wealth, you should write it on your palm with a permanent red-ink marker and read it daily: Wealth is an income stream. These smart marketers know that you don’t build great wealth by merely creating a great product for a hungry crowd … not even a great product for a hungry crowd and a great piece of copy to sell it. No, you build great wealth by creating a product for a hungry crowd, plus a built-in way to keep that hungry crowd frozen in place and buying from you again and again whenever they’re hungry. In other words, you want a marketing system that rewards you with substantial income right away, and then—much more important—rewards you repeatedly with an automatic back-end revenue stream.
That’s how you leverage your wealth in direct marketing. For example, if you have information to sell, you might choose to sell it either in the form of book, a special report, a newsletter, or perhaps even a membership site. How do you choose? Well, if you apply the “Wealth is an income stream” principle, you’d know the answer immediately. You would certainly not choose a book or special report. A newsletter or a membership site would be a far superior way to build your wealth. Why? When you successfully sell a book or report, you’ve got a product. But when you successfully sell a newsletter or membership site, you’ve got a business.
With the book or report, you make a onetime sale and it’s over and done. To make more money, you have to write a new book or report, on a new topic, start a whole new selling process, get a whole new “yes” or “no” decision from your customers, many of whom may not care for the topic of your second book or report. But with a newsletter or membership site, your first sale leads automatically to years of repeat sales. That’s because a high percentage of your first-time buyers will renew their subscriptions automatically each year. So, with that first sale, you’ve locked in an automatic, self-renewing revenue stream, an annuity, that will keep pouring money into your pockets for many years to come without having to create a whole new product and marketing campaign. Result: You’ll grow a lot richer, much more easily, and have an extremely valuable, thriving business you can someday sell, instead of a pile of outdated books or reports collecting dust in inventory. Books and reports do have their place, especially in establishing your credibility … or as introductions to other back-end businesses. But they’re a very hard way to build wealth by themselves. As you’ll come to fully appreciate with the DVDs and expanded, illustrated transcript of The Bencivenga Seminar, wealth is not just a onetime infusion of money. Real wealth is knowing that you’ve secured a healthy flow of money that keeps pouring into your life, this year, next year, and the year after that. That’s real wealth because it bestows an ongoing river of revenue as well as the priceless security of feeling rich all the time.
Now let’s take this a step further. Even better than a newsletter is a newsletter that itself leads to further ancillary sales. A good example would be a health newsletter that brings in lots of money year after year from subscriptions … and that also persuades people to buy your own proprietary vitamins and supplements. Now you have automatic revenue streams triggering lots of subsidiary automatic revenue steams, and you can keep the process going indefinitely. In The Bencivenga Seminar DVDs and expanded transcript, I show how any marketer can use the mighty leverage of this principle to grow much richer.
And That Certainly Includes Copywriters! If you’re a copywriter, how can you apply the “Wealth is an income stream”principle to build your own wealth?
The best way I know is to help your clients multiply their wealth and have an arrangement that lets you share in that growing wealth. At the encouragement of my friend Jay Abraham, this is what I started doing about 20 years ago and why I am able to now retire while I’m still young and healthy enough to enjoy it. For more than 20 years now, ever since I became known for consistently producing breakthrough direct mail packages, my phone has never stopped ringing and my schedule has been booked for years in advance by clients willing and, in some cases eager, to share the extra profits my copy would create for them. So, until my recent retirement, my standard, nonnegotiable charge for more than 20 years has been a $25,000 upfront, nonrefundable advance against future royalties of five cents for each direct mail package mailed.
The Real Money for Copywriters When I started quoting (nervously, at first!) my $25,000-fee-plus-royalties rate for writing a direct mail package, my copywriter friends thought I’d gone mad. Back in the 1980s, creative fees were much lower than today and freelancers worked on a flat-fee basis. Several of my fellow copywriters called me to ask, “How can you charge $25,000?”
Their question showed how little they understood about wealth building. First, the $25,000 up-front fee that bowled them over was just to screen out the dreamers, tire-kickers, and time-wasters among potential clients. The real money was always in the royalties—and still is today. Moreover, for major mailers whose revenues depend so heavily on a successful direct mail package, neither the $25,000 nor the royalties were ever a deterrent if I could consistently deliver success, which I and they both knew I could, mainly due to the unique power I demonstrated with The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®, which yields such remarkably consistent success. Now, if you do the math, you’ll see that five cents per piece mailed adds up quickly. If a client mails, say, five million pieces in a year, you’ve just made $250,000 that year from just that one piece of copy, and the meter starts rolling anew next year and the year after that and so on. As long as your copy keeps working, you keep receiving royalty checks like clockwork, just as you would if you were an author with a best-selling novel or a rock star with a hit song. If you’ve written a really compelling piece of copy for a mass-market product, and your client mails 50 million pieces in a year, you’ve just made $2,500,000 from that single piece of copy for just that year, from just one client.
In the DVDs and expanded transcript of The Bencivenga Seminar, you’ll see that one of our liveliest discussions was about royalties and how copywriters can better help their clients get rich and share in those riches themselves. In the audience were most of the highest-paid royalty copywriters in the world … as well as the advertisers who pay the highest royalties. Leading this private closed-door discussion, I revealed the best ways I’ve found to set up royalty arrangements … how to know which clients will honor their agreements to pay you and which ones will likely try to wriggle out … how you can prevent other writers from horning in on your royalties (by knocking off your copy) … what royalties other writers are charging … whether you can ask some of your clients but not others to pay royalties … and many related questions. Toward this end, at the seminar, we all discussed whole new ways of partnering between marketers and copywriters that can help both sides become a lot more productive and wealthy in today’s new marketing environment. For example, the direct mail royalties I’ve earned over the years have all been on a five-cents-per-piece-mailed agreement. But that doesn’t work for Internet marketing, because there are no direct mail packages mailed! In our pull-no-punches session between mega-successful copywriters and advertisers who pay copywriters the world’s highest royalties and fees, we hit upon what I think does work to everyone’s advantage better than anything before. In fact, with a direct marketing product in which I’m still a partner, this is exactly the formula I’ve now adopted myself, and so have many who came to the seminar. Best of all, the advertisers love it, as it perfectly aligns both the copywriter’s and the advertiser’s incentive to maximize revenue for both. In fact, it makes advertisers thrilled to shower copywriters with wealth … because in the process, they make much, much more. Finally, we also discussed a fascinating and highly creative variety of creative compensation plans—some of which I’ve frankly never thought of—that other copywriters are using.
If you’re a copywriter, these compensation ideas will give you enormous flexibility and motivation to review—and greatly enhance—your own fee structure. Even if you’re not ready at this moment to change your fee structure, perhaps because you want to get a few more control packages under your belt, these discussions will give you an easy-to-follow roadmap for maximizing your income and wealth in your copywriting career. And what if you’re a marketer? You can profit greatly from this information as well, because you’ll see how some of the world’s most successful entrepreneursincentivize their copywriters to become obsessed with making them more money, to “dream, live, and breathe” about new ways to make their marketing break the bank with additional profits for you.
If You’re a Copywriter, Hear Me Out! You’ll Never Get Rich on Flat Fees! If you’re a copywriter, no matter what your present compensation arrangement may be, please heed my words: You’ll never get rich on flat fees! You must find a way to share in the wealth you create for your clients, or you may reach your own golden years with much less gold in your pocket and a nagging regret that you helped make others much richer, but never yourself. In the seminar DVDs and expanded transcript, you’ll also discover …
Negotiating Tips for Copywriters and Marketers Speaking of your compensation, I also share with you …
Can You Imagine Yourself Making We’re still talking here about Master Secret #4, “Wealth Is an Income Stream.”
OK, here’s an idea that can generate more money for you every year than you may ever have thought possible. This idea came to me once when I wanted to set a really big goal for myself. How could I earn a million dollars from just one piece of copy? I know that sounds impossible, just as it did to me when I first came up with this notion. As I show in the DVD course, that is the usual knee-jerk reaction most of us have when we stretch for a really big goal. It’s our habitual, “limited-mind-set” thinking. But as I also teach in this DVD course, you must learn to ignore this automatic knee-jerk, self-limiting reaction and instead say firmly to your subconscious mind, “Not so fast! Let’s imagine that I really have to come up with a way to do this … that someone is holding a loaded gun to my head and will soon pull the trigger if I don’t come up with some way to achieve this admittedly outlandish goal. Under those stark conditions—I must do it or die!—what could I possibly come up with?” When I took that attitude, I did come up with something … I realized, “What if I could sell the same piece of copy for $1,000 to 1,000 different people? There is my million dollars for a single piece of copy!” Now that is perfectly achievable, because in every field there are people in every community who need good advertising—be they real estate agents, stock brokers, financial planners, hardware store owners, chiropractors, dry cleaning store managers, you name it. And there are tens of thousands of these people in communities across America.
In other words, you can create a marketing template, like a software program, for a given industry … sell it to many different people in that same industry … and make a small fortune. Let’s say you develop a highly successful program for insurance agents. You can then sell it, say, for $5,000 to other agents. If you do that in each of 1,000 communities, you’ve just made yourself $5 million for a single piece of copy. The leverage is tremendous. What’s more, you can also offer annual updates and new campaigns to keep this river of revenue pouring into your bank account like a perpetually flooding Mississippi River.
Once a local insurance broker tries your campaign and discovers, “Gee, you really do bring in great leads for me,” he or she will want to spend another $5,000 with you next year to update it. And if you build up to 1,000 people paying you $5,000 a year, you have a $5 million renewable yearly income, just from updating a few good pieces of copy. Now if that seems so far out of reach as to be unbelievable to you, that’s your knee-jerk, “limited mind-set” doing its thing. If it makes you feel better, just to get started with the unlimited marketing mind-set that I teach, OK, go ahead and scale that $5 million number back to $1 million, if that’s what it takes to get you started thinking bigger about your income. Once you see how easily you can flex your income-generating muscles, you can then set the bigger goals I recommend. And I show you how to do this with zero fear of failure, by making failure a perfectly acceptable outcome. I know, this turns the usual approach to “goal setting”—with all its attendant deadlines and high-pressure self talk—merrily on its head. And that’s precisely why you will now be empowered to start achieving outrageously successful goals as never before. I teach how to achieve these spectacular goals with zero pressure and fear of failure by making your attempt itself an exciting, nothing-to-lose, no-big-deal adventure. As you’ll see for yourself the first time you try it in the way that I teach, this go-for-it, nothing-to-lose, no-deadlines-or-pressure- on-yourself mindset magically dissipates your subconscious resistance … and, paradoxically, all but ensures your success.
Now, getting back to this idea of marketing templates, what I’m teaching here is not theory. Creating these marketing templates that you can resell over and over is such a lucrative way to build wealth that several copywriters at the seminar are already doing this in local markets. Best of all, it’s even easier to do on the Internet than in traditional direct mail, as I explain in the DVDs and expanded transcript of the seminar. I even show you the advertisement that I wrote in one field to make this happen. It attracted so much business from all across the country, I could barely put my phone down before it rang again with more people wanting to take me up on it. You’ll receive a copy of this ad … as well as my “greatest hits”—a collection of my strongest-pulling ads of all time.
Other Ways to Get After I spent the first 10 years of my career working in America’s top direct response ad agencies and learning at the feet of masters like David Ogilvy and John Caples, I decided to go out on my own as a freelancer. I was so nervous at first, because I had a mortgage and a family, including a medically involved daughter. Ihad to succeed.
Because I was blessed with great advice from legendary advertising masters in my early years, succeed I did. Soon after I launched my freelance copywriting business, I found myself booked up six months in advance. But that wasn’t enough security for me, so I tried some of the other new business secrets that had been shared with me by the most successful freelance consultants of that time. They worked like a dream, and soon I was booked for two years in advance. I never looked back … or had to worry about finances again. For virtually all my remaining 30 years as a freelancer, I had a waiting list of clients that stretched out to two years. Actually, the waiting list could have stretched even longer, but I wouldn’t even maintain a waiting list beyond two years, as I felt this would be impractical and could be perceived as condescending to the good people who wanted to hire me. I never wanted to come across as arrogant, because I never liked it when people acted that way toward me. In the DVD course, I describe how I managed to build a permanent waiting list of clients eager to hire me. Put these secrets into practice, and you’ll never want for new clients. They will be lining up outside your door, ringing your phone off the hook, and spreading your name around the industry as one of the hottest freelancers to call.
For example, I tell you about the priceless advice that I received from legendary direct marketer Dick Benson, a consultant who was always in red-hot demand from clients throughout America. When I first went freelance myself, Benson told me how I could have all the clients I could handle, and his advice proved right on target. In all my years of copywriting, this has been the #1 way that I (and other successful writers I’ve known) have attracted as many clients as we can accept. I also answer one of the most common of all questions from copywriters just starting out: “How do I get started attracting clients when I don’t have any clients to begin with?” I address this difficult question and again pour out all my secrets for making this process much easier to land your first high-paying clients. I also share …
I Passionately Believe That Everything I’ve just mentioned is under the banner of Master Secret #4, “Wealth Is an Income Stream.”
It’s a major part of my DVD course because I believe passionately that copywriters, designers, and marketers deserve to be rich. And why not, if you’re triggering lots of wealth for the clients you serve? Selling is the highest-paid profession in the world, and if you know how to do it masterfully, as I teach, you deserve to be rich and certainly will be if you play your cards as I show you. The key—your foundation for having enormous value in any marketplace—is knowing how to be a superstar salesperson in print. Remember, as a copywriter, designer, or marketer, you are in effect a “salesperson” with the magical ability to knock on a thousand doors—or a million, or 10 million—at once and deliver a masterful sales presentation to all those prospects at the same time. Thanks to this “multiplier” effect of advertising, which can put your message in front of unlimited numbers of people all at once, you can close an unlimited number of sales all at once. So your leverage here in building wealth rapidly is enormous. But everything depends on knowing how to sell skillfully. In the DVD course, I share the most effective techniques I’ve ever learned to sell like a master in our overmarketed world.
These are secrets you don’t normally find in advertising books or courses. That’s because throughout my career I’ve been blessed to work with several of the greatest selling masters in the country. These are superstar salespeople who are masters of persuasion not in advertising but in personal selling. I’ve loved learning from these selling giants, because every time I’d learn a new secret from them, I’d usually be able to figure out a way to apply it in some way to boost the response of my direct marketing copy. Apply them yourself, as I show you, and the results will delight you. Let’s start with the best way I’ve ever found to open the sale and get past the “automatic rejection response” that is now second nature to your prospects, caused by overwhelming advertising clutter …
Master Secret #5: Over the last 12 years, this one secret has made more money for my clients and me than anything in all the best advertising books put together. It works for any product or service and is the most potent factor behind the biggest direct marketing creative breakthroughs of the past 50 years, but especially of the last 12 years, as the tsunami of clutter has swamped our prospects’ lives. And it works even better online.
I won’t give too much of it away here, but I will tell you why I named it “The Cracker Jack Secret.” Have you ever noticed that nobody, in the entire history of the world, has ever thrown away a Cracker Jack box without first getting their fingers sticky, rummaging inside to dig out their prize? To the best of anyone’s knowledge, no Cracker Jack box has ever been thrown away unopened! What does this have to do with you? Well, if you send out direct mail or email, what’s your biggest problem? Exactly! Thanks to clutter, right now, perhaps 95–99 percent of your prospects are throwing your messages away unopened.
So let’s connect the dots … Up to 99 percent of your prospects throw your marketing materials away unopened. Yet nobody in the history of the world has ever thrown away an unopened Cracker Jack box. Catch my drift?
Are you beginning to see that one of the biggest mistakes you can possibly make in marketing is to fail to put a valuable surprise inside every marketing piece you send out … and let your prospects know there’s a valuable surprise inside? If you start applying the psychology of “The Cracker Jack Secret,” as I show you in the DVD course, your improvement in results will blow you away. You will make your envelopes and email almost irresistible to open. Just as with the Cracker Jack box, many of your prospects won’t be able to throw your mail away, because they’ve first got to find that little surprise gift inside. And I don’t mean a gimmicky plastic trinket. The surprise you include in your direct mail package, space ad, or email can be anything your market values, especially a highly prized piece of information … and especially something that demonstrates what you’re selling and why it is so desirable. What have tens of millions of dollars’ worth of our tests shown about the best way to harness this powerhouse secret? I reveal all in the DVD course.
As you’ll see, I’ve taken this principle to extremes most marketers can’t even imagine until they see my samples. The results, uniformly, have been off-the-charts explosive. I seldom use the word “always” in advertising, as there are usually exceptions to any rule. But I have yet to find an exception to the response-boosting power of “The Cracker Jack Secret.” I always use it in some way for my clients. For any clients who weren’t using this secret before, it has always enabled me to smash their previous control.
Lots More Secrets of Once you know how to use “The Cracker Jack Secret” to stand out from the clutter, bypass the “automatic rejection response,” and capture your prospect’s attention and interest, I show you lots of other techniques of brilliant salesmanship for converting that interest into powerful desire to buy your product or service. For example …
Perhaps the Greatest Secret Ever Discovered One of my favorite examples of applying the secrets of master salespeople to direct marketing is this next one. I genuinely believe it’s nothing less than the greatest secret of seducing anyone into saying “yes.” It was first described by one of the greatest super-salesmen of all time, who worked in life insurance, an extremely difficult field. Nobody ever wants to sit still for a pitch from a life insurance agent. That’s why before this salesman discovered this secret, he was doing so poorly that he was about to quit the business. But after he discovered this amazing little secret, he did so well that he shattered his company’s sales records. The best part is, this secret works with stunning effectiveness (maybe even more so) for direct marketers. In fact, any marketer who fails to use this strategy is at a severe disadvantage to those who do. It literally transforms your presentation and offer into something that almost anyone is irresistibly tempted to say “yes” to.
Psychological “Hot Buttons” That OK, just to make sure we’re still on focus, I’m still talking here about my best ideas for applying salesmanship in advertising.
Now, when working with several of America’s best salespeople, I discovered that they shared a striking characteristic. They all knew certain principles ofstreet-smart psychology that enabled them to influence others with exceptional effectiveness. One of them described these secrets as “psychological hot buttons,” because once you know them, getting people to do what you want can often be as easy as pressing their “hot buttons.” Just one example—people desperately want to be consistent in their behavior … and you’ll learn how to use this universal desire to motivate people to desire what you offer as never before. You’ll also discover how to unleash the normally overlooked power of the “Zeigarnik Effect.” The Zeigarnik Effect is named after the Russian psychologist who discovered that there is an almost irresistible drive within most people tofinish incomplete tasks, sometimes against all reason and even when it makes no sense to complete the task. You’ll see how you can use this in your continuity programs to keep people buying more products from you. You’ll also see why fear of loss is a much stronger motivator than desire for gain … and how to use this fascinating bit of psychology to sell much more of whatever you offer.
And here’s another psychological hot button I show you how to press. You may recognize this from your own experience. Let’s say you’re looking to buy a new home. You find one you like and are leaning towards making an offer, but you’re in no hurry, because you’re negotiating and resolved not to appear too eager. But then you get wind there’s another buyer in the picture, a couple coming back to inspect the home for a third time. What happens? You suddenly want that home more than you ever wanted it before, and you immediately plan to raise your offer! What happened? Competition for the object you want drives your desire much higher. Such is human nature, and I show you exactly how to exploit this secret to greatly intensify your prospects’ desire for anything you want to sell. Shamelessly manipulative? Perhaps. But it works like crazy, as do the other psychological hot buttons I share.
In my own defense, I hasten to add that not all these techniques smack of manipulation. Some of them do, yes, so I urge you to use them ethically, as your prospects won’t even be aware of the powerful “hidden persuaders” you are secretly wielding. But other techniques are among the noblest and most straightforward tactics you could ever imagine, and they can work wonders for you, too. Take candor, for example. Yes,candor! It is so rare in advertising that when prospects encounter it, they’re so taken aback that they quickly lower their guard. Consider what David Ogilvy said about this seldom-used powerhouse of persuasion …
“The antique dealer who points out a scratch before he lets me buy his chair always wins my trust for life.” Isn’t that a delightful insight? And doesn’t it reflect such a refreshingly honest and open way to do business? Imagine that you are considering the purchase of an expensive antique chair and encounter a dealer who points out a blemish you didn’t notice. I’m sure his candor would work its magic with you, too, exactly as it did for Ogilvy. And just as surely, candor will work its magic with your customers, if you use it correctly. I’ll show you several superb examples of how to use candor—to freely admit a minor flaw—to greatly increase the credibility and pulling power of your copy. If you are someone devoted, as I am, to selling truthfully, this is one of the most important tools in your selling arsenal. There are other useful techniques I’ll share, as well. For example …
When Your Creativity Fails and This is a little-known copywriting trick that works beautifully in markets that are highly competitive, and most of the obvious benefits, headlines, offers, and other approaches have already been used many times and have saturated the market. This “create an enemy” technique opens up a whole new way to sell with surprising vigor and effectiveness. When your creativity is tired and it is hard to get any traction in your copy because everything else has been said so often, this strategy will save your life and often give you a monster breakthrough.
There’s more …
And while we’re still on the subject of salesmanship in advertising, let’s move on to …
Master Secret #6:
On Wall Street … or on Madison Avenue … or in direct marketing circles, if you know how to sell, and especially how to close, you are golden. In good times, when companies are flush, you will be showered with money, perks, and trinkets. In some Wall Street firms, for example, year-end bonuses for top salespeople run into the tens of millions of dollars. In hard times, if you know how to sell, when layoffs force others to hit the cold pavement, you will be coddled and protected—because you have the most highly prized skill in the business universe, the ability to sell, to generate cash flow, the lifeblood of any business. Among all salespeople, no one is held in higher esteem than the stars known as closers. Calling you a “closer” is the highest accolade your admiring colleagues can pay you. It means that no matter what your prospects may throw at you in a presentation, you know how to roll with the punches and bring home the order a high percentage of the time. When stakes are highest and a company must win an account, they send in their star closer.
That can be you, either in personal selling or in direct marketing, when you apply the secrets I teach in the DVD course. I have studied the techniques used by master closers in all fields and have figured out how to apply their methods to the direct marketing process. In this part of the course, for example, I share my whole bag of tricks for closing the sale, including “The Secret of the Apothecary Scale” … “Advanced Secrets of Risk Reversal” … “The Secret of Best Sellers in Any Product Category” … “The Takeaway Principle” … “How to Make Offers Your Prospects Can’t Refuse (Without Resorting to Lucca Brazzi)” … and much more.
Master Secret #7: This is the final and most important part of the entire DVD course. That’s because there are certain secrets that greatly empower your success in all walks of life, including marketing. Chief among these is the ability to manifest your desires. Everything in the universe is governed by laws, and this is true of how to harness your own mind to manifest almost whatever you want, including outrageous success in your marketing and copywriting. This is so important because every great achievement in life—whether a magnificent bridge, a towering skyscraper, the attainment of your own financial independence, or the launch of a blockbuster product—all have one thing in common. They all begin in the mind. When you fully understand this, and how to harness your mind’s phenomenal power to manifest your dreams, your life will change in positive ways you cannot even imagine. For one, you will realize that you possess a power similar to that of the pilot who sits comfortably at the controls of a mighty jet airplane. Once you know how to “use your controls” in smarter, effortless ways, you can experience a whole new level of propulsion to get wherever you want to go in life. I’ve lived a blessed life. I’ve worked with many clients who’ve remained my business partners and friends for decades, and we’ve spawned tremendously successful businesses. My clients, my family members, and my friends have sometimes commented on how “lucky” I seem to be, how often circumstances seem to break my way to make our joint ventures successful. Some even consider me their lucky charm. Well, the secret will now be out. It is not luck, at least not the way most people think about “luck.” When you want things to start breaking your way, when you want the universe to conspire to assist you and shower you with good fortune, I’ve found what I feel certain is the key, and I share this with you in the seminar. Learning about this whole area of how to manifest your desires is critically important to your mastery as a marketer. Why? Because as a marketer, this is your stock in trade—the intensification and fulfillment of desire!
To help others realize their desires, it is of incalculable benefit to become a master of the laws of desire yourself. These are among the most important secrets I reveal in the DVD course. For example …
A short demonstration, using this DVD course as an example … Let’s say you’re a copywriter. I imagine there must have been times in your career, perhaps even now, when you wonder how good you really are and if you can sustain, let alone multiply, your current income. Even the best of us have not been above worrying, “What if I skid into an extended slump and don’t turn out any winners for a long time? What will happen to my income?”
Perhaps you’re even facing a new assignment right now that is so challenging, you have no idea of how you’re going to beat the client’s strong control. Each morning when you wake up and think about it, you want to go back to sleep. You loathe the idea of failing, yet you have no idea what to write that will electrify your audience, and this makes you anxious. You particularly dread the thought of getting one of those awful, awkward phone calls from your client, telling you that your package has just lost out to someone else’s. Or, more likely in such cases, you get no phone call at all, because your client just didn’t feel comfortable breaking the bad news to you. Will this client ever call again? Will others? You wonder about these things and if thesystematic creation of winning advertising copy could somehow be easier … and your future income a lot more secure. Well, it most definitely can. Imagine, thanks to the secrets of consistentmarketing success that you will learn in this DVD course, that such thoughts need never again shadow you like hounds in the night. Imagine how much better it would feel to have the confidence that grows only from knowledge—the knowledge of how to automatically stack the odds of winning in your favor on each and every assignment. No, that doesn’t mean that you will win every time. Nobody does. But it does mean that you can succeed in our profession far more consistentlyand thus enjoy a high, ongoing level of demand for your work, and thus a whole new sense of security and confidence about your income. You can know thatinevitably you will win your fair share of tests. Moreover, on those inevitable occasions when you don’t win, you will not embarrass yourself, because your copy invariably makes a respectable showing and, often enough, puts you in the winner’s circle.
And that means that you will have taken much of the risk out of your clients’ decision to hire you, because you will consistently come in at or near the top, and that’s all that clients will ever ask of you. Building a reputation as a consistent producer of winning copy leads in short order to being offered more assignments than you can handle from an ever-widening circle of clients, all of which gives you great financial security. Remember, you don’t have to beat other copywriters all the time or by great lengths to win enough of these contests to be among the best in our business. If you cross the finish line first by just a nose ahead of your competition, you’ll still be declared the winner. And this DVD course will give you scores of ways to gain a huge running start against any copywriter who doesn’t know these techniques. If anything can give you the security and rich financial rewards of being a more frequent, consistent winner in this business, this DVD course will do it for you.
How to Manifest Your Own Desires Now let’s talk about fulfilling your most strongly held desires, both in marketing and your whole life.
When I was young, I studied with several authentic, famous Zen masters at the Zen Center in New York City. These cheerful, wise monks were famous for helping others to see and act with clarity of mind and effectiveness in action. As one of these Zen masters might say, if you’re going to hit a target, you must first have a target. This means that with any activity you enter into, you want to have in your mind—before you begin that activity—a clear, vivid picture of the success you want to experience. This will help you so much in realizing the success you desire. Obvious, yes? However, all too often we just plunge ahead without even envisioning the outrageously successful outcome we’d love to achieve. And if you don’t picture it … if you don’t have such outrageous success as your clear, highly specific target, how can you expect to hit it? What you see is what you’ll hit! And if all you see is a muddled, vague outcome, you’re going to experience a muddled, mediocre result. This applies to your success in copywriting, marketing, and everything else in your life. Here’s an example I give in the DVD course … Imagine going into an airport and saying to the ticket agent, “I want to go someplace great. I want to experience a wonderful journey.”
That’s terrific, but the ticket agent can’t help you unless you say specificallywhere you want to go. If you say, “No, I’m having trouble choosing. There are so many possible destinations that I can’t decide yet. But I do really want it to be something great …” Think that way, and you’re not going to get anywhere. If, on the other hand, you say, “I want to go to San Francisco,” then the ticket agent can give you a ticket to San Francisco. You can board the plane, take action to follow your plan, and in a short time, you’ll arrive in San Francisco. It’s the same way in life. If you want to arrive at a terrific destination, you must first have one. It all starts with a clear vision of what you want, of something that really excites you. In this part of the DVD course, I teach you how to live the life you’ve always wanted—a big life filled with outsized success, achievement, excitement and so much natural, unforced motivation that you wake up every morning eager to jump out of bed, thrilled to be alive, and on fire with the excitement of achieving your biggest dreams, dreams that are worthy of you!
This is the part of the course that is dearest to my heart, as these are the secrets, gleaned from many years of studying with masters of manifestation, that have transformed my own life into one of great personal happiness, attainment, the thrill of being alive—and seeing my greatest desires unfold before my eyes every single day. And it all starts with having a target before you can hit it!
But What If You Have No Clear Idea Right Now As I show in the course, then you must make discovering your passion your first big goal, your first major destination. Imagine seeing yourself feeling so happy because you have finally discovered what you want to do, where you’d like to do it, and with whom you’d like to do it. Let that be your first destination, and once you arrive there, plan your next destination. As one master puts it, “Go as far as you can see. Then you’ll see further.” In other words, whether you are fairly sure of what you’d like to achieve in your life … or you are not … the process works the same way.
And What Is That Manifestation Process? In the DVD course, I give you the elegantly simple and extraordinarily effective four-part secret I was taught for achieving outrageous success at anything you want to do in life—including becoming a star copywriter, marketing executive or entrepreneur or accumulating significant wealth.
With this simple four-part technique, there is no question that you will become, for the first time in your life, a true master of desire, someone who is capable of manifesting your heart’s desire in virtually every area of life—spiritual, health, family, wealth, career, every area that is important to you. And it will take you very little conscious effort, because you will be harnessing the mighty, untapped power of your subconscious mind to make your dreams come true with an ease and certainty you have never experienced. As you’ll see, what I teach you here is radically different from what most others recommend about setting and achieving goals, and it is a critically important difference that will make gigantic gains in achievement and productivity so much easier for you. For the first time, you will free yourself up to set and achieve much bigger goals without any worry whatsoever that you may miss them.
You’ll also discover how the thrilling pursuit of a spectacular goal will, all by itself, add indescribable zest and sparkle to your life. Using this master technique that I teach you will take all the fear, anxiety, and pressure off you to reach for something spectacular in your life. You will have absolutely nothing to lose, and this will enable your subconscious mind to participate to its fullest extent. I have been a student of the subconscious mind—and harnessing its vast potential—for more than 40 years. I’ve studied scores of gurus, interviewed many in person, read the best books in the field, and tried the techniques they teach. What I give you is the easiest and most powerful way I’ve ever found to program the “software” of your mind so that you will automatically be in high achievement mode. I assure you, this will change your life in ways you cannot even imagine now, and not just in your copywriting and marketing ability, but in every area of your life.
And it’s all automatic, except for the simple four-step instructions for setting up this new “mental software program” for harnessing your subconscious to achieve great things. As soon as you set it up and hit the “play” button of your mind, it runs automatically. You will likely discover that you are suddenly much luckier than you ever have been in your life, effortlessly coming upon insights, networking contacts, and mutual acquaintances that help you in scores of amazing ways you could have never consciously orchestrated. All because you have learned how to fly—by letting your conscious mind be the pilot and your subconsciousmind be your mighty jet engine. So get ready to set and achieve big, thrilling goals that are worthy of you, of your biggest dreams, that electrify you and have the power to give you the big, exciting life you have always wanted for yourself.
Street-Smart Copywriting Secrets There you have them—the 7 master secrets of wealth creation for copywriters and marketers.
But I have many other secrets I’ve picked up along the way that don’t fit into the seven neat categories I’ve just described. And I want to share these with you too. For example, during the early years of my career, I was blessed to work with an all-star array of some of the greatest copy chiefs, creative directors, clients, and agency heads who have ever lived, including David Ogilvy … John Caples … Ted Nicholas … Len Reiss (the successor to Vic Schwab at Schwab & Beatty) … Joe Segel (founder of the Franklin Mint) … the legendary Dan Rosenthal … and a host of lesser-known master craftsmen who taught me their most prized tricks and scientifically proven techniques for boosting response. I own every good book ever published on direct marketing, and I have never seen most of these secrets printed anywhere, as they were handed down verbally by copy chiefs and creative directors to those working under them, including me. In the course, I pass them on to you, and you will gain a great edge over any writers who don’t know them. For example …
Write Brilliant Copy While You Sleep???
Great News for Any Marketer If you have to evaluate or approve copy in any way, I’ll bet you can relate to this …
You’ve just finished reading a piece of copy and you know that something bothers you about it, but you just can’t put your finger on what that is, let alone how to improve it. Believe me, I know the feeling. For a good portion of my career, I was a copy chief who had to turn out consistently excellent copy from a bullpen of wildly different copywriters, some of them young cubs … some of them grizzled veterans … some in-house … others on freelance … and all of them with their own writing styles and differing opinions on what makes a good piece of copy. At first, I found it exasperating—impossible!—to coax a harmonious symphony of excellence from this orchestra of mavericks. But necessity—and a brilliant teacher named Dan Rosenthal—taught me how … using something called “The Crit System.” “Crit” is short for “critique,” and since leaving Dan’s company about 30 years ago, I’ve refined my own version of the “Crit System.” No matter what your product or service, this gives you nothing less than a reliable, easy-to-use, utterly dependable quality control system for the consistent production of superb copy and design from everyone who works for you. In other words, this is a simple system that anyone can use—you don’t have to be a copywriter. It takes the production of blockbuster advertising out of the realm of the mysterious, unpredictable, inconsistent, and elusive … and turns it instead into a predictable, controllable repeatable process, just like any other function in a successful business, such as manufacturing. Let’s face it—if you want to run, say, a top-flight restaurant, you can’t make the production of great meals a sometime, hit-or-miss proposition depending on which chef is in the kitchen on any given night. Every meal for every patron—no matter which chefs are manning the stoves—must be consistently excellent, and this is not a process you can leave to chance. It’s no different in the production of great copy that makes you rich. You want a reliable process for its production, regardless of who’s in your creative kitchen, so that you are not vulnerable to the vagaries of different writers, all of whom have their good days and bad days and often have too many deadlines to cope with at once. This can lead to a temptation to rush your job and not take the time to do it right. I show you exactly how to counter such problems by putting in place a reliable copywriter quality control system. I guarantee it will change your fortunes in direct marketing so dramatically, you’ll never want to live without it again. With this system in place …
How Will You Fare in Our While viewing the seminar, you will have an opportunity to match wits against many of the brightest lights in direct marketing and see if you can pick the winners from our pairs of split-run tests. You will also benefit from the analysis of the results—why certain headlines and formats performed so much better than others, all of which gives you yet more confidential intelligence for improving your own results.
A Superstar Jam Session With so many marketing stars and superstars in attendance, it would have been a shame not to pick their brains. I’m so glad I did! At the end of the seminar, as I passed around the mike, these giants of the direct marketing world contributed their best insights for boosting response. Just a few quick examples: From Gary Halbert: A simple change in your offer that, based on his tests, normally triples your response, believe it or not. I was delighted that Gary shared this, because I have found that most marketers, copywriters, and designers focus great attention on headlines and formats (as they should). But they often inexplicably neglect testing bold new offers. Yet that’s where you’ll uncover some of your biggest breakthroughs, as this insight from Gary Halbert illustrates. From Jenny Thompson: A little-known online research technique that is free and vastly superior to focus groups in finding out what your market wants, how your market talks, and how to come up with products that they will devour eagerly. From Michael Fishman: Michael is considered by many, including me, to be the world’s greatest list broker. He has been the list wizard behind many of my most successful mailings, as well as giant winners for some of the most savvy marketers in direct marketing. At the seminar, Michael shared his best inside secrets for turning modest winners into colossal hits by knowing how to uncover lots more lists that you’d normally overlook. He also points out the biggest mistakes people make when renting mailing lists, as well as numerous ways to avoid getting ripped off. From Ken McCarthy: The most powerful technique of all for making sure that your client does not play games with your royalties or other performance-based compensation. You’ll hear Ken’s brilliant strategy for making sure you always get paid what you deserve from your clients. He shows how the ideal position to be in is like that of an electric utility. In other words, you serve your clients well, but if they do not pay their “light bill” (your well-earned share of the profits), you are in the position to “turn off their lights” (i.e., pull the plug on their online traffic, because it’s under your control). Ken and others explain how this works. This gives you tremendous power to prevent your client from fooling around with your justly deserved royalties and other forms of compensation. I explain how you can accomplish the same thing with offline advertising, such as direct mail and space ads.
All Key Principles Illustrated To bring everything I’ve described in this long letter vividly to life, each secret is illustrated by examples of my own work (most of it available nowhere else) and from a wide array of the most successful control ads and direct mail packages of all time. Just a few examples:
The Legacy I Want to Leave … Even by my standards, this has been a long letter. So let’s wrap up … As I’ve said, I want to leave a special legacy to those motivated to be stars in our business, just as I have been motivated my whole career to be the best I can be, to live a large life instead of a small one, to create insatiable demand for my services, to sell with integrity, to achieve my dreams of financial security, and to build an excellent reputation to be proud of. I have succeeded in these goals and would like to show you how to do the same. I want to leave a legacy and, in a way, I’d love you to be part of it. Here’s what I mean … My goal is to have it known throughout the direct response industry—today, in six months, in five years, in 10 years, and perhaps even in 50 years—that those who have taken The Bencivenga DVD Course training consistently rank among the most respected and successful masters of the marketing world. Should you take this training, I want to have you be recognized as someone who possesses these state-of-the-art selling techniques and is conversant with their use … that you inspire well-founded confidence in direct marketers who will be more inclined to hire you because you know what they want you to know … that you understand, for example, the critical elements of The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® and how to manipulate each to trigger maximum response … that you know what is meant when major players talk about Proof Element Marketing® and the secrets of making it work … that you know how a “Crit System” works and are comfortable with it … that you know the advanced fine points of marketing, copywriting, and design that this program teaches.
The Two Factors You Must Have I’ve hired many a copywriter in my day and have observed their progress. Invariably, those who rise to the top in both reputation and earning power are those who possess (1) superior knowledge of their craft and (2) superior dedication to succeed. Both are absolutely necessary. I stand ready to give you the first—the superior knowledge. But the dedication can come only from you. Are you motivated enough to invest, say, just a fraction of what legions of wet-behind-the-ears college freshmen are willing to invest in their education? Here’s what I mean … Counting all costs, an incoming freshman at Harvard or Yale must fork over more than $50,000 for the first year alone, and again for every year thereafter, for as long as he or she remains a student. Yet every year, so many high school seniors apply to Harvard that the school must reject more than 90 out of every 100. Do you have as much motivation as one of the tens of thousands of high school seniors who apply to Harvard each year? Fortunately, the cost for this unique training is nowhere near $50,000. It’s just a fraction of that, and it comes with a guarantee that Harvard would never dream of offering. It’s guaranteed to be worth 50 times its cost, or you’ll pay nothing. OK, let me get specific …
The Four Qualifications You Must Meet 1. You must be willing to invest in yourself. The Bencivenga DVD Coursetraining costs $5,000. This is the same price paid by those who attended the seminar, and the cost will never be less, ever. Neither are there any exceptions to this price. I say this because those who attended the seminar, as well as those who have expressed interest in purchasing the DVDs and expanded, illustrated transcript, include many of my longtime friends and business associates. I cannot show favoritism to some and not to others, so the cost of $5,000 is universal—for everyone—without exception. 2. You must be a star or future star. As I say, there will be no exceptions to the $5,000 investment, and this is also true for the few struggling copywriters and marketers who’ve written me with hard-luck stories, looking for a price break. Not only will there be no price break, but if you’re in desperate financial straits and have to hock your car or sell your firstborn, I strongly prefer that you do not purchase this program. I’m not looking to inherit anyone’s financial desperation. If this is your situation, I wish you well, but this is not the purchase for you, at least not now. If you desire this program so strongly that you simply must have it, but you lack the funds, my best advice is to save up for it. Please don’t go into debt. Rather, let ownership of this course become a fierce career goal for you. Remind yourself of this goal daily, keep working and saving toward it, and soon the course will be yours. I know you can make that happen if you set your mind to it, and that will be just the beginning of great achievements in store for you with the help of this course. As I mentioned earlier, I have created enough sets (2,000) and established a high enough price within a very small market, that the supply will last for several years. I assure you, there will be a set waiting for you—ready to rocket you to the highest levels of copywriting and marketing success—if you are ambitious and determined enough to start saving up for it now. Also, please understand that this is not a business opportunities and get-rich-quick schemes are for the benefit of the sellers, not the hopeful buyers, and it’s not what I’m about. What I’m offering here is something quite different and special … Available to just 2,000 ambitious copywriters and marketers, this is the ultimate training if you see yourself as a star, superstar, or future star of direct marketing … if you want to take your knowledge to a whole new level … and if you want to learn the most powerful secrets I’ve ever discovered from more than $1 billion and 40 years’ worth of testing to …
In all these areas, this seminar will indeed be life-changing. If that’s what you are looking for, I invite you to join our elite circle. 3. You must keep what you learn confidential. You must agree in writing never to publish, resell, or distribute the information you learn in The Bencivenga DVD Course in any way, shape, or form. This is because you will be learning copyrighted proprietary formulas and trade secrets that are for your own use and benefit but not for resale or redistribution in any way. In fact, on the advice of Jay Abraham (a friend who’s conducted many seminars himself) … and some of the best legal minds who know how to protect intellectual property, you technically will not own any of the materials you receive. Your $5,000 entitles you to lease these materials indefinitely, provided you do not try to sell or distribute the information in any way. If you do, we will revoke your license and move to confiscate the illegally sold material from whomever purchased it from you. This protects my intellectual property, and it also protects the investment you’re making, as these materials will never be allowed to be sold more cheaply on eBay or any other source nor be widely available anywhere. 4. You must pay by check and in full. For my whole career, I’ve run a two-person business, just myself and my loving wife, Pauline. We have no staff, no secretary, no administrative help of any kind. All this has given us a life of great freedom to travel when and where we please. And, as a result, we like to keep things simple—no merchant accounts, credit card orders, and the like. If you want this program, you must:
As soon as your check clears, we will FedEx The Bencivenga DVD Course to you.
Wiring Instructions If you prefer to wire funds, which can be especially helpful in international transactions, please send an email requesting wiring instructions to my wife Pauline (you’ll find her email address at the top of the Reply Form). She’ll write back and tell you how to proceed—it’s very easy.
Two-Year, 100% Money-Back Guarantee You risk nothing when ordering because The Bencivenga DVD Course is guaranteed to be worth at least 50 times its cost to you—or at least $250,000. And you will be the sole judge of that. If at any time during the next two years you don’t agree that the principles revealed here will be worth at least $250,000 to you over the course of your career, just return the materials for a complete refund. You risk absolutely nothing.
Surprise Bonus Too Valuable to Describe Publicly I also have in store for you a surprise bonus I am working on now that is so powerful I cannot even reveal it, as the very concept behind it will instantly trigger inferior imitations on the Internet, and I’m not going to allow anyone else to steal my thunder on this. All I’ll say here is that if you are a copywriter or marketer, this bonus will be“Da Bomb,” the most powerful tool you will ever possess to systematically ratchet your response higher on any product or service you will ever offer. No, it has nothing to do with coaching sessions, webinars, or anything resembling anything else ever before available in direct marketing. And its impact on your response is going to be mind-boggling and ongoing. That’s all I can say right now.
I Invite You to Click Below Now If you’d like to be among those who will possess one of the strictly limited 2,000 DVD sets … fully protected by a two-year 100% money-back guarantee … and you do meet the four qualifications above … just click on the link at the end of this letter. Please rest assured that I will never reveal this complete treasury of wealthbuilding, response-boosting secrets in any cheap mass-market manner, such as a book or online newsletter, or in any way that undercuts the value of the investment you’ll be making in yourself. This vast treasury of response-boosting secrets—the cream of more than $1 billion and 40 years’ worth of scientific direct marketing tests—will be reserved for the relative few who know the extraordinary value of such knowledge, the knowledge of how to sell with maximum power in the most leveraged way to sell ever invented—direct marketing. If you know the value of such knowledge, I invite you to seize the moment, click on the link below, and join your fellow direct marketing stars, superstars, and future stars who shall stand apart as the elite class of our industry because they possess the uniquely powerful secrets of The Bencivenga DVD Course. To order The Bencivenga DVD Course, please click the link below, print out the Reply Form, and return it as indicated: Yours for a good life and |