Goldmine Marketing

Here’s what I’m up to…

  • Sell ‘Em What They Want Already

    2:22pm
    East of the Mississippi


    We’re getting a break from the cold here in Saint Paul.

    It’s 36° outside!

    I was working on a landing page and my client kept asking me to clarify that only part of the offer was an easy-to-use “framework” –– a desirable aspect of this offer –– and that other parts of the offer weren’t a “framework” at all, but instead dealt with data and functional changes.

    Which, sure.

    But copywriting isn’t content writing!

    The goal of sales copy is to build up excitement, or anger, or fear, or some emotion about the current situation…

    And then to tie that into a changed emotion or other benefit that will only happen as a result of the purchase.

    If we spend all our time explaining the nuts and bolts of what the person will actually be doing –– in the name of transparency –– it begins to sound like a lot of work…

    And who wants to choose more work?

    Now, deep down, you and I and everyone knows that change and improvement does take work (or at least cash).

    But we can’t build up hope with technical details.

    There’s a difference between “See it sparkle!” and “It sparkles. Sometimes. When the light is right.“

    We can’t hope to make a sale when we say, “imagine how your friends will feel when they see you“…

    …and end that sentence with “putting in extra hours to make this work out.“

    Gotta sell the hope that tomorrow’s gonna sparkle.

    Sell your buyer what he wants.

    Deliver that.

    But also deliver what he really needs.

    Love you,

    Jeffrey

    PS. Might you know Judd Apatow’s email? The one I tried bounced.

  • Sick in the Head

    1:58pm
    East of the Mississippi


    Saturday I watched half of the Mel Brooks classic, Spaceballs.

    I’ve seen it dozens of times and I still laughed out loud.

    I was inspired to watch it after reading a Judd Apatow interview with Brooks in Judd’s serious book about comedy, Sick in the Head.

    There was a lot about writing in the book, and about life in general, and I want to share some of it with you.

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  • What was once HOT is now NORMAL

    2:14pm
    East of the Mississippi


    I tried something new today with my coffee:

    Brewed it with Thai Chili Pepper flakes.

    It adds a bit of zing to every sip.

    Years ago, as a prank, my uncle put my dad’s name on a mailing list for Mo Hotta Mo Betta, a hot sauce mail order company.

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  • The Important 20% of Sales: COPY

    12:24pm
    Saint Paul


    Yesterday we discussed BIG IDEAS in marketing and how a good structure can be used to entice shoppers into buying.

    But one thing I didn’t mention?

    You can’t take this winning structure –– or any other –– and just “make it work” without knowing something about your audience.

    I spoke with Brian Kurtz this morning about his 41/39/20 rule of marketing:

    41% of your success comes from “the list.”

    Or better said:

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  • 90K in Sales: A Framework (time sensitive)

    8:17am
    -10° here, east of the Missississippi


    Hey, last week we discussed the importance of grabbing your reader with a BIG IDEA.

    The best sales letters revolve around a single BIG IDEA, with copy that supports and expands on that singular idea. Like these blockbusters:

    • The End of America? (Mike Palmer for Stansberry Research)
    • Two Young Men (Martin Conroy for The Wall Street Journal)
    • Tap the Hidden Wealth Inside Your Paycheck (Doug D’Anna for StraightTalk Magazine)

    My friend Rick Peterson is an ex-Agora copywriter.

    Agora is a huge financial publisher of investment advice. If you know of Motley Fool, Agora is similar –– but Agora’s been around longer.

    Anyhow.

    Rick was hired by Agora to write “BIG IDEA” emails that get attention and get people salivating… and buying.

    And that’s exactly what he did.

    Check it out:

    Just ONE of Rick’s email sequences at Agora pulled in over $90,000 in sales.

    Then he followed up with non-buyers and that sequence pulled in another $65,000 in sales.

    Rick and I were chatting about BIG IDEAS a few weeks ago when he dropped those info nuggets.

    But what was even cooler was that he broke down the structure of those 2 email sequences… plus a 3rd sequence!… so those structures could be used as frameworks to create additional, high-selling email flows.

    Not fill-in-the-blank templates that customers have already seen and gloss over, mind you…

    But 3 reusable, adaptable frameworks that anyone can use to quickly create high-converting emails.

    Because good sales copy is less about the words and more about the way peoples’ brains react to what they’re reading.

    And these frameworks help you create those mental reactions.

    I asked Rick if I could share these frameworks wih you.

    And he did me one better:

    Rick recorded a video to explain the 3 high-selling frameworks and his thinking behind these winning emails.

    But here’s the thing:

    Rick said I could share this, yes. But he was only going to keep it active for 48 hours.

    Now… I don’t know if that means 48 hours from when I write this email… at 8:53am… or 48 hours from when this mails later today.

    Either way, clock is ticking.

    If you want Rick’s 3 high-conversion frameworks… including the original copy you can study and apply… plus the 30 minute video of HOW Rick thinks (so that you can write better copy yourself…)

    Well, best jump on this now:

    https://therickpeterson.com/Jeffrey

    Love you,

    Jeffrey G Thomas
    Direct Response Copywriter

  • Real Life vs. Big Ideas (the only way to survive online)

    2:24pm
    Saint Paul

    The internet is dying.

    What was once a place of fascination and connection has become a wasteland of uninspired, templated content created by, well, pretty much everyone.

    More people are opting out of an always-connected lifestyle…

    Buying devices to lock up their smartphones (because they can’t control themselves)…

    And returning to living in the real world.

    Example:

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  • How I use AI (and why)

    12:31pm
    East of the Mississippi

    Not sure if you spend any time on LinkedIn, but there seems to be a lot of marketers there.

    And of the marketers who post, they tend to fall into two camps:

    One camp that posts plenty of AI content, often from other creators, and talks about how game-changing AI is––and maybe you want to buy their course.

    And one camp that doesn’t want anything to do with AI.

    I have a more nuanced take, which of course isn’t polarizing enough to gain much traction.

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  • What are you doing tomorrow? Party?

    Did you watch my conversation with David Newman?

    We covered his career in marketing and his books, especially his newest book Market Eminence about becoming a celeb in your niche.

    Well tomorrow is his online launch party for that book. 1pm US Central time.

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  • Still Buying that Thing?

    1:45pm
    -1° in Saint Paul

    A year ago I took Derek Johanson’s CopyHour course, a 90 day journey of handwriting successful sales letters to embed their lessons into my subconscious.

    One thing I’ve learned in marketing is that most people don’t complete the thing they buy:

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  • Bigly 💔

    11:47am
    Saint Paul

    Longtime readers of this website may know how it got its start back in 2016:

    Reading and summarizing the lessons found in the books from Scott Adam’s “Persuasion Reading List.”

    And while I didn’t summarize all of the books –– persuasive copywriting became my main focus –– I did write up a good number of the books on his list (and I read others that I didn’t summarize).

    Well, if you haven’t heard, Scott Adams died from cancer yesterday at age 68.

    Scott, through his blog and livestreams, changed the way I saw the world in profound ways.

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