Imagine you’re having a discussion with a hyperactive, talkative teenager.
And the conversation goes like this…

“We went to the mall, and like, there was this fire in the mall. And we went from there to the cinema, but we didn’t have any money and anyway the popcorn machine was broken, and so we didn’t really want to go to the movies without popcorn. But right after that we went to have some pizza and there was this creepy guy outside the store. But listen to this—because that’s not the best part. The best part is the Sylvie dumped Josh, and like, they ran into each other in the street…”

When we, like, write copy for our website, we like, sound a lot like that teenager

What we tend to do is go all over the place with our copy. First of course, we’ll try to stuff in about five concepts in our headline. Then we’ll try and fill in a whole bunch of sub-heads that we want to drive home.

And then our first paragraph tries to cover all the possible points. And like that teenager, we have the entire story in our heads, but nothing quite gets across to the client. And that’s because you’re trying to cover way too many points too quickly.

And as you’ve worked it out for yourself, this bounce and jumping around is exhausting for the reader or listener, and hence is a big mistake.

So let’s see how this mistake unfolds when we write copy by examining an actual piece of copy.

Headline: Are You Fed Up With Unprofessional Contractors …
Body text:
That don’t call you back or even show up?
Are you done with contractors that lack the ability to communicate in a timely manner?
Or run away from problems that crop up during and after a project?
Are you over dealing with the hacks of the world?
Have you enough of sitting home babysitting people that are you uncomfortable with?

So what’s wrong with that sequence?

Technically, nothing. The headline is perfect. It gets my attention without too much of a fuss. But then I go to read and I get between three-five main plots and no sub-plots. And how do we know they’re main plots? Because we can list them out and see for ourselves. They all want to take centre stage.

Main plot 1: Don’t call you back or even show up
Main plot 2: Lack the ability to communicate in a timely manner
Main plot 3: Run away from problems that crop up during and after a project
Main plot 4: The so-called professional is nothing but a hack.
Main plot 5: Discomfort. Having to babysit people that are you uncomfortable with

Just like that teenager’s story, it’s possible for us to jump from one to the other, without so much as pausing for breath. So now that we know we’re creating bounce, how do we get rid of this bounce? And how do we still use all of the point we want to cover on our web page?

Here’s how you do it.

Just like a movie, you have a main plot. And you have sub-plots. So what’s your main plot? It’s the client’s most pressing problem. That’s obvious, isn’t it? You’d want to get the client’s attention by driving home the biggest, scariest, buggiest problem, wouldn’t you? And here’s how we go about it.

Headline: Write your headline. Let it cover ONE big problem (that big, buggy problem)
Body text 1: Drive home the problems involved with that ONE point.
Body text 2: Drive home the consequences of that ONE point.
Body text 3: Drive home the solution to that ONE problem.
Move to the next point.

So how does this look when we put the teenager’s story in this format?

Headline: We went to the mall and there was a fire.
Body text 1: What happened next (at the mall)
Body text 2: Then what were the consequences?
Body text 3: How did we escape the fire?

With the teenager, she’d complete one story, and move to the next. And the next. But you may have made your point with a single story. So what do you do with the rest of the stuff that you so badly want to get across? You bring it up later. Let’s see how. But first let’s get back to our example.

Headline: Are You Fed Up With Unprofessional Contractors …
Body text: That don’t call you back or even show up?
Body text 1: What’s the problem with not calling back or showing up?
Body text 2: What are the consequences? Describe the emotion that the client feels, in detail.
Body text 3: What’s the best way to avoid such a desperate scenario?

And then you present your service

Body text 4: Presenting XYZ contracting company.
Body text 5: Drive home the point of calling back. How you do it. When you show up. How you follow up.

Notice we haven’t gone to Point 2 yet. And yes, I know, you’re itching to drive home that point

But notice something? The customer doesn’t care about your itch. They’re locked in to what you’re saying. You’re the first person they’ve met who isn’t like that teenager, jumping from story to story.

The customer’s biggest problem is ‘unprofessional contractors that don’t call back or show up’ and you’re doing just that. The customer wants to know more about that story in detail, before they’re ready to move to the next story.

So once you present your company and why you bring the ONE solution, you can now move on to the next story.

Except you don’t have to tell the next story in as much detail. You can now roll out the remaining stories in slightly less detail in a feature/benefit format that looks like this:

Feature 1: Benefit 1. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah.

Feature 2: Benefit 1. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah.

And so on with Feature 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8—and so on. And add benefits to every one of those features

You can have as many as 8-10 paragraphs rich with details of the problem and the solutions you bring to the customer. And having locked into the main problem and seeing how you bring that solution, the customer will happily trundle through the rest of the points, and get more convinced by the minute about your expertise and professionalism.

In short what you have is a main plot. And you drive home that main plot.

And then later, pull in the sub-plots, but without the same level of intensity as the main. Just remember that you can pick any plot to be the main plot. (e.g. ‘Sylvie dumping Josh’ has more drama than ‘no popcorn at the cinema.’ And then re-tell your story on the sales page.

ONE plot at a time 

Do you have a question on ‘Understand Plots and Sub-Plots when Writing Salesletters? Ask it here.

The Brain Audit really teaches you the art of persuasion because it gives an insight into how people’s brains work. I have used the principles in writing WebPages, writing articles, making presentations, networking, negotiating and even writing submissions for a judge!

But the best bit about the Brain Audit is that it actually works.The principles are easy to understand.

Would I recommend it to people serious about getting on in business? Absolutely.

Michael Smyth, approachablelawyer, Auckland
Judge for yourself —The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t

“If you suspect that your business could be bringing in a lot more revenue but you don’t have a clue how to make that happen without hype or hassle, 5000bc is a must-have resource.

I honestly didn’t see what 5000bc could offer me that I couldn’t get from Sean’s books. Besides, how could a bunch of people – most of whom are not business experts – help me build my business?

I joined anyway because the price was right and I wanted the information that came with the premium membership.

The information and support I received from Sean and my fellow “cavers” about a single Web page was directly responsible for selling $10,000 worth of books in less than two weeks.

Unlike many Web communities, 5000bc members are active and to the point. Sean keeps adding content that drills down to specific problems in business and then shows you how to solve them.

Try it. You won’t regret it.”

Molly Gordon, Master Certified Coach
Shaboom Inc, USA

Judge for yourself—How 5000bc can make your business succeed.

1) Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’?
Learn how the core elements of outlining can save you from the misery of writing your next article.

2) Do you know that visuals immediately improve your sales conversion?
Learn how to create drama and curiosity and help improve your web page conversion with visuals.

3) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients?
Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer?

4) Chaos Planning
Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s March, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected.
Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning.

5) Nothing bugs you more than a painful client.
A client who hassles you at every step of the way. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials—and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy.

I was sitting at a cafe one day, when a client was raving about my articles. Of course, I was smiling from ear to ear–as you do when  someone is a big ‘fan.’

“So how come I’m mesmerised by your articles?” he asked.
“What’s your big ‘s-e-c-r-e-t?”

“One word”, I said.

Every article boils down to one word.
Most articles go up the hill, down the valley, into the mountains and into the woods. Our articles don’t.

They stick to one word.
One angle.
They drill down like crazy.

So if you were talking about a topic like ‘pricing’, it’s almost too vast a topic. But what if you stripped it down to one angle?

Like how to increase prices by 10%.
Or how to increase prices by 10% on your website.
Or how to increase prices by 10% with a live presentation.
Or how to increase prices by 10% with specific terminology.

You see what I’m saying?

Most writers don’t follow this level of drill-down.
They write about massive topics.
They don’t have specific ideas.
And then the article feels soggy. And non-crunchy.

You see any dope can write articles.

And most articles are dopey anyway.
Because they don’t follow a structure. Or a grid.
They don’t understand drama. They don’t understand sandwiching.
They don’t understand the intensity or the difference between mystery.

And suspense. And when to use what.
So the article falls apart before it even gets off the ground.

And that’s not all.

There are also the myths.

The stupid myths of talent.
That some people are better writers than others.
That some people can think better than others.

But what if that were indeed a myth?

Because it is a myth. Writing good articles is within your control if you understand the structure and flow.

http://www.psychotactics.com/article-writing-live-course
and get the newest bonus. (Note: There is a form to file in, before you get the bonus)

So what does the bonus cover?
When structuring, does length of the article matter? And why not?

Find out for yourself.

Warm regards,
Sean

P.S. About that client who was raving. We got $35,000 worth of business from them. Not only did the article impress the client,  but it was then easy for the client to show the articles to her  bosses, who in turn were sold.  So yeah, long story short: Well-written articles work to get you a chunky bit of business. But find that out for yourself at the link  above.

P.P.S. The goodies are free. However if you are considering the course you should look at the Home Study, as it has very precise instructions on how to get outstanding at article writing. If you’re a member of 5000bc.com we may also put together a  Home Study course group in the Cave.

P.P.P.S. The Home Study prices will be increased shortly. Get it while you can at the existing price (Note: We’ve raised prices consistently year after year).

How do you become an expert in your customer’s eyes?
How do you become the person the customer most wants to work with?
How do you then increase prices 500% and still have customers wanting to work with you?

To understand how this unusual situation occurs, let me tell you a story:

I was a cartoonist by profession.
Then one fine day, I decided to get into ‘marketing.’

Now tell me honestly:

Would you hire a cartoonist to show you how to attract customers?
Would you hire a cartoonist to show you how to improve your website?
Would you hire a cartoonist for anything–but–to draw cartoons?

Why would you?

I wouldn’t.

And that was the uphill battle I faced: No one knew me as an expert.
Now it didn’t matter how many times I looked in the mirror and called myself an expert.

I still wasn’t getting any respect, let alone pesos in the bank.
And it drove me crazy.

But there’s always a way out of crazy-land

So here’s what I did.
I started writing articles.
And it was painful writing those articles.
I’d write one article after slaving over it for two days.
And then sometimes after two days, I’d trash the article and start all over again.

Did I say there’s a way out of crazy-land?

Well, it sure didn’t seem so, because this article-writing-jazz was
driving me loco.

But here’s what I found too.
That there were systems. And techniques.
Techniques that enabled me to write faster.
That enabled me to make an article almost like a movie.
That enabled me to see a pattern as to which articles would go down the gurgler, and which articles would get lapped up by the readers.

That there were certain articles, when published, that got customers to my website in droves. I’d wake up, and suddenly there were fifty, or a hundred new subscribers.

Sometimes as many as two hundred or more.

And then as the weeks and months passed, I started getting calls

Calls to help customers with their website (um, after I wrote a website-based article).

And then emails. To help customers to help them attract clients (um, again, it was an article that did the job).

You’re guessing what crossed my mind, eh?

Not only were the articles pulling in customers to the Psychotactics website, but these customers were asking me to work with them.

Me, a cartoonist, work with them?

I have to say, I was scared out my wits. (For two whole years actually). But after two years of writing articles (and I just wrote about 20 articles in the first two years), even I began to see a trend.

I figured I could go nuts and cold-call…

Or I could sit at my computer and write an article. And have a customer call. (Ooh, I did like the sound of that phone ringing).

But you have to remember this was back in the year 2002-2004.

Back then, the Internet was a bit of a novelty. People doled out their email addresses like peanuts. Today it’s not that easy to  have two hundred people stream through your website. Which means that it’s not enough to just write an article.

There are squillions of articles on the Internet today

And those articles are competing with audio.
And video.
And heck knows what else.

So the questions do cross your mind:

1) How do I write so that my clients actually read my articles above all that noise?
2) How do I write, if I struggle to put a paragraph together?
3) Is there a ticket out of crazy-land? Can I really become anexpert in my client’s eyes?

There indeed is a ticket

And if you’ve been putting off writing, because you think it’s hard, well, it’s time to get that ticket out of crazy-land.

Information (um, Article Writing) creates expertise

Ask every author on Amazon.com
Ask every top consultant.
Ask every top trainer.
And ask a cartoonist.

But don’t take my word for it. Judge for yourself.
Get some solid methods to write better articles at this link.

Don’t wait. This link won’t stay up forever.
http://www.psychotactics.com/article-writing-live-course

Sean

P.S. The goodies are free. However if you are considering the course you should look at the Home Study, as it has very precise instructions on how to get outstanding at article writing. If you’re a member of 5000bc.com we may also put together a Home Study course group in the Cave.

P.P.S. The Home Study prices will be increased shortly. Get it while you can at the existing price (Note: We’ve raised prices consistently year after year).

Imagine you had a fairy godmother.

And she gave you one wish: The wish of ‘perceived expertise’. This ‘perceived expertise’, means that your customers would look at you and say: “There goes the expert in the field. I only want to work with her/him.”

I had such a godmother. And I got a wish from that fairy godmother in the year 2002.

You see I’d just started up my consultancy in marketing

I’d moved from India to New Zealand. No one knew me in these parts. No one knew if I was good at what I did. Or just plain useless. And what was worse, was I wasn’t quite sure either.

Then one day, that fairy godmother whizzed into the room

“Write articles,” she said.
“Write articles?” I echoed.
“What good are articles going to do for me?” I thought condescendingly.

But as fairy godmothers go, they can read your thoughts

And so there I was, um, writing articles. And remember, I didn’t even know my subject well enough. To me, marketing was a whole new world. But then something magical happened. Something I just didn’t expect. When I sat down to write, I started to get ideas.

Ideas that I didn’t know existed in my head.

And as I read more books (both business and non-business books), I got even more ideas. When I put those ideas on my website, and put up a little ‘Subscribe’ link right at the very bottom–I started getting subscribers.

I wasn’t even selling anything online (or offline for that matter)

And there I was..ahem…building an audience.
An audience that wanted to listen what I had to say.
An audience that went from just friends and family, to a chunky hundred people.
Then a thousand. And it kept growing.

I wasn’t doing any advertising

No publicity. Heck, I barely knew how to do my own marketing.

Yet these articles were like a magnet. They pulled people from every part of the world to my…um…pretty crappy website (you should have seen it in the year 2002). And offline, I was starting to get inquiries too.

“Can you give us some advice on these marketing matters?” they said

“Can you train our staff?” they said.
Can you do this, and can you do that.

And on and on it went.

But articles were hard work for me

It would take me two days to write a single article. And I’d curse and struggle. And to write one article a month was a big achievement for me.

But hey, I did have a fairy godmother

And fairy godmothers grant wishes, so I took her up on the wish. “Make me write great articles that captivate. And show me how to write them at high speed (so I don’t have to spend two days over a single article)” I said to her.

“Article writing is about structure”, she said

“Structure and drama,” she continued.
“Structure and drama and the ‘next step’,” she crescendoed.
“Drama pulls you in. Structure keeps you there. And then the next action gets your client to move to the next step.”

And just like that I learned how to write articles. And now it’s your turn.

Will you let me be your fairy um…godmother?

Do you want to learn how to spot drama? Learn how to spot structure? And understand how to use the power of the next step? Well, ask and you shall receive. But hey, there are no magic wands here. You’ve actually got to go to the link below.

And there you’ll be taken to a page with instructions. Instructions on how to get some goodies. Goodies to drama, structure, and the next step.

So, tah-dah, here’s the link:

http://www.psychotactics.com/article-writing-live-course

See you on the other side!

On Saturday 24th September 2011, you’ll get the details for what’s easily the “toughest article writing course in the world.” And it’s the toughest course because it’s not just another information-dump. Instead of getting even more information, you actually acquire–then master the skill of article writing.

And not just master it, but write with a sense of drama that keeps readers hooked from start to finish.

And as you’d expect, few get in.

There are two reasons why few get in:

1) We don’t take 1000 participants
Or even 500. Or even 50. Last year we stopped at 18. And the course was oversubscribed many times over. The doors still remained closed. This isn’t because we’re prima donnas. It’s because the group can’t sustain more than a fixed number when learning how to write. It’s important for the group and for learning–hence the “atom-sized” group size.

2) The results are staggering
There is probably no course (and you can check) that turns almost 95% of the participants into stunning writers. How stunning is stunning? Well let’s put it this way. The folks who’ve done our course can write on any topic–no matter whether it’s their expertise or not. And write with supreme authority.

And we’re going to send you goodies on Saturday 24th September

Just so you can learn how to create drama and flow in your articles and learn how it’s a matter of structure and a very systematic approach. But for now, here’s a link that will give you an insight into what makes the course so unique.

Read it, because for one, it’s not boring. And two, it will give you an idea how you should be marketing your own products/services.

http://www.5000bc.com/pdf/protege/Prospectus_Article_Writing.pdf

This is it.  168 hours to the special announcement of the 2012 Article Writing Course. Or as one participant calls it: The Article “Writhing” Course.

Tick, tick, tick

I remember the time I was watching a video on the ‘water test’. The ‘water test’ is a method to accurately gauge if a pan is exactly at the right temperature, as the accurate temperature prevents the ingredients from sticking.

As you might have realised, I had my nose to the video to make sure I wasn’t getting the steps wrong. Yet when I tried it on my pan at home, I couldn’t replicate the water test. No matter how many times I watched the video and tried the exact steps, I still couldn’t get the ‘water test’ to work.

The reason? I was using a non-stick pan

Yeah, mine was non-stick and the pan in the video was a stainless steel pan. Heck! You think I would have seen the difference. But I never did, and your readers have the same problem when they’re reading your articles.

And that’s because they’re not just reading. They’re trying to read, assimilate and execute the learning at one go.

And in doing so, they miss out some valuable points

In effect, they make ‘mistakes’. And those in-attentional mistakes can be avoided if you take the trouble to educate your reader. Of course the easiest formula to achieve this goal is to do the following:

Step 1: Give the reader the steps to follow.
Step 2: Point out the hurdles along the way.

Step 1: Give the reader the steps to follow

Let’s say you’re teaching the reader how to cook a delicious chicken tikka masala. Obviously, you’d give them steps, because the reader is now following a recipe. And that’s what most recipes do. They tell you what to do. But they don’t tell you what possible problems or mistakes you could make while executing the dish. Which is where Step 2 comes into play.

Step 2: Point out the hurdles along the way

So ha jee, we have shown the reader how to make the chicken dish, but now we need to point out where they can go wrong. They may fry the spices too long, causing a bitter after taste. Or the gravy may turn a bit sour. And when we point out these mistakes, we help the reader avoid the obstacles in advance.

This gives your article two solid advantages

Any article that covers both the how-to as well as the mistakes immediately marks itself out as a solid, enduring piece of information. The second advantage however, is that if your article instantly gets beefed up to a nice, solid consistency every single time.

But what are the mistakes you can make when adding ‘mistakes?’

The problem with article-writing isn’t that you have less information. In fact the reverse is often true. You have the curse of knowledge. So you try to stuff your article with a whole lot of how-to information. And then while the reader rolls around with indigestion, you proceed to add even more on his plate.

And there’s a way around this problem

You want to balance out the how-to with the mistakes. If you have two or three steps involved in the how-to, then a mistake or two is fine to slip in, just to balance things a bit. But should you find yourself generating half a dozen mistakes or more, it’s probably a better idea to write an article (or two) that covers the mistakes alone.

Pointing out the mistakes a reader can make are crucial

I sure as heck should have known that I should have been using a stainless steel pan. The pan was right in front of my eyes in the video I was watching. And yet I missed it. And so will your reader.

So point out the mistakes and both you and your reader will go on to make many more perfect chicken tikka masalas for a long, long time.

So do you have a story you would like to share? Share your experience here

Two Brain Audit Audio Files: FREE Before 21 August 2011 Last week you got a chunky 30-page excerpt of The Brain Audit. This week you can get two short five-minute audio files. These short audios will teach you two very important lessons which you can implement straight away. Two Free Brain Audit Audio Files Download here Products: Under $50 1) Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’? Learn how the core elements of outlining can save you from the misery of writing your next article. 2) Do you know that visuals immediately improve your sales conversion? Learn how to create drama and curiosity and help improve your web page conversion with visuals. 3) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients? Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer? 4) Chaos Planning Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s March, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected. Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning. 5) Nothing bugs you more than a painful client. A client who hassles you at every step of the way. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials—and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy. NEW PRODUCT! Black Belt Presentations: How do you create presentations that enthrall, hold and move an audience to action?

When you’re writing an article, inserting The Next Step should be really simple. And it is, if you are clear what you want the customer to do next. But hey, we all know what we want the customer to do next, and yet there’s still a bit of doubt. Are we doing the next step right? Or not?

So here are three methods for implementing the ‘Next Step’

Method 1: Editorial Next Step
Method 2: Sales Next Step
Method 3: Embedded Next Step

Let’s examine all three of them a little closely, shall we?

Method 1: Editorial Next Step

In every article your core goal is to get the reader to experience a new world. The reason the reader reads your article at all, is because you’re taking them on a new journey. This journey depends on what you’re covering in the article. You may be showing the reader ‘how to increase prices without losing customers’. You may be showing them how to ‘fix a roof on a garden shed’. You may be asking them to watch the video on ‘One Man, One Cow, One Planet.’

In every case, you set out to change, or at least nudge the customer into doing something. That was your goal right from the start, or you wouldn’t have written the article in the first place.

So your final take on most articles would be to nudge a reader to move to the next step.

And this is what I’d brand an ‘Editorial Next Step.’ In effect the editorial nudge has no sales activity in it at all. It’s just saying something like:

a) Read more articles on pricing strategy.
b) Read the continuing series on how to create more durable roofs.
c) Watch the video on ‘One Man, One Cow, One Planet because it will help you understand what’s happening to our soil.

The Editorial Next Step is just the push to get the person reading the article to do something. And in a way, the nudge is what the reader is expecting to get that nudge. It’s a signal that the article is done. So when you look at the ‘moral of the story’ in fairy tales, you notice the same nudge.

The story ends and there’s a moral

That’s an example of an Editorial Next Step. Which is all very fine, if all you want to do is ‘complete’ an article, or get the reader to read or do something. But what if you want the reader to  buy something as well? Ah, that’s the ‘Sales Next Step’.

Method 2: Sales Next Step

The Sales Next Step is simply a call to action to buy something. Or do something that is more than likely to lead to sales. But how would you know if the nudge is leading to sales or editorial? Well ask yourself this: Will the customer feel a bit of resistance when they go to that next step? If so, then it’s a Sales Next Step.

So if the customer has to fill in a form, opt-in, jump over some barriers, sign up, pay for something etc., then it’s a Sales Next Step. The Editorial Next Step feels like friendly advice. e.g. “Hey see this movie, or you really should read this book, or go read other articles, or watch this YouTube video”.

The Sales Next Step is different, and you know there will be at least an iota of resistance when the person reads your message. And it’s more than likely that your message will be ‘salesy’ e.g. Sign up for this course; Sign up for the workshop, etc. Which leaves us with just one last method to the ‘Next Step’: The Embedded Next Step.

c) Method 3: The Embedded Next Step

You noticed the ‘One Man, One Cow, One Planet’ nudge didn’t you? And you did feel curiosity when I mentioned it once. Then I mentioned it again. And then again at the start of this paragraph. Now imagine I never once told you to see the documentary, you’d still be slightly eager to check it out. And the reason was that the information was embedded as ‘editorial’ content.

For instance, if I’m writing an article on Pricing Strategy, and I give examples of how we did the 5000bc.com pricing strategy, then I’m embedding a next step. When I’m writing an article in 5000bc and give you information about how we conduct The Brain Audit workshops, I’m embedding that next step into the article.

And the embedding is clearly a sales pitch? Or is it? Some people may not see the sales pitch in it at all. It may appear to be 100% editorial. And that’s the beauty of the Embedded Next Step. It has no next step involved. It’s not asking you to buy anything, there’s not a link in sight anywhere, there’s nothing. But part of, or the entire article revolves around the product or service.

Time for some examples…

a) How We Consistently Increase Prices Without Losing Customers (And this article may contain the strategy of how we’ve increased The Brain Audit prices from $20-$119. And how it’s actually increased sales).

b) Will Customers Buy On Trust And Reputation Alone? (And this article may contain the story of our product on ‘Blackbelt Presentations’ and how we generated $30,000 on the weekend, without a sales page—and on trust and reputation alone).

So as you can see, the Embedded Next Step is kinda like a case study in the article. It doesn’t have to smother your article. It just has to be reasonably prominent.

Example, Example…

Let’s take the example of: Will Customers Buy On Trust and Reputation Alone? In that article I can write about the concept of trust, about the concept of what causes people to trust, give them examples about the ‘Black Belt Presentations’, but also give them examples of how Jack Johnson fans will buy the next album based on an announcement alone. Or how Apple will sell a new product without really having the product on the shelves yet.

We’ve covered a lot, so let’s just summarise and then see where we can use these three ways to use the ‘Next Step’.

Summary:

1) The Editorial Next Step is to get you to do/read something.
2) The Sales Next Step has more resistance involved. And involves some sort of sales pitch, no matter how minor.
3) The Embedded Next Step has no links, no call to action, nothing. But it becomes the focus of the article. It becomes the primary case study, possibly secondary case study as well. And sure it can share the spotlight with other case studies too. But there’s no call to action. That’s why it’s called ‘embedded’.

So where do we apply these next steps?

1) The Editorial Next Step is usually placed inside the article itself. Often just after the summary. It’s more than likely to be the last few sentences of the article, though it can appear before the summary from time to time—but that’s rare. (You’ll see an Editorial Next Step at the end of this article as well.)

2) The Sales Next Step has a clear demarcation. It sits away from the editorial, and it’s clearly a sales-based nudge. Anyone looking at it should be able to tell it’s a next step leading to some product/service offering. (You’ll see a Sales Next Step after this article.)

3) The Embedded Next Step is embedded in your article itself. The ‘One Man, One Cow, One Planet’ could have been an embedded next step, if I had any financial gain, but I don’t. Besides this article is long enough, without having to bear the weight of a few cases studies as well.

So there you have it.

Three ways to get the customer to the next step. Now insert it into your articles. You can insert just the Editorial Next Step or both Editorial and Sales. Or all three.

Be clear what you want the customer to do, and they’ll do it. Because you’re the one who provided the next step for them to take.

Don’t forget to leave your comment below

What do your customers think? What would make them buy? In the Brain Audit – Sean teaches 7 steps on how to form killer communication pieces that makes people buy from you. The Brain Audit is a simple psychological system that everyone can use in their communication to increase their profits.” Ankesh Kothari – Biztactics, USA Judge for yourself Find out how The Brain Audit can help you Products: Under $50 1) Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’? Learn how the core elements of outlining can save you from the misery of writing your next article. 2) Do you know that visuals immediately improve your sales conversion? Learn how to create drama and curiosity and help improve your web page conversion with visuals. 3) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients? Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer? 4) Chaos Planning Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s March, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected. Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning. 5) Nothing bugs you more than a painful client. A client who hassles you at every step of the way. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials—and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy. NEW PRODUCT! Black Belt Presentations: How do you create presentations that enthrall, hold and move an audience to action?

Before I start, let me make one thing clear. John Forde is a copywriter who lives in Paris. And a good friend with a great newsletter. And me, I’m Sean D’Souza. Which of course makes it really weird when I say I used myself for inspiration. It sounds a lot more than weird, actually. It sounds egocentric. Let me assure it’s got nothing to do with ego.

And everything to do with desperation
You see when I started writing articles for my website back in about 2001, I was at best a cartoonist. If you asked me to draw something, you had a bouncy volunteer right besides you. But when you asked me to write, the bounciness would sure fade away pretty rapidly. You see not only did I consider myself an average writer, but I had enough reason to be afraid of writing.

And the reason I was afraid was because of girl named Clare.

I remember writing an article way back in the year 1990-91
I wanted to be a copywriter and in one of my diverse moods I decided to “make some money” writing for the newspapers as well. So I met up with this guy called CY Gopinath, who ran this writing agency. Well CY gave me an assignment, and I wrote about it.

And Clare, who worked with him, edited my assignment. And when Clare was done I couldn’t recognise the darned thing at all. There was so much edited; so much added; so much removed that it seemed to me not my work at all. Today I can’t even remember the subject of the article.

But I remember the memory of frustration
I remember that I didn’t want to be a writer. Well who cares about writing articles anyway? I could be a cartoonist instead. I could write ad copy. Clare wouldn’t be around to edit my stuff. And who died and made Clare queen anyway? And there I was, ten years into the future, and Clare was still bothering me.

In fact most months, article writing was a drudgery
I wrote articles because I was forced to do so. I knew I was supposed to update my website. I knew that one of our alliances, Allen Weiss (from MarketingProfs.com) would be asking me whether I’d completed my article. Somehow I had to banish Clare from my head and take away the fear of writing.

Article writing was intense drudgery
I hated every bit of article writing. I hated the start, the middle, and I couldn’t be sure of the end. If I completed an article in one working day, I’d be ecstatic. Most days it would take me two days.

Two whole days and I couldn’t honestly tell you if the article wouldn’t end up in this article graveyard. Thankfully it was only two days in the whole month (Yup, I’d write once a month).

And then I decided to get inspiration from my own articles
I started looking back at the ones I’d completed, and felt this immense sense of satisfaction. Even inspiration. And so before writing, I’d look at my previous headlines. I’d read my own articles. And feel a sense of accomplishment. That put in a little juice in my reserve tank. That propelled me off the starting point.

And I coughed and sputtered, but at least I was writing a new article. It didn’t make things any better. I was still a foul person to be around on article writing days. So I had to search for inspiration.

And inspiration came in the form of a guy named John Forde
I loved the way John wrote. His writing was always so effortless. He seemed to be having so much fun. And he knew his topic (unlike me who mostly knew about cartooning). And so I’d read many of John’s article. At one point, after getting to know him, I even asked him for an archive of sorts. Just so I could read and be inspired.

John’s writing and mine: They both nudged me on
And while I got a lot better over the years, there was a moment in time when I got radically better. That moment was when I promised my members that I would write 5 articles a week. No one paid attention of course, but I had promised 5000bc members that they’d get this wealth of information week after week.

And there I was trapped—in a way. I had to write those articles. If you thought writing one is hard, five must be pure agony.

Actually I found quite the opposite
The moment I started writing five-six articles a week, something changed rapidly. Not all at once, of course, but in a few months I found that I could literally sit down at my computer and turn out five articles in the course of the day.

Fast forward to the year 2008, and I could write five articles in about 3 hours or fewer. In March 2010, I surprised myself.

I wrote 350 pages of content in four weeks
Three whole books: One on “Chaos Planning”, one on “The Secret Life of Testimonials”, and one on “Blackbelt Presentations: Part 1″. And this is while tending to forum posts on 5000bc.com and answering email and creating new websites, blogs, and doing at least two dozen projects at the same time.

And when you see all of this from the outside, it’s easy to think: This Sean is a genius. Or a mad man.

I don’t see the same Sean as you do
I see the Sean who struggled with Clare’s edit (she was only doing her job well). I see the plod, the drudgery of writing articles for MarketingProfs in the early days (I wrote almost 50 articles for them). I see the fear in my eyes when I promised to write five articles a week in a moment of madness. And I know that anyone can do it.

Anyone
I don’t care who you are.
I don’t care what your education.
I don’t care if you can even read—or write.

The best part is that you don’t need to slave for almost ten years like I did. Or if you go back in time to Clare, twenty years. You can do it in three-six months. It’s still going to be a slog, but you can do it.

And then there are going to be times when you’re super frustrated
And the only inspiration you have is yourself. Or someone like John Forde. And if you persist, something magical will happen. You’ll get enormously better at writing.

And you’ll be an inspiration to others.

Imagine that!
———————
Next Step: “My first meeting with a client used to be nothing more than a presentation of my portfolio.”

The Brain Audit has given me a system that I can illustrate to the client, and I can tell I sound much more professional and competent. Also, the system makes my job easier and faster. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.

Yes, The Brain Audit is a system that makes communication more effective and makes me appear more professional. It also opened my mind to a new way of seeing my profession.

Not just a designer, but a valuable designer that thinks and can help clients grow.”

Cesare Ferrari, mfwebmarketing,Du Bois, Pennsylvania, USA
Judge for yourself The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t
———————
“5000bc is without a doubt the best value in a marketing subscription that I’ve ever seen. Plus, it’s affordable even if your just starting out.”

“Nothing is held back, you get a real inside view of Sean’s business model. I actually understand how his business works and can apply many of the same concepts to my situation.”

Richard Mouser, jumpstartpublications
Houston, Texas, USA

5000bc now has a Waiting List.
The waiting list joining time is approx. 30-45 days. So if you are serious about getting your business to the next level, get on the waiting list now.

Judge for yourself http://www.psychotactics.com/5000bc
———————
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3) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients?
Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer?

4) Chaos Planning
Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s March, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected.
Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning.

5) Nothing bugs you more than a painful client.
A client who hassles you at every step of the way. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials—and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy.

There’s a reason for putting the brand name as well as the headline in the subject line. It’s called getting your attention.

See, customers subscribe and then they forget you.

And yes, a great headline can catch their attention, provided you write a great headline. Most of us fall in love with our headlines, but believe me, headline writing is the hardest thing ever.

So your reader is not seeing your email in isolation. They’re seeing a headline with 200 other headlines. If the headline doesn’t do the job, you’ve got a back up–your brand name.

The recognition of your brand name and the association with you, will get your reader to notice your email. And yes, there’s another reason. It’s called Spam. Every single day, readers go through the act of deleting it. Your email is sitting smack bang in the middle of all those emails. If I don’t recognise your name (as in John Doe) then I’ve deleted the email without reading.

It’s not a path you want to take.

The brand name + headline is effective as it gives a complete message and eliminates spam mistakes. The other option is to put the brand name in the name side of things.

For example: Sean D’Souza:Psychotactics
Subject: How to Write Psychological Headlines (And Why They Work)

That way, your brand name will always be to the left and your headline will always be to the right. And it’s just as effective.

Imagine you were to start up an Internet-based business.

And told that to promote your business, you would not be allowed to do any affiliate marketing. Or joint ventures. Or any external publicity. No Twitter, no Facebook, no social media. No pay-per-click advertising. No goo gaa search engine optimisation.

All you had was one weapon: The ability to promote your business through article writing—and article writing alone. Would that be possible? Is it actually possible to create not just a profitable, but an extreeeeeemely profitable business with article-writing alone?

You guessed the answer, didn’t you?

You instantly knew that it is indeed possible to drop all of the possible strategies you see online, and still generate enormous traffic—and revenues—through article writing alone. And you get that weird feeling of “this makes sense, but makes no sense at all”.

Everyone will give you the idea that you need ten or twenty methods to get traffic to your website, and you don’t. You can use just one method—article writing—and have more than enough customers to keep you very comfortable.

But it’s not going to happen tomorrow…

Blogging or writing articles for a year probably isn’t enough to begin with. It’s like having a baby for a year, and saying “Why can’t this baby walk, talk and dance?” It usually takes more than two-three years for a business to really be walking, talking and dancing.

And then the walking, talking and dancing depends on how good you get at your writing. If you continue to write crummy headlines and just run of the mill articles, then you can’t expect any one to pay attention. But once you start to write well, your ideas come alive.

And so do strategic alliances…

When we began our business way back in 2001, we had no customers. No subscribers. Nothing. Besides I was a cartoonist, not even a writer. But I sharpened my writing to the point where others started to take notice. And if they didn’t take notice, I’d, um, write to them and make them take notice.

So who were these “others”? They were other websites (blogs didn’t exist in such a big way then) that were publishing good content. They’d publish my articles. I’d open my inbox and there would be 50, 60 even 200 subscribers. Can you imagine going to bed and waking up to find 200 emails in your inbox that are not spam?

But that was 2002, what about today?

Back then there wasn’t so much distraction as you have today, but even so, if your article is outstanding, and it gets published elsewhere you can get 20, 30 or even 50 subscribers from a single article. These aren’t visitors. They’re subscribers. People who come to your site or blog. People who investigate it before parting with their email address.

We’re talking about skeptical folk here. And these subscribers, eventually turn to clients if you get them through a sequence—but you already know that.

What you may not know is the power of a single article.

A great article has amazing endurance. An article is not an article is not an article. It’s the starting point to an incredible journey. If you write a series of articles on a topic, it’s even more incredible. If done right, you can leverage an article almost infinitely.

But infinite is a big word. So let’s look at a finite universe of why articles (and the ability to write articles) is so darned important. First let’s take the leverage tour, shall we?

How far can one article go?

Let’s take where I can possibly put a single article that I write.

• In the newsletter at Psychotactics.
• In someone else’s newsletter.

• On the Psychotactics website and/or on your blog.

• On someone else’s website and/or blog.

• In our membership site at 5000bc.

• In someone else’s membership site.

• As material at your event, or as part of training.

• As material at someone else’s event (even if you’re not showing up).

• I use it for my newspaper column.

• I can make it a report (e.g. The Headline Report is a single article).

• If I add more articles to it, it can be sold (as this report will be).

• I can use the report as a bonus to sell something else.

• I can use it as an award or prize (when packaged correctly).

• I could then make an audio out of the article.

• And a presentation.

• And a video.

A single article has enormous potential
When combined with several articles, it becomes a report. But don’t underestimate the power of a single article. Our article on headlines was made into a report. It has been downloaded several tens of thousand times and that one article has been the root cause of easily well over tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But there are no shortcuts

You can’t just submit to some article or ezine site and hope to get these kind of results. If you look around you, you’ll find that those who succeed aren’t lazy bums. They’re hard working, and work smart too. And they don’t take shortcuts. They find a medium that works, and they work it like crazy.

Which brings us full circle to the question: Can you build a business on article-writing alone?

The answer is yes.

We’ve been in business all these years with no affiliates, no joint ventures, no fancy publicity, no ga ga search engine positioning, no ad words—nothing. Yes, we’ve done the odd thing here and there, and yes we do have a so-so social media presence, but as you’ve worked out, the main strategy has been article writing.

All we’ve ever done is write good stuff and make sure that our customers pass it on. 
We write good stuff and attract other blogs and websites who value good stuff, to publish our material. We write good stuff and that good stuff then gets leveraged, making us not just a very sizeable income, but also allows us to take a “three-month vacation” every year since the year 2004.

Can you build a business on article-writing alone? I guess you know the answer, don’t you?

———————
Next Step: “Before I purchased the Brain Audit, I thought this is just crazy, I’ve got so much marketing material that I still haven’t implemented.“

But right from Sean’s first story and metaphor, I could see this was different. I was hooked. The Brain Audit challenged virtually every principle of marketing I’d grown up with. Like selling benefit or never starting with a negative or problem.

And it’s this refreshing, innovative approach that makes the Brain Audit a must buy for anyone who is really serious about challenging the status quo and taking their business to new heights.

Already we’ve applied the principles to one of our workshops and the response has been fantastic. The Brain Audit and our ongoing association with Sean has been one of the best business decisions we’ve every made.

Paul Mitchell, Managing Director, The Human Enterprise, Australia
Judge for yourself The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t

———————
“I actually didn’t join 5000bc a year earlier than I did assuming it would be a lot more expensive than it is. Silly me.”

I found it was far better than I ever imagined, over the years I have been a participant of many different memberships and forums and none of them come close to what 5000bc offers.

I would recommend 5000bc to any entrepreneur or small business owner as a great source of knowledge and information from like minded people who have often already achieved what you may be struggling to do and can help save you loads of time and ultimately expense in getting to where you need to be.

Duncan MacIntyre, officechairadvice, Derbys UK

5000bc now has a Waiting List. The waiting list joining time is approx. 30-45 days. So if you are serious about getting yourbusiness to the next level, get on the waiting list now.Judge for yourself http://www.psychotactics.com/5000bc

———————
Products: Under $50

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3) Does your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients?
Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer?

4) Get ready for 2011!
Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s March, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected.
Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning.

5) Nothing bugs you more than a painful client.
A client who hassles you at every step of the way. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials—and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy.

Read my lips.
No, not mine.

The lips of the customer. Here’s one of three things customers are telling you, right after you’ve made your presentation about your your product or service.

1. Your product or service is boring.
2. Your communication is boring.
3. Where have you been all my life?

But they don’t say any of the above lines

In fact, customers don’t even expect you to pry the lines apart and read between them.

No, no, no, no, no.

In the attempt not to hurt your feelings, customers often use shorthand. A kind of code. The weird part of the code is that you’re getting the completely wrong–and often quite the opposite message.

Smart folks such as you and I, end up with yolk, white and the rest of the barnyard eggs on our face, because we can’t decipher the code. We think the customer means ‘yes’ when she means ‘no’.

Shuckeroos, this gets weirder and weirder

You bet it does. Because when a customer is saying: “How Interesting,” you think “Whoa! They think my stuff is interesting!”
Instead the customer is saying, “Where’s my can of Raid, when I need one?”

So what’s the Kiss of Death…

And how do you read between the lines?

Go through your core marketing message; your elevator speech; your audio logo and then wait for the response.

The Kiss of Death response is:

1. That’s interesting!
2. That’s nice.
3. Hmmm.

You’ve just hit the customer over her head with a giant sleeping pill. She’s not the slightest big interested (either because she’s the wrong target audience, or because whatever you’ve just said has done the ol’ ‘In one ear-and out of the other trick.’ And all the time, the customer is smiling that cheesy lying smile, because she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.

You don’t care about the touch-feely feeling stuff

All you care about is the sale. So how do you know if you’re about to get lucky? She needs to say: “Where have you been all my life?”

But again, that’s not what customers say. They revert back to their code. When they’re really, really interested, they say, “Wow, how do you do that?”

How do you do that?

Aha, that’s customer-code speak for “You’ve just knocked my socks off, and given me a wedgie. You’ve got my attention, now don’t just stand there. I want to know more.”

You’ve come back from the land of the dead.

Whatever you said, has installed a powerful trigger. A trigger that forces the customer to be interested. A trigger that slams dunks your product/service into the customers’ brain and bypassed the pain of the kiss of death.

Your first step to increased sales is recognition

Listen for the words. If ‘That’s interesting,’ ‘That’s nice’ or ‘Hmmmm’ sneak in, you’re in a doom loop. If the ‘How do you do that?’ pops up, you’re well on your way to stardom and red carpets (at least in customer land).

Learn to read between the lines.
Watch the lips.

And if you hear the kiss of death, smile – and get back to the drawing board to refine your marketing message once more.

If you were to step into a disco today, you’d run bang, smack into a hit song by Madonna.

It’s a song called ‘Hung Up.’

And then your fingers would start snapping. Your feet would go tappity-tap. And you’d find the tune familiar.

…Even though you’ve never heard the song before

So what’s in the song (or the album for that matter) that locks you in? How come the songs instantly get your attention? And more importantly, why is it that they manage to keep that attention?

And can Madonna teach you a trick or two, that you could use for your Powerpoint Presentations, your salesletters, your brochures and your speaking?

You bet she can.

Because she using the Power of ‘New’ and ‘Knew’

‘New’ as in something you don’t know.
‘Knew’ as in something you do know.

‘New’ as in something dramatic, that you’ve never heard before. ‘Knew’ as in, ‘hey I’ve heard that before and it’s cool.’

In fact, Madonna’s album, ‘Confessions on the Dance Floor’ takes snippets from forty years of dance music. Stirred in between Abba, the Pet Shop Boys, Giorgio Moroder, Tom Tom Club,

Stardust and the Jacksons are little chunks of music from Madonna’s existing albums.

If you stop and listen carefully, you’ll hear sounds from ‘Like a Prayer,”Papa Don’t Preach’, and ‘Die Another Day’.

Aha, so that’s why you were tapping those feet!

But what has tapping feet got to do communication?

Notice how this article started? It started with some ‘new’ information. When something is ‘new’ it has a sense of cruchiness, that instantly grabs you by the throat and forces you to pay attention.

You were expecting to read how to keep the attention of your customer. Instead Madonna and her hit song whooped into the first paragraph.

That’s the factor of ‘new.’

Then as you read further, you’ll hit a patch where you say: “Aha, I knew that!” and you’ll kinda ease into the rest of the words, as you take in the information.

And that’s the factor of ‘Knew.’

The factor of ‘Knew’ is a nice feeling. It’s warm, fuzzy and cuddly. It takes away the fear of the unknown.

And it gets your feet tapping.
And your brain smiling.

To get your customer’s attention you need to use ‘new’

No, no. Not the exact word. But you need to have a newness in your communication. So when I present the ‘Brain Audit’, I set a chair in the centre of the room.

I then proceed to sit down on the chair.
Then I stand up.
Then I sit down.
Then I stand up.
Then I sit down.
Then I stand up.

It’s new. It’s different. It gets the customer’s attention.

I then switch to the factor of ‘knew’…

I then talk about how the chair isn’t likely to break, despite me sitting and standing up all day (probably all year).

And the audience knows that.

They know that the chair is built to take many, many sit-down-stand-up routines.

And then I talk about how advertising and marketing doesn’t have the same robustness as a chair.

That marketing and advertising relies on guesswork and hoping that somehow customers will see the ad and buy something.

And then I bring in the ‘new’ concept of the Brain Audit, that pretty much shows you how your customer is thinking.

Before I head off again, into the ‘knew’…

In effect, my speech is peppered with ‘knew’ and ‘new’

And if you listen to the audio on Triggers (available with your Premium copy of the Brain Audit) you’ll hear the constant move between these two factors.

But why is it so important to use these factors?

Because as you get attention with something ‘new’, eyes pop; ears become Spock-like, and your audience’s brain goes on red-alert. When you bring in the familiar factor of the ‘I knew that’, the audience relaxes.

And relaxing is a good thing too. Because too much of ‘new’ would keep your brain always on tenterhooks; always on overload.

You experience the overload at many workshops and seminars.

You get such a lot of brand-new inforamation, that you suck it up like a sponge.

Then like a sponge your brain kinda sags. And leaks sprout. And you lose bit of information. Suddenly, it seems like a good idea to take a toilet break; eat a muffin; do anything but keep listening to this fire hose of new stuff (powerful as it may be).

Real power comes from alternating ‘knew’ and ‘new’

As long as you can keep the flow going, you can keep the attention of your audience right through a book, a presentation, or just about any communication.

Use the factors well, and watch how your audience’s brain goes ‘tappity-tap, tappity-tap, tappity-tap.’ Use it badly and your audience goes to sleep or simply walks away.

But you ‘knew’ that already, didn’t you?