How to Know for Sure If Your Ad Is a Winner

Good morning. Okay, so here we are continuing our series on my application of Applying My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins. And we're still, we're fall of, of November, our fall of 1997. And I. There's so much that I have underlined and re. Underlined and can trace back the genesis of things that I do to this day. So one of the overriding things that, that Claude bases everything on is that our success, meaning in advertising, our success depends on pleasing people. And I thought that's pretty interesting, right? By an inexpensive test, we can learn if we please them or not. We can guide our endeavors accordingly.

And this is a. You know, I have built so much on the idea of testing something in a small way. I did a video where we explained our. The way we approach the clinical trials of just starting something with a hundred dollar test, knowing that if it's going to show signs of life, you can very quickly see if you've got an appeal that is on the winning side or you've got one that's on the losing side. That's all I'm looking for. I've developed ways of knowing very quickly all I'm looking for are winners and losers. That's all I want to do in that first test.

The things that kill you are the middling things where the things that you think that you can, that maybe you can salvage, you know. And in that extent, to that extent, one of the principles that Claude really talks about is the idea of kind of putting your best foot forward. Right. And in this he's saying the man who argues for his own advantage is usually disregarded. And you've heard me talk now a lot about the idea of using gift cards or free trials, something that has an inherent value not attached to somebody doing something for you first. Any attempts that you make to hedge your bets or to make you have an advantage.

That's why people are much more inclined to try buy one, get one. Meaning you're covering your bases here. You're covering your costs versus giving something of somebody. Oh, out of the fear that somebody might take advantage of you and not. It may be true that a very small percentage of people may take advantage of you and not do what you, what you expect them to do or what. You know, taking a chance on people sometimes can go wrong, but for the most part, people are very honorable. You know, winners are magnanimous. I've always said that, that I say in this thing, you know, that one of my guiding things is that sometimes it's less expensive to get a result for somebody than it is to convince them to give you money to get the result.

And that alone is a very, very profound truth that I've proven in many, many different approaches. And often, sometimes people think that people have to have skin in the game or they've got, you know, that they're serious people. If somebody who, you know, there's a real prevalence for doing tripwire offers, for instance, you hear that around marketing that somebody who will pay a dollar for something is a much better prospect than somebody who you could give something to for free in exchange for starting the dialogue. And I've never found that to be true. When you're looking at the compounded returns, any of these things that are self interest, they're also usually rooted in a desire to win immediately to in the first interaction.

But if you think about the lifetime value of a relationship with somebody who's going to continue to use your product or service again and again and again, they're not going to continue to do that unless they see some distinct advantage in it for themselves. And that means pleasing people. You have to be pleasing to them that they have to like what it is that you've done. And if you've got something that pleases people, then it's you owe it to yourself to do everything you can to make sure that they experience that first. You go first. You go first. Always have giving somebody a free facial where they can come into your studio, they can see the environment, they can experience the warmth and the care and the ambiance of being in your space.

They can get an amazing facial, they can feel what that's like. That is a much easier person to get to come back to your studio than it is somebody who maybe didn't come because you didn't make that first attempt. If it's something that going to give somebody 50% off or buy one, get one, they still have to take a chance on you first. When you take a chance on them and you get the result, that's the most important thing. So every time we talk about this, I look at what is, you know, the table stakes is that you've got to have a product or service that we call it is a dream come true for your clients.

That's profit activator 5. That's where we start. Can you deliver a dream come true experience? And dream come true elevates it beyond just an adequate experience or it's okay. You, when you focus on creating something amazing, that's sometimes the best advantage of that. So giving somebody that free facial experience is a, is a long term win. Same thing with, with a mosquito treatment. You know, trying to spend any amount of money to convince people to give you even half price for a mosquito treatment is less compelling than somebody actually having experienced a mosquito free yard after a mosquito treatment. So Claude was a big believer in that.

And that we can't rely on, on our judgment or experience. We must test our undertakings in the most exact way possible, learn our mistakes and correct them. And that I've found that to be absolutely true that you can, there's no need to send 10,000 postcards to get an answer that you could get with a thousand postcards. And there's no need to start a Facebook campaign with $1,000 a day budget when you could understand the direction of where something's going with, with $100 period. That's the kind of discipline and stuff that you learn when your objective is to know that you are trying to, you're trying to win, you know, you're trying to win over a new customer and being that is the best thing.

Now here's something that is, is very, I've used this quite a bit that Claude says anytime you're doing ads, anytime you're doing something, it's not about just getting awareness of something or you know, telling a story for something. He is says aim to get action. Your reader is perusing a magazine or newspaper. She's more scrolling Facebook. She's paused because your subject on your headline attracts her. But in a moment she'll be interested in her reading and usually forget you. This is why I'm such a fan of the lead ads product on Facebook is that we're not trying to get people to go and do something right now.

We're not trying to interrupt their day. I mean from a big investment wise, we're trying to get somebody interested in something that they can do quickly. And what lead ads allows people to do is they can just push a button. We always use I love the word download or you know, but never like sign up. It's a different thing. Download is something that somebody could do right now. So if we're offering a gift card or we're offering a free mosquito treatment, download is the play. And that's something that somebody can do right away. And if we go immediately then to a page where their information is already filled in and all they have to do is confirm, push the button, that's the fastest thing that we could do with the least interruption to what they're doing.

We're not trying to put all of our weight on getting them to make an ultimate decision. Right now, we're trying to turn an invisible prospect into a visible prospect, knowing that now we've got a. We've got lots of runway now and an open dialogue with someone who expressed an interest in this. In this thing. We're able to build a list of people who we know are interested. So always look for what is the easiest action that somebody can do. When I'm following up with people and we're doing events, I always keep this in mind that I call it. I often want to separate the decision from the logistics.

So a lot of the things that I do are sending in email, we'll send an invitation to something and say, hey, I'm doing this thing. Would you like to join us? And then when they reply and say yes, then I send all of the information along with it. And then, of course, the next action is that they're going to decide that they're going to come. So if I'm doing like I am doing, I do them all the time. My Breakthrough Blueprint workshops in Orlando. I'll say to people, hey, thanks for connecting. Here's what we're doing here. We're going to spend three days in the boardroom.

We're going to. It's a small group. We're going to focus on building your blueprint, applying all the eight profit activators to your business. Here's when it is. Here's the date. This is the cost. It'd be super if you could make it. You don't need to do anything right now. That's an important thing. You don't need to do anything right now. Just let me know you're in and I'll save you a spot. P.S. as soon as you decide, I'll send you our. Our breakthrough Blueprint online program so you can get started before the event. Now, that action, that call to action of just replying to the message and saying I'm in is the fastest thing that somebody can do.

They don't have to go to a landing page, read a whole thing, take out their credit card, enter it in. That's disruption in their day, and that's logistics. I want to separate the decision from the logistics. As soon as they decide, I want to make it easy that they can anchor that decision. So when they say I'm in, that only takes two seconds for them to type those words and reply. And now wheels are in motion. They can. We've got all the time in the world now to handle the logistics of getting their plane reservation, getting their room reservation, paying for the event, all of that stuff is much easier on the back of their decision and commitment to actually do it.

And if you read Influence by Robert Cialdini, which is an amazing complement to this book, this whole line of thinking, behavioral psychology, you'd understand that that is commitment and consistency. We're usually consistent to the commitments that we make. So this has been an amazing book. I think we'll move on to the rest of the journals. I can't say it enough. My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins is maybe one. It's certainly one of the top five books that you need if you're going to be an accountable advertiser.

Every idea that I've had, every dollar that I've made over the last 30 years has gone through my brain, through my pen, onto a piece of paper in my journal before it went out into the real world. And if I can turn people onto that activity as a driver for what to do, what to think about, what to ask yourself to draw out, what the next most valuable action is for you and how to find the most profitable things that you can install in your business, I'm all for it.

So this Friday at 1pm, I'm going to do for the first time a 50 minute profit finder workshop. And you're going to join me live on Zoom. And we're going to go through a 50 minute exercise. Bring your pen, bring a notebook or piece of paper and I'm going to guide you through a thinking process that will help you identify where the lowest hanging fruit is in your business and maybe some fruit that you didn't even know was there.

But I'm going to show you where to look for it. So it's free. It's for you. It's Friday. At 1pm this Friday. Just watch.

Just go to 50minuteprofitfinder.com and I'll get you all the details and hopefully you can join us then. Friday 1:00pm.