This secret “sock puppet” method changed the way I write my ads

Good morning. Okay, we're being driven home from Concord. And this is going to sound crazy probably when I say it to you, but I was reminded in looking through my journals and seeing how the idea of meeting people where they are in headlines came from with that great print advertising book. But I, at the same time, was really going deep into the idea of the way Steve Scott in A Millionaire's Notebook approached the writing of infomercials. And he was talking about this idea that when you make a list of all of the possible objections that somebody could have about, you know, not buying your product, whether they're going to not buy specifically your product or not buy anything in the category or to buy from somebody else, when you have that awareness of all of these things that are going on and you imagine them.

This is my interpretation of it as going on in the back of their minds. And so while you're having this conversation in your ad, in your video, in whatever communication you're making with them, you have to imagine that the conversation that's going on on the surface is really secondary to the conversation that's going on in their mind. And so I imagined that what you're and what they're saying in this dialogue is like two sock puppets having a conversation. But they're evaluating all of this in the back of their. In the back of their mind. So one of the things that. The way Steve illustrated this was in outlining how he put together the script for Lori Davis Hair Care.

And one of the objections that people might have is that they might say, well, my hair is oily. This probably won't work for oily hair. Or my hair is really dry. Will this work for dry hair? Those are questions that they have in their mind. So rather than using and overtly bringing up that question, like, I think the worst way that you can address things like this is a frequently asked question page. That's how people often try and overcome objections, is they'll put, you know, does this work for dry hair? And then you'll put, you know, the. Overcoming the objection for that in an overt way.

But where the real valuable way to do it is to know that that conversation is going on in their mind and to answer that question without even bringing it up, because they. If they can get that fear or that concern addressed without having to ask it, then they. They value that higher. It's almost like if you're setting up. It's like a setup if you ask a question and then they. You're overcoming it. It seems to overt so here's how he did it with the Lori Davis hair care is they. He wrote a portion of the script that explained that the Lori Davis hair care products are specifically formulated with adaptogenic whatever molecules that measure and know precisely how much moisture to, to allow in or to, you know, whatever the mechanism was.

So it adapts to whatever the, whatever the hair condition is. Now when you're saying that in presenting it, that's addressing the issue, but it's not as set up as will it work for dry hair? Yes, it works for dry hair. Like it just seems too trite to overcoming it. And you know, there's a lot of subtleties to this, but when I started thinking about the dialogue that's going on in people's minds in the ads that I was writing, I started to realize that sometimes if I can get inside the mind of what they're thinking and I can address it in a headline or in the ad, that would be a win for me.

So at the time we were running ads that were headlined about how to buy lovely homes in Winter Haven with zero down payment. That was becoming a thing that people can get zero down mortgages. This was in the late 90s. Now when I did this exercise and started thinking that people might be reluctant to respond to this because they had this image fear of admitting or feeling like they're admitting that they don't have any money. And so if you can protect somebody's ego under that umbrella of how, you know, making them feel safe addressing that issue, I just added to the headline a little thing for the sock puppet to interpret for their minds of saying how to buy lovely homes in Winter Haven with zero down payment.

And then we put in brackets, even if you can afford to pay cash bracket. Now all of a sudden that increased the response because now people could feel safe under that protective umbrella of not having to identify as somebody who doesn't have any money. They could be someone who has all the money. But they're just curious about how this, these zero down ads or mortgages work. So that was a big thing. I see evidence of that in the way that we did the Muskoka home sites. The developer that I worked with that we said I need to sell these six Muskoka home sites in the next 30 days and I'm willing to sell them 33% below their current appraised value.

And the idea of using the actual authoritative thing of getting the lots appraised answers the silent question of what else was the, you know, why would they be doing this, or 33% off of what you're kind of addressing that skepticism in a way that moves the. The moves them forward. So there's a lot of subtleties in that. I'm gonna do a couple videos going through that process in more detail so that we can apply it to your things. But just for now, to know that you're. Whenever you're talking, you got to imagine that there's two conversations. There's the sock puppet conversation, the words that you're saying, the words that they're saying back, and the deeper, silent dialogue that's going on in their mind.

And if you recognize that and you can use your sock puppet to actually speak to that silent part of their mind that has the concerns, you're going to win.

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.