Last week Ryan Healy wrote a funny blog post.
It was about the power of the word “secrets” and how it was used in the opening montages of both the show “He Man” and the show “She Ra” (complete with YouTube clips — gotta love those old Gen X cartoons!)
Anyway, I watched He-Man every day as a kid.
And I especially got a kick out of “Orko.”
Orko was a dimensionally-displaced magician dude who was always floating around casting spells that seemed to backfire (and usually in a way nobody expects and that’d get him in trouble…)
Well, you know what?
We got some of that online, too.
No, I’m not talking about dorky little magicians floating around.
I speaketh of people using sales “tricks” that backfire.
Example?
A while back I remember reading a copywriter’s site who claimed he was trained in NLP or hypnosis (something like that). So I started reading his ad and he kept repeating the same words over and over and over in the ad.
It was like he actually thought he could “hypnotize” you.
And it was REALLY weird.
Now, he probably thought he was being “clever.”
Maybe even “cool.”
But it was just extreme lameness.
And I’d be shocked if any serious client looking for a solid copywriter would be able to keep a straight face while reading it (much less hire the poor shmuck who wrote it). It was just too silly and blatantly manipulative to take seriously.
And that’s kinda the “moral” of the story.
Forget the tricks.
Like Orko’s spells, sales tricks rarely ever work.
And, in fact, just backfire.
Ben Settle
P.S. The next Crypto Marketing Newsletter issue goes to the printer in a couple days. It’s all about closing sales in your ads (including an extremely persuasive way almost nobody ever talks about).
No goo-roo tricks or nonsense.
Just solid ways to close the deal and get the sale.
Very simple.
And very profitable, too.
To get it just float on over to…
