Last Thursday, I had the privilege of attending Altitude’s Million Dollar Marketing Makeover seminar with Eben Pagan. If you don’t know who Eben Pagan is, well…. let’s just say that Mike Dillard and hundreds of other top tier marketers are his marketing students. If that doesn’t get your attention, he goes by the pen name “David DeAngelo” in the Dating Advice niche and generates over $20 Million per year in sales from DoubleYourDating.com.
Well as part of this exclusive opportunity, Eben was putting attendees in the “hot seat” live on stage. He would literally bring someone on stage, flash their website on the big screen and redesign your marketing strategy, your copywriting, your site design and help take your marketing from ZERO to $MILLIONS in under 15 minutes.
Well, I was one of these lucky entrepreneurs who got put in the “hot seat” and it was badass! Eben normally charges $10,000 for the same type of marketing makeover in private, so getting torn apart in public was well worth the monetary savings.
Initially, things went well. He analyzed my sales page and complimented it on the format and then proceeded to ask me questions about my market, the techniques I use in my market, and after about 5 minutes he got into tearing my sales page apart.
After he worked through my headline, he went into what I should put into the body and off the top of his head started telling me EXACTLY what he would like to see in my sales letter… and about 30 seconds into him speaking I started getting goosebumps… I had a thought run through my head, “Holy Cow! Eben Pagan is writing my sales letter…”
So I made sure not to open my mouth and let Eben talk uninterrupted for as long as he wanted to go.
He then stopped after a couple of minutes and asked me if there was anything I wanted to add. I responded, “Nope. You pretty much just wrote my sales letter”. His reply, “Then I guess we’re done here then”. We shook hands and I left the stage to applause and dozens of people wanted to get my business card. (I guess I somehow impressed them with my silence).
Although it would be impossible for me to explain the entire methodology Eben used to write my sales letter in a short article, he did give me the most important secret he uses in his copywriting and I wanted to pass that along to you.
During the initial exchange he asked, “What’s your best traffic source?” I replied, “Google AdWords is hands down the most consistent and reliable.” “What’s your best Google AdWords technique, which has worked best for you and which any network marketing newbie could use and get immediate results?”
Eben asked. I answered his question and he said, “Put that into your sales letter. Put the best technique you have and give it away for free within the copy of your sales letter.” Now I have to admit I was reluctant to even tell Eben Pagan about my technique, much less give it away to everyone who visits my website. But that was exactly what he was asking me to do.
I was a bit concerned about giving away my ‘bread and butter’ technique, but then the light bulb went off in my head. He explained that by putting your best technique first, which any newbie can use, you are accomplishing a number of things, which 99.99% of sales letters fail to do:
- You are getting the prospect to read your sales letter, because you are embedding valuable content among your sales presentation.
- You are gaining their trust and gaining credibility, because the prospect will be thinking, “Gee, if this is what he’s giving away, I can only imagine the value I’ll be getting if I paid him to show me more.”
- Psychologically, you are instantly turning yourself into “their guru”, because among a sea of ‘snake oil salesmen’, you have given them something they can implement immediately, get results and your prospect will have a natural tendency to come back to you for more, forever. (Much like I come back to Mike, while he gets to siphon more money from my wallet with every new promotion.)
What made that session even more amazing was that I knew Eben was showing me how to do something he, himself, uses in his marketing for Double Your Dating – a $20 Million company.
As my friend Jim Yaghi correctly pointed out, in David DeAngelo’s sales page, Eben gives away a technique which any guy can use to instantly know if a girl is ready to be kissed or not. He calls it the “Kiss Test”. Eben was telling me to use my version of the “Kiss Test”, which offers incredible value, immediate results and is easy to do.
So next time you sit down to write a sales letter, start with your best easy to do technique and give it away for free. It’s Eben’s $20 Million copywriting secret.