7 Master Secrets of Wealth Creation for Marketers and Copywriters

Available on DVDs for the First and Only Time …“Gary Bencivenga’s 7 Master Secrets of Wealth Creation for Marketers and Copywriters”“I will never be able to share these seven secrets in the Bullets, for reasons you’ll understand in a moment.“But as my retirement legacy, I will share all seven with you … if you can meet the four qualifications spelled out in this letter.”Now available via DVDs and expanded, illustrated transcript for the first and only time—my never-to-be-repeated “Reveal-Everything-at-Once” Seminar.Only 2,000 sets available.Tightly restricted and limited distribution … you must be able to meet the four criteria spelled out below (no exceptions).Reveals every secret I’ve ever learned about how to boost your advertising response and become independently wealthy as a copywriter or marketer.Based on more than $1 billion and 40 years’ worth of scientific direct response tests.Includes everything revealed at my one-time-only Retirement Seminar, hailed as “historic” … “phenomenal” … “life-changing” by industry leaders … plus much more material that’s been added to make this the ultimate “Master’s Program” on breakthrough marketing and copywriting.Featuring scores of the greatest direct response ads of all time to illustrate every principle … plus “Gary Bencivenga’s Greatest Hits”—my all-time best ads, sales letters, magalogs, bookalogs, and more that you can use to guide your own marketing and copywriting.Guaranteed to be worth 50 times its cost … or you pay nothing.Free bonus if you respond now—”Da Bomb!” … probably the most powerful tool ever discovered for systematically boosting your response in every promotion you’ll ever run.Dear Marketing Top Gun:     I am looking for an elite group of men and women determined to be among the most successful and highest-earning copywriters and marketers in the world.I am retiring now and want to share with this select group of stars and future stars what I believe is a priceless legacy—my seven master secrets of wealth creation for copywriters and marketers.The truth is, I can never reveal these seven master secrets in the Bullets.Why not?From the start, I promised to keep the Bullets short and fast, like bullets.But teaching these seven master secrets takes more time.For example, my #1 master strategy, The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®, has eight parts. It takes about two hours to teach and another two hours to bring you to mastery.Anyone can master this, and once you do, your ability to boost response on demand soars. You immediately take a giant leap forward in your ability to write copy with the hand of a master … and evaluate it with the eye of a jeweler.But the unavoidable problem is, it does take four hours to acquire mastery of the eight steps and how to string them together, mainly because you must first unlearnseveral things you’ve been taught as gospel about how to generate maximum response.You see, almost all copywriters and marketers today are using the same old-fashioned techniques. But the world has changed, and the consumers you’re trying to influence have grown increasingly immune to these conventional headlines and approaches. In today’s overmarketed, overhyped world, the “same old” techniques for generating response may occasionally work, but not nearly as well as they used to. This is why most direct marketers are seeing their response rates decline every year. And this will inevitably continue, as consumers grow increasingly immune to an ever-rising flood of these same tired, overworked approaches. You need something new that works better.And that is why the advanced secrets I teach are so much more effective. They show you how to clearly and dramatically stand out from the clutter and trigger maximum response in any medium, for any product or serviceRecord-Shattering Ads to Serve as Your ExamplesThe other reason I’ll never teach these secrets in the Bullets is because they require lots of real-life examples of the advertisements that are shattering response records in every field in which they’ve been applied.The other reason I’ll never teach these secrets in the Bullets is because they require lots of real-life examples of the advertisements that are shattering response records in every field in which they’ve been applied.All this takes a seminar to deliver … the very seminar that I have called my one-time-only, “Reveal-Everything-at-Once Retirement Seminar,” which I gave recently to 100 of the world’s top copywriters and marketers.This treasure trove of knowledge is based on more than $1 billion and 40 years’ worth of scientific advertising tests. It’s nothing less than my legacy to the most ambitious and dedicated men and women in direct marketing today.When I gave this seminar training live, I promised the 100 attendees that I’d create a free set of DVDs for them. To my embarrassment, it took me many more months than I ever imagined to produce them, mainly because I wanted to enhance the program by including a deluxe illustrated transcript featuring scores of ads and visuals as well as additional response-boosting information—everything I could possibly teach about how to improve your advertising results.Finally it’s all done. And, in addition to the 100 sets I’ve produced for the seminar attendees, I’ve run off an additional 2,000 sets of both the DVDs and illustrated transcript. These are theonly 2,000 sets that will ever be available anywhere at any price, and after these 2,000 sets are gone, they will be gone forever.But please don’t feel pressured into buying immediately just because only 2,000 sets will ever be made available. Candidly, this supply will last for at least several years. That’s because I am not looking to trigger a fast wave of mass “panic buying” from lots of people, which would inevitably include many less-than-qualified candidates.My aim—expressed in the value, scope, and extraordinary content of this DVD course—is just the reverse. And that is to restrict distribution to a tiny slice of the copywriting and direct marketing community—exclusively the most ambitious stars and future stars who are hell-bent on being among the richest, most in-demand, most consistently successful Top-Guns on the planet. And that, by definition, is a very small, elite universe.The only reason to act now—and this is important—is so that you can start putting these breakthrough wealth-building, career-advancing copywriting and marketing techniques to work immediately, allowing you to experience complete financial security and independence much sooner than you could ever achieve otherwise.No matter what, you must meet four rigorous criteria to qualify—no exceptions.More about that later. First let me tell you about the DVD course itself…“Always Be Thorough”One of the principles I teach is that champions are always thorough in their preparations, and this certainly holds true for copywriters and marketers.In that spirit, and because this course represents a significant investment, I’m going to be quite thorough here and give you a complete description of everything this training will teach you. Let’s start with …Four Words to Live ByThe seminar that is the basis of this course was held in what is probably the most elegant meeting room in New York City, the glittering penthouse of the St. Regis HotelWhy did I hold it there, when I could have hosted it anywhere and saved considerable expense?The reason relates to my four-word approach to everything I teach about life, about marketing, copywriting, and acquiring whatever you want in life.Those four words I urge you to live by are, Why not the best?Why not the best—in the copy you write, the products you market, the results you trigger, the reputation you build, the fees and royalties you command, the wealth you accumulate, and all the perks you’ll get to enjoy? After all, why should the best in life be reserved for others and not you? Why should you ever settle for anything less than a big life, a life full of major achievements, exceptional wealth and income, and a reputation as one of the most respected stars in your chosen line of work?The truth is, there are only two things you need to experience such success.The first is knowledge of how to achieve it, and the second is thededication to acquire and apply that knowledge.And that is the opportunity represented by this DVD course. If you supply the dedication, I will give you the knowledge.As you can read in the beige boxes sprinkled throughout this piece, the secrets I reveal in this DVD course have created so many blockbuster campaigns and breakthrough products for so many clients that I truly believe that these clients have gone overboard in their praise about what I’ve done for them.I honestly don’t believe there’s a “world’s best copywriter,” any more than there is a “world’s best actor” or “world’s best centerfielder.” In each case, you can make a good argument for any of several outstanding practitioners. But I do confess to being enough of a copywriter to gratefully accept (and run like a burglar with!)their over-the-top praise.The truth is, it’s really not me they’re praising, but the creative techniques I’ve developed for triggering extraordinary results. That’s what they love, the results, especially the consistency of breakthrough results I’ve always been able to give them.And anyone who uses the same techniques can achieve the same results. This is why, before the seminar, the legendary Prince of Print, Gary Halbert, wrote in his newsletter …“There is no seminar on earth I can think of that would be more worth attending than the one going to be given by Gary Bencivenga. You can be certain, barring some sort of tragedy, every sane marketing genius in the world will be there to sit at his feet and learn from him … We’ll all be busy taking notes and learning from one of the handful of true living legends of copywriting and marketing …“You know, as you walk through life, you cannot help but be aware of all the corrupt businessmen, thieves, sex offenders, crooked politicians, warlords, murderers, greedy religious leaders, lying CEOs, and just plain jerks. But, every once in a while on this path through life, you come across ‘a Gary Bencivenga,’ A Person Who Restores Your Faith In The Decency Of Mankind!” A much faster way to become “a serious, big-money copywriter…”—Gary Halbert    As you’ll see on the DVDs, on the second day, toward the end of the seminar, Gary Halbert took the mike and told the audience how appreciative all in attendance should be for the astonishing amount and quality of the information that had been presented. He said that it amazed and inspired even him.Later he summed up in an unsolicited written testimonial the impact this seminar could have on your own life—and the speed of your success—in this way…“You can get along very nicely by just learning to be an average copywriter. However, if you want to be a serious big-money copywriter, the info given in Gary Bencivenga’s seminar will take 15 to 25 years off your learning curve.”Indeed, afterward, the seminar was immediately hailed as “historic” … “phenomenal” … “life-changing” … and a host of other superlatives by these very superstars who attended, including Ken McCarthy, Brian Kurtz, John Carlton, Richard Stanton-Jones, Peter Stone, David Deutsch, and other top marketers and copywriters.You can read their comments about me and these secrets here, as well as on the Internet. But you will not find anything on the Internet revealing the techniques themselves, as all who attended were sworn to secrecy at the seminar … just as you will be if you order the DVDs and illustrated transcript.Again, more about this later. What I want to emphasize here is this—with these techniques, I guarantee that you will achieve unprecedented consistencyin your ability to produce breakthrough copy, generate record-setting response, chalk up an impressive array of control ads and direct mail packages, be in hotter demand than you’ve ever enjoyed, and launch blockbuster new products at a success rate you’ve never experienced. And that’s true whether you write the copy yourself or retain others to do it for you.But You Must First Qualify . . . .If you qualify to receive this training and agree not to share it, as I’ll explain below, I will guarantee you an effortless learning experience that you will look back on as a turning point in your life, when your knowledge of your craft comes together as never before … when you see a new universe of opportunity with a new, inner vision … when your ability to convert your marketing knowledge into major wealth takes a quantum leap … when you know in your heart that your future financial independence is secure because of the life-changing knowledge you have just acquired.So settle back for a few minutes and read my rather thorough explanation of what is so different about what I teach … and the difference it will make in your own success.Master Secret #1:The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®—The Never-Before-Published Formula Based on More Than $1 Billion Worth of Scientific Testing Just about 40 years ago, I broke into direct marketing working with two Hall of Fame legends, John Caples at BBDO and, later, David Ogilvy at Ogilvy & Mather.With these two masters as my guiding lights, and others in the decades since, I have never escaped the direct marketing copy department.As a result, for 40 years, I have written and methodically supervised well over $1 billion worth of scientific direct marketing for many of the smartest and most successful direct marketers in America. And even though I am retiring now, I still stay in touch and share advice with these top marketers, always keeping a weather eye on their latest test results.This $1 billion+ worth of testing has revealed, clear as day, eight critical factors so influential, I call them the eight overwhelmingly dominant factors of generating maximum response.I’ve woven all eight into what I callThe Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®, which makes it very easy to apply each of the eight critical factors in your every marketing message.Never before revealed, until this seminar, to anyone except my clients, this Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®is, in my view, the most consistently successful proprietary formula ever devised for creating breakthrough advertising … boosting response, traffic, and revenue … and gaining an overwhelming advantage against your competitors—be they other copywriters, products, or services.The eight elements of The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® are like puppet strings, and once you know how to pull on each, you can make the marketplace move to any melody you want to play.It Took Me 10 Years and Millions of Dollars in Testing to Piece This Puzzle TogetherActually, it took me the first 10 years of my career and tens of millions of dollars’ worth of testing to put the pieces of this puzzle together.In those young and heady days, I and my partners were wildly “test happy.” We liked to test everything that could possibly—even remotely—influence response. That included all the usual suspects, such as headlines, designs, prices, premiums, offers, and so on. But we also ran quite a few “oddball” tests that most direct response ad agencies would never even think of trying, including some very unusual headlines and approaches to the writing of body copy.To our surprise, we discovered that certain of these headlines and body copy treatments were mysterious anomalies—they “shouldn’t” have worked very well at all according to conventional direct response wisdom. Yet every time I and my partners created headlines and layouts built around these “inexplicably powerful” factors, response would soar.After more years of further testing, it all came together and made perfect sense, at least once you know The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® and how the eight factors reinforce one another and make the whole so much more powerful than any one part in boosting response.The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® works for any product, in any market, for any piece of advertising you’ll ever run. It’s so reliable, it will let you know with almost unerring precision—even before you test!—how strong your advertising message is going to be.If your message is weak in any of the eight key areas, you will know it instantly—just by reading your ad and seeing if each required element is present or not. That’s how easy it is. This means you can now know exactly where and how any piece of copy needs to be strengthened to crank it up to maximum pulling power.As I say, it took me a long 10 years of trial and error to piece this formula together, and then the next 20 years to refine it.I Was Just an Average Copywriterfor the First 10 Years of My CareerI mention this because, for the first 10 years of my career, if truth be told, I was really just an average copywriter. But, once I based my copywriting and marketing on the Gibraltar foundation of The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®, I became almost unbeatable, winning about 85 percent of the time, usually against the best copywriting competition in America. (And you needn’t take my word for this … as you can tell from the supporting comments in the boxes of this letter.)There are some major marketers for whom I’ve never lost a split-run test, even when tested repeatedly against several of the best copywriters in the world.To put this in perspective, one of my ablest competitors over the years, the superstar copywriter Doug D’Anna, has written …“If a copywriter beats the control one out of four times, you’ve got a really good copywriter. If he beats it two out of four times, you’ve got a great copywriter. If he beats it seven out of eight times, you’ve got Gary Bencivenga.”     I’ve often been asked how I’ve been able to win so consistently. Until now, I’ve never revealed the secret. Why should I, when I’ve had to compete for royalties against the fastest guns in the West, East, North, and South?I wish I could say it’s my writing talent. But, as you can tell from my plain, graceless sentences, I write with none of David Ogilvy’s eloquence, nor Gene Schwartz’s emotional fire, nor Gary Halbert’s drama, nor Ted Nicholas’ infectious optimism, nor John Caples’ storytelling magic.“Ideas and techniques that have been consistently outperforming the best copywriters in the world…”“An outstanding seminar that not only shows the inner secrets of great copywriting, but also presents ideas and techniques that have been consistently outperforming the best copywriters in the world.”This will be a gold mine for me. I not only expect my results will be better, but also know exactly how and why.”— Carl Galletti, superstar copywriter and Internet marketing guruBut that’s the liberating, “common-man” beauty of The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®. You don’t need to be a great writer to create blockbuster winners. That’s because …The Real Secret to CreatingBlockbuster Advertising Consistently Is . . .… knowing exactly what to say to your target market to trigger breakthrough response. It is not how eloquently, cleverly, emotionally, or creatively you say it, although those qualities do help make your ad more enjoyable and appealing to read. But for triggering response, those qualities are vastly overrated.The most critical factor by far in being able to generate record-breaking response is knowing exactly what to say.It’s the same as in personal selling. You don’t need a silver tongue to be a selling superstar, either in person or in print. In fact, the great majority of the highest-paid superstars of selling in every field are not the best-looking, smoothest-talking, or most creative people you’ll ever encounter. They are surprisingly ordinary souls who know how to do two things exceedingly well—They know how to establish rapport and build trust with their prospects.They know exactly what to say to elicit a “yes” response far more frequently than their peers.In short, they know what to say to very effectively open the sale and then to close it. And that is precisely what The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®teaches you to do in your own market, regardless of what product or service you sell.Best of all, The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® grows directly out of my own personal philosophy of how to succeed at anything in life, which is … Master Secret #2:The “Make-It-Easy” Approach to Breakthrough MarketingI don’t believe in hard. Nobody sticks with hard very long. I believe that those who’ve achieved incredibly difficult feats, such as Lance Armstrong, have found ways to make the extremely difficult a lot easier. And that separates them from—and allows them to outperform—those who never find ways to make the difficult easier.Do you ever find marketing and copywriting hard? If so, you’re not alone. Marketing can be a brutally tough way to earn your living, if you don’t know a few simple secrets of how to make it much easier.Believe me, I know. For roughly the first 10 or 11 years in this business, I found copywriting and marketing not just hard, but agonizingly, tortuously difficult. Sometimes my frustration made me depressed and brought me close to tears.In my early years as a copywriter, working for Madison Avenue direct response ad agencies, many a late night would find me trying to stare down a blank page in a battle of wills.I was always the first to blink. I could produce nothing, not even a first line of copy. Picasso once said that all art is merely the artist’s reaction to the first line he paints on the canvas. But I couldn’t even get my first line!I smoked cigarettes back then, and I’d light up one after another. I’d curse my deadline. Curse my fate. Curse the stupid product I was trying to sell. Rearrange my desk drawer. Make a phone call. Read a magazine. Grab a snack. Wonder what else I could be doing at that moment and, for that matter, with my whole life. This would go on for hours, sometimes days, until my copy chief would inquire, “What the #%*! is taking you so long?”In time, mercifully, I developed my Make-It-Easy System for marketing and copywriting, which I also reveal in the DVDs and expanded, illustrated transcript of The Bencivenga Seminar.I learned, during these years, to look at every aspect of successful, breakthrough marketing and ask, how can I make this process easier?In fact, that’s how I came up with The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®.It happened when, at age 30, I was appointed copy chief at Callas, Powell, Rosenthal & Bloch, then a highly respected direct response New York ad agency owned by copywriting legend Dan Rosenthal.I suddenly found myself in charge of an elite, fast-growing copy department and had to teach others the art and science of creating breakthrough direct marketing.I quickly concluded that I couldn’t teach an art—it’s too subjective and intuitive.I realized I had to turn the teaching of marketing and copywriting into a science, a repeatable set of principles that, if followed, can be counted on to yield the same predictable result of breakthrough response.So I systematized the process and, most important, made everything about successful copywriting as easy as I could possibly make it … so that even a wet-behind-the-ears kid just out of college could quickly learn the system and start creating breakthrough control packages virtually out of the gate.This is exactly what happened with my staff. With just one regular weekly class of training in this method, every single writer in our copy department was soon belting home runs …They often crushed by 50 percent, 75 percent, sometimes even 100–200 percent or more the former control packages of our new clients. Most of these clients had been in direct marketing for years and were astonished at the results our approach yielded, usually on our first try.Once instructed, my young tigers were also able to dramatically boost response rates and rejuvenate long-running control packages and space ads for our existing clients.Likewise, they were able to get fledgling entrepreneurs off to a flying start, launching new products so successfully that, in a few cases, these entrepreneurs went on to build direct marketing empires that made them fabulously wealthy.No, We Didn’t Win Every TimeSometimes a client came to us with a new product that, after testing, proved to have little marketplace appeal. We learned that when a new product is so flawed that few people want it, even the most brilliant advertising won’t sell it.But with long-established products, where the only variable was the pulling power of our advertising, we almost never lost.All thanks to a system of proven success factors made easy to apply and use.And that’s how I’ve always approached copywriting and marketing—how can we make it easier?For Example, in the DVDs and Expanded Transcript of The Bencivenga Seminar, I Teach You . . .The #1 easiest way to get a 50 to 100 percent boost in your results immediately.The easiest way to persuade your best prospects to desire your product intensely—so much so that they’ll never truly feel satisfied with anyone else’s similar product.The easiest way to beat out even the most ferocious competition in your marketplace, even when their marketing is brilliant, their budget huge, and their copy so persuasive, it could have been written by Claude Hopkins himself.The easiest way to control the process of persuasion rather than merely guess at it. You’ll learn that persuasion, like music, comes down to a few simple notes. Master them, and you can play an infinite variety of melodies that are music to your prospects’ ears.The easiest way to apply the secrets of Warren Buffett, America’s smartest investor, to the process of marketing and wind up far richer. Very few marketers have ever thought of this.Where virtually all of your competitors’ ads are weakest, and the easiest way to exploit this near-universal vulnerability to your great advantage.The easiest way to come up with powerful premiums to help sell a main product. (So effective, you’ll find that prospects will often buy your main product just to get your free premium.)One of the easiest (and smartest) things I’ve ever done in my life that dramatically improved my ability to turn out control ads at will.The easiest way to beat—indeed, forever banish—procrastination, perhaps the #1 occupational hazard of copywriters and marketers with too many projects on their plates.A simple technique that will let you gauge, with almost mathematical precision, how your ad is going to perform when it hits the marketplace. And you can do this completely on your own, without any focus group, survey, or any other means. It is something you can do in five minutes at your desk all by yourself—anywhere, anytime—and know instantly how your headline or entire ad is going to perform.And finally, the easiest way to be a master of persuasion—the simple, 12-word sentence that will make you one of the most persuasive people on the planet, no matter what field you’re in. This is the “master secret” of perhaps the most persuasive man of the 20th century (and an adviser to six presidents). You’ll see how to apply his 12-word secret of persuasion to marketing … and greatly increase your response on any project.Master Secret #3:“The Blockbuster New Product” SecretAs you can see, I have tried through my whole career to take what’s difficult about marketing, break it down, and make it a lot easier.Now, one of the most difficult challenges in marketing, perhaps the hardest but also the most financially rewarding, is launching a successful new product.Some experts say that, on average, only one out of seven new products succeeds. So the odds are normally overwhelmingly against you. But if you beat those odds, you can experience the marketing equivalent of hitting the lottery.I have found a way to dramatically increase your odds of success in launching new products that can make you or your company much wealthier.This astonishingly effective, easy-to-use, and truly secret strategy is different from anything ever written in direct marketing. Until this seminar, this strategy has never been revealed publicly anywhere on the planet or published in any book. And everyone at the seminar—as with all the information I shared—was sworn to secrecy never to publicize it.As you’ll fully appreciate when I give you this strategy, you will want to preserve it—just as I do!—for just the few of us who know about it. That’s the enormous competitive advantage this strategy bestows upon anyone who knows it.I learned this secret from the legendary Joseph Segel, the mega-millionaire founder of The Franklin Mint, when he and I worked together on one of his projects.If you are planning to launch a new product and try this secret just once, you will be blown away by the difference it makes in response, often 100–300 percent or more.What’s so beautiful about this little secret is that it is equally powerful and reliable no matter what you want to sell—books, newsletters, golf clubs, videos, music club memberships, collectible plates, financial advice, e-books, land in Arizona, anything. This one secret is worth many times the price of this whole program, and I guarantee you’ve never heard it from anyone else, ever, no matter how many books you’ve read or seminars you’ve attended.With this one strategy:You will raise the odds of a blockbuster success severalfold. With any new product, you can never be guaranteed success, but this strategy raises your odds to the max.You will dissolve price resistance and may even be able to double or even triple your original price point because your product will create such white-hot demand from the core of your market.You will create intense desire for your new product and yours alone. In other words, once you introduce your product this way, your market will never again be satisfied with your competitors’ products. Buyers will seek your product out specifically, demanding exactly the unique features you described in your advertising.You can easily lock in many years of repeat business from these same customers—converting their loyalty into self-renewing rivers of revenue that enrich you for decades. Your loyal customers will become the best annuity and “retirement plan” you’ll ever have.Not only will you likely achieve a blockbuster success, but once you do, your new product will be relatively immune to knockoffs. I know, you may be thinking that any product can be knocked off. Not so! Certainly not if you launch your product the way I describe. Do it this way and you will build a moat around your new product that can’t be breached by those slick knockoff artists who slither through the weeds, waiting for a chance to cash in on other people’s hard-won success. (I really dislike knockoff artists, and this strategy foils them as surely as a mama lioness guarding her cubs. Yet it has nothing to do with lawyers or legal roadblocks.)Please understand, I’m not talking here about the “USP,” the well-known principle of the “unique selling proposition” first formulated by the great Rosser Reeves and popularized by Jay Abraham. No, this goes beyond the “USP” and is much more powerful.It’s an advertising strategy so important—and so unknown—that if you follow it, it will literally change your whole approach to marketing for the rest of your life and make an enormous difference in your success and personal wealth. So priceless is this strategy that you must agree in writing never to publish or reprint it anywhere, as I’ll explain below.Master Secret #4:“Wealth Is an Income Stream”Speaking of building wealth with new products …What’s the easiest and surest way to get rich in our business, as either a marketer or a copywriter?Commit these five words to memory:“Wealth is an income stream.”This applies to both marketers and copywriters. Let me start with marketers.The smartest marketers I’ve ever worked with—Tom Phillips (Phillips Publishing) … Marty Edelston and Brian Kurtz (Boardroom) … Allie Ash and Walter Pearce (KCI) … among many others—all know and practi