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Quick Cashvertising Summary

Cashvertising is one of the best books ever written on the subject of copywriting and advertising and is full of dozens of marketing fundamentals and best practices.

The most important lesson that Drew Eric Whitman teaches in Cashvertising is that people are motivated by 8 biologically-programed desires that he calls the Life Force 8 (or LF8). If you advertise to any of these desires innate in all humans, then people will desire your product and buy, buy, buy!

The other 100+ marketing principals and tactics are the best that Drew has been able to gather and use over his extensive career in advertising, and they all are sure to serve you well also… I highly recommend that you get a copy of this book!

Animated Video Summary of Cashvertising

Free Cashvertising PDF (Life Force 8 and 9 Secondary Wants)

As you will read in the blog below or I have illustrated in the video summary above, advertising to the Life Force 8 and 9 Secondary Desires that all people have will move your product faster than anything else you can do! That being the case, I’ve made this free and downloadable pdf of Drew Eric Whitman’s Life Force 8 and 9 Secondary Desires so that you can reference it in all of your future marketing.

FREE DOWNLOADABLE CASHVERTISING PDF: Click Here for High Resolution Cashvertising PDF Infographic Life Force 8 and 9 Secondary Wants.

Please feel free to use this Cashvertising pdf, but if you do please provide a link back to this blog post or www.marketingmehn.com


 

Cashvertising Review (My Thoughts)

This is an amazing book on advertising/marketing and copywriting for anyone getting into marketing, for experienced marketers, or any business owner/entrepreneur because it is so comprehensive, straight-forward, and accurate. I’ve personally used many of the tactics in this book to much success, and I don’t think Drew is wrong about any of what he writes. I could not recommend this book more than any other if you are interested in copywriting, marketing, or business. You can apply the marketing tactics and principals to any media: digital, print, video, etc.

 


 

Full Cashvertising Summary

Most people don’t know a –BLEEP–thing about advertising and what makes people buy. “Advertisers ” as Drew says, try to be cutesy and clever. As you may have guessed by now, that is not how to make people buy from you. It is so bad that Drew goes on to use a quote from the late great David Oglivy who says that “99% of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything”.

So then how do you SELL your product or service to people? How do you persuade them? It really isn’t that hard if you know human psychology and how the human mind works.

According to some deductive logic, Drew illustrates:

Advertising is a subset of communication,

Sales is a subset of advertising,

Persuasion is a subset of sales,

Psychology is a subset of persuasion. 

And psychology is the study of the human mind.

Therefore… one can deduce that if you know how the human mind works then you know how to advertise.

… so this book teaches you how to advertise by teaching you about how the mind works.

The most important point that Drew communicates is that: the human mind has 8 main desires which he calls the Life Force 8 or LF8

If you advertise to any of these 8 biological desires then people will DESIRE your product or service and they will BUY BUY BUY!!!!

After these 8 biologically programmed desires there are 9 “secondary” desires or wants that all humans have… hold on… this is really valuable stuff here so before we go into detail and list LF8, The 9 Secondary Desires, and Drew’s other great tips, let’s cover these 2 important marketing fundamentals so you can better apply and understand how to properly use what Drew teaches.

Drew teaches these 2 MARKETING FUNDAMENTALS later on in his book, but I feel like it is best if you understand them first before going through the LF8 and 9 Secondary Desires.

 

MARKETING FUNDAMENTAL NUMBER 1 – AIDA

You’ve probably heard of the acronym AIDA (or A.I.D.A) which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Drew didn’t create this framework, but he agrees this is a useful guide to making sure your advertising is persuasive and effective.

  1. ATTENTION ! None of your advertising matters if you don’t first have their attention and interest. This is obvious, but you might be surprised about how many people miss the importance of getting and holding someone’s INTEREST. You might have the best ad ever created but no one will buy your product if you can’t capture and keep their attention long enough to watch, read, or listen to your ad.  
  2. DESIRE – you must make your prospect (aka future customer) desire what you are selling.
  3. If the desire is strong enough, they will take ACTION -> but it really helps to get them to act on their new desire right away because there is a very small (next-to-nothing) (infanticimal) chance they will take the time to buy your product at a later time…. So (and this is important) ASK them to take action now… or use marketing tricks like a deadline, limited supply, FOMO, coupons that expire in the near future, etcetera to encourage immediate ACTION. Even saying there is “a limited supply” or “for a limited time” is better than nothing if you don’t have a hard deadline.

 

MARKETING FUNDAMENTAL NUMBER 2 – MIND MOVIES

TO EFFECTIVELY CREATE A DESIRE WITHIN A PERSON DREW HIGHLY RECOMMENDS TO USE VIVID IMAGERY SO THEY CREATE WHAT HE CALLS A “MOVIE IN THEIR HEAD”.

This does 2 main things. It increases their desire by painting a more vivid picture, and secondly, it helps them visualize actually using your product or service.

 

Here’s an example – Which would you rather buy?

Example A – 
BLANK Sells Pizza – 1 800 555 5555 
$9.99 
123 Mozzarella Rd.
www.bigcheesedisc.com

 

Or 

 

Example B – 
At Pauley’s Pizza, we hand-shred our mozzarella every morning. Our convenient their home delivery service is, but they don’t tell you that their average delivery time is over an hour. Pauley’s Pizza delivers in 28 minutes or your pizza is free. Call Pauley’s Pizza now 1 – 800- 555 -5555 or order at Pauleyspizza.com 

In Example B you start to imagine fresh mozzarella, fresh dough, and thin crispy goodness which does much more to help you picture Pauley’s Pizza in your imagination. This will definitely increase the chance that you will opt for Pauley’s instead of the competitor’s cheese disc”. Even the mention of their delivery policy gets you thinking that their service must be really good if they are offering free pizzas when they don’t hit their mark.

Again, the other big reason this helps your customer desire your product over the alternative is that they can imagine themselves using (or in this case eating) your product as they read the description. Again, that is a key part of the buying process for every customer… they must be able to see themselves using your product because if they can’t they won’t. 

Also importantly, the more vivid the picture or “movies” in your customer’s imagination the more persuasive they are!

 

Here’s more examples to further illustrate how this works-

You could say:

Go somewhere and do something. (This is a blank movie screen. No imagery.)

Go Somewhere and Get Something. (Do can mean anything. Get is a little more specific.)

Go to the Kitchen and get something. (Still vague, but now you know where to go.)

Go to the kitchen and get food. (ahh, now we’re getting somewhere. Do you see how filling in the details creates imagery?)

Go to the kitchen, open the oven, and get food. (notice now you pictured yourself opening an oven. Specific wording implants images. Action words create moving pictures.)

Go to the kitchen, open the oven, and pull out the pizza. (Very visual. A picture of a Pizza pops into your head, whether you want it to or not! See the power of this? You can’t help but picture what I’m saying because these are specific visual words.)

Go to the kitchen, open the oven, and pull out the freshest, crispiest, most delicious hot pizza you’ve ever eaten. Go on, cut yourself a big, hearty slice. Careful, it’s hot! Now take a big bite. Talk about crisp! The dough was made fresh this morning and baked in an extra-virgin olive oil-coated cast iron pan for a thick, deep dish Chicago style crust. The sauce? Prepared from scratch, of course, from juicy plum tomatoes picked this morning, and blended with select fresh herbs from our very own garden. Cheese? You betcha! Lots and lots of chewy, whole-milk mozzarella, made from the finest buffalo milk, of course, and the entire pie baked to bubbling perfection in a 750-degree wood-burning brick oven imported from Genoa, Italy.  (Okay, okay, hopefully that illustrates the value of using words that create vivid imagery or “movies” in your prospect’s head.) 

This example also does a good job to help dispel the marketing myth you may have heard that “short copy beats long copy”. Drew and all the marketing greats say the opposite, that in fact long copy beats short copy as long as it is not boring copy. 

There’s a good quote from Marketing Legend David Oglivy: “The more you tell, the more you sell.”

Drew thinks this short copy myth got spread because people’s attention spans are shorter than a goldfish’s, but the truth is that a lot of people need long copy to build up enough desire to buy your product or service. Don’t be afraid to keep the copy flowing.

To further dispel this myth, lets use some common sense.

A person with a short attention span can easily read the headline and then buy… they don’t have to read everything if they don’t want to! Therefore, with long copy you can sell to the person with the short attention span as well as the person that needs you to create a longer and more specific mental movie in their mind, in turn, increasing their desire and convincing them to buy.

OKAY – With these  fundamental marketing concepts covered… you are now ready to learn exactly how the human mind works, what people desire, and some other great TRADE SECRETS that Drew reveals throughout Cashvertising:

 

DREW’s MAIN LESSON (The Life Force 8 or LF8):

Human beings are biologically programmed with the following 8 desires:

  1. Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension.
  2. Enjoyment of food and beverages.
  3. Freedom from fear, pain, and danger.
  4. Sexual companionship.
  5. Comfortable living conditions.
  6. To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses.
  7. Care and protection of loved ones.
  8. Social approval

Okay, so now you are probably wondering great… what do I do with this new found knowledge? It’s simple! Just tell your customers how your product or service meets one or as many of these desires as possible. The more benefits you can show your product satisfies these desires the better.

Alternatively, people are motivated by loss even more than they are gain…  so you can also show how if they don’t get your product they will be missing out on ways to satisfy these 8 desires.

I can personally attest to how effective the LF8 are…they work, and that is why I’ve written this blog to help you benefit from this valuable information too. If you’ve made it this far do yourself a favor and bookmark this page so you can review it a few more times because you know it is valuable information 🙂

 

Another Main Point of Drew’s

PEOPLE BUY BECAUSE OF EMOTION AND JUSTIFY WITH LOGIC – that’s why these are so effective because they FORCE AN EMOTIONAL RESPONSE BY TOUCHING ON A BASIC WANT OR NEED

 

9 Learned (Secondary) Human Wants

  1. To Be Informed
  2. Curiosity
  3. Cleanliness
  4. Efficiency
  5. Convenience
  6. Dependability/Quality
  7. Expression of Beauty and Style
  8. Economy/Profit
  9. Bargains

These secondary wants don’t come close to the LF8 but they are strong enough to create or increase the desire of your product in your prospects’ eyes… so use them!

 

Click here for FREE CASHVERTISING PDF

 

Cashvertising Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: WHAT PEOPLE REALLY WANT

  1. The Life-Force 8
  2. The Nine Learned (Secondary) Human Wants

 

CHAPTER 2: HOW TO GET INSIDE THEIR HEADS: THE 17 FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES OF CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY 

  1. The Fear Factor—Selling the Scare 
  2. Ego Morphing—Instant Identification 
  3. Transfer—Credibility by Osmosis 
  4. The Bandwagon Effect—Give Them Something to Jump On 
  5. The Means-End Chain—The Critical Core 
  6. The Transtheoretical Model—Persuasion Step by Step 
  7. The Inoculation Theory—Make Them Prefer You for Life 
  8. Belief Re-ranking—Change Their Reality 
  9. The Elaboration Likelihood Model—Adjust Their Attitude 
  10. The 6 Weapons of Influence—Shortcuts to Persuasion 
  11. Message Organization—Attaining Critical Clarity 
  12. Examples vs. Statistics—And the Winner Is … 
  13. Message Sidedness—Dual-Role Persuasion 
  14. Repetition and Redundancy—The Familiarity Factor 
  15. Rhetorical Questions—Interesting, Aren’t They? 
  16. Evidence—Quick! Sell Me the Facts! 
  17. Heuristics—Serving Billions of Lazy Brains Daily 

 

CHAPTER 3: AD-AGENCY SECRETS: 41 PROVEN TECHNIQUES FOR SELLING ANYTHING TO ANYONE 

  1. The Psychology of Simplicity 
  2. Bombard Your Readers With Benefits 
  3. Put Your Biggest Benefit in Your Headline 
  4. Crank up the Scarcity 
  5. 22 Psychologically Potent Headline Starters 
  6. 12 Ways to Lure Readers Into Your Copy 
  7. 360 Degrees of Attention-Getting Power 
  8. The Reverse-Type Pitfall 
  9. Crush Your Competition With Extreme Specificity 
  10. The Famous Ogilvy Principle 
  11. The Psychology of Typefaces 
  12. Insist on the Pro-Design Difference 
  13. The Power of Questions 
  14. The “Granny Rule” of Direct Mail 
  15. The Psychology of “Social Proof” 
  16. The Guillotine Principle 
  17. PVAs–The Easy Way to Boost the Power of Your Copy 
  18. Directing Mental Movies 
  19. Battling Human Inertia 
  20. Establish Your Unique Selling Proposition 
  21. Buy Your Own Island 
  22. Authority Positioning 
  23. A Sales Letter in Survey’s Clothing 
  24. Power Your Ads With Pictures 
  25. Grab ’Em With Grabbers 
  26. Long Copy vs. Short
  27. Offer Testing 
  28. Survey Power 
  29. Editorial Energizers 
  30. The Coupon Persuader 
  31. 7 Online Response Boosters 
  32. Multi-page Your Way to Success 
  33. Guarantees that Guarantee Higher Response 
  34. The Psychology of Size 
  35. The Psychology of Page and Section Positioning 
  36. The Fantastic Four 
  37. Consumer Color Preferences and How Color Affects Readership 
  38. The Psychology of Pricing 
  39. The Psychology of Color 
  40. Wrap Your Ads in White 
  41. Give Yourself a “Cleverectomy” 

 

CHAPTER 4: HOT LISTS: 101 EASY WAYS TO BOOST YOUR AD RESPONSE  

22 Response Superchargers  

9 Ways to Convey Value  

13 Ways to Make Buying Easy  

11 Ways to Boost Coupon Returns  

46-Point “Killer Ad” Checklist

 

TOP 5 TAKEAWAYS (OTHER THAN LF8 AND 9 SECONDARY DESIRES)

    1. The Psychology of Simplicity (KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid – don’t talk over people’s heads… just write at a 7th grade reading level).
    2. The Psychology of Pricing – everything’s relative so your product’s price relative to something expensive makes your product seem less expensive. Also, given 3 choices people tend to like the middle one.
    3. The 6 Weapons of Influence – Shortcuts to Persuasion -speaking of Robert Cialdini, Drew takes his 6 weapons of influence and teaches them: Reciprocity, Scarcity, Authority, Consistency, Likability, and Social Proof.
    4. The Psychology of Color – colors create emotional responses ie red = anger, passion, etc. so be mindful of what colors you choose. For CTA you can usually use BOB (big orange button) as long as it stands out ie you wouldn’t want an orange button CTA if the rest of your ad is orange. Complimentary colors (or opposite colors) are usually a good choice for CTAs and buttons.
    5. Put Your Biggest Benefit in Your Headline – the famous marketer Jay Abrahams says you can get up to 21 times the results of your marketing and ads just by better headlines because they are usually the most important part of your ad. 

 

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