I had been a professional advertising copywriter for about 15 years before I discovered Gary Halbert and realized how little I really knew about marketing. After I became a subscriber to Gary’s newsletter, I soon realized the self-proclaimed “Prince of Print” had a wealth of knowledge to share about using words to sell things, or, to be more accurate, to persuade people to buy things.
Years before the invention of the World Wide Web, Gary was teaching marketing methods that many of today’s Internet Marketing gurus call their own. Gary used to speak before groups of people who wanted to learn his techniques so they could improve their cash flow. He would ask what the most important requirement was for someone who wanted to succeed selling hamburgers. They would suggest the restaurant should have the most convenient location, or their cook should use the tastiest ingredients, or the manager should be skilled in motivating his staff, or many other ideas, which Gary all rejected. He said all of these suggestions were OK, but the most important thing you needed was a starving crowd.
I met Gary in his home in Key West, went out fishing on his boat, rode in his pink Cadillac and chatted with him about our mutual interest in cameras and photography. But what I remember most is how he changed my thinking about writing advertising copy. Gary said if somebody heard or saw one of your ads, the worst thing they could say was they thought it was very creative and you were an excellent writer. How they were supposed to react was to ask where they could buy the product you had written about.
Another principle of Gary’s was that the very best time to sell something to someone was right after they had already bought something from you. This “up-sell” technique is now part of the standard business model for anyone doing Internet Marketing, but when Gary first told people about it, the concept was startling. He referred to it as his “porcupine in heat” theory, and the details about why he did so are, regretfully, best reserved for telling to mature, consenting adult audiences only.
During his all-too-short career Gary wrote a lot of newspaper ads that ran in publications as varied as the Wall Street Journal and the National Enquirer, but in my opinion the medium in which he excelled most was the sales letter. Gary’s letters were printed on paper and were delivered to their recipient in a real envelope with a real postage stamp. Nevertheless, the principles of persuasive copywriting he taught are just as effective in today’s world of online communication.
