Selling Hypnotically- the Art of Suggestion

by Richard Barker

  4. Intelligence

  Create intelligently, design intelligently, and target intelligently. If you’re reaching out to a target demographic of elite academic scientists, the words and ideas that you use to persuade them will be different from those you direct to the average commuter on the New York City metro. You need to adapt accordingly and be smart about your target audience. If you want to truly hypnotize someone with your sales copy then you need to understand them. You need to understand where they’re coming from, where they’re going and what their goals are. You need to reach out to them through your words and touch upon the very points and ideals that they think about and worry about every day. Speak to them in their language; concentrate on a micro-niche.

  Remember, always place yourself in the minds of others when trying to persuade.

  Embedded Commands

  The name “embedded commands” encapsulates the nature of these hypnotic commands: “some suggestions that are planted within the conversation such that they sound like an integral part of the whole conversation.” These commands may consist of two or more parts, to be described below. Embedding a command is nothing more than deeply suggesting a particular action you desire during a conversation.

  You must learn and understand how to use embedded commands in order to use them effectively. First of all, know that each command has at least two main parts:

  Part A

  In each embedded command Part A serves as a distracter. It creates distraction to keep the conscious mind from resisting the command. It can also be said that it acts as a softener for the subconscious mind and paves the way for hypnotic commands to directly seed the thought process. The softener can be something similar to but not limited to:

  As you can see…

  You can…

  It’s always important…

  Part B

  This part is the command needed to create the intended response. If you want someone to see and buy a product, you will use a “buy now” command combined with the distracters or softeners:

  As you can see “by now”…

  You can “buy now.”

  It’s always important to “buy now.”

  I often give a suggestion within an embedded command, and sometimes it sounds so obvious the buyer just laughs but takes action, and other times they don’t see it coming. Imagine you are presenting your product or service to someone. I like to use words like, “By now you will realize that I like action-takers; I see you are an action-taker, and for that I commend you. You realize by now that my CD will help you finally walk away from the devastating effects of tinnitus; you have suffered too long and I am here to help you make the change. Simply go to the back of the room since you realize the benefits and pick up a copy right NOW.”

  You give commands to create the intended response from the subject. Use embedded commands in the content of your conversation. The commands can be about anything you want them to change, adopt or improve. But keep in mind that you must only give well-structured commands.

  Using Social Media

  I couldn’t write this book without mentioning social media and how to sell hypnotically through it. I will add a health warning, though: the landscape changes frequently so what I am telling you now may change a month or so down the road. I am therefore sticking to concepts and systems I use currently, but note that the method of delivery could change. At the time of this writing, the single most effective way I get leads is Facebook. Many have talked about Facebook marketing; to this day it is number one and has been for at least two years for me. Why would I use social media to attract new clients? Easy: it is where most of my clients live. You can quickly build a lead list, which in turn ends up being an email list you can use offline. The concept is simple. Target a specific audience linked to a product or service you have; through a well crafted advert draw them into a landing page off the social media site and then bribe them with a lead magnet for their contact information so that you can market to them later. You can promote anything, including blog posts, webinars, free “challenges” and mini courses, discount codes and any type of opt-in freebie. You can promote and use videos, selfies, recipes, or anything you want that relates to your business.

  The point is to give VALUE first, and work on converting that into a sale later. I don’t recommend using ads that go straight to a sales page unless your product is less than $40 or you are using retargeting ads to get people who are already on your email list to visit your website. For any purchase above $40, people really have to “know, like and trust” you before making a decision. One great thing about ads on social media is that you can test multiple ads that perform multiple tasks and call the client to various actions and find out which one is the most effective. I have written a detailed book on social media called “Hypnotic Social Media Domination,” which you can download from my store at http://incrediblehypnotist.com.

  Things to Do on Facebook

  1. Visit https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor/ . If it’s your first time there is a file you have to download. You must be using Chrome browser. Download Chrome browser here if you don’t have it: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/desktop/index.html.

  2. Decide how you want to use FB ads to grow (or create) your list.

  3. Targeting RESEARCH. You have to spend an hour or two looking around for pages made by your “competition”/peers. Facebook’s “Audience Insights” is a great place to look for pages to target. Personally, I looked at the business pages of people whose emails lists I subscribe to. I found great pages I could model and style some of my own after.

  4. Graphics and Video: Pictures need to be eye-catching if you want more clicks. Use pictures that work with your own brand or style. Pictures in Facebook ads must consist of 20% text or less, so stay within the rules. Use Picmonkey or Canva to make quick but nice-looking graphics. Make a Pinterest board of design ideas for inspiration. Take screen shots of ads that you see and like on your own timeline and put them into a program like Evernote to organize and review when you are creating your own graphics. Graphics must be 1200 x 628 to be placed by the power editor. If they aren’t that size, they will look pretty bad. As a top tip, you can use an overlay grid. Here is the Facebook grid tool: https://www.facebook.com/ads/tools/text_overlay.

  Video Ads: Create a short video, 60-90 seconds, about what you are promoting. I use this for webinars and get great response and conversions. Make sure videos have a call to action at the end of them. Use conversion-tracking pixels.

  Copy: This is the words you use with your ad. It can be short and sweet, or a bit longer. I use a combination of both. I’ll show you examples of mine; you can also look at examples of ads from others in your industry. Definitely hit at least one “pain point” in your copy, e.g., “Are you struggling with _____?” or, “Did your launch flop?"

  Then use a positive phrase, like, “That’s okay. I can help you!"

  Watch out for words like "weight loss" or "earn $5000 on your next client." FB often will not approve ads that have income, weight loss, or health claims. If the ad is for a free training or free course, I like to say a few things they will learn in it, e.g., “In this free workshop you will learn: 1. _____, 2. _____ and 3. _____.”

  Be sure to take screenshots of other people’s ads to get ideas for your ad copy.

  Create a Thank You Page: You’ll need to put this page inside your email autoresponder program so that it pops up when a person opts into your list. I use LeadPages because it’s really easy to create the right landing page that converts.

  Once we have our graphic and our copy, and know who we are targeting, we can start placing our ad. Go to the power editor to do this.

  Chapter 10

  Social Engagement

  Why are you even on these social media sites, anyway? Do you have a strategy or a plan? Do you lose hours of your time arguing on Facebook forums, or do you have a consistent approach to your time spent online? How do all these sites help you? As so
meone who has a desire to sell a product or service online, you must have a plan. Mine is something like this:

  Collect images using Instagram and place them on Pinterest boards. Upload video to YouTube and Vimeo along with thumbnail images. Promote the video on Facebook using business pages and my personal profile. Tweet the post and embed the video into Twitter, Youtube and Facebook ads. Promote on Google+ and LinkedIn.

  It sounds like quite a few moving parts, but it is pretty straightforward once you get into the habit of doing it enough and regularly.

  Social engagement means fingers clicking specific buttons. If a fan doesn’t engage with your post in at least one of four ways (described below) you won’t have engagement. You want people to engage with you on many levels across all social media platforms. Why? Because it will make your advertising cheaper later on down the line. When you post something, you want people to like it or give it a thumbs up, or, better yet, share it and leave a comment or rebroadcast it.

  When someone interacts with the content you have posted, they are expressing interest in you. That is your WHY, your meaning, your purpose. What do you do, and how do you do it?

  Don’t sell yourself short. Your why and how are powerful stuff to people out there. Knowing about you is a reward in itself. If you are message-driven, sharing what you care about in a true attempt to educate, entertain, or inspire people, and those people communicate back to you or push your message out to the world… that is a sign that you are doing something right!

  So Why Does Engagement Matter?

  This is where mindset enters the picture. Mindset is what will connect the dots for you between fan engagement (likes, comments, shares, and clicks) and exposure to your business (such as getting your posts into your tribe’s news feed).

  The more often followers engage with you, the more often your posts will be pushed to the top of their news feeds. Most social media sites and platforms help your business–by noticing that people are interested in what you have to say. Therefore, in each and every status update you post and tweet you send out, you want to influence your audience to engage in at least one of the four ways that count: liking, commenting, sharing, or clicking a link. This is where your mindset is critical. When you’re creating a Facebook post for example, it’s not enough to be clever, or even thoughtful. When you create a Facebook post, you need to come at it this way: “How can I thoughtfully construct this post to ignite the action needed for my fans to engage?”

  Remember, if there is no engagement, Facebook and the other social media sites simply think your audience is not interested. And they’re not going to promote something that they think people aren’t interested in. On the other hand, the more people take action on one of your posts, the more your posts will show up in their feeds—not just that one post they liked, but all your posts. Say you’ve been getting lots of “likes” on a particular photo you posted, or had people commenting throughout the week on a status update… and then, later in the week or month, you post something about a specific promotion you’re doing. All those likes and comments on the old photo or update will take your promotional post straight to the top of your fans’ news feed. Simply put, an increase in fan engagement also equals an increase in the exposure of your promotional posts. Are you beginning to understand the roadmap? As you consistently offer high-quality, valuable content that captivates your audience and motivates them to engage, you will also indirectly increase your sales. Selling hypnotically and using persuasion are just as important online as offline.

  Earn Your Right to Promote

  Your mindset around promotion directly affects engagement and therefore exposure, even when you are not actively promoting with a given post. It works the other way around as well. Holding a mindset that drives you to heavily promote without offering your fans compelling content they want to consume will decrease fan engagement and decrease your organic reach.

  On the other hand, cultivating a mindset that propels you to create posts with the intention of informing and meeting the needs of your fans (without an intent to sell) will increase both engagement and news feed reach.

  Closing Tips for Facebook:

  - Know what pages you want to target before you place your ad. Make an organized list of the demographic you want to target.

  - Take screenshots of ads that come through your newsfeed so you have examples to look at when you start writing your ad and putting it together.

  - Test like your wallet depends on it, because it does. Testing helps you avoid flushing money down the toilet. You can get high quality leads/email subscribers for a very inexpensive cost if you just keep tweaking and testing until you find the "sweet spot."

  - Be patient with yourself. Yes, there will be times when you spent $5-10 on an ad that only generates one lead. It happens. Don't cry and don’t have a panic attack. Turn that ad off and try targeting a new page. Try new copy. Maybe even try using a better pic or video. FB ads are all about testing.

  - Use the FB grid tool BEFORE you post your ad. A lot of people's ads get declined because of too much text.

  - Watch out for words like "weight loss" or "earn $5000 on your next client." FB often will not approve ads that have income or weight loss claims.

  I go into much more depth in my online class called “Crush Facebook Marketing.” Go ahead and enroll; you will be glad you did.

  My final word on social media is this: Whatever you think or feel about being connected, it is now part of your job to embrace it. Whether you like or dislike certain platforms, you must be on ALL OF THEM. If you do not like Facebook, that is your hard luck, because you must be on it to successfully sell hypnotically. Use the social media tools to your advantage; see them as a marketing gift. I love all social media sites, from Periscope to Blab, Twitter to Facebook, and Instagram to Snapchat. Why? Because they are platforms where I can reach out to potential clients. Social media can be a very effective way of cultivating leads and gaining new clients while retaining current ones. I see people in my industry make the same mistakes over and over again. They get too political or too personal on Facebook. If you are in business and you want to make money all I can say is STOP IT. You must treat social media sites as part of your business and posting on them as something you must do every day. Every word you say must be deliberate and purposeful. Don’t market too much or too little; build your list and keep your followers engaged.

  Social Media Tips

  Always Post Quality Think of social media like a megaphone. It can make your message louder but not better. Make sure that you’re putting out high quality stuff at all times.

  Post Regularly—But Not Too Regularly!: Post 20 times a day and you'll essentially be spamming. Don’t post at all and your social account will look like a graveyard. Once or twice a day for most accounts is good.

  Use IFTTT: IFTTT lets you set up advanced relationships between your accounts. It’s potentially hugely powerful. Just Google the term and the website will pop up. It is a great way to link all your actions on social media together.

  Get Rapportive: Using Rapporitve, you can get the LinkedIn account of anyone who emails you. This lets you build your connections and learn more about the people you do business with.

  Don’t Forget Real-World Networking: There is great synergy to be found between your real-world networking and social media. Tag people in Instagram posts with you and use business cards to find them on LinkedIn.

  Create a Consistent Brand: Make sure your message and design language are consistent across all your channels.

  Write Content That is Unique and Interesting: Avoid derivative or standard content. Avoid clickbait. Instead, post content that sounds interesting and unique and that actually delivers.

  Get Periscope and Blab: Periscope and Blab are excellent for live video marketing.

  Save Spreadsheets as Videos: A quick way to make a video without a camera is to save an Excel spreadsheet as an MPEG and record a voice track.

  Schedule Your Tweets:
To make sure your accounts stay active, you can schedule your posts. Buffer is a good tool for doing this.

  Use Influencer Marketing: Find the big influencers on Twitter and Facebook and then target them.

  Start Small and Work Up: But don’t go straight for the big fry! Target someone who is big in your niche but not massive and then work your way up the pecking order.

  Stay On Message: People need to know what to expect from following your account. Try to remain broadly on topic.

  Get the Pinterest Chrome Plugin: This will let you quickly and easily pin images you find on your travels on the web.

  Have Discussions in G+ Communities: G+ communities are great for getting more contacts and for sharing your content.

  Reciprocity is a Powerful Tool: If you share, like or retweet someone they will very often respond in kind!

  Add a Twitter Feed to Your Website: This way people who visit your website can see the kind of value you’re delivering on social media.

  Use the Apps: The Instagram and Twitter apps are great for quickly adding content on the move.

  Focus on the Lifestyle: Social media is a great way to glamorize the lifestyle your products or services promote.

  Engage Your Fans: Answer questions, respond to comments and generally be seen engaging with your audience. This is how you take leads and customers and make them into loyal fans.

  Ninja Marketing Ideas

  Websites

  Google changes its algorithms so often these days that there is a lot of debate as to whether you even need a fully functioning website. Websites have been around for a long time, and I am sure you have already invested in one, but how relevant are they TODAY? Banish anything written in Flash or Coldfusion and instead build a Wordpress website. There are hundreds of themes and plug-ins, so you can create a unique looking site. Benefits of a Wordpress site include that it is easy to add content—which Google loves—and it is simple to edit your own website without the need of a programmer. In fact, with a little bit of know-how you can create a nice looking Wordpress site quickly. Or, you can always get a designer to build one for you and pay around $300-400 by using an outsourcing site like upwork.com. Some designers are moving to a one-page squeeze page, which in essence is a page with all the content in one place. It stops the user from clicking off your page. The primary focus of your site, after all, should be to capture leads and sell something. On your website home page or one-page squeeze page make sure you have a video that quickly explains your services and a lead capture box where people can quickly contact you, thereby giving you their contact information. Ensure your website is mobile friendly; this is easy to check. Just go to Google, search for “mobile friendly website checker,” and enter your website to see if it is optimized for mobile. You simply must have a website that works correctly on a cellphone, including clickable call to action buttons and one-click dialing your office.