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Mar
15

One of the best marketers in the world thinks he sucks

By | advertising, Copywriting, Main Content, Writing

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When you hear one the greatest copywriters EVER say he is a lousy copywriter… you have to wonder… WTF?

David Ogilvy was an advertising legend.

He is the man behind many of the greatest campaigns ever done:

“The man in the Hathaway shirt”
“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”
Only Dove is one-quarter moisturizing cream
“The man from Schweppes is here”

…to name a few.

So how is it possible that one of the greats thinks he sucks at it?

Well he does.

And he wrote this letter to explain why he thinks that.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/i-am-lousy-copywriter.html

12 points are listed there that you MUST pay attention to.

I love points 1, 5, 9, 10 and 12

Point 12 defines why he feels he is a “lousy copywriter” and what he does to make it shine.

Why does this matter to you?

Because ANYONE can write a great marketing campaign if they work at it and follow his steps here!

You can.

I can.

Anyone can with the right formula and blueprint (http://www.storysellingtips.com is a great start and a killer deal)

Have a great day.

Troy

PS: Are you a DOG LOVER?Dog Lovers Who Like Making Money

Me too.  I have something BIG stewing for dog lovers like you and I.

This Friday at 3:00 MST I am hosting a webinar that will show you a proven way to improve the health of your dog, while putting some extra cash in your pocket.

If you are interested in finding out more, just fill in your information and I will be in touch right away with the webinar details…


It just shows you are interested in finding out more, no other catch, hook, or gimmick.

Feb
22

Honing your personality in pixels

By | Main Content

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Next month is 10 years in business for me.

A big achievement I am proud of, but one I also question on exactly HOW this happened.

I was an english class flunky in High school and in University (had to take English 101 TWICE in University to get my grade point up!)

…add the fact that I was NEVER a writer until 10 years ago.

Makes you kinda wonder how I got here… does for me anyhow.

The type of writing I do is specialized on helping those who want to sell more products or services.

Considering I was in sales for 15 years before writing, now it makes a little more sense.

But to get good fast at writing with personality, I found a couple things that worked well for me, and will for you too.

1) I hand wrote out successful ads, sales letters, even book chapters.  Yes, BY HAND.  The cramps were painful. It took a long time.

But damn did it work well!

I first hear about this from the late, great Gary Halbert… and ignored it. I thought “why would I write by hand? typing is way faster!”…as does everyone who hears this.

One day I thought I would just listen to someone who mastered the skill, so I began. Every morning for 2 hours before the kids woke up, I would hand write out sales letters.

For 6 long months!

Every.
Single.
Day.

And oh my, it did far more for my writing fluidity and ease than anything else I had ever done.

It is also something I recommend you do too.

But you need to commit to it for at least a couple months.

By the way, there was a recent Harvard Study that scientifically proved that HAND writing wired the brain differently than typing…hence, why it worked. As you write by hand, you are creating new neural pathways… ones that aren’t created by typing (not to the same degree).

2) Write lots.  The more I write then more comfortable it seems and the better the results I get.

These dailies are a wonderful thing for the soul… very therapeutic and it helps create MEGA content for your marketing efforts!

For the first few years in business I tracked every single hour I wrote.  I made a 1,000 square excel sheet and marked off every hour of writing I did.

The first sheet took 14 months to fill (something like that), the next one 12, the next 8, and so on.

I don’t track any longer, but the funny thing is… the more sheets I filled… the better my writing got.

Go figure.

3) Write JUST like you talk.  ONce you are done writing a piece, practice reading it out loud.  If you stumble on anything, rewrite it.

If it is smooth and an 11 year old could read it back without stumbling… perfect!

4) Last, share your faults and failures through your writing.

For me, it’s an endless supply of writing material :O)  I am not scared to admit I screw up along the way.  But I also do some real good things for my clients too.  (if you ever need any help with sales copy or email campaigns, let me know)

Being a real person rather than some knob who pretends to be perfect is the ULTIMATE relationship builder.

Try it.

Last, I shared stories… lots of them.

It’s how the Story Selling Program came about http://www.storysellingtips.com and its the basis for my business.

All of these you should be doing too.

It will help your business…

…and your bank account!

Have a great day.

Troy

Feb
08

Personality in pixels

By | Copywriting, Success, Writing

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One of my favourite things about writing this newsletter is the feedback I get from you guys!

Keep it coming.

It helps me focus in on the ares you want me to focus on, and it’s always a treat to know someone is reading… and taking action on what they read.

Like Tom for example…

Here is what he wrote me:

Troy

I love your daily musings especially your focus on storytelling. I am  building a new website with a focus on personal stories from my own experiences in combination with factual information. My biggest fault and drawback is procrastination. When I am ready to write, I can and derive much satisfaction from the results. It is getting in the frame of mind.

Sometimes, I force myself to sit, ready to write, then have to give up.

Recently, I wrote a little piece for the editorial page of our local newspaper. We are in a transit strike here in Halifax and there is a lot of emotion swirling around this issue, mostly negative from both sides of the argument. I am very adverse to negative behaviour, both in business and our personal lives. Life is hard enough, without being bombarded daily by negativity. That is why I enjoy your comments, especially your recent Budweiser find. That was a great ad. My entire family watched it.

So….on with my letter to the editor. I was in the “mood” when I wrote this and it only took several minutes. It incorporates a story, will perhaps encourage alternate travel, instil a moral value or just bring a smile to someone’s face. I hope you enjoy it (see below).

Keep up your good work.

Tom McLane
1-888-507-8880
http://www.goldwaterseafoods.com

The article…

I remember back in the seventies, there was a transit strike in Halifax. Hitch hiking was popular then and I had returned home from hitching across Canada. My mother was in her sixties and had an appointment downtown. We depended on the buses as we had no vehicle. My dear old mother told me she was going out to the street and “stick her thumb out”. I told her no one would pick her up and she was crazy to try. She slung her purse over her arm and went to the street with her thumb out. I would guess it was no more than two cars went by and she was whisked away in plenty of time to make her appointment.

Today, I would gladly pick up a senior, student or anyone else waylaid by the current transit strike. Humans are a resourceful lot and will always find ways to solve a little inconvenience. Let’s get back to those glorious 60’s and 70’s when we trusted and helped one another with a smile on our face. Pick up someone in need of a drive and share your story of a bygone era.

==================
My comments to Tom…
==================

Thank you Tom.

Great to hear from you.

Sounds like you are well on track to get more stories out there. Actually, writing for the papers, and even writing letters to the editor, are great ways to get practice writing and to get exposure.

Anything you can do to write, write stories, comment on peoples articles or posts, etc. is great practice.  The more you write the better you get.  Thanks for sharing this.

Troy

===============
Further on this
===============

Finding your “personality in print” (or personality in pixels) is something you must strive for.  Once you find it, you have a marketing asset that you can use anytime and every time you want to build your business or communicate with your clients.

But the ONLY way to find it… is to write.

Write lots.Personality in pixels

About anything and everything.

The other night I got in a mode and wrote for an hour about a 30-day trip I took to Africa back in ’99.  I had never written about it before in this depth, but I sure did enjoy recalling it!

You will get to see it and some of my Africa pictures at another
time.

The point is… you must write.  

Consistently.

Passionately.

Your payback will be great… and the best thing is… your ability to pour your personality down onto the computer screen is a skill that will pay you forever.

Any business.

Any market.

Any economy.

Get busy will ya!

Are you writing yet?

Have a great day!

Troy

PS: Your ability to weave a good story into your marketing has
never been more important than now. People are buying experiences
more than products and services right now… and stories help them
see that the experience of buying from you is DIFFERENT.  Which
is what they want.

Your competitors probably suck at telling stories, so here is a very
powerful tool to put you ahead of them quickly.

It helped one company go from $500 a month in online
sales to $15,000 a month… with the addition of a one-page story
on their website.

You can do that too with the Story Selling Home Study Coaching
program http://www.storysellingtips.com. It is ready and is an
incredible way to introduce your clients and prospects to your
backstories…

…where your real money will be made. http://www.storysellingtips.com

Jan
25

The curious case of the “bespoke brief”

By | Copywriting, Email Marketing, Writing

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Another bizarre email request came through my blog today.

I wanted to share with you the email I got, and the unusual lessons that are inside.

First, I get lots of requests through my blog contact page.

Some of them are for helping with marketing campaigns, others are asking for money, some are joint venture requests, and then other times….I get this kind of nonsense.

“I hope you are well. {NOTE: no personalization – shows a lack of real effort or research on who actually writes for the site.  It would take about 2.3 seconds at the most to figure out my name}
After reading your blog, I think you may be interested in a project I run that would be great for your site.

{NOTE: if they truly read my blog, they should have put something in here to prove that they did, and didn’t just hire someone to do this en masse}

We are looking for partners that we can place a page of our high quality editorial content with, in which the article will be written directly to a bespoke brief produced by you. In exchange we would like to place a link back to one of our blue chips client’s sites.

{NOTE: ‘Bespoke brief’?  Who talks like that?  I sure as hell don’t! Nor would I EVER recommend you do.  I had to think about what it actually meant…and any time you ask someone to get out a dictionary to decipher your message, they are done…toast…vamoose…later gator.  Never try and impress people with your creative use of big words.  It doesn’t impress anyone}

{NOTE: So they want to put one of their clients content pieces on my site, with my endorsement, and a link back to their client’s sites?  Wow! I am so excited!!!  What an amazing opportunity for me.  I am such a lucky guy and this is the opportunity of a lifetime for me! What am I waiting for…this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me. YEESH.  That is the best they can do, is it?  There is truly NOTHING in it for me with their offer. Put crap up on MY site with a link back to some other person’s site…how enticing.  How about I write my own content and link back to MY products, services, or recommended resources? Go figure.}

We endeavour to produce the highest quality content for our partner sites. I can assure you that all of our clients are recognised corporate brands, so the quality of your site will not be affected by the link within it.I’m sure you receive many e-mails similar to this, offering services at the lower end of the quality spectrum. {company name} Limited have worked on a high end proposition, we are content providers not spammy link builders. Please visit www.{removed for privacy}.com so you can get more of a feel for who we are and what we do.

{NOTES: Yes I do get lots of this nonsense…thanks for thinking of me.  Yours is no better and actually may be worse.  Now go away please.}

If you are interested in partnering with us, or have any questions regarding this opportunity, please do not hesitate to contact me.

{NOTE: Can’t wait!}

I look forward to hearing from you.Kindest Regards

…….

Maybe these guys have a great business doing this, I have no idea. The approach they took with this email SUCKED though.  I can’t think of a more useless piece of trash.

Always remember when soliciting new business….the potential customer you are contacting has 2 very important questions they quickly want an answer to:

1) “What’s in it for me?”  This email never once answered that question.  Yet it is the most important one of all.   Put some serious thought into the answer to this when writing emails or approaching prospects.  If you don’t address this – expect them to dismiss your ‘wonderful offer’ much like I have here.

2) “So what?”   Each and every line in your email request (or letter, or postcard, etc) should answer the question.  Put content on my site? So what?  I write my own.  A link back to their site?  So what?  I don’t want to promote some moron I don’t know, trust, or like.

Put some thought into your emails and prospecting efforts.

Please!

Don’t let your email request get caught in a review like this one!

Answer those 2 questions and you will get a much more friendly response than this :O)

Troy

Jan
16

Are you making this mistake in your email marketing?

By | Autoresponders, Email Marketing, Internet marketing

1 Comment

Are you making this mistake in emails?

This appeared in my inbox this morning and there was something important to note.

First, never heard of the person sending the email, nor the company.

So… the second paragraph in the letter is a blatant lie.

See for yourself:

—
This is Mia Henderson. I hope this note finds you well I’m not a big fan of getting phone calls unannounced so I try not to do it myself. I know you place tremendous value on your time, so I’ve included a high level overview of what we do.

We understand your capabilities in Corporate Development, Corporate Finance, Globalization, Growth, Information Technology, Innovation, Marketing and sales, Operations, Organization, and Strategy.

But the question here is have you made your presence and are you successful in reaching out to the decision makers at the right time

We are a growing database provider specializing in business list solutions and data enhancement. We have a comprehensive business database of 42 million+ B2B and B2C records. Our lists can be used for Multi-Channel Marketing – email campaign, tele-marketing, fax marketing and direct mailing. The list would be for your perpetual use with no restriction on the number of usage.
—

Some notes on this:

* To say they understand every nuance of my business like they do in paragraph 2 is absolute BS! They know absolutely nothing about me or my business – why lie?

vs. this section which I wrote for a client (and I have used this type of approach with numerous different industries and gotten good results from cold lists)…

“…Very frankly, my letter to you has the sole purpose of opening up your options for running your business. In a challenging economy, we all need to be willing to keep our eyes and ears open to new opportunities that can improve efficiencies and add on additional profit streams to our existing marketing model.

I don’t know if you’re happy or royally aggravated with your present business cash flow as it is today. I’m working in the dark. And, of course, again – why should you care?”

{NOTE: I don’t lie and pretend I know everything about them like the email I got – important lesson, admit you aren’t the be all and end all. You DON’T know everything. Nor do I. No one does. Admit your shortcomings and offer a solution to fix that}

* This quote: “But the question here is have you made your presence and are you successful in reaching out to the decision makers at the right time”

“have you made your presence…” – huh? That makes no sense to me there. My presence where? In the market? In my home town? In Canada? I have no idea what in the heck this is supposed to mean.

Think your writing through to make sure words being used are the best choice. We all make mistakes and let some of these things slip through (I know I do). But please be careful with these things.

{Read your emails through one sentence at a time – even going backwards from the bottom up, one sentence at a time. Does each sentence make complete sense? Does it stand on its own? Is it even necessary?}

* The close. Very important to consider the first action you are asking them to take. People are bombarded with pitches, so yours had better be a good one.

Here’s theirs…

“Please send me the following details so we can provide counts and a sample file for your review at no cost.
Target Criteria:
Industry:
Title:
Geography:
Look forward to hearing from you soon.”

Not exactly wowing me with their pitch.

This one works for me and my clients though…

“PS: Remember, a Keg Gift card, just a phone call away.

PPS: Not sure if you use an iphone or iPod, maybe your spouse or kids do. Even if you won’t make the time to give us a trial run, just do me the favor of some reply to my letter. Drop a note to me in the mail, or email me at < <<>>. I really want to know what you think about my letter, and maybe some feedback on how I can be of best use to your company. Any response at all, and I’ll send you an iTunes gift card to use for yourself, or to pass on to your friends or family.

Let me know at 403-xxx.xxxx”

{NOTE: 2 offers in there. One for a $25 gift card at a good steak house – theirs just for having a conversation over the phone. At the initial contact part of email marketing, all you want to do is break down that reply-resistance barrier. Get them to initiate contact with you after reading your email. THEN you at least have a small connection with them.

Second ethical bribe… just reply back to the email and get an iTunes gift card. Why not? An email reply isn’t as good as a phone call, but at least they took time out of their day to give you feedback on your letter. That could be the first step to a long term relationship.

One last lesson on this…

…GET THICK SKIN!

FAST!

If you are going into the email marketing world with thin skin and are easily offended, look out. You will get complaints, nasty ones.

Suck it up and move on.

I get those from people who signed up to be on my list years ago. People who have received tons of great marketing advice through my ezine.

They have a bad day and they feel it is in their right to be mean and nasty.

I remove them from the database before they have a chance.

The funny thing is…

…those who complain loudest have NEVER bought a thing from me. I look and see while removing them. 9.9 times out of 10, they have never spent a dime with me.

Who needs their BS?

I don’t.

Nor should you.

Think through your email communications properly… this one I got this morning didn’t.

Troy

Dec
02

Biker babes and bad-ass story success

By | Autoresponders, Copywriting, Email Marketing, Writing

1 Comment

I’m a big fan of Sons of Anarchy.

Hadn’t even heard of it until recently, when a friend gave me seasons 1 through 3 on dvd.

Spellbound and a major time vampire.

Sons of Anarchy has turned out to be one of the best series I have ever seen with some of the most powerful, emotion wrenching storylines I’ve experienced.

The best part is that they use some of the same principles I unexpected have been teaching through my emails and in my Story Selling Coaching calls.

A very basic tool that keeps your prospects interested in hearing from you.

…one that grows your business by leaps and bounds over the years if you use it.

Guess what it is?

If you guessed a fantastic story line (something everyone, yes… you too, can create in their marketing), you are correct.

But there is something else other than the main story line that keeps people craving more and addicted to the characters.

Cliffhangers.

Everywhere.

The amazing writers behind this series are masters at creating tension through cliffhangers.

“Will Jax kill him?”

“Will she tell SAMCRO the one thing that will rip the entire club apart at the seams?”

“Will the Doctor be able to save her career… or be subjected to years as a ‘biker-babe’?”

Each episode leaves more unanswered questions in the viewers mind.

Unbelievably addictive…

…and I am not much for watching a lot of tv.

Get this though:

5.8 million viewers per episode

Highest-rated basic cable drama in the US

Emmy nominated

2011 Golden Globe Winner (Katey Sagal… THE best character I think… and a big surprise Peg Bundy could end up to be such an amazing actress. She was also nominated for numerous other acting awards for her role)

 

…much of it through the incredible use of hooks and cliffhangers.

Something you should be working on in your marketing campaigns.

It’s works like gangbusters and isn’t that hard to do when you practice it a wee bit.

I’ve used it for myself and for many different clients over the years.

 …and the clients and prospects LOVE IT.

A great story, mixed into your marketing and personality-driven communication with your clients/prospects… sprinkled with a dash of cliffhanger and BAM, you have a winning campaign.

One they will want more of.

One they will continue to open, read, and act on.

And you know what?

I’m teaching this in the Story Selling Coaching Club.

To find out the full details and to reserve yourself a spot, go to:

http://www.storysellingtips.com

 

Troy White

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