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Dec
01

Are you letting your customers fill in the blanks?

By | advertising, Copywriting, Entrepreneur

One place where a lot of people go wrong with their marketing message is that they forget to tell a complete story.

They allude that there is something more the customer needs to know.

They pretend they have told the whole story and that there is nothing left out to the imagination.

They assume that the message they are saying in their marketing is crystal clear to anyone who sees it.

Which is when disasters like this happen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usYpXqrBLLk

It is a commercial running here in Canada, and has caused quite a stir.

Swiss Chalet makes a decent meal at a decent price.  Not a place I enjoy, but it is quite popular in Canada.

This holiday commercial comes out and they think they have used story telling and emotions to get people to buy.

They seem to want to move away from the usual price comparison advertising which they run, to a family get together venue.

Somewhere between the concept of this commercial, the writing, and the scripting… it has gone wrong.

It’s not that the wording or acting is bad (it is), it’s that they left far too much to the audiences interpretation.

Note the comments on youtube.

Most of the comments are from idiots who will put up any disgusting comment to get a rise out of people.  But it is very obvious here that when you leave a story line to others to fill in, they tend to think the worst.

Look at your website, your emails, your autoresponders, even your business cards, brochures and follow-up pieces: are they leaving anything to the imagination?

Are you leaving it up to your customers to figure out what you do and what makes you the one to buy from?

Or are you telling them the complete story on who you are, why you are different, what makes you the one they should invest their money in.

Don’t leave it up to them to figure out what you are selling and why they should buy now.

It is NOT their responsibility to find a reason to buy form you…

…it is YOUR responsibility.

And if you aren’t telling them the complete story, don’t blame anyone but yourself when business is bad and people start talking bad about you.

Nov
24

Right message… right market

By | Copywriting, Direct Mail, Entrepreneur, Marketing on the web, Time management and productivity, Wacky marketing ideas

Two success stories to share with you on advertising effectively.

SUCCESS STORY #1 – Network Marketing Money Machine

I received a phone call 2 years ago from a husband and wife team.  They have done exceptionally well in the network marketing industry, and now was to go big on the speaking / information publishing business.

We designed them a campaign that goes like this:

Step 1 – Squeeze page to capture emails from people

[All a squeeze page does is capture contact information from people who visit your website.  You need to entice them into why they should sign up – snippets of content they get, free bonus books or audios, etc.  When they enter their information – name and email – they are then sent to step 2.

Step 2 – Thank you for sign up and Free CD giveaway

[We gave away an audio cd detailed part of their system they use to earn well over a million a year in the industry. The cd is free, shipping and handling is $5. This gives people a very low cost way to get more familiar with you and your techniques. If they take the free cd offer, they click through to the order page with an option to buy into step 3.

Step 3 – Upsell to higher end package at 20 -40 times the price of step 2

[When people go to the order page for the cd offer, they are offered an option to buy a much higher pried package. In this case we did 2 higher priced options – one at 20 times the cd s&h price, the other at 50 times that price. They can get just the cd… or take them up on the upsell offers with much more information and product sent to them.

Step 4 – For those who never took the offer for steps 2, 3 or 4 – they get sold into step 2 through the auto responders they receive once they sign up on the free newsletter (step1)

THE RESULTS?

Because the copy was targeted perfectly to their market, and because they had a good number of people read the copy:

1. 1800 people purchased the cd option
2. 20% of those people bought upsell #1 (at 20 times the price)
3. 5% bought upsell #2 at 50 times the price

Do the math!  That is a serious money making AUTOMATED machine. For every 1,000 qualified people they send to their site, they know roughly how much money they will make immediately.

In the next 9 MONTHS, that simple marketing system, with the right words, sold well over $1.2 million dollars.

QUESTION FOR YOU:

How can you leverage these ideas and automate the sales process in your business?

SUCCESS STORY #2 – First time author ROCKETS to #1

Another client of mine launched his first book.  You may have seen some of the promotions for The Power of You!?

We invested a substantial amount of time and resources putting a massive campaign together for him.

1. Teaser sales letters to get people to the main sales letter

2. $3,000 in bonuses to buy the book on the launch day

3. Long copy sales letter to sell the book and bonuses – the key was that he needed people to buy on a single day so Amazon could do their calculations on if he had a best selling book (calculated by Amazon every hour based on total books sold from their site)

4. Recruited LARGE numbers of partners to endorse the book to their own client lists.  They got to read the book first, then endorse the book to their own clients if they like the book.  IMPORTANT NOTE: the partners received NO financial compensation for doing this.

I wrote the copy they sent to their lists, to recruit them as partners, to sell people the book, etc.

5. Arranged everything to happen on August 15th starting at 12:01 am.

THE RESULTS?

#1 on Amazon – on the main book best seller list AND in all 5 registered categories the book qualified for!

PLUS, 3 days later – it was STILL #1

Thousands and thousands of books sold (5,000 sold in first 2 weeks, 55,000 sold over the next 3 months) – each of those books is a lead generator for him (ads on the inside of the books for other products) and a MASSIVE database built from the launch (people had to supply their emails to get the bonus materials)

Now he has #1 International Best Selling Author to his name.

QUESTION FOR YOU:

How can you leverage these ideas and have other people promote you to their lists? How can you use this to launch a new product, service or bundle?

The key here is to NOT say “that isn’t my business”. The key is to say “HOW can I make that apply to MY business?”

When you do that – and then implement what you wrote – you will see similar results as they have seen.

The power of the written word, combined with massive action…

Simple Things to Change and Test in your Marketing and Copy Over the Next 30 Days (measure your results before and then after you make these changes to see the effect on your bottom line)

* Are you running a headline in all of your marketing? Go to the news racks and pick up some copies of Cosmo and The National Enquirer (seriously).  Find ways to modify some of their cover headlines to fit an advertisement, or email, or newsletter subhead line. This is a simple, yet incredibly effective way to create revenue producing headlines.

* Is it targeted specifically at your target customers?

* Are you specific in your claims? None of the “best in the world” type of claims – no one believes them anyhow.

* Does your marketing material answer the question – “would this help our field sales people close the deal, or pre-qualify the prospects?

* Does every piece of your marketing containing some form of measurement device (special website to visit, email subject line to send you, trackable phone number, etc)? Without this, you have no way of knowing which of your marketing dollars are working for you, and which ones aren’t.

* Does your marketing and advertising materials explain what it is you want them to do immediately after reading the ad or promotion? (does it ask them to take action by phone, mail, email, web form, or fax?)

* Does it answer all the questions your typical prospects ask your sales people?

* Can you specifically tell me who your ideal client is (age, sex, income, demographics)?

* Is the most common word in all your marketing “You”? If not – get rid of all the “I”, “We”, “Us” etc – they do not care about you! All they care about is what you can do for them.

* Do you have testimonials in everything that your prospects and customers see?

* Do you follow up with your prospects and clients at least once a month?  Remember that there are totally different messages you want to send to your prospects and to your existing clients.

Try this out in the next month – and let me know your results.   Troy

May
26

Your USP – fact or fiction?

By | Copywriting

Are you dramatically different?

One of the best books you will ever discover to help you grow your business is Doug Hall’s “Jump Start Your Business Brain”. It is an underground classic that is absolutely wonderful advice – it is the book that helped me break free of mediocrity into a life I absolutely love.

One of his biggest points in the book is how you can create a company that is dramatically different than any, and every, competitor in your marketplace.

It doesn’t sound easy at first.

Honestly, how many hairdressers or dry cleaners or grocery stores are there in your city that are DRAMATICALLY different?

Few and far between.

In fact, it appears to me that most business owners lose all sense of creativity when they start their business.

The typical process they go through?

Look at what all their competitors do, where they advertise, the types of advertisements they run, the marketing materials they use, the web sites they have… and then they

COPY everyone else.

Open your yellow pages for proof… in house painting or carpet cleaning… what is DRAMATICALLY different? Or any section for that matter.

How do you create a dramatic difference in your business?

And why should this be considered important?

First, having a dramatic difference gives you a 353% better chance of succeeding (based on thousands of business success stories being ran through a computer model Doug Hall invented). That alone should be enough.

So – tripling your odds of making your business the leader in your industry is all you need to know at this point.

NOTE: 80% of copycats end up failing in their business – so this is very important.

Now, let’s get into how to create your own dramatic difference.

1) list out all your biggest benefits you provide right now. If you struggle with this – list out all your features on the left side of the page then the benefit of that on the right.

2) list out your competitors biggest benefits as well – same method.

3) cross out the benefits on your list that are the same as your competitors.

(great service is not a benefit – everyone says that – unless you do something different with your service offerings)

4) is there anything left over? If so, you have the start of a dramatic difference. If no, you need to get real serious about this. If your customers can’t tell the difference between you and your competitors you are in trouble (and they judge this by this same process – who appears to be different or better?)

5) Can you create a dramatic difference from this so far?

Can you answer - ” is the first to offer _________ in this industry” or “What makes different is that we are the only company out there that offers _________”?

Write out 5 answers to each of those.

Does it SHINE?

Or does it suck?

If your statement doesn’t leap off the page as a big breakthrough – keep working on it. What could make your difference 10 TIMES greater than all your competitors?

With so many daily distractions in front of your potential customers – you have to create a MASSIVE difference in their eyes.

What would make them stop everything they are doing to visit your store, read your ad, or answer your letter to them?

Find a way to become dramatically different and you will succeed. Probably the best way to find your own dramatic difference is to look at what your competitors are doing – and do the opposite! And the easiest way to do the opposite is to look at OTHER industries to see what they do differently than you do – THEN find a way to use their difference in your own business.

Ø If you paint houses – copy the service ideas behind cleaning companies, window cleaners, tree trimmers.

Ø If you run an accounting firm – copy the service ideas behind printing companies, marketing consultants, house painters, car detailers.

Ø If you run an information product business – copy the service ideas behind luxury property rentals, artists, paving companies, fence builders, moving companies or pizza delivery companies.

YES – these are completely off-the-wall, unbelievably abstract ideas.

That’s the point!

Find out what works best in other industries (stands out as the most bizarre way to do business in your own industry) – and copy that idea. Try it out for a few months and see how people respond.

You will be pleasantly surprised.

Apr
29

13 Marketing Tips for Small Business

By | Copywriting, Marketing on the web

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THE LUCKY 13…

Here are 13 things you need to check through to make sure you have implemented them ALL in your business.

1. Create a great USP – something that stands out and tells your clients why you are not only the best choice, but the only choice in their purchasing decision.

2. Keep it simple.  Can a grade 8 read and understand what it is you are saying in your promotions? If not, go back and simplify it.

3. Educate them – tell them about you, your business, what it does and how it does it – and – MOST IMPORTANTLY – why they should even care!

4. Ask the prospect/client to take action right now. Any action – buy, phone, email, signup – whatever your marketing message is – make sure it contains something they should take action on.

5. Why should they believe you? The prospects you are targeting WILL distrust you.  It is a fact of life.  You need to overcome this distrust with proof that you deliver (testimonials, case studies, pictures, professional sources, anything and everything that shows you are the best at what you do)

6. “What’s new?” is something your prospects AND clients want to ask and know.  You must give them compelling reasons to buy – buy again – and spend more each time. And you can’t do that by boring them – what is NEW in your business? Your offering? Your client success stories?  New bundles of products or seasonal promotions? Tell them what is new in your personal life. Make sure they have a good reason to
read what you are writing!

7. Make sure everything you do is designed to get their contact information.  From your business cards to your letterhead, to your advertising and website – everything must present a compelling case as to why they should give you their contact information.  And when they do – FOLLOW UP!

8. Find ways to raise your prices and offer an upsell every time they go to make a purchase.  There is ample proof that you can double your prices and not lose a significant number of buyers – as long as you make the reason compelling enough as to why they should pay the higher price – and what you offer in return.

9. Call everyone (or hire professionals to do it on your behalf) AFTER your direct mail efforts – it will increase your response by a huge margin.

10. Find people to joint venture with and cross-promote to their lists and your own.

11. Make sure your clients and prospects KNOW you appreciate them. They pay the bills – so make sure they are constantly told that you value them.

12. Invest a substantial amount of your time developing good higher end products for your clients. Either on your own or through partners, you need to present them options at higher prices and better bundles of products and services. A one-time buyer is twice as likely as a prospect to buy again, and at a higher price. A two time buyer three times as likely… and so on. Your entire goal is to get them to buy once then offer them multiple options to buy again, and again.

13. The greatest way to get referrals is by being the best-of-the-best. Make it so they would feel guilty for NOT telling their friends, family and business associates about you.  Be the ONLY one they would through excellence. And again, you have to ASK them to refer their friends and family.  They may do it on their own – but chances are they don’t feel comfortable doing it.  But if you position so there is something in it for them, and for those who they refer – they are much more likely to actually do it.

Here’s to you cranking up the heat on your marketing!

Troy White