Archive for the ‘Copywriting’ Category

Last week I had a great one-on-one “Breakthrough Session” with one of our Main Street Inner Circle members.  We covered a lot on the call, including the key obstacles preventing her from hitting her 12-month goals.  One obstacle in particular stands out because it’s a universal problem across businesses.

The obstacle was identifying her ideal customer.  Do you really know who your ideal customer is?  And I mean REALLY know.

Think critically about your answer and don’t accept a vague categorization like “anyone with a clogged drain.” We’re not talking about anyone who would or could purchase your product or service.  We’re talking about your absolute dream customer.  Who is that person? What does she do for work and for fun? Where does she live? Or is it a he?

In our AdWords Jumpstart class, we spend a LOT of time in the first couple weeks working on what’s called your “customer avatar.”  That’s because your entire advertising and marketing is built around your ideal customer.  You simply cannot be successful in any marketing campaign until you complete this first step.

Your Ideal Customer Determines…

As I just mentioned, the first step in any marketing campaign is to identify your ideal customer.  Let’s look closer at how this step impacts the rest of your decisions as you build your campaign.

Your ideal customer determines…  your targeting options.  If your ideal customer is not searching in search engines like Google to find your products or services, then SEO is not a good option for you.  Or if you know your ideal customer spends a lot of time on Facebook, then social media marketing and advertising may be good strategies.  It’s pretty obvious that the only way to know which targeting options are a good fit for your business is to first know exactly who you’re trying to reach.

Your ideal customer determines… your front-end offer.  You first must know exactly who you’re selling to before you can expect to create an irresistible offer.  Different people have different wants, needs, problems, fears, goals, desires, buying power, price sensitivity, etc.  So the only way to craft the best offer is to laser focus on your target.

Your ideal customer determines… the social proof you highlight.  Again, in AdWords Jumpstart, I cover the importance of using social proof from customers who closely resemble your ideal customer.  That way, the testimonials have the biggest impact.

Your ideal customer determines… your advertising and website copy.  Ads and websites targeting stay-at-home moms will certainly look and read differently from ads and websites targeting single, young professional men — right?

Your ideal customer determines… EVERYTHING!  I think you get the picture that this list could go on forever.  If you’re not absolutely clear on who your ideal customer is, then take some time this week to get more clarity.  This will help you make better decisions with everything else you set up in your marketing system.

Before you create any kind of marketing campaign, the first question you should ask is…

Who Is Your Target Prospect?

It’s easy to get lazy and say “Well, I want to sell more stuff, so my target prospect is anybody who would buy my stuff…”

But come on, let’s be honest — if you’re aiming for “anybody,” you’re not aiming.

Instead, you are taking the “spray and pray” approach (and that’s NEVER the best approach…)

Why I Love Direct Mail

I never fully appreciated how important the concept of “choosing a target market” was until I was planning my first direct mail campaign some years ago.

Direct mail is such a great way to learn marketing principles because real money is on the line. You’re forced to make decisions, and you gain clarity. If you don’t make smart decisions with direct mail, you will lose your shirt.

I really wanted to try direct mail, but I was nervous about losing money, so I was very careful about selecting the right prospect list. Here’s a really basic run-down of how I went about the selection process:

1. I made a list of all the types of prospects who could conceivably be interested in my product.

2. I prioritized again based on number of prospects available. (In other words, traffic potential.)

3. I prioritized based on who seemed most likely to buy. (In other words, conversion potential)

After going through that research, I selected a very specific audience that I thought had the highest likelihood of wanting to buy my product. And I’m happy to report that as a result of this careful planning (and, I’ll be honest, some luck), my first direct mail campaign squeaked by with a slight profit.

I didn’t exactly strike it rich with the campaign (if I remember correctly, I think I spent about $600 and brought in $800), but I did learn a very valuable lesson in the planning process.  And I want to make sure that you learn this lesson, too, even if you never plan to use direct mail in your business.

Lesson: All prospects are NOT created equal. It always pays to focus.

Here’s What To Do Now

I’m going to assume you’ve got a product or service that you’re selling, you’ve already got some customers — and you want more customers.

Well, I’m a big believer in identifying what’s already working and then simply doing more of what’s working.

So, here’s the question you should answer: What type of customer is currently spending the most money with you?

Think about that question, analyze whatever customer data you have, and then create a detailed customer profile that’s representative of your target prospect.

Next, focus your traffic efforts (your ads, etc) around that target audience, so you can attract more of your ideal prospects.

And then, tailor your marketing messages specifically to that target prospect, so you’ll increase your response rates.

I know, this is “Marketing 101″… and it probably sounds overly simple, and that’s because it IS simple. But no matter how sophisticated or experienced you are, it’s always a good idea to step back periodically and make sure you’re connecting with the right prospects.

We’re going to have some fun with marketing today. :)

I’ll show you how a silly cartoon can help you increase response to your marketing messages AND generate more testimonials and referrals from happy customers…

But First, Some Bad News

Your customers are selfish! They don’t care about you, your company or your products and services. All they care about is themselves.

Your customers are constantly asking the question…

“What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM)

You’re the same way, and so am I. We’re all asking this WIIFM question whenever we see an ad or hear a sales pitch.

You must have a good answer to WIIFM in order to get your prospect’s attention.

And then, you must deliver results. Remember, all your customer cares about is getting results.

OK, you’re all caught up.

Now it’s time to have some fun with marketing :)

Create Your Marketing Cartoon

Step 1. Take out a blank white sheet of paper and a pen, and turn the paper sideways so it’s horizontal.

Step 2. Draw a little circle on the left-hand side, and a circle on the right-hand side, and then connect them with a straight line across the page.

Step 3. Draw a stick figure (representing your customer) on the left, and fill in what your prospect or customer is currently thinking.

Step 4. Draw a stick figure on the right, and fill in the result your customer wants to get.

Step 5. Fill in the milestones your customer will need to achieve (or roadblocks he’ll need to overcome) in order to arrive at his desired result.

Here’s my example:

In this example, I’m helping a customer with SEO.

His current situation is that he wants to get ranked in Google. And his desired end result is that he’s ranking #1 in Google.

And so, it’s my job to guide him through the 3 major milestones to get ranked in Google:
1. Research: keyword research
2. Relevance: optimizing your website so it’s relevant to your target keywords
3. Reputation: building links and doing other things to increase your website’s authority

By drawing this kind of cartoon, you’ll get a clearer idea for what’s going on in your prospect’s head, so you can get his attention and make the sale…

Plus, you’ll get a clearer idea of the steps you must take get your customer the results he’s looking for.

Here’s What To Do Now

Grab a piece of paper and a pen and take a few minutes to draw a cartoon like this for YOUR customer!

The other day, I received a letter in the mail and I didn’t respond.  And in today’s article, I want to explain why I didn’t respond.

Business owners and marketers spend a lot of time trying to get people to respond, but they spend too little time addressing the many reasons why people don’t respond. If you want to increase response, you also need to plug the holes in your bucket.

So, I got this letter from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Let me show it to you, so you can see what it was like for me to receive this letter in the mail…

Here’s the envelope (my name and address appeared in the plastic window – I removed that part)

Here’s the letter:

I realize it’s probably hard to read the text in the image above, so here’s how the letter begins:

“Be the FIRST to experience phenomenal works of art… and get two museums for the price of one.”

“When you’re a member of the Fine Arts Museums, you can be among the first in the Bay Area to experience remarkable exhibitions…”

OK, so what’s the problem here?

No “Reason Why”

Whenever you receive mail from somebody you don’t know personally, what’s your first question?

That’s right. You want to know “Why am I getting this?  How did they get my name?”

The Fine Arts Museums did NOT answer that question. They ignored Robert Collier’s famous advice to “enter the conversation in the prospect’s mind.” Instead, they just launched into their offer without connecting it to me and my personal situation.

Here’s what the Fine Arts Museums could have written to me if they wanted to convince me (personally) to read their letter and then respond to their membership offer…

“Why am I writing to you?

I was comparing records with my friends over at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in Manhattan and they said you were a member there a few years ago. I looked you up and saw that you recently moved to San Francisco, and you haven’t joined our museums.

Also, a little birdie told me that your parents were recently visiting you in San Francisco — and they visited our museums and LOVED them but you still haven’t been once…

And I want to fix that, right now.  I’m writing you today to give you a special offer on our membership.

Here’s my offer to you: Join as a member today and you’ll be able to visit our museums as many times as you like over the next 2 months for FREE.   I’m willing to make that offer because I know that once you see all the amazing exhibits we have, you’ll want to keep coming back again and again, month after month, year after year.

After all… Don’t you want your 2-month old son Ian to be exposed to fine art so he grows up to be a perfect little cultured gentleman?”

If they had written that to me, I’d probably be a member right now.

Now, obviously, I was having a little fun there. There’s no way that the Fine Arts Museums could have known all of that about me or my parents, etc. But they could have said something to tie the letter and membership offer to me personally. After all, there IS a reason why they’re writing to me, isn’t there?

They’re not writing to every name in the phone book or else they’d go broke. They got my name and address somehow, and they think there’s a good reason why I’d be interested in their offer — otherwise they wouldn’t be spending the $1 to send this letter.

And for these reasons, they should explain why they’re writing to me and why I should take advantage of their offer.

Big Lesson: As advertising man John E. Kennedy explained over 100 years ago, you should always reveal your “reason why” — why you’re contacting your prospects or customers, why you’re making a special offer, why there’s a discount, why there’s a deadline, etc. — in order to decrease skepticism and increase engagement with your message.

I don’t want to be too harsh. The letter wasn’t all bad. There was a special offer for new members (although it could have been stronger).  But, for me at least, this letter didn’t do its job.

It didn’t sell me. Instead, it left me wondering why I got the letter. It left me alone to try and sell myself on why I should join. If I was going to sign up, I had to connect the dots. And that’s too much work — I’ve got too much else going on in my life to sell myself on signing up for this.

Maybe I’ll visit and join at some point… But I’ll go when I want to go, not when they want me to go — and that means, from a direct-response standpoint, this letter failed (at least for me).

I’ll tweet this out to the social media folks over the Fine Arts Museums (@deyoungmuseum, @legionofhonor) and see what they think of my direct mail tips. Maybe the social media people will talk to the direct mail people and they’ll consider some of my advice here.  I’ll be watching to see what they send me next… :)

Pete

P.S. Can you spot any other major “mistake” or weakness in this mailing or reason why I might not have responded? I’ll give you a hint: the late great Gary Halbert would not be impressed… I’ll follow up with another article next week to reveal my other big suggestion for boosting response from this mailing.

If you’ve ever invested time or money into your marketing, then you know that there’s a lot of risk involved. And in today’s article, I’m going to give you one of my favorite tips for minimizing marketing risk.

But first, a quick story to set the stage…

At a marketing conference many years ago, I attended a workshop by David Bullock and Jerry West about how to create a profitable Google AdWords campaign from scratch. That’s where I first heard of the concept of congruence in advertising. But I also learned another, equally important concept that day:

“Get out of your office and talk to real people in the real world. It’s not only good for your health, it’s great for your marketing.”

Back to the story…

David and Jerry were building a Google AdWords campaign to sell a woman’s skin cream, as an affiliate (which means that if a website visitor purchased the product based on their recommendation, David and Jerry would earn a commission on the sale). The workshop presentation was a case study of their ability to create a brand new campaign from scratch and generate a profit on their ads.

The catch? They were creating an ad campaign in a market they’ve never competed in before, and knew nothing about.

David and Jerry aren’t women’s skin cream customers. They had no prior experience selling skin cream.  They were at a competitive disadvantage in the market — they were basically clueless going into the test. And yet, they still managed to create a successful campaign.

How did they do it?

They entered the real world and talked to representative customers — women shopping at the cosmetics counter at a department store. They surveyed women and asked what they were looking for in a beauty cream.

As a result, David and Jerry gained confidence that the product they were promoting could be a winner — it had many of the attributes that real women were looking for. Most importantly, they now know how to correctly position the product so it would sell. Specifically, David and Jerry took notice of the exact words and expressions that many women in the department store used — and they “mirrored” those phrases back to website visitors in their Google ads and landing page copy.

By speaking to representative customers in the real world, David and Jerry were able to create a connection between their market and their advertising messages. And in order for your marketing to be effective, you need to connect. There needs to be a “click” between what people want and what you have to offer. Dan Kennedy calls this message-to-market match. This concept probably sounds obvious, but it’s so incredibly important. Without a strong match, your marketing messages will fail.

When you’re struggling to get your marketing to connect, it can feel like you’re playing darts with a blindfold on. You’re trying to hit the target, but you don’t really know where it is… and as a result, it feels like you’re just gambling with your time and money. One of the best ways to remove the blindfold and minimize your risk is to get out into the real world, talk with real people, and listen to what they have to say.

Here are 3 ways to use “real world” interactions to improve the performance of your marketing messages.

1. Go on a Field Trip

You can copy David and Jerry’s example, and go on a field trip to survey some potential customers in person. And by “survey,” I don’t necessarily mean having people write down responses in written format. If I remember correctly, David and Jerry recorded conversations with people, and then got them transcribed. And I believe that they provided participants with some kind of gift (cash or gift certificate) for their time.

2. Pay Close Attention When Networking

Networking can be another good way to find your message-to-market match. And this tip is especially important if you are not in a business with regular 1-on-1 sales conversations with prospects. Go to networking events where representative customers may be present. As you’re speaking with people, people will naturally ask you what you do. When you reply, pay attention to the responses you get, and experiment with different answers. When you give a particular response, do people’s eyes glaze over, or are you keeping their attention?

3. Record and “Clone” Your Sales Pitch

Here’s a tip I learned from Gary Halbert. If you regularly have 1-on-1 sales conversations, then — with their permission — record your sales calls or presentations, and then get them transcribed. Pay attention to the order and sequence of your presentation.  Also, pay attention to the objections that your prospect raises, and how you answer them.  Review your successful presentations, and see what the commonalities are. Then, use this language as the basis for your marketing and advertising messages.

How will you know when you’ve found your message-to-market match? It’ll be obvious. You’ll instantly see stronger response rates to your advertising and marketing, and you’ll start attracting more customers than ever!  When you’re testing different appeals and messages in the market, it’s not uncommon to have one message “out-pull” another by a factor of 2X or more. So get out there into the real world and start hunting for your message-to-market match!

Do you remember the scene in Office Space when the consultant, Bob Slydell, is interviewing employees to figure out who they should keep and who they should fire?  Bob asks the squirrely employee, Tom Smykowski, “What would ya say you do here?” and Tom simply could not articulate how he provided ANY value to the company.  And eventually Tom flipped out and yelled at Bob, “Well look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don’t have to!”

It’s a hilarious scene and it illustrates an important skill every business owner must master – how to answer the question, “What do you do?”

It sounds so simple, but those 4 words can wreak havoc on your business if you haven’t spent enough time thinking through your answer.  Many people refer to this concept as an “Elevator Pitch” because you’re supposed to be able to complete your answer within the time it takes to go up or down the elevator with a prospect.

Crafting a great elevator pitch is similar to defining your unique selling proposition, or USP.  Both require a complete understanding of your business, your competitors, and your target customers.  And both will evolve over time as you test and refine your message.

If you think you already have a solid elevator pitch, please share it in the comments below. And if you need help, then here are 3 exercises to get you started.

1. Define Your Ideal Customer

The most important step is to first define your ideal customer.  It’s impossible to create a great elevator pitch if you skip this step because you won’t know who you’re trying to attract to your business.  Trying to be all things to everybody is one of the fastest ways to failure.

Don’t just define a type of customer.  Try to think of one real existing customer and list everything you know about him or her.  If necessary, survey this customer over the phone, in person, or via an online questionnaire.  The goal is to get as many details as possible so you can clearly define who your customer is and what she’s thinking.

For example, here are some questions you may want to ask or research on your own:

• Where do you live (city or suburbs, house or apartment, east or west coast)?
• Are you married? Any children?
• How old are you?
• Where do you work (blue or white collar, industry, self employed, or unemployed)?
• What books or magazines do you read?
• What do you do for fun outside of work? Or what are your hobbies?
• What are you trying to accomplish by using my product or service?

As you gather more information you will start to develop your ideal client avatar, which will be used in your elevator pitch.  For example, a dog trainer might determine her ideal customer is a frustrated new puppy owner living in the city.  In this case, the elevator pitch may start with “I help frustrated new puppy owners who live in the city…”

2. List Customer Problems

The next set of questions are geared toward identifying the #1 problem your customer is trying to solve.  So you should ask:

• What are a few of the problems you’re trying to solve with [insert your product/service]?
• How do these problems affect your personal life, relationship, and work life?
• What other solutions have you tried in the past?

For many new puppy owners, the #1 problem is housetraining.  So based on these answers we might tweak our elevator pitch to be, “I help frustrated new puppy owners quickly housetrain their dog…”

3. List Benefits of Your Solution

The final step is to identify and list all of the benefits of your solution.  Questions to ask include:

• What will your life be like when you solve this problem?
• How will solving this problem affect you and your family?

In our example, a housetrained puppy means less cleaning and no more worrying when the dog is left alone for a few hours.  So our elevator pitch can be refined even further to be, “I help frustrated new puppy owners quickly housetrain their dog so they stop wasting their free time cleaning and spend more time playing.”

So What Would Ya Say You Do?

If you just went through the 3 exercises above and you want to get feedback, then post your elevator pitch in the comments below.

Over the past couple months I’ve been reviewing a lot of our customers’ websites and I’m seeing the same mistakes again and again.

The 3 most common websites mistakes I see are:

1. No compelling offer
2. No clear call to action
3. No lead generation

If you’re making these same mistakes then you could be losing sales every day without even knowing it.  And in this article I’ll explain how to fix these problems, so you start generating more leads and sales from your website every day.

No Compelling Offer

The #1 website mistake I see is not having a compelling offer prominently displayed on the website.  Without an offer, there’s no urgency for the prospect to contact you immediately.  And if your prospect doesn’t contact you right away and instead clicks to another website, then she is probably lost forever.  It’s just too easy to shop around and everyone has ADD when it comes to surfing online.

You need an offer that your prospect can’t refuse, so you don’t miss out on the fleeting opportunity to make a sale.  This is what we call an “irresistible offer” and every website needs one.

An irresistible offer should include as many of the following components to increase your website conversions:

• Name your offer (i.e. if you’re a dentist, then you may offer a special “Summer Smile Cleaning & Whitening”)
• Define the price (i.e. normally $300)
• Guarantee (i.e. whiter smile or your money back)
• Reason for your offer (i.e. look great in your summer photos)
• Deadline (i.e. offer ends Labor Day)
• Call to action (i.e. Call 555-555-5555 to schedule your Summer Smile Cleaning & Whitening today)

Go through the list above and think about what you can offer to your prospects to get more of them to contact you from your website.

No Clear Call to Action

The second mistake is not having a clear call to action.  Some businesses take time to create great offers for their prospects, but all that work is wasted because it’s not obvious how to contact the business.

There’s a great book about website usability that I recommend every serious online marketer and business owner read called, Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.  As the name suggests, it’s all about how you want to design your websites so your visitor does NOT even have to think about what to do.  If your visitor gets confused, then she’s going to quickly leave and find another website (i.e. your competitors).

You need to make your website brain-dead simple and ensure your call to action is glaringly obvious.  That means your offer and directions (e.g. to call or complete a web form) should be prominently displayed “above the fold” – which means your prospect doesn’t have to scroll down in their browser.

To test your call to action, I recommend you stand up and walk about 10 feet away from your computer monitor.  Then look to see if you can see your offer and call to action.  If you can’t, make it larger and more obvious on the page.

No Lead Generation

The third mistake is not using a “lead magnet” to generate more leads on your website.  A lead magnet can be a free report, video, webinar, coupon, demo, or anything else that has enough value to your prospects that they will give you contact information in exchange for the “lead magnet.”

The fact is, the vast majority of people who visit your website will NOT be ready to buy from you.  That means your irresistible offer might not make sense at the time they stumble across your website.  For example, the dentist offering the “Summer Smile Cleaning & Whitening” deal is great for prospects looking for a dentist. However, some prospects are not quite ready to schedule an appointment, but they would complete a webform to receive a free report called, “5 Tips to a Brighter Smile.”

Once your prospect enters her email, then you can follow up to nurture the lead until she is ready to schedule an appointment.  Not only do you collect valuable contact information, but you also position you and your business as the authority in your industry.  So everyone who requests and reads your report will be more likely to do business with you versus all of your competitors.