Archive for the ‘... on Marketing’ Category
How the Fun Factor Affects Consumer Behaviour
You know it - doing business with certain retailers, suppliers or service providers (especially the Government) can be boring. Yes?
But what if there was a way to turn those mundane parts of the transaction into fun experiences for your customers? How would it make them feel? And how would that feeling affect your sales, the mood of your people, and your lives in general?
In a previous blog I spoke about “touch points” or “moments of truth”. The way your customer experiences your brand at each touch point has a large bearing on the perception of your organisation and whether or not they purchase from you or stay loyal to you. Make it fun at each touch point and you’re onto a winner.
Many companies have a “boring” or even potentially frustrating step in any transaction. It might be …
Recession-Busting Tips From a Billionnaire
Who better to give advice on how to survive and thrive in the recession, than one of Australia’s most successful business powerhouses, Gerry Harvey of Harvey Norman?
These are Gerry’s tips as reported in the March edition of “In the Black” magazine.
1.Constantly monitor business performance. Check the numbers in earnings, revenue, volumes, margins, customers, clients, appointments. Compare the latest numbers to the previous month and a year ago.
2. Reduce uncomfortably high debt quickly. Work hard to achieve this objective. Find efficiencies and cut costs. Too much debt makes it difficult to borrow later.
3. Plan ahead. Be flexible. A business must be able to adapt to changing economic circumstances quickly, whether good or bad.
4. Top customer service is paramount and generates return business. Satisfied customers generate free, word-of-mouth advertising.
5. Be confident. Do your own research and trust your judgment. You know your business best, its strengths and its weaknesses.
Be decisive. Make decisions. If the plan is not working, don’t hesitate to change it. Cut your losses.
6. Chase customer feedback. Constructive criticism can help improve your business.
7. Know your staff and their strengths and weaknesses. Set realistic targets. Put the right people in the right jobs and business will improve.
8. Educate staff. Keep staff fully trained in an ever-changing world. Encourage staff to specialise. It will pay dividends.
The Proof Element On Steroids
One of my long time copywriting and marketing clients is Rob Nixon, who is one of the country’s leading advisors and business coaches to the accounting profession. I’ve just spent four days at Rob’s coaching club conference in Queenstown New Zealand interviewing his clients.What I have experienced is one of the best examples of “the proof element” I’ve ever seen.
What Can the Biggest Loser Teach Us about Business and Marketing?
In Australia, series 4 of the “Biggest Loser” television show has just commenced. What happened in last night’s episode was a great reflection of what happens to most of us in business, and especially in marketing.
The contestants had to race from Fitzroy Island to Manly (in Sydney). They touched down at Sydney airport and ran directly to a Biggest Loser table where they had to select a mode of transport voucher of their choice – bus, train, ferry, $20 or a “hitchhiking” sign.
Sexy NOT Sexist Advertising At Its Best
Ah, the masters of creating attraction in the marketplace, Virgin, are at it again with their latest television advertisement celebrating 25 years of being in the air. This ad is a flashback to the 1980’s featuring Virgin Atlantic flight attendants walking through an airport.
Notice how most people featured in the commercial (excluding the Virgin crew) are just slightly dishevelled and unglamourous, the colours of the footage are all muted. Then in come the crew, perfectly groomed and super glamourous. The TVC starts out with depressing news of a miner’s strike and ends with every man and woman in that airport either wanting the hosties, wanting to be them or wanting to fly Virgin.
Sexy or sexist?
Read the rest of this entry »
How Recession-Proof Is Your Business?
aWith the economy taking a nose-dive and business getting tougher than ever, many small business owners are worrying about whether they are going to survive the tough times or how they can survive the tough times.
Here’s a quick self-analysis checklist to determine how “at risk” your business is.
1. RecessionProof businesses monitor and measure their sales conversions. They make the most from every sales opportunity that walks through their doors.
A Marketing Lesson from JK Rowling’s “Tales of Beedle the Bard”
The Harry Potter books were such a phenomenom that the latest offering by its author JK Rowling, “Tales of Beedle the Bard” hasn’t even hit the shelves yet and it’s already no. 1 on Amazon’s best seller list.
Why is that? You don’t need to be a genius to work out that it’s because the Harry Pot ter and by association, JK Rowling brand are so hugely popular, consumers just want more of anything she has to offer. She could write a couple of paragraphs on a serviette and have that printed and it would be a best seller for months.
The Marketing Law of Fence Jumping
In a face-to-face sales presentation, prospects inevitably have certain objections or fears about buying a particular product or service, AND/OR about selecting the most qualified supplier.
A skilled salesperson is a master at overcoming these objections. The challenge is, when you write copy you don’t have the luxury of knowing how people are feeling about your sales message. With that, it’s important to overcome any objections in your copy, in advance, before they get to the end.
Long Copy vs Short Copy: The Truth
It’s a highly contentious issue and some people will fight with me on this topic and swear that it can’t possibly be true.
As strange as it may sound, as far-fetched as it may sound, as logic-defying as it may sound, even in today’s busy, frenetic society I assure you this IS true.
Long copy DOES sell and in this article I’ll show you why.
Not only does it sell for internet marketers and in online sales letters, or in mail order, I’ve personally seen long copy also sell for wedding florists, for gyms, for mortgage brokers, for financial planners, car exhaust repairers, shopfitters, educational institutions, banks, insurers, funeral homes, recruitment consultants, real estate agents, weight loss centres, printers, for cosmetics … and many hundred other businesses.
3 Important Marketing Lessons from Advertising Legend, Claude Hopkins
Claude Hopkins is widely recognised as the father of advertising. His insights are so simple yet so profound and they apply just as well today as they did decades ago when they were first used.
Here are three lessons, in Claude’s own words. Please note that due to the era that it was written in, the language may be a little dated and that he uses the word “man” instead of “people”.
Sales Letter Surgery
If you’re in an industry that relies on securing an appointment to get a sale (and even if you aren’t) this article will be of particular interest.
Lets say that over the course of the day, you send out 10 cold appointment letters, and from those 10 you end up with 1 luke warm appointment.
By tweaking certain elements of your approach it’s quite simple to double or even quadruple your responses. The elements that affect your results include:
Here are some examples of winning copy approaches.
How to Write Hypnotic Copy That Connects With Your Reader’s Soul
Ever wondered why some copy writers manage to write sales-pulling copy again … and again … and again? Well … keep reading.
By the time you get to the end of this article you will have a clear … crystal clear … picture of what their secret really is.
If you are like me you are always looking for new ways to increase your marketing response. Increase your profits.
Well … congratulations are in order. The very fact that you are sitting here reading this article means Read the rest of this entry »
12 Questions to Ask When Deciding on a Copywriter
1. Strategic ability- Is their strategic thought behind their creative processes or are they being creative purely for the sake of being creative?
2. Does their work embody “salesmanship in print” or are they simply creative writers?
3. Do they have the ability to write in different styles so they can adapt their writing to suit a particular industry?
4. Does the copywriter have the ability to visualise and communicate a concept to the designer?
5. Market research - How will they “get to know” your target market? Will it be guesswork? Will it be based on experience? OR will they roll up their sleeves and interview your clients?
Proposals That Sell … What Goes Inside Them, How To Write Them, How To Cut Your Preparation Time In Half
“Yep!” Preparing proposals is enough to make most people cringe. They take too long to prepare. They’re absolutely boring to write and a real pain in the neck.
Sound familiar?
Having said all that, proposals have an enormous bearing on whether or not someone is going to buy from you, so it makes sense to ensure that your proposal sells. The only problem with doing that is “normally” to create a really “flash” proposal takes time and that’s something that most people simply don’t have to spare.
If you’ve tried proposal templates before in an effort to save time, you’ll know that unless it easily customisable, the document comes out looking like an unpersonalised template which can leave a bad taste in your prospects’ mouths.
Inside this article I’ll show you how to create a winning proposal that can have a dramatic effect on your conversion rates and then how to create a “template” so it looks as if you’ve written it from scratch for
each individual prospect.
Writing Web Copy That SELLS - Is It Really That Far Removed From Traditional “Offline” Copywriting?
Whoever said “long copy” doesn’t work on the web obviously doesn’t know how to sell online. In fact, online marketers are making an absolute fortune with web pages spanning 1200 or more words used to sell their software and manual products.
There’s an internet marketing expert in the States who went from zip to millionaire just by promoting a book on car secrets via a very wordy online sales letter. He is now recognised as perhaps the world leading expert in internet marketing. His name is Corey Rudl.
The copy on our product pages is equally as long … and it works, delivering us many thousands of dollars in product sales without any offline promotion.
“How to Create a Sales Explosion With Every Ad and Letter You Write”
“Welcome on Board Employee Induction Kit”
“Marketing Manager’s Toolkit”
“Tenders that Sell”
The key is to get to the point early … you can have long copy on your website BUT (and I stress BUT) make sure the beginning of your message gets to the point quickly. That’s where you can lose people. It’s vitally important that you hook them quickly by offering strong “hit them in the face” benefits.
How to Double The Power Of PR Using The Internet
Whether you engage a PR consultancy to get PR exposure or you write and submit your own press releases, here’s a way to generate much more exposure with minimal effort.
We all know that if you blanket broadcast a press release to every editor under the sun (whether or not your article is appropriate for their readers), is the quickest way to see you burn those contacts. That’s a given. Having said that, there are numerous, targeted ways to increase your press release coverage in a targeted way, over the Internet.
How to Turn the Biggest Skeptics Into Eager Buyers
When making a purchasing decision, people have their “rip off radars” on high beam and rightly so. They’re wary and so they should be — after all, they’re about to spend money so they want to be sure they’re not going to get ripped off, AND they want to be sure they’re going to get the absolute best return on their advertising dollar.
Anyone can claim something generates great results. And they often do.
Here are some ways to dissolve scepticism and prove your claims:
The “What If” Communication Technique That Wakes Up People’s Brains And Excites Them
Have you ever noticed that some people are great at remembering people’s names and phone numbers, while others seem to be hopeless at it?
That’s because everyone learns things in a different way. In fact, when it comes to learning new things, everyone perceives information in different ways.
Everyone processes information in different ways.
Everyone applies information in different ways.
And everyone integrates information in different ways.
When you understand the secrets of how the human brain works … when you communicate in a style that “wakes up” people’s brains, they take more notice … they remember what they read … they store it in their long-term memory.
AND, here’s what’s even more significant for you as a copywriter …
