Donnie Bryant is a direct response copywriter and marketing consultant. He helps small businesses and solo professionals connect with and convert their “should-be” clients with unusually effective marketing messages and systems.
Over the past few months, I’ve been stealing quite a bit.
The guys who run the One Hour Startup have been creating so much great content, and rolling it out so masterfully, I haven’t been able to resist the urge to rip-off some of their ideas. John Breese and Ryan Healy are certified marketing geniuses.
For this weekend only, John and Ryan are leaving the door unlocked and asking people to steal from them. They’ve made their entire array of Kindle books (normally $10) FREE for decisive entrepreneurs and marketers.
If your business can use some breakthrough ideas, it’s time to be decisive. I can’t recommend these resources strongly enough.
Head over to the One Hour Startup $10 Library page to take advantage of this steal of a deal (which they’re calling an “ethical bribe”) before you go to bed Sunday night.
P.S. Don’t forget to check out the Kindle contest OHS is holding. I don’t mean to spoil the surprise, but the winner will receive a rare copy of Ken McCarthy’s final System Seminar from 2011.
Last Tuesday I was a guest on Lunch Money (part of The Million Dollar Trek) with Camari Ellis. It was my first experience with Google Hangouts.
For 89 minutes, we discussed marketing, copywriting, lead generation ideas and why you need to fall in love with your customers. We basically went through the 5 “smooth stone strategies” I talk about in my Beat Goliath report (which you get for free when you sign up for my weekly newsletter. Just enter your name and email address in the boxes to the right.)
We also briefly talked about the Walmart donkey meat fiasco.
For those of you who missed it, here’s the recording of the show.
Funny Side Note:
With this being my first time using Hangouts, I made a pretty embarrassing mistake when I started promoting this show. I created an event on Google+ and shared it with a few hundred people and made it publicly visible. Then, naturally, I included the link to that event in my email newsletter and shared it on Twitter and LinkedIn as well.
The problem is, the Hangout was hosted at the event Camari had created.
For some reason, I thought my Google would figure out what I was trying to do. I figured that once Camari and I were connected, our Hangout events would merge. (Don’t ask me why I thought that.) So I never corrected the problem or redirected people to the correct link.
So there were several people sitting at the Hangout I created and invited them to — without me.
It’s possible to know everything about marketing techniques, strategies and tools and still be a marketing imbecile.
If you don’t understand what makes people tick, you don’t have much going for you. Marketing is about people, not methods. When business people miss this fact, the marketing they produce is usually pretty fragile. Always in danger of falling apart. Susceptible to defeat in the face of opposition or competition.
Fragile marketing is all around us. Here are 4 major symptoms — do your communications suffer from any of them?
1) Price-based messages are fragile
Unless you have no mailbox, TV or internet, you’ve probably seen dozens of advertisements for Black Friday “doorbuster” sales. Doorbusters take urgency to the extreme, offering uber-low prices to drive traffic to stores (or to a lesser extent, websites).
Don’t get me wrong; everyone loves a good deal. But consider the position you put yourself in when you put all your eggs in the low price basket. You have to be cheaper than Walmart. You have to compete with the preponderance of their commercials, too. Is that really the contest you want to participate in?
While this is true all year ’round, consumers (at least here in America) are practically programmed to shop at big box retailers for Black Friday and other commercialized holidays. The retailers spend millions of dollars broadcasting their bottom-basement prices to your customers. The deck is stacked against you.
Remedy
No matter what you sell, if you don’t a) offer something unique, b) make a more persuasive appeal, or c) develop a special relationship with your customers, you lose…
Last week’s newsletter on leadership got a great response. (If you missed it, sucks for you. But you can make sure it doesn’t happen to you in the future by signing up in the box on the right side of the page.)
Positioning yourself as your customers’ leader (and speaking with the voice of authority that comes with it) creates one of the biggest opportunities for business growth I can think of.
According to John Maxwell,“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” If that quote describes you, this message is for you.
If you have clients and customers that you take good care of, you’re already leader. Now you have to work on positioning yourself as their leader. That doesn’t always come naturally.
Here are a few quick thoughts on business growth through customer leadership.
Ask Not What Your Customers Can Do for You…
Last January, Simon Sinek published a book called Leaders Eat Last. I haven’t read the book yet (shame on me), but I remember how the title instantly caught my attention when I first saw it. Those 3 words flesh out the idea that leadership is all about serving others, not about getting other people to follow your commands. (The term servant leadership is somewhat redundant for that reason.)
This is part of the burden of leadership — putting others before yourself is the right thing to do. This means:
offering products and services that your customers want and need, not necessarily what you think is cool right now
a strong commitment to quality and
gutsy guarantees and service after the sale
These will make you a better leader and they will ultimately make your business more profitable.
Leaders Are Architects
To a certain extent, leaders define reality for their followers.
They create a vision of what’s possible, painting a mental picture of all that life can be, all that it should be (at least in a given area).
They empower their followers to take action.
The give them the education and/or tools to make it happen.
Leaders Lead
Education and inspiration are important, but a leader has to go beyond that stage. He should lead by example. He does everything in his power to get his followers to do what he knows is best for them. He holds them accountable to what they’ve committed to do.
It’s one thing to teach your followers about eating healthy food. Educating them is definitely a good thing. But what do they gain if they keep eating junk? It’s a leader’s job to do everything he can to help them make the difficult decision to change.
Leaders can’t cower back. They have to keep pressing forward. Even when it’s dark. Even when they’re unsure of their own qualifications. Their followers depend on them!
Action Steps
1) Decide to adopt a leadership mindset in your industry, your office, your city. Make a commitment to pursue excellence and use whatever influence you have to help your pack move toward a better result in some area.
2) Remember — it’s not about you! Putting the best interest of your followers ahead of your own interests is the right thing to do.
Leaders may chose to eat last, but good leaders will still have plenty on their plates.
3) I’d like to point you to one of the documents that helped crystallize a lot of my thoughts on this topic. It’s an old newsletter article from Jay Abraham on what he calls the strategy of preeminence. If you’re familiar with Jay, you’re familiar with this concept. In this PDF, he covers some specific thoughts that I promise you’ll find enlightening. He’s giving it away for free at his website, no opt-in required. You can download it here.
It’s 4 pages long. Well worth taking the time to read, think about deeply and apply to your business (and life).
We watch a lot of Christmas movies at my house. A lot, like the DVR is 78% full just from Christmas movies.
Most of the time I’m too much of a tough guy (in my own mind) to admit that I like them, but it’s one of the ways my wife and I spend quality time together during the holidays.
Something interesting happened while we were working our way through hours of these movies this year. Some prominent themes jumped out at me as particularly helpful in terms of marketing and business growth. As you’re thinking about resolutions and goals for the new year, these ideas could very well impact how you move forward in 2014. Even if you’re too tough to watch Christmas movies.
1) If It Ain’t Broke…
How many versions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol have been turned into movies (not to mention plays and books)? Dozens.
How many spoofs of the “I wish I’d never been born” motif from It’s a Wonderful Life have you seen?
And I don’t think I can stand to see even one more fake holiday relationship that ends in a marriage proposal on Christmas Eve, followed by the falling of winter’s first snowflakes.
These films are produced year after year after year. And we keep watching them.
One thing that becomes eminently clear as you pay attention what Hollywood is cranking out is that when something works, keep doing it. Too often, entrepreneurs and marketers feel the need to be original and creative. There’s nothing wrong with that desire, but why reinvent the proverbial wheel? The legendary David Ogilvy noted that most marketers “worship at the altar of creativity, which really means originality — the most dangerous word in the lexicon of advertising.” When you have a message that keeps generating the results you want, don’t throw it away until you find something even better. If a marketing channel is producing high return on investment, don’t abandon it to chase after the hot new fad. Always feel free to test, but don’t give up on anything that hasn’t stopped delivering.
Remember, business owners often get bored with their own marketing before their audience does.
Also, consider taking inspiration from what is working for other successful people and businesses. Modeling is one of the fastest ways to create effective systems, products, services and messages. Sometimes taking a shortcut is the smartest thing you can do.
“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” ~ Salvador Dali
2) Envision The Alternative
I can’t tell you how many Christmas films I watched over the past month used the aforementioned motif from It’s A Wonderful Life (or the more recent Family Man). The protagonist has some sort of character flaw or they’re about to make a bad decision when they’re magically transported to an parallel dimension where they’re married instead of single, middle class instead of wealthy, etc. They’re “blessed” with the opportunity to see things how they should/could/would be if they did things differently.
This is precisely the purpose of your marketing. You need to create a vision in the mind of your prospect, showing him how much better his life will be when he starts using your product…how much he’ll miss out on if he will be if he procrastinates…the danger he puts himself in if he trusts the “low cost provider.”
Don’t hand out brochures or send emails or make webpages that simply state cold facts about your business, product, service or founder. Tell stories that paint a picture of the better future that comes along with what you have to offer. Answer the question “what’s in it for me?” thoroughly and vividly, from the perspective of the would-be customer.
“We did this” and “we have that” and “BUY NOW” probably won’t get the job done, especially if you haven’t already established a solid base of happy customers.
3) Don’t Buck Tradition
Christmas has more tradition associated with it than most other holidays, and many of the people who uphold them are borderline fanatical about keeping them. In several of the movies I’ve seen recently, commitment to these traditions often drive the plot forward and add structure, silliness or some other significant element to the story.
Roman poet Ovid noted thousands of years ago that “Nothing is stronger than habit.” Traditions are probably a close second.
Pay attention to your customers’ traditions and habits.
Attach yourself and your products to their currently-existing traditions; take a cue from Maxwell House’s Haggadah.
4)It’s More Blessed to Give than to Receive
When you were a child, the holidays, including your birthday, were all about the presents you were about to get. In adulthood, most of us (especially parents) find that giving is much more satisfying than receiving ever was.
This concept doesn’t always translate easily into the business realm. We operate our businesses to gain a profit. That’s not just the way it is, it’s the way it should be.
But we should not base our decisions primarily on how we can extract the most money from the people we do business with. Rather, we should commit to giving as much value as possible to the other party. Then we set our prices accordingly. Always give more than you plan to get.
On Christmas day, a terrific story about giving was posted online. You really should listen to The Big Give, a 15-minute story by Jim Signorelli. A lot of things come into perspective as you listen to Jim describe one particularly memorable Christmas.
We had our first real snowstorm in the Chicagoland area yesterday.
While I was outside removing snow from the sidewalk and driveway this morning, I felt a little pride. Shoveling is not my favorite activity, but I think I did a pretty good job. I took care of it early so that the kids waiting on school buses wouldn’t have snow invading their shoes, making their Monday morning socks cold and wet. (Mondays are tough enough on school kids anyway, right?) The walkways are well-cleaned and salted to prevent slippery ice patches.
Yeah, I did a pretty good job. I don’t like to brag, but I might even be the best on the block.
Despite the high quality of my work historically, no one’s walked up to me and offered to pay me to shovel the sidewalk in front of his house. I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen, either.
The same is true for your business. No matter how great what you offer is, having a customer randomly approach you with cash in hand is not very likely. Your product or service may even be the “best on the block.”
This is why marketing is so important. You have to tell people who you are, what you do and how choosing you will improve their lives. They need to know why they should do business with you.
A few other thoughts popped into my freezing cranium while I was taking care of my winter duties this morning:
There’s never a shortage of people willing to pay to avoid pain. I can’t think of any surer way to position yourself to win in the marketing game. I mean, who likes to have people ringing their door bells early in the morning? But when he’s offering to relieve you of the necessity to face frostbitten toes, he’s a pretty welcome sight. Think of ways to solve problems or erase pain for your prospects, and you’re well on your way to success.
You don’t have to be the best. You don’t have to be the only person who does what you do, either. How many industrious individuals are out there making money cleaning up snow for other people? Quite a few. There’s plenty of action to go around. Don’t let the fact that you’re not one of the “big dogs” stop you. Davids beat Goliaths every day. Even if they don’t wipe them out completely, lots of them get big enough pieces of the pie to make it worth their while. Never let competition scare you off from chasing your aspirations. Find a chink in their armor, and go for it.
Finding a “hot” market is the best way to go. A snowstorm like this one produces all the ingredients of a hot market. There’s a large group of people facing an ugly problem. Almost no one wants to deal with this problem (who doesn’t hate shoveling snow or scraping ice?), but it has to be resolved. The few people willing and equipped to take on the task have an immense potential to profit. Do you provide an solution to a pain, problem or fear that your core audience feels acutely? Are there enough people in that group for you to generate the kind of revenue you are looking to earn? If so, you have a very solid foundation.
December is a funny time of year. Depending on your seasonality, this could be the busiest time of year or your slowest. But no matter what, targeted marketing gives you opportunities to gain ground as a business, even if it’s just planting seeds that will begin sprouting a few months down the line. Keep at it.
Yesterday’s article prompted response from one of my readers. We’ll call him John. He asked how he can apply the shortcut principle to his reflexology practice, which offers long-term solutions to clients. What follows is my response, almost verbatim.
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A few things come to mind with regard to the shortcut angle. First, let me say that I think your website copy is pretty strong. Addressing the issue up front is almost always a good idea, and I think in your case, it’s absolutely essential.
Now…
There are plenty of products and services that don’t start working right away, right? Even things like medication don’t solve root problems instantly. It’s all about setting expectations. Which is what you’ve started doing on your website. It would probably be helpful to position your services as longer-term processes, just like any other health-related issue. No one gets 6-pack abs in one workout session, right?
One idea that would be particularly effective, I think, would be to give the client something on your first visit that would have an immediate impact. Let me throw a few things out there; your brain can fine-tune and make applications that will work best for you:
Your pre-service consultation is a brilliant idea. Even if it wasn’t necessary, it would be a great idea. If you don’t already do this, you can use that time to come up with a quick (use a template) action plan that shows them the many things that are negatively impacting their health and causing pain/discomfort, things they may not even realize are causing problems. Tell them something shocking or interesting they didn’t know about themselves, their lifestyle or routines.
Of course, in that action plan, you recommend 6 weeks of treatment. Maybe you even use a coupon of some sort to get them to take you up on the 2nd session.
You could create a comprehensive report or booklet that contains highly-useful insights that show the clients the benefits, create realistic expectations in their minds that decrease the likelihood that they’ll give up after the first visit. Education-based selling, per Chet Holmes’ model.
Have you seen those pamphlets doctors give to expecting mothers showing them what’s going on with their bodies and babies over the course of their pregnancy? Can you show/tell clients what begins happening with their bodies during the first session, then what continues happening as they move forward with future treatments? Even if they can’t sense the improvement, if you show them what’s going on and what benefits are beginning to accrue that they’ll see in week 5 and 6, I think they’d be less likely to give up so easily.
Is there something you can do that will make them feel good right away? You mentioned that there are pain medications that will give instant relief, even though they don’t fix anything. What if you had a 10-minute massage to get the client relaxed? People spend big money on massages just for the stress relief and relaxing effect. They often set regular appointments.
Maybe massage is unrealistic, but you see what I’m driving at. You could offer clients mind-blowingly delicious lemonade while they wait, and if it’s good enough, that might be what gets them to say “Hey, I’ll come back next week.“
You may recall the study Cialdini referred to in Influence where gas stations gave a punch card to their customers. One gave a card offering every 8th car wash free, or something. The other offered every 10th one free, but they punched the first 2 spots when they gave the card to the customer. That jump-start toward a goal caused a greater degree of commitment and desire in the customers at the second gas station. The increase in response was remarkable. I don’t remember the details very well, but you see the point. What can you do to get clients to commit in their minds to investing in their own health and well-being by coming back to see you enough times to get the full benefit?
You have testimonials. Can you get video testimonials? Or at least pictures to go with the written ones? Either one of those upgrades will add more credibility and impact to your website.
Do you have any long-term clients? Can you start offering them incentives to spread the word? If they personally recommend your services to people who like them, some of that “liking” will rub off on you. They can also explain that the full effect takes some time to come about, reaffirming the expectations we want to set.
You could try having those long-term clients can refer people by saying something like this. “I’m taking care of the persistent back pain I used to have by visiting (business name). If you need some relief, I think I can get you an appointment, but I’ll only give you his number if you’re prepared to take the process seriously. This isn’t a one-and-done process. John can’t afford to spend his valuable time on building foundations for people who never finish the construction” That’s a bit of an aggressive approach, but it’s effective.
Your services may not be a shortcut in terms of time, but they require less risk than surgery, less side effects than medications and less pain than ignoring the symptoms. When you think of it that way, you’re offering a shortcut through some very undesirable stuff to a better life in less than an hour a session. Sounds good to me!
When Robert Frost wrote about the two roads diverging in the woods, he failed to mention a significant detail. The main reason the more-traveled road was so popular was because it was paved, well-lit and it had signs laid out by the people who made the trek back when it was one of the less-traveled paths.
Those courageous people were entrepreneurs like you.
If you think about it, every single product, service and business is built around providing its customers with shortcuts. They enable their clients do what they want and need to do faster, better and with less effort.
You don’t need to learn about internal combustion engines; you can take your car to the mechanic. Who needs to chop vegetables and boil chicken broth when you can buy a can of soup? Forget driving all the way to the library. Google is waiting for your search inquiry.
People like fast and easy. There’s nothing wrong with that. But what comes easy to some may be incredibly difficult for others. That’s opportunity. Work hard at what comes easier for you than for other people. Use your gifts to help others who aren’t gifted in those areas. Free them to focus on their own strengths and passions.
Very few people want to take the road less-traveled (even if it does make all the difference).
The question is, are you positioning your product or service as the shortcut to the good life? Do your sales and marketing messages help your prospects see all the time they’ll save, all the toil they’ll avoid and the improved quality of life they’ll enjoy when they take the shortcut you provide?
Your homework for the week is to think about how you can clearly communicate this idea to the people you want to do business with.
How do you make a billion dollars in sales without discounts, urgency, a call to action or even appearing to “sell” at all?
It’s not only possible, but it’s a bit of an open secret. It happens somewhat frequently these days — in Hollywood.
I know this about you: you don’t have a Hollywood bank account to spend on advertising. And you know something about me, too. You don’t have to have a 10-figure marketing budget to apply the ideas I’m going to share. Trust me and give me just a few minutes of your time.
This trailer for Man of Steel is a good jumping-off point:
Even though Man of Steel had a $150M marketing allowance, there are some powerful principles you can put into practice for yourself without spending much more on your own marketing. If you do it well, these ideas will more than pay for themselves. Some will begin begin having an impact faster than a speeding bullet.
Here are 4 super takeaways:
1) Sell the Experience
Most of our marketing sounds like this: “We’ve been serving the community for 20 years. We only use the finest materials. Our service can’t be beat.”
Those things are important, but they don’t capture the imagination of our customers. That messages doesn’t make the heart race.
The trailer doesn’t say “We spent 3 years and over $200M to make this movie. It’s 2 hours long and it’s sure to excite you.” Instead, it teases you with a taste of what you’ll see, hear and feel when you get to the theater or buy the DVD. Action. Stunning visual effects. An engrossing story about a beloved character.
How can you emulate that? Talk about the experience you provide. Illustrate what the future will look like after doing business with you. Or if they don’t. Better yet, have a current customer tell the story for you.
Remember, people want to know what’s in it for them. Show them right away. Put yourself in their shoes; what’s going to get their heart racing?
2) Know, Like and Trust
Everyone’s familiar with Superman. Most of us like him. Some people are fanatics. (I’ve seen people come close to fist-fighting when discussing DC vs. Marvel.) And just like an old friend, we’re happy to spend more time with him, getting to know him.
While there are plenty of ways a Superman reboot could go wrong, this production builds on a strong franchise with a loyal built-in following. Not a bad place to start.
On top of that, the director (Zack Snyder) and producer (Christopher Nolan) have rabid fan bases of their own. Even if you don’t know them by name, you’re familiar with their work:
People know, like and trust the movie-watching experience itself.
What positive associations do your potential customers have that you can tap into?
Who or what do they already know, like and trust that you can align yourself with?
What part of your product or service are they already in love with that you can highlight?
What amazing experiences can you remind them of?
3) Go in for the Long Haul
Superman has been around since 1938. There are new comics, cartoons, TV shows and movies all the time, and it’s been that way for decades.
Repetition begets trust and burns memories.
Think about your marketing efforts in the long-term. I know you don’t have 75 years to wait for a profit, but don’t go crazy acting like a traveling salesman who’s only in town for a week, either.
Communicate consistently and continually. If possible, try to reach your audience in multiple channels to keep things fresh and interesting. Write articles in magazines or trade journals they read. Take on speaking gigs and record them so you can share the video or MP3. Do a podcast.
Don’t just blog or email.
The challenge is that you have to continually fascinate, educate and/or add value, otherwise you become a nuisance.
4) Make the “Ask” Easy
Have you noticed that trailers don’t put pressure on you? They don’t have to sell you half-price tickets or give you free Ginsu steak knives if your order in the next 10 minutes.
There’s no need for anything like that.
They’ve tapped into established consumer behavior. People love movies. They pay for tickets at the theater and buy the DVD, too. They love to go in groups (or couples at least), and they love to tell everyone they didn’t go with how awesome (or horrible) the experience was.
There are millions of people who go to the movies no matter what’s playing. It’s not hard to get them to buy a ticket.
The price-to-value equation is an easy one for moviegoers to calculate. They enjoy the experience, and the value of that experience outweighs the cost of the ticket. It’s a no-brainer.
Is there a proven consumer behavior or cultural trend you can hitch a ride on? (Be careful, the competition can be rough there.)
What can you do to make your product/service so valuable that your price is a non-factor?
(Just for the record, I’m all for strong calls to action, creating urgency, etc. I highly recommend using them to strengthen your offer.)
I haven’t seen Man of Steel yet (apparently their marketing doesn’t always work, huh?), but I know this: $150M worth of marketing has generated at least $830M in gross revenue for Warner Brothers. That’s nearly a 6X return on investment. There’s something worth paying studying there.
Although I believe direct response is the way to go, especially for small businesses, we can learn from all kinds of business success. Anyone getting 600% ROI is worth paying some attention to, wouldn’t you say?
Supporting our neighboring communities is a great idea. It’s just not the stated purpose of the Shop Calumet City program or this coupon booklet.
Says the Alderman Jones in the booklet,
“When you shop and support local businesses in Calumet City, there will be more dollars available for local school districts, more money to improve our roads and streets and more funding will be available for our parks and libraries.”
If we’re trying to encourage shopping in Calumet City stores, why is one of the twelve coupons in the booklet belong to a store based in Midlothian? Doesn’t that encourage people to spend money in a suburb other than Cal City?
Coupons are marketing devices. They can be a great way to generate interest in what a business has to offer and drive traffic to their locations.
Or they can go end up hidden at the bottom of kitchen drawers until spring cleaning time.
I applaud the 12 businesses that have coupons in this book for having the guts to take action to improve their business and participate building up the local economy. But to be frank, the decision-makers in these businesses should demand more from their marketing efforts.
Here are a few points worth noting about this coupon book:
Again, 8.3% of the coupons direct shoppers to spend money outside of Calumet City
Of the 12 coupons, eight of them are worth about $2. For example, a free McDouble with purchase of medium fry at McDonald’s or $2 off of a $20 dry cleaning order. In most cases, any resulting sale will probably be profitable, but how many sales will result from the distribution of these coupons?
One of the more seemingly valuable coupons is $5 of free gasoline. That’s pretty hard to resist. BUT how much does it help the gas station? With the less-than-razor-thin profit margins on fuel, it’s practically impossible to recoup the value of the coupon on a gas-only purchase.
What makes it even worse is that there’s almost no chance the customer who redeems the coupon will suddenly start buying their gas at that particular station. People buy gas a) at convenient locations or b) where it’s the cheapest. The coupon basically gives away gasoline for nothing in return (unless the driver buys snacks while getting their free fuel); it will not change buying behavior.
For long-term economic impact, these coupons should include some way of building relationships with customers. The businesses should get these people’s contact information and follow up with them.
They could offer bounceback coupons to turn one-time shoppers into customers (people who make it a custom/habit to buy from you).
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I don’t mean to “go negative” here. I really love this town and the people in it. I honestly want things to get better. Why should Orland or Tinley Park enjoy more prosperity than us?
What we need is not short-sighted marketing ploys created by government officials. We need gutsy, intelligent entrepreneurs to lead the charge to a better future.
Since when do entrepreneurs rely on the government, anyway?
P.S. Next time, we’ll talk about specific business growth methods entrepreneurs in our area can use to start building a better tomorrow for our community.
