Posted by:
Daniel Levis
April 23, 2008
Issue #402
Dear Web Business Builder,
It seems my little tutorial last week about winning formulas for creating riveting opening body copy that cements readership proved useful to a few readers.
So this week I’m handing you a few more strategies that I hope you’ll find just as helpful …
Apart from selling your reader on reading your copy, there are no hard and fast rules on what your objective should be in these crucial opening paragraphs. Every selling situation is different. And your market is what should drive your direction.
You may find it best to bribe your reader to read your copy by making him a big fat promise of what he can expect in the copy that follows. You may want to scare the daylights out of him with a terrible warning of impending doom and promise his rescue.
You may want to shock or surprise him with something so unusual he can’t look away. Or you may just want to make him smile and agree with you, so that he instantly likes you and is interested in what you have to say.
All of these approaches and more can be used to enter the conversation that’s taking place right now between your prospect’s ears. Here are five more specific strategies that have proven successful…
Strategy #6 — The damaging admission opening: With this strategy, you start by saying bad things about yourself, your company, or your product.
The idea is to shock the reader with a statement that’s incongruent with what a salesperson would be expected to say when selling a product.
Naturally, this grabs attention and builds trust.
What’s most unusual about the following example is that there’s no appeal to the prospect’s self-interest anywhere in the entire opening.
The copy is curiosity arousing, but there’s no statement of benefit to the reader, not even in the headline. Its author, marketing maverick Joe Sugarman, in his book, “The Adweek Copywriting Handbook,” says there’s no need for such in the opening of an ad.
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Posted by:
Troy White
April 22, 2008
Issue #401
In this issue:
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9 timeless guidelines for designing a survey that gets you results …
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2 potentially disruptive changes that will undoubtedly result from your survey. How to be prepared for this, and what to do about it to maximize your cash flow …
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Entrepreneurial madness! The top 3 issues people are faced with – and some thoughts on how to move past those issues as quickly and painlessly as possible …
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And Much More!
Fellow Business Builder,
In honor of “National Get To Know Your Customer Day” (Saturday, April 19th), I went out to my e-mail list with a survey. There were 20 questions - and I gave them multiple choice type questions mixed in with open ended fill-in-the-blank type questions.
First, if you haven’t done a survey to your customers lately – do it! The information you gain will be invaluable to your future business.
I used surveymonkey.com with a professional account and was set up in no time with my first survey ready to roll (Click here to see and/or take my survey).
Here are some of the guidelines I used, and I would recommend you do, too:
- Give them a gift for helping you out. Their time is worth something. Show them you appreciate them, and hand them over something you would usually charge for.
- Keep the graphics clean, simple, and easy on the eyes.
- Make sure the questions are easy to understand and cannot cause confusion (Example: “Rank the following 1 – 5” is ambiguous. Does it mean 1 is the best, or the worst? Does it mean you are comparing one against another and are ranking them in order of preference? Think it through and make sure your questions lead them down the path you want them to take – not down one that will leave you confused and without usable data.)
- Mix in multiple choice with open ended question and answer format. (Gives you a breakdown of percentages, plus the chance to dig deeper into what is really on their mind, what things they want most from you, etc.)
- Use an introductory e-mail to explain to them what you are doing and why you are doing it. The introductory email should always tell them about the bonuses they get with their submission
- Ask at least one question that gets them to rank you compared to other alternatives in the market. This may be the most enlightening question you ask! And it will also fire you up to perform even better than you have in the past. Anyone in their own business loves competition, and this will fire up that spark again and get you moving more passionately towards your grand vision.
- Ask one type of question that helps them point out what they DO like about you. What makes you different? What makes your information or products better than the others? Why do they stay on your list as a client, and what do they want more of from you?
- Toughen up! I made mine anonymous (recommended for some surveys – others, ones you want tracked back to each client’s preferences, not anonymous). Why did I choose this format? If there are complaints, they will come out in a format like this. And you must learn how to take BOTH the good and the bad. If you are not hearing the bad, that is typically not a good thing. There is always someone who is going to have some kind of complaint. (In my survey, some complained the survey was too long, and others complained it was too short. Again, you can’t make everyone 100% happy!)
- USE the data you collect! You need to have a two part plan going into this. First, know what you want the data for. Do you want more products to sell? If so, a survey will help you find out what type of product your customers want from you – and will be very descriptive with the name of the product, the content of it, and the price point you should sell it for. The second part of the plan is to set in stone how quickly you will take action on the data you collect. If the deadline on your survey is the 25th of the month, by the 26th you should have the analysis done – and an implementation plan already prepared and ready to move on. Then move on it. The worst thing you can do is go to all this effort, get your list involved like this, get them to pour out their deepest darkest secrets, tell you what exactly they want from you, then completely ignore what they tell you. That’ll be the last time you get any help (or orders) from your customers!
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
April 21, 2008
Issue #400
Dear Business Builder,
I must say, suddenly finding myself just four years away from the big six-oh is a massive shock: Especially to a guy who still feels 18 and who never thought he’d live to see 30.
But on my birthday this month, I officially became a geezer. I don’t mind, really. Sure beats the alternative. And frankly, some of the life experiences I’ve had in my 56 years on this planet are beginning to come in pretty darned handy!
Fact is, I’m getting pretty excited about the business opportunities this new economic environment holds for us business owners, marketing folk and copywriters.
See, I’ve learned a few things in my two-score and 16 years – stuff that some other pretty smart fellas figured out a long, long time ago …
“There’s nothing new under the sun.”
– King Solomon
“What is past is prologue.”
– William Shakespeare
“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
– George Santayana
“Those who CAN learn from history can get richer than Midas.”
– Clayton Makepeace
OK – you caught me. That last quote probably doesn’t belong on the list with the others. But frankly, I like seeing my name listed alongside those luminaries. My blog, my call. Right?
So … “nothing new under the sun” … “past is prologue” … “learn from history” … “get rich.” Got it? Great!
OK – keeping that in mind consider this …
- Huge expenditures from a massively expensive war are coming home to roost.
- The U.S. economy and stock market are stalling; unemployment is rising.
- In an attempt to pull the economy out of its funk, Washington is printing money like there’s no tomorrow.
- Inflation – our cost of living – has begun rising.
- Oil and gasoline prices are at all-time highs.
- Food and raw materials are in increasingly short supply and prices are soaring world-wide.
- Gold and silver prices are on a tear.
- Congress is already controlled by the Democrats and the voters are set to throw the Republicans out of the White House.
Have I left anything out?
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Posted by:
Julie McManus
April 18, 2008
Issue #399
(Frequent Flyer)
Hi Ya, Fellow ‘Net Trenchers!
Did you miss me? I was on vacation in Colorado. My family and I rented a condo in Keystone for a little spring skiing, plus we spent some time with family in Denver. We had a nice, relaxing time … at least as relaxing as possible with a four-year-old and eight-year-old (that have never seen snow or skied before) in tow. Although the weather wasn’t exactly springlike, if you ask me … we had snow every day and a couple of days included 60 mile per hour winds and whiteout conditions. But on the sunny days, you could see the green tips of all the flowers trying to break free of a winter’s worth of freezing temperatures.
A good time was had by all except for a few minor mishaps, including getting stuck on the top of the mountain in a major snowstorm with two frightened little girls and only an open chairlift to get down. As well as another big snowstorm that rolled in the night before we were scheduled to check out of our condo and left the roads an absolute mess (with snow chains required for all commercial vehicles) … not exactly comfortable driving for Florida folks.
But perhaps the worst experience was that we were flying American Airlines and - like hundreds of thousands of other folks - our flights were cancelled …
Thursday started like many of the other mornings … dark grey skies and lots of snow falling. We’d seen the news reports about the American flight cancellations, so I checked American’s website Wednesday night to see if we were affected. As of Wednesday night, our flights were still a go. But as the snowstorm rolled in Wednesday night, another type of storm was taking place over at American Airlines. 500 flights cancelled on Wednesday … 900 more flights cancelled on Thursday …
So as we rushed to beat the snowstorm and get out of our condo on Thursday morning, I decided to check the flight status one last time. Sure as sugar … our flights were cancelled. A quick call to American’s customer service line elicited a busy signal and then another. What should I do!? I quickly hopped onto Expedia.com (as my brother-in-law is yelling in the background “We gotta go if we’re going to beat this storm!”) to check and see if we could rebook on another airline. I ended up booking our return flight on Frontier Airlines. The good thing was it was a non-stop flight. The bad thing was it left at 11:55 p.m. – a red-eye – and it cost more than our total round trip on American.
As we quickly vacated our condo, I started to wonder whether re-booking on my own was the right thing to do. But after seeing thousands of people standing at ticket counters and sleeping in airports all across the country on television … I realized it was.
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Posted by:
Robert Hutchinson
April 17, 2008
Issue #398
The nutritional supplement market in the U.S. is enormous – and growing fast as health-conscious baby boomers age.
The Dietary Supplement Information Bureau (DSIB) reports that three in five consumers (59%) now take supplements on a regular basis.
Estimates of the size of the market in the U.S. range from a low of $4.6 billion to as high as $30 billion. Worldwide the entire market is estimated to be $162 billion.
The good news for copywriters and marketers alike is that a huge chunk of these sales come through direct-to-consumer channels, such as direct mail and Internet marketing.
Companies such as Health Resources, NDI Solutions, Doctors’ Preferred, Nutri-Health Supplements, Nature Rx, Tabak’s and many others mail millions of pieces annually – and are in constant need of new packages.
“Some people think the pie is the same size and we’re all fighting for a piece of it,” says Deeba Jafri, president of D.J. Direct Response, Inc., and a direct marketing strategist who specializes in nutritional supplements. “But the truth is, the pie is growing rapidly. Business has never been better for nutritional supplements.”
According to David Klein, a list broker and CEO of Macromark, who works with Jafri on many projects, it’s a myth that direct mail quantities are declining in the nutritional supplement niche.
He says that it all depends on the particular company and the products that are being promoted.
“Every mailer is different,” Klein explains. “We have mailers we started with three or four months ago who were mailing 25,000 to 50,000 pieces a week and now they’re mailing 350,000 pieces a week.”
Klein concedes that recent postal increases and the seeming glut of direct mail packages “are not helping,” but, he says, overall direct mail continues to grow year over year consistently relative to other media.
What’s critical, he says, is good copy.
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