Posted by:
Daniel Levis
April 22, 2009
Issue #657
In this issue:
- Why almost everybody marketing online today has targeting wrong, wrong, wrong …
- An innocent little mistake that once corrected, instantly spikes the response to virtually any webpage …
- How to determine the intent of Web searchers who insist on using “ambiguous” keywords — so you can sharpen your message-to-market match and grow your business faster …
- And more!
Dear Web Business-Builder,
When Gene Schwartz wrote Breakthrough Advertising, back in the 60’s, the Internet was just a glimmer in some computer scientist’s eye.
Little could Gene have realized the massive implications this new media would have for the craft he loved so dearly and plied with such mastery.
Yet, most of what Gene wrote in that watershed book is just as applicable in today’s fast moving wired-world as it was then in the cumbersome days of typewriters and typesetting.
Some of what Gene had to say is even more applicable today than it was then. The chapters on market awareness and sophistication in particular …
Gene observed that different states of market awareness and sophistication required markedly different approaches to copywriting.
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
March 16, 2009
Issue #630
Why polls and focus groups
may be the best way ever invented
to spring to the worst conclusions
about what your prospect wants …
And the ONLY way to get the answers
that will actually rocket your response.
Dear Business-Builder,
You’ve just helped me a great deal. You couldn’t have known you were helping me, but you did anyway and I’m grateful.
Over the past year or so, nine or ten of the more than 600 articles in our archives have addressed this economic crisis – a situation that was about to affect and still is impacting your ability to succeed.
At first, I simply offered advice to help you prepare your business and your family for the great economic crisis I saw brewing. Later, hoping that learning what caused this crisis might help us avoid repeating it, I tracked the blunders that put our nation and our world in this precarious situation.
That meant each of these articles had plenty of political content. I spared nobody in Washington; laying the blame for our current economic crisis squarely at the feet of villains in both parties.
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
January 8, 2009
Issue #58
In this issue:
- Why persuasion is the most valuable skill you could ever acquire …
- How to seduce prospects without ever explicitly naming a single benefit …
- How acknowledging and validating your prospect’s core beliefs and values gives you an almost unfair advantage in sales copy …
- How to use rhetoric to bypass prospects’ brains entirely – making it virtually impossible for them to refuse the impulse to order NOW …
- And MUCH MORE!
Dear Business-Builder,
Whether you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, marketing pro or copywriter, this issue is going to be extremely valuable to you.
We’re continuing last week’s ramblings on persuasion: Without a doubt, the most valuable skill any human being could possibly develop – and I am not talking about just in copywriting or sales either.
Persuasion makes the world go around:
- Persuasion is at the heart of every government system you can name. In democracies, politicians gain power by persuading perpetually gullible citizens to vote for them. Once elected, the peoples’ representatives debate each new bill before it becomes law, each side attempting to persuade the other.
Even in monarchies and dictatorships, domestic tranquility – and in many cases, the very survival of the regime – is assured as the masses are persuaded that the monarch was divinely appointed … that the dictator is the nation’s destiny … or at the very least, to abide by the law of the land (often at the point of a gun).
- The world’s legal systems operate almost entirely on persuasion. Trials are little more than contests between two sets of attorneys to determine which will better persuade the judge or jury of its point of view.
As the OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson trials graphically demonstrated to many, the guilt or innocence of the accused can be irrelevant: If you have the most persuasive lawyer, you win: You can get away with the sickest behavior imaginable – even murder. On the other hand, if your lawyer is less than persuasive, you can be as innocent as a lamb and as pure as the driven snow – and still wind up on Death Row.
- Every religious movement owes its existence to its abilities to persuade converts that its holy script – and therefore its precepts and doctrines – is authentic, accurate and reliable (and by extension, that contradictory ones are frauds).
- In our personal lives, many (if not most) of our marriages and life partnerships are rooted in persuasion. Whether by passive seduction or aggressive pursuit, one of us persuaded the other to commit to an exclusive long-term relationship.
- Raising children is a Herculean two-way exercise in the art of persuasion. Parents use every persuasion strategy at their command to produce desired behaviors and discourage undesirable ones – and kids are past masters at figuring out what needs to be said or done to persuade Mom and Dad to give them their way.
- And of course, persuasion is an essential component in every business success story. Every day, banks and investors are persuaded to bankroll new businesses … quality employees are persuaded to join their teams … workers are persuaded to perform in productive ways …
… New customers persuaded to make their first purchases … existing customers are persuaded to make new purchases … unions and vendors are persuaded to accept companies’ terms … and executives persuade other businesses to enter into alliances and joint ventures and to concede to mergers and acquisitions.
Heck: One of the greatest business empires of all time began with a simple act of persuasion. Microsoft was born when Bill Gates persuaded IBM to pay him a royalty on every copy of MS-DOS software installed on its machines!
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Posted by:
Daniel Levis
December 10, 2008
Issue #564
Dear Web Business-Builder,
Staying abreast of what’s happening in the world right now is a double-edged sword for us marketers.
On the one hand, keeping your finger on the pulse of your market is crucial to “operation money-suck.”
On the other, it can become a dangerous diversion that seeps poverty consciousness into your noggin.
You need to choose your perspective wisely …
And that means remaining a dispassionate observer, personally immune to the perverse mental masturbation that captivates the masses, in times like these.
In the foyer of the communal office space where I hatch my evil marketing plots to rule the world, hangs a huge flat screen TV tuned to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for you foreigners).
It’s all news, all of the time … one economic doomsday scenario after another. There is another TV in the interior of the complex tuned to the same channel. And all day long the banter rages on like a bad horror movie.
On the radio, bubble-heads babble nonstop. In my in-box, Chicken Littles’ galore accost me with their inane yak. Even the water cooler gossip is filled with idiotic blather about the economy.
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Posted by:
Daniel Levis
December 3, 2008
Issue #559
“If you can channel the tremendous force of belief behind only one claim, no matter how small, then that one fully-believed claim will sell more goods than all the half-questioned promises your competitors can write for the rest of their days.” – Gene Schwartz
Dear Web Business-Builder,
When planning a promotion, there are always things you need your prospects to believe before they will buy.
The idea that not buying your product or service right now would be the epitome of dumbness is just one of them.
On the way to that end goal, there are always supporting conclusions that must be hurdled …
- You may need to convince your prospect that a certain process or method is superior to all others when it comes to solving his particular problem.
- You may need to prove to him that even though your company is small, you can meet his needs.
- You may need to lead him to the conclusion that despite what he perceives as his own limitations, he can succeed with your help … and so on.
Every selling situation has its own unique supporting conclusions.
I think we’re all familiar with the idea of substantiating claims with proof, in the form of testimonials, customer success stories, expert endorsements, the credentials of the seller, and so forth … but these are just a few of the factors that impact belief.
Indeed as I sat down to write this article I counted 20 different mechanisms for getting your prospects to believe what you need them to believe … on the road to buying your product.
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