Posted by:
Gary Bencivenga
October 28, 2008
Issue #533
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
If you want the easiest, surest and most rewarding way I’ve found to succeed online, here is the simple 7-step formula:
- Carve out a niche. Be known for something specific. Use the rifle, not the shotgun. When in doubt, go narrower than others in your field. For specific examples, see The Fuzzy Dice Secret for Exploding Your Sales.
- Give something valuable away free. Within your narrow specialty, create an e-zine (or course, collection of tips, series of mistakes to avoid, seasonal recipes, any regular communication) that demonstrates your expertise and is so helpful, interesting and informative, your prospects will want to keep getting it regularly.
- Promote your free e-zine every way you can — in Google ads, articles you write for the media, speeches before trade groups, press releases, radio interviews, communications with your customers, take-ones at related retail outlets, space ads, newspaper classifieds, direct mail, co-ops and swaps with others in your industry, etc. Explore any and all avenues.
- Capture e-mail addresses. Never give away your valuable free tips on your website! Share them only in exchange for an e-mail address when someone signs up for your e-zine. Consider offering one of your best free tips in the form of a free report to induce people to sign up. This automatically gives you permission — and the means — to stay in touch with your market, building your most valuable direct marketing asset, your list.
- Pile on the value. Work hard to make your free e-zine so valuable and interesting, your prospects eagerly open it. As in romance, woo your new prospects with your bouquets of insight and pearls of wisdom. Don’t be shy about opening up and getting personal. Become a friend. Resist the urge to keep lunging at them with sales lust. Your goal: get your prospects into the habit of welcoming your e-mails like love letters because they are so valuable, useful and interesting … not in the habit of deleting them on sight because they are self-serving sales pitches. The rule: establish trust before you sell with lust.
- Never sell hard in your e-zine or free course. Instead, dance the two-step. The biggest mistake even savvy marketers make in their e-zines is selling too much, too soon, too hard, and too often. Let your e-zine be an oasis of value in a desert of hype. Always, and especially in your first several communications, let the value of your free information far outweigh your sales copy.
Eventually, after you’ve proven your value to readers and it’s time to sell something, dance the two-step …
(more…)
Posted by:
Gary Bencivenga
August 19, 2008
Issue #484
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
My friends, star marketers Alex Mandossian and Yanik Silver, recently paid me a compliment by calling me, "The world’s greatest living reason-why copywriter."
I consider it such high praise because my mentor, David Ogilvy, was in my view the greatest reason-why copywriter of all time. In fact, when asked by a reporter if he was a strong proponent of "reason why" advertising, Ogilvy responded, "Is there any other kind?"
Thinking of Mr. Ogilvy (or "D. O.," as we staffers at Ogilvy & Mather called him) has prompted me to once again offend every English teacher whose classes I endured, and inspire everyone else who speaks the King’s English to cringe, by penning another of my infamous poems, this one entitled …
(more…)
Posted by:
Gary Bencivenga
July 15, 2008
Issue #459
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
In this BULLET you’ll discover the two most powerful words in advertising and how to use them to explode your response fairly easily and consistently.
Which Headline Pulled Best?
First, to illustrate the secret, can you guess which of these two magalog headlines was the big winner for a financial newsletter?
HEADLINE A: (next to photo of financial guru, Charles J. Givens):
If you’ve got 20 minutes a month,
I guarantee to work a financial miracle
in your life.
(caption under photo)
Charles J. Givens, the self-made $200-millionaire,
entrepreneur and best-selling financial author of all time.
HEADLINE B: (same photo and caption):
The Millionaire Maker
(subhead) Can he make YOU rich, too?
* * *
Which of these headlines absolutely smashed the other in a split-run test, out pulling it by a huge margin and becoming a profitable control for years?
Rather than just tell you the winner, let me describe how you could know in advance, once you understand the two most powerful words in advertising today.
By the way, no BULLET you will ever read will give you more sheer power to boost your response consistently, beat existing control packages easily and create your own blockbuster products than the simple yet profound secret I will now share. Yet I doubt if you have ever read this anywhere, even if you have been a lifelong student of advertising.
(more…)
Posted by:
Gary Bencivenga
June 19, 2008
Issue #441
Ask this simple 5-word question,
stand back and watch
your breakthroughs — and response — erupt.
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
In this Bullet, you will learn a simple five-word sentence that gives you an almost unfair advantage in boosting your response, outselling your competition and triggering an ongoing stream of creative breakthroughs.
Asking this simple question is the easiest way I know to get yourself and your staff to think outside the box. It can literally make you wealthy and establish your reputation as a marketing visionary with a Midas touch.
This is true whether you’re an entrepreneur, infopreneur, copywriter, marketing manager, CEO — anyone with anything to do with marketing.
Shameless overpromising? Not at all, as you’ll now see.
Here’s the question:
What are we really selling?
Just five little words. But let’s explore their revolutionary power, first on a basic level, then advanced.
A Little-Known Secret of Master Closers
First, always remember that advertising is nothing more than salesmanship multiplied by a mass medium. This is why it can unleash such powerful leverage in making you rich and successful. It is a persuasive salesperson able to close thousands or even millions of sales at once. And then do it again tomorrow and the next day.
Knowing this, the happiest hunting ground I’ve ever found to uncover new ways to explode response is to learn the secrets of master salespeople and then apply them to direct response.
What follows is easily one of the most powerful.
Early in my career, a wizened old Copy Chief taught me that one of the shrewdest questions master closers always ponder is, "What are we really selling?"
(more…)
Posted by:
Gary Bencivenga
April 4, 2008
Issue #389
How to Find “Hot Pockets” of Customers
Eagerly Looking for What You Sell
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
A master salesman, one of the most successful in America, once told me that selling is simple, unless you make it complicated. He then taught me his greatest secrets for keeping it simple.
I found that his secrets worked like a charm in advertising as well, because advertising is nothing more than multiplied salesmanship — one good salesperson working his or her magic with thousands, even millions, at once. In fact, it’s this mighty multiplication factor that empowers advertising to rapidly enrich Top Guns who know how to use the simple secrets shared in these Bullets.
So let’s take a look at one of the greatest secrets this wise old salesman taught me. Just as I did, you’ll find it’s one of the easiest things you can do to increase your response. It seems so obvious, you may well think that you’re doing it already. But let me assure you of two things …
First, 98% of all marketers, even savvy ones who think they may know this, can do a much better job of applying it (most have barely scratched the surface). Second, once you do apply this in your market, you’ll be able to attract customers the way a large magnet draws metal filings. Or, merrily mixing my metaphors (I love doing that), you’ll be tossing your hook right in front of a ravenously hungry school of fish.
So what’s the big secret?
Well, the wise old salesman told me you’ll corral lots more customers by intercepting them wherever they are looking for someone like you.
Sounds simple, and it is, but we often complicate it to the point where we’re not doing this at all. Let me illustrate with an example I came upon recently, which I’ve dubbed …
The Fuzzy Dice Secret
My best "aha!" moment last year hit me when I learned the smartest way to sell just about anything online.
I learned it from Andy Jenkins, a super successful Internet entrepreneur who’s created a sprawling online empire of more than 80 sites that sell everything from information to specialized electronics to medieval suits of armor at $7,000 a pop.
For months, I had been trying to figure out for a business partner the best way to sell products online. Where to begin? What marketing strategy would work best? Should we create one big website selling all our products — in effect, an online catalog?
Or would separate websites for each main product be better? And how should we drive traffic — with e-zines, Google ads, search optimization, banner ads, blogs, podcasts, a little of everything, or what?
The marketing questions seemed endless, and the answers elusive … until Andy clarified everything by sharing what I have come to call "The Fuzzy Dice Secret."
(more…)
