Does Your Website Say “How OLD Do You Think I Am?”

“How old do you think I am?” was a fairly well-known marketing campaign years ago for a women’s moisturizer. In the TV commercials the question was asked by a beautiful woman, presumably older than she appeared.

Now the company has created a totally marketing-driven site. Whoever developed it for them is a marketeer “that get’s it.” It should make you think, “How OLD is my web site?”

Is your online marketing text heavy, long and all about you and your company? your features and your latest promotion? Is it BORING? Or is it about the needs and desires of your best customers?

Check this out right now and go through it, as any other visitor would:

www.OlayForYou.com

It is an OMG moment. Go through the entire thing pretending you have crow’s feet or any other of the skin challenges they present (yes, we men could use some anti-aging).

• It is TOTALLY “about you”
• It gathers data
• It’s interactive
• It’s simple
• It’s affordable for anyone to do, especially if you simplify it and reduce the number of questions
• It’s informative while based on the visitor’s input
• It’s not high pressure
• The voice over talent becomes your friend and “recommends”
• It has a nice variety of marketing options at end, i.e. gathers personal email at end, tell a friend, bookmark
• Probably the most significant point of all is that the technology DISAPPEARS!!!

Let me repeat:

“The technology disappears!”

It’s so well done you don’t feel like you’re doing all the work. It’s near effortless, point and click, without “just fill in the fields.” The process may not be perfect but it’s darn close. As a man and not the perfect target market, I found it a touch long and I wasn’t always sure of my answers based on my lack of cosmetic knowledge (RRrrr, let’s talk about power tools and fishing. Scratch….scratch).
 
Seriously, take a look. This is a great model to emulate and MIND SET to acquire for your own branding, internet marketing and lead generation online.

Popularity: 48%

Turning Copy Into CASH: In The Beginning There Was…

…. the Word.

 With the explosion of audio and video online, the “word” or copy has been taking a back seat of late. If you’re selling and marketing online beware forgetting about the power of text.

 Consider the following:

 1) Words Sell.  If you put up a picture or video of a nice car driving down a road, in a beautiful area, with a happy fun couple inside, do you know what it’s about? Is it about the car, saving the environment, insuranace or a travel ad? Images whether still or video, help add emotion and energy, but don’t always obviously explain what is being promoted or an offer.

2) Words Define. There can be HUGE difference when using similar words, or synonyms, based on either definition or context.  Think about it. Using the word “happy” vs. “gay” can be significant, yes? (“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” - Jerry Seinfeld)

3) Words Help. The use of words help define your brand, your commitments and your customers’ experiences. As you rely more on self-service online, for things like directions or frequently asked questions, it is critical to be clear and direct with your text.

4) Words Influence.  Words allow you to make offers. Without a specific promotion, benefit or call to action, your marketing is impotent and frankly, a waste of money and media.

5) Words Guide. Search engines began and remain based on text. If you’re posting video or audio, you still need to use specific keywords or tags, so when your pages are searched by the search engine company’s spiders, they comprehend and score your sites higher in their rankings. Remember the importance of your keywords, descriptions - even the alternate tags and filenames for your pictures and graphics.

In my Customer Catcher coaching sessions, with small businesses, internet marketers and sales and marketing professionals. I propose that you can quickly improve your profits by a minimum of 10% JUST by utilizing a thesaurus. Most copy writing is BORING from using too common a vocabulary or too complex.

Another cool tool, that’s online, to stimulate your copy and creativity is available at VisualThesaurus.com. It’s visual, ‘popcorn’ interface is fun and very functional.

When you’re excited about selling online and influencing visitors to buy, you might already be concerned about the pulling power of your ‘copy.’ However, remember the Power of the Word throughout your business, from recruting and training, to customer support and your Privacy Policy.

Popularity: 46%

When all else fails, sell to these people… they’re always ready to buy…

Is the recession killing your sales? Are your websites racking up less and less unique hits? Are buyers just not buying?

Well, I’ve got news for you. If you think money is scarce and people are not willing to fork over the big bucks…

…You’re not marketing to the one recession-proof, always ready, willing and able-to-spend demographic: the Rich!

Listen, my wife works part-time at a Four Season resort.

CEO Izzy Sharp (we’re old buds, that’s why I get to call him Izzy and not Isadore) recently distributed a letter to all employees. Along with announcing that billionaires Bill Gates and Saudi Prince Alwaleed (I’ll spare you his full name) had just bought the company, and are taking it private, he disclosed a startling piece of information.

In three Four Seasons Hotels last year, guests spent on average, $1,000 a night!

That’s right, every single day of the year in 2007, guests spent an average of $1,000-on everything from room, food and incidentals! All this while the stock market tanked, average consumers supposedly weren’t spending, people were getting laid off and the economy was in a recession.

Okay, so you’re saying to yourself that was just the Four Seasons. Well, I’m not privy to the Ritz-Carlton and all other 5-star hotel numbers-or those hotels that averaged a $800 a night spend-or those stores and companies, online and off, whose customers spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on a single purchase-regularly!

The point is: the rich are not an anomaly. They exist, and their ranks are growing. There are more millionaires now than ever before in history. Saying someone is a millionaire no longer carries the cache it once did-it’s no longer an exclusive and unapproachable demographic.

Millionaires are all around us-you probably know a couple handfuls already.

Even half-millionaires count! How many shiny new BMW’s and Benz’s do you see on the road with temporary license plates? Too damn many if you ask me-but I’m just jealous.

Listen, these people, the rich that is, will never stop buying-as long as they’re making money (typically by selling their products and services to the equally rich and richer).

So grab a piece of the action-and join the club!

But you say your product or service doesn’t appeal to the rich. Well, why not? Update it, change it, enhance it, add value to it-make it bigger, better, and charge more for it!

People will always believe that if an item has a higher ticket price it has to be worth it-that it has to do a better job than a lower priced item that does the exact same job. It’s a matter of human psychology-so use it to your advantage. Market and sell to the rich!

How?

To be continued…

–Barry

www.WritingWithPersonality.com 

Popularity: 58%

Want a couple thousand names to sell to?

Well don’t rent them, not when you can easily create your own list of hungry buyers.

As I wrote previously, you can have the best product or service in the world, but if you don’t have a house list, one that’s eager to receive your emails-you’ve got no one to sell to.

Conversely, if you don’t have a product or service to sell, you can still sell other people’s products and services-if you’ve got a house list.

Now you can always rent a list, of course. But then you’ve got to introduce yourself, prove yourself, sell yourself. In short, you have to work a lot harder to sell these people-because they don’t know you, don’t trust you and don’t care about you.

But if they know you, have experience with you, through multiple contacts and sales-you can get right down to the business of selling your, or someone else’s, product.

Admittedly, there are times when you might need to rent a list. For example, when you want to mount a quick strike campaign to a new niche market (but never rent a compiled list-only rent a subscription list, one with attractive Recency, Frequency and Amount stats.)

So how do you build your own house list-a list of customers and prospects willing to consider your offer?

Lots of ways. And to get you started, here’s my short list of list-building ideas:

• Write, publish and promote a subscription-based, free or not, ezine (an online newsletter).

• Write, publish and promote a subscription-based, free or not, newsletter (an offline ezine).

• Write a blog and offer to notify readers of new posts if they provide their email address.

• Collect names and addresses at the point of sale-to notify buyers of upgrades, special announcements, etc.

• Conduct a seminar and collect names and addresses for a free, or not, CD/DVD recording of the seminar, bonus report, etc.

• Conduct a Webinar or Teleseminar (see above).

• Write a special report or white-paper, deliver it through a squeeze page (after name and email address are provided).

• Write articles, and place your email address and sign-up link in the resource box at the bottom, in order to receive comments and subscribers to your advertised ezine.

• Participate in trade shows and offer a chance to win a free-gift to those attendees who drop their business card in the fish bowl.

• Joint Venture (JV), with a complementary business-provide or contribute your “something” to a joint marketing endeavor-in order to access their list of names (you’ll therefore be introduced to the target market by someone they already know and trust.)

• Co-Registration (Co-Reg), hitch a ride with an offer on someone else’s marketing platform (e.g., on an order or thank you page)-it’s an implied endorsement by that marketer to his sphere of influence.

Remember though, these names and addresses that you collect are the key to your business’s continuing success-so treat them with all due respect and reverence.

Always promise, and keep your promise, not to abuse their privacy. Fully disclose, clearly, that you will be contacting them for various reasons, promotional and informational, in the near future.

And then ask them to confirm (and whenever possible, to double opt-in) their desire to receive communication from you.

You’ll then be on your way to marketing heaven.

–Barry

www.WritingWithPersonality.com

Popularity: 62%

“Rinse And Repeat” Your Marketing

“Rinse and Repeat.”

 These simple, 3 words doubled sales in one segment for the personal consumer goods industry. They could double your success too. You’ve probably read them yourself numerous times on the side of…

… a shampoo bottle!

Just like convincing someone to wash their hair twice in the ‘Directions’ to supposedly improve results, you can use this same philosophy to attract more traffic to your sites, collect more leads and speak with more fresh prospects to multiply your sales. It near doubled the sales of the shampoo companies. (Tip: People do what they’re told. You just have to remember to TELL THEM!)

Often when coaching clients about improving their marketing, they will tell me what worked for them in the past and what did not. I immediately ask them, “Did you do it again?” for their most successful tactics and over 95% usually say, “No!”

Isn’t that crazy?

Think of all the things that you could do again and again, once successfully proven.

• Email Marketing Campaigns
• Teleseminars & Webinars - like Paradise Publishers offers FREE with its Expert Encounter Series
• Special Offers like “2 for 1″ Offers or Added Bonuses
• Using Specific Scripts when following up on the phone or contacting a lead for the first time
• Direct mail pieces, especially post cards like I use at www.CustomerCatcherCards.com (Grab free samples)
• Copy That Sells, from email Subject Lines to Headlines on your Press Releases
• Networking or Speaking at Live Events - seminars, conferences, and trade shows
• Contests & Promotions - Win an iPod or Vacation and other cool things NOT directly related to your product/services
• Media & Public Relations - sending out digital press releases, being interviewed on radio, or even hosting your own show. (Warning: Shamless plug ahead - If you want to do that, check out www.RadioTalkShowHost.com)

You can always alter and adjust past efforts but use the core tactic or effective strategy that worked for you before. Even if it was in another industry or for another company. Loyal reward programs started in the airline industry and are now very successful in many other areas of commerce. The same can be said of Gift Cards.

Use the “Rinse and Repeat” approach for all your marketing and sales efforts.

Popularity: 34%

Dying for Bigger Boobs!

Have you heard about the 18 year old girl in Boca Raton, Florida, who died from complications from a boob job?

Yes, tragic, unfortunate, and I’m shedding crocodile tears, no doubt. And yet, if it had happened to my teenage daughter–I’d be a mess–forever! But then, I wouldn’t have allowed her to get a boob job in the first place!

Listen, I’ve got nothing against boob jobs–buleeeve me, I don’t. But what the hell were her parent’s thinking?

Why permit an 18 year old girl, a high school cheerleader (the media reports she wanted to be a doctor when she grew-up-as if to add some intellectual heft to her profile, and that she just wasn’t a female version of Shallow Hal) get sculpted, nicked and cut–as if doing so were no different than getting braces.

After all, you need your teeth to chew, and yes there is the issue of appearance, smile, etc.. But tits–for a kid?

Okay, you want bigger knockers? Fine, finish college and pay for them yourself. That’s my answer.

Wondering what this has to do with marketing? A lot! But first let me continue with my rant.

What kind of a lesson in values, self-worth and pride of accomplishment had they been teaching their daughter? That without a good pair of jugs–she’d be nothing in this world–of no value to anyone-not herself or her friends? That life’s not worth living without beautiful melons?

Ever heard of Boca Raton? Well, there’s part of the problem. It’s another one of those flashy, wealthy small city/suburbs that dot the American map, where the amount of money you purport to possess is directly related to your self-esteem, self-image and social acceptance. Like Beverly Hills in California for example, and the Hamptons in New York. Practically every city has one of them nearby. You can probably name one near you.

These are cities where leased BMWs, Ferrari’s, Lamborghinis and Aston Martins are driven by unemployed people.

Naturally, (and I say naturally for a good marketing reason), these cities attract a huge proportion of starry-eyed wannabees, air-heads, dead-beats and other parasitic-dreamers looking for a fast, easy, soft and comfortable float on a magic carpet ride.

As a side note, I think Boca Raton has the highest ratio of plastic surgeons per capita of any city in America. There’s enough silicone, saline and Botox jiggling down the roads of Boca to cause a Hazmat team to run for the hills. I know, I used to live in South Florida. And I have family and friends who live in Boca. In fact, I’m headed there in three weeks.

Boca is a sun-drenched metaphor for where marketing and life meet at the crossroads of money and desire.

Okay, enough with the cynicism and the rant…on to the marketing lesson.

There are 12 eternal human desires that every marketer should know.

• 1. Money
• 2. Improved Appearance
• 3. Security in Old Age
• 4. Leisure
• 5. Comfort
• 6. Proof of Accomplishment
• 7. Increased Enjoyment
• 8. Self-Confidence
• 9. Popularity
• 10. Praise
• 11. Time
• 12. Health

Every human being walking the earth wants at least one of these 12 things.

It’s your duty as a marketer to figure out how many of these 12 desires your target market values above all else!

Because it’s not the features of your product that will compel your market to buy, but rather the fulfillment of these desires.

Show how your product will help your prospects achieve their desires–and your product, your service–is as good as sold.

And now, just for fun–name the desires the stereo-typical Boca Raton denizen values above all else.  Need a hint: think boobs.

–Barry

www.WritingWithPersonality.com

Popularity: 52%

Every successful marketer must have this…

 No, it’s not a product.

You don’t need to invent, design or develop a product to be a marketing success.

You can sell other people’s products-as an affiliate marketer.

But that’s still isn’t enough.

You don’t need a library full of marketing books or an MBA, though it wouldn’t hurt (well, the MBA might, but not the books).

You may be an unread, uneducated dolt and a monumental bore at a party, and yet you may have an unbelievably intuitive understanding of what it takes to quickly persuade and sell ice cubes to an Eskimo.

But if you’re missing this one thing, you’ll still never be a success.

You may be a master at SEO, designing websites, adding video, and every Web 2.0 trick of the trade out there to your thousands of websites. And you may have enough money in the bank to run thousands of pay-per-click campaigns…

But you’ll never be a marketing wunderkind-you’ll never make a 6 or 7 figure income as a marketer, if you don’t have this one crucial, absolutely vital thing…

A list.

No, not a list of things to do, or buy.

A list of names.

No, not any names. Not names from the yellow pages, not names from a “compiled list” sold by a list broker-but a list of names of people who are hungry, who are absolutely dying to buy what you are selling.

Without a list of such hungry buyers, the best product ever invented, ever marketed by the most cash-flush marketing organization ever built-will go unsold.

And where do you easily and quickly find such a list-how do you cultivate such a list?

It should be right under your nose-it better be right under your nose.

It’s your house list, your customer file. It’s the names of people who have bought from you before.

Such a list is worth more than ten times its weight in gold-it’s more valuable than any product ever invented and sold.

Why? Because you’ve already successfully marketed to and sold these people-on you.

You don’t have to convince them again, though it wouldn’t hurt to remind them, that you can be trusted, that what you offer is of great value. They know it-they’ve experienced it and they want more.

With a house list your entire organization, your entire inventory of products can go up in smoke-but you won’t go out of business. So long as you have these names, you can dust off the ashes and get right back to the business of marketing and selling.

Without such a list, you’ve got to start from scratch, all over again.

How do you easily compile such a list, if you don’t have one already and never sold anything before…?

Stay tuned.

–Barry

www.WritingWithPersonality.com

Popularity: 44%

Marketing Musing: Simplify

Welcome to the first of a long line of marketing musings from me, Martin Wales.

It’s my pleasure to accept Nic Gremion’s invitation to “think out loud” here on Site Reference’s Internet Marketing Blog. (Really cool as I’m under various restraining orders, in both democratic and communist countries alike, around the world.)

All of this got me to thinking….

We think too much. We make things complex in our marketing and in our business.  We get so focused on the processes, like building a web site, copy writing, ad buying, running PPC campaigns and blogging, that we tend to ignore, forget, or worst, act blindly without having simple, clear objectives. A simple objective would be to have 10 new optins per day to my online newsletter. That’s simple. That’s measureable. That’s FIXable.

Think about the complexity of a Porsche and all the small, delicate moving parts and the price it takes to fix them - heck, even just to diagnose what’s wrong. Then compare that with the “people’s car” generally know as the Volkswagen Beetle. It gets you from A to B.

That’s what you marketing should do. Move the prospect from A to B.
From ‘not having a clue who you are or what you do’ to ‘having a burning desire to find out more about you.’

Note that I didn’t say, BUY from you in the first step. Just moving them from not knowing you, or caring to, to ‘wanting‘ to know more would be an incremental success. Get them from A to B.

Now,you can work on from B to C. Once they investigate and research a bit about you, then they might be more comfortable to move from prospect to customers - from B to C.

Many falsely think that because the Internet allows us to purchase immediately, to achieve instant gratification, and push the customer away from dealing with us personally (big mistake) that we should SLAM them with the sales approach, the big close or the buy now or die!

One true advantage of the Internet is the near free cost of continually communication and an infinite ability to publish, print or media, information. Use this revolutionary marketing advantage to keep a continual conversation going to get your traffic from A to B and then B to C.

Sounds simple but simple ain’t always easy, is it?

In closing, I hope to hear your comments, feedback and your own personal musings about marketing. Please do not consider me an ‘Authority’ but a ‘Curious Inquisitor’ seeking enlightement and assistance, like yourself.  I look forward to serving you by bringing experts and specialists to share their opinions here, as I quiz them in my own simple laymen thinking and conversation. Question A. Answer B.

Popularity: 28%

The Internet is like the NYC Subway System at rush hour…

It’s crowded, annoying and smelly!

Hundreds of marketers are hosted at every “train stop”, loudly hawking their wares, littering train stations with ineffective and numbing sales pitches-hassling tens of thousands of commuters-all in an intrusive and audacious effort to make a buck.

Isn’t the free-market system wonderful? You bet it is-if you’re a marketer and know how to work the system.

Understand this, if it’s not abundantly clear to you already (please excuse this presumption to doubt you… after all, we don’t know each other very well, yet)…

The great majority of those hapless and bothered commuters stuffed into slow and uncomfortable subway cars deep within a dark hole in the earth… all they want is to get home, or get to work on time.

But on the other side of the train track… there are commuters who are on their way to do some casual, non-committal window shopping-and still others, albeit a small percentage, who are seriously intent on buying exactly what you’re selling…

These are the low-hanging fruit you want to pick!

So if you’re a marketer selling what they’re looking to buy-you’ve got it made, right?  Not so fast.

You’ve got a problem.

First, you have to convince these ripe, red apples to get off the train at your stop…

Then… you’ve also got to convince these apples that you can make wonderful applesauce-that your widget is a better deal than the widget sold by your competition, at the next stop…

How you do that and much more is what you’ll find right here, right on this blog.

Hope you’ll enjoy the train ride.

Next stop… marketing and sales success.

–Barry

Popularity: 25%