jacobbear.com

I found a new technique based on an old marketing trick I read about a few years back in Response magazine.

The magazine article suggested testing a few different marketing messages with radio ads. Each ad should have a toll-free number, a website, or some other way that people could resonse. The response for each ad needs to be different, so you can compare the response from each of your radio spots.

Once you’ve found a clear winner, you can use it to unroll a more comprehensive (and expensive) marketing campaign.

The take-away from all of this is to test your copy and your marketing ideas with cheap media. This keeps your expenses down. Then you can raise the stakes once you have marketing copy that has already been proven.

But even a simple radio ad will cost your company thousands of dollars. So here’s an even easier way to test your copy, your offer, and possibly generate some leads in the process.

Start with a sales letter. This is the canon of all marketing, and I’ve mentioned it before. If you don’t have the resources to print and mail a sales letter, you can adapt the copy into a web page and draw traffic through AdWords, classified ads, cold calling, or many other tactics.

The reason I start with this model is because it’s the most inexpensive way to present and test a “hook” that will get the attention of your best prospects, address the pain that they’re feeling, provide a solution and break down your offering into a solution to their problem.

When you’ve tested a few different sales letters, you’ll have a clear picture of the best offer, the best hook, the most profitable markets for a project and a viable strategy for bringing it all together.

Testing a sales letter is the best way to tweak and test your message. Copy is the foundation of every effort. So once you’ve got it right, then you can re-apply it–with amplified results.

Is marketing irrelevant?

I just had a bizarre experience which convinced me that if your clients feel they’re getting real value, you’ll get their business. It doesn’t matter how incompetent, rude, or irrational you are.

It started with a mysteriously threatening letter I received from the City of Los Angeles. After some entertaining verbiage about “Protecting the interests of the city” the letter informed me that I was  delinquent on a city tax.

When several phone calls failed to resolve the problem, I gathered up a sheaf of requested documents and went to City Hall to take care of the situation in person.

Protecting the Interests of the City, Part I

Once I found the right room,  The woman behind the desk told me to take a number, even though there wasn’t anyone else waiting. She took a few minutes to make a call on her cell phone, and then called out three or for numbers ahead of mine. When my number came up, I approached the desk and was informed, “I can’t serve you until you place your number in the receptacle.”

I jumped through a few more hoops and then finally got to explain my situation. The woman behind the desk  asked what kind of business I was in.

“I’m a copywriter.”

A blank, inquisitive, uncomprehending stare.

“I write marketing copy that businesses use on their websites to get more customers,” I explained, with all the confidence and enthusiasm I could muster.

“And people pay you money for that?”

“Isn’t that why I’m here?”

She scowled, sighed, rolled her eyes and  shook her head.

“Well, Mr. Bear,” she finally said, “It looks like we were unable to determine how much money you made, so the computer picked a random number and that’s the income you’re being taxed on.”

I took out my state and federal tax returns, printed records from QuickBooks, and showed her the correct figures. But when one item was still missing, she angrily shoved the folder back at me and demanded, “How could you NOT bring that?”

Don’t blame me, I’m the creative one…

Protecting the Interests of the City, Part II

In the end, I got everything sorted out. The City of Los Angeles has given me permission to continue to do business here, with the Mayor’s blessing.  But there’s a useful marketing lesson here as well, and it isn’t the obvious one about good customer service

The truth is, the city of L.A. offers tremendous value to me, so I’ll happily pay whatever I’m reasonably determined to owe them.

Maybe we need bureaucracy. Surely I do. Let me explain.

The city supports a large industry of attorneys, CPAs, IT professionals and others to help people and businesses deal with situations like mine. These organizations hire numerous bicycle messengers, whose high-energy caffeine addictions support the coffee shops where I often ply my trade on a laptop. Better still, these organizations need copywriters, so they keep me in the green and allow me to pay taxes to the city. What comes around goes around.

Not to mention the woman of my dreams works for the City of L.A., makes less than half of what she’s worth, and manages to support several of her family members and a whole menagerie of cute, furry animals.

In fact, just the Los Angeles Public Library by itself has done more for me than 4 years of college. That’s worth giving a few bucks to the city.

What I’m saying is without any advertising, horrible PR and abysmal customer service the City of LA still retains me as a loyal customer because her numerous and elusive products and services are immensely valuable. I get my money’s worth. Value trumps marketing.

So here’s the bottom line. Be good at what you do. If your clients really feel you’re delivering great value, doing far more for you than the dollars they pay you, they’ll stay with you and protect your interest. Then use your copywriters and marketers to make the outrageous, irresistible promises that you know you can deliver.

Don’t tell anyone I revealed this. I’ll get enemies left and right. But here’s the reason I always talk about missing 20% of your best opportunities. Because even the best copy only accounts for 20% of your results. There are two other factors that are twice as important: Your list, and an offer.

But before you even get started writing copy, or especially before hiring someone else to write copy for you, get clear on the two things that may account for up to 80% of your marketing success: The right offer to the right people.

Be the demanding client for a moment, and let’s see how this works.

The backpacker principle

Suppose you’ve earned some free time, and you want to do something special. You’ve always wanted to go backpacking in the remote parts of Hawaii. You want to climb volcanoes and watch them erupt at night. Hey, you’re even going to sleep in a lava tube if you get the chance.

Four hundred travel agents are competing for your business. But they’re not all on a level playing field. After some initial research, you start getting emails from 100 travel agents that are based in Hawaii, and specialize in travel there.

Which one will you choose? Out of 100 possible agents, fifty of them advertise on outdoor adventure websites. You now have 50 agencies that specialize in outdoor Hawaiian adventures. They know where to find the most comfortable lava tube beds. They can get your camping gear safely on and off the plane, and bring you to the best trailhead.

Ten of these companies are offering special discounts or premiums for the month you want to travel. Guess what? Out of 400 competitors, these 10 are the only ones in the running, based on choosing the right list and the right offer.

Who will be the winner? Assuming the 10 finalists offer comparable value, then and only then will the copywriting make a difference.

What the research says

A lot of market research over the last 30 years has produced the same conclusion. Getting the client is 40% list-building, 40% the offer, and only 20% the copy. A good copywriter will help you write a good offer, and could therefore contribute 60% to your success. But finding the right list is critical. Don’t waste your time selling lava tubes to clients who want a 5 star hotel.

Does copywriting still matter?

These are tough times. There are still plenty of people spending money, but everyone is more careful about where and how they spend it. Focusing on a narrow list is critical. (You can have multiple lists, but you need to market to each one separately.) Constructing a worthwhile offer is vital.

But then, in the end, when you’ve done all your hard work and research and you’ve made the right offer to the right market, all of your efforts can go to waste. Because when you’ve fought your way into that last handful of carefully-selected candidates, you’re competing with businesses that did all of their homework too. You’re up against the toughest and smartest competitors, and they’re going to fight you with everything they’ve got.

This is when you need a copywriter at your back.

Response Magazine often talks about a low-cost way to test your infomercial, before you spend a fortune on DirectTV.

They suggest running a long radio spot with the same or similar script that you plan to use for your infomercial. Many long-copy radio spots have been successfully morphed into high-yielding infomercials. And if your radio spot bombs, you can change the script or the concept before you’ve spent a fortune on TV advertising.

But even a simple radio ad will cost your company thousands of dollars but the priciple is useful no matter how small your advertising budget may be: It’s better to discover a failing campaign before you when the costs are low.

Since copy is the backbone of every ad campaign, along with a solid offer, you’re best off testing your copy and your offer as cheaply as possible. If it’s successful, you can invest more money to get your message out there on the expensive media.

Start with a sales letter, and make 2 slightly different versions so you can compare the response.  Maybe change the headline, or they layout, the “p.s.” at the end or the call to action.

Mail each one directly to 100 or 1,000 of your most likely prospects. Send out the different versions as an email to everyone on your list. Post them on your blog, and link a few relevant Google ads to the pages.

Track your results, and find out what works This is the time to tweak and test your message. Copy is the foundation of every effort. Once you’ve got it right, then you can re-apply it–with amplified results, over other media such as radio and TV.

Somewhere out there, for every person who has done business with you, there are maybe ten others who could or would, but aren’t because of several reasons:

They haven’t heard of you.

They don’t understand what you can do for them.

They didn’t need you when you approached them in the past, but they do now.

They aren’t aware of the advantages you offer over your competitors.

The aren’t aware of the need for your services, and the potential benefits of working with you.

What are you doing today to keep in touch and enlighten them?

The biggest marketing opportunity of the year is about to fall through the roof and land in your coffee. Most marketers won’t notice it, though, because they’ve got their sights locked on to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the holiday season in general.

But the real opportunity comes in January. Businesses start off with fresh budgets. Consumers wipe the slate and cover it with New Year’s resolutions.  Kids have pockets full of gift cards and spending money, while many adults are looking forward to an income tax refund in the near future.

You have a vast treasure trove of people eager to learn, to earn, to lose (weight), to gain, to change their lives–and they have the energy and the means to make it happen.

Best of all,  your competitors are asleep, gorged on eggnog and holiday sales. That’s the time to strike.

Now is the time to plan your January campaigns, if you haven’t done it already. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Look around for other people and businesses who compliment what you do. You can bring each other new business for additional profit. If you’re a personal trainer, work with a chiropractor and a masseuse. If you sell a product, look for professionals who could sell your product to their clients.
• Write a letter to prospective clients, personally inviting them to better health, higher earnings, simplicity, or whatever benefits your business delivers
• Publish an informational how-to that deals with an issue your clients are concerned about, which you know how to resolve. This doesn’t have to be an ebook or a white paper. You can hold a teleseminar, a webinar, a live workshop, a podcast, or a video.
• Create premium versions of the information above, which you can sell for an additional source of revenue

These are old, time-tested tools. They’ll uncover opportunities for you where you thought there were none. Start using them now, and get the jump on a prosperous 2010.

Google’s internal motto is “Don’t be evil.” But the company recently launched a program that gives anyone–including your most unethical competitors–the power to essentially vandalize your website.

Google’s new application, SideWiki, creates a sidebar on your website where anyone can register and leave a comment. You’ll have no power to moderate this.

This opens your site to all kinds of abuse. Your site could become riddled with vulgar, meaningless comments. Competitors can offer your products at a lower cost, and post their affiliate links.

Sylvie Fortin did an excellent post about SideWiki on the Marketers Board. You’ll have to scroll down past a bit of advertising, but here’s the link:

http://www.marketersboard.com/google-sidewiki-controversy/

Her post includes some real-world examples of perverted and vulgar comments, sleazy spam with affiliate links, and even Nazi propaganda.

What can you do about this? There are three tactics that come to mind right now:

1. Enough pressure on Google might eventually get them to kill the program or give you some say in what gets posted on your website.
2. You could Flood your own website with worthless, inane, spammy comments so that visitors ignore the sidebar altogether
3. Maybe it’s time to aggressively seek testimonials, and invite your best clients to flood SideWiki with kind words on your site.

Aside from all that, it’s important to keep SideWiki, along with all social media, in perspective. It all comes down to strategy.

For example, I spend a good hour or two a day on blogs, FaceBook, Twitter and such, but ultimately I get the best results from good old fashioned, time-proven marketing principles. Like being consistent, sending the right message to the right people for the right impact.

Nobody in business can ignore what happens on the Internet. But it’s just as dangerous, naive, and lazy to disregard all of the tools that can promote your business offline as well.

Here’s the good news. You’re not alone in figuring out how to make sense of this. If you want some help, or just a chance to bounce some ideas around, I’m offering free teleconference strategy sessions on a first-come, first-served basis.

All you have to do is call or shoot me an email and I’ll put you on the schedule. There’s no charge and no obligation for these calls, but I’ve only got a couple hours a week to do this.

I’m already booked through the end of October, but I can still do a few of these in November, if you can beat the crowds.

That’s it for now. Be sure and check out Sylvie Fortin’s post on SideWiki. Here’s the link again:

http://www.marketersboard.com/google-sidewiki-controversy/

Several years ago, a clothing retailer in Baltimore figured out how to save his family-owned store from the big giants like Wal-Mart that were moving into the neighborhood. What did he do?

He wrote a letter. By hand. He wrote it on a yellow legal pad, embellished it with circles and asterisks, underlined key sentences for more emphasis, and drew in some cute little coupons.

Then he ran off a few hundred photocopies, on the same yellow legal pad paper, and sent them to his best customers.

Marketing under the radar

This funky letter did the trick. Loyal customers flocked into his store the following weekend, and his immediate cash-flow problems were solved.

After that he instructed his employees to gather the name and address of everyone who bought anything in his store. Now he regularly sends out interesting, creative mail to his list–not just for the holidays and new seasons, but practically every month. At least.

His business is thriving, even did well during the past 12 months when so many businesses have been hurting.

His name is Bill Glazer, and you can look up his book on Amazon, Outrageous Advertising, if you want to read more about how he did it and see a copy of the fateful yellow letter. But there’s another point I want to make.

We’re in the digital age, and you should be putting some effort into making Twitter, FaceBook, websites and email work for you. But you’re a fool if that’s all you do. Here’s why.

Everyone gets mail, and at the very least they have to physically handle it in some manner before it ends up in the recycle pile. I can’t think of a better way to come in under the radar, and get right up in front of potential clients while everyone else is fighting for attention in cyberspace.

Get this right one time, and you’re set for the rest of the year

If you can come up with an eye-catching, creative mailing, you’re going to reach your prospects in a way that many of your competitors aren’t even trying to do.

And the beauty of it is that you only have to do it once. You don’t need to post a Tweet every half hour and spend your evenings on FaceBook. You don’t need to come up with a new blog post every day. Once you have a proven mailing campaign, you can tweak it a little and send it out month after month, possibly for years.

Now I’d like to introduce you to the man who can help you.

My friend Gonzalo Tapia runs A Plus Mailing, a family business that has been around for more than a quarter of a century. Gonzalo’s company has survived multiple recessions, and he’s helped other businesses do well when the economy wasn’t.

Gonzalo knows his stuff, from how to do a mailing that gets results to saving a few bucks on printing and postage. And now he’s put together a special guide so you can be direct-mail savvy, too.

You can’t find this anywhere on the Internet today, but we might give you a free copy. If you ask nicely.

There’s a good chance you’ll be able to get the guide from his website in the future, but in the meantime Gonzalo is doing me (and you!) a great favor. He’s giving me permission to offer a draft of his book to select friends and readers.

This isn’t something you can just download off a website. This is strictly a friends and family deal. It won’t cost you anything for now, but you have to ask for it. Call me or send an email with “direct mail guide” in the subject line if you want a copy.

Over the last two weeks, I wrote seventeen drafts for this post. I couldn’t find the right words to convey what I want to say, so I’m just going to spill it out and hope you’ll agree.

You know we’re in tough times economically, and I hope you’re not feeling the squeeze as badly as people who have lost their homes or their jobs.

I could go on and on about the importance of “giving back.” A bad economy must be much worse for non-profit organizations, and unbearable for the people, animals, and ecosystems that rely on them.

I could remind you of what Zig Ziglar said: “The only thing you need to do to get what you want is help enough other people to get what they want.”

But you know all this, and I believe you want more or less the same thing I want: To make money and do some good in the world. So let’s work together.

Ambition, Abundance, and Action

I’m trying something new this summer. Any writing I do for you in July or August, I’ll give 10% of your payment to the charity of your choice. I’ll even do it in your name, so you can get the tax deduction and the good karma. Plus, if it’s a big project you’ll get a big discount.

And of course you’ll get a lot more out of this than just a thank-you card.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not 100% satisfied with the wealth your business brings in. But my readers are a step above that.

I’m betting that you’re actually willing to do something about it. You know that results-driven content on your website brings more sales. You get better SEO when you have copy written for that purpose.

You bring in more clients from a targeted, direct response campaign.

If you’re letting your prospects see content that’s boring or unfocused, you know that you can do better. And in this current economic climate, you have to do better, or you’re not going to make it.

There’s never been a better time to spruce up your website, create content that prospective customers will truly read, and just do some good, honest marketing. I’m trying to make it easy for you to advance your business and support your favorite cause.

So what I propose is this. I’ll write fresh, new, results-driven copy for your website, brochures, or a marketing campaign. And just as I promised, I’ll donate 10% of the bill to the charity of your choice. In your name. You’ll get the credit, the glory, and the tax deduction.

Not to mention a discount.

Normally a large project would cost you $1500 to $3000 or even more. But for the entire month of July I’m putting a ceiling on every project at $750, which is only half, or even a fourth, of what you would normally pay.

If you want, you can also give the money you’ll save to a charity. Or you can add it to your coffers, and use it to build your business and enjoy yourself.

Coaxing the world back to life

I said that this was an experiment. I’m giving up my usual vacation time to do this, because I need to see if it can work. I’m hoping this offer will set an example for other businesses, and they’ll follow suit. Imagine when a thousand businesses do this!

Coffers will overflow. Good works will be done, and all the while you’ll be pumping the heart of the economy, blowing on the coals, coaxing the world back to life.

There are trees to be planted, hungry people to be fed, kids waiting eagerly for guidance and direction, or just a chance for some fun. Stray and wild animals need rescuing, homes, and habitat. Beaches and parks need to be cleaned up.

Very few people get to live at a crossroads like the one we’re in right now. I challenge you to think like a mountain and live like a rainstorm.

If this seems like a good idea, pass it on. Maybe you’re happy with your copy right now, and there’s no need to change. If so, forward this to someone else who can benefit.

This isn’t just about the writing, but the idea. Steal it yourself, if you want. More businesses giving away 10% of their earnings to their customers’ charities can’t be a bad thing.

So I’m asking you to take at least one of these two steps:

1. Call (213-427-92880 or email me (Jacob@jacobbear.com) to get your discounted, world-improving, wealth-attracting project off the ground.

2. Pass this ezine on to anyone you think could use a marketing boost.

This is red, the neighborhood cat. Last week he showed up on my porch with a huge infected gash across his face. The veterinarian drained the wound and sewed him up, and now I need to keep him inside while he heals.

He’s a fiercely independent outdoor cat, and I’m afraid he’s already bored with my silly words and amateur YouTube videos. So I gave him a toy on the end of the sting. He ignored the toy, but almost instantly fell in love with the string.

Your clients may do this from time to time, so it’s important to understand what your “string” really is.

One of the books that made my shortlist for best marketing books of 2008 was Waiting for Your Cat to Bark. There’s nothing really new or earth-shaking in the book, but they presented an important concept in a creative way: Your prospect is a cat, but you might be treating her like a dog.

In other words, if the way you’re selling and presenting doesn’t fit the needs and personality of your client, then buying is actually against their nature. It’s like expecting a cat to bark. Or selling them the toy when what they really want is the string it’s tied to.

Your job is to find the string in your business, and dangle it in front of the right cats. I had a weird experience with this last month.

Towards the end of May, I started making offers to a fresh list of prospects in a new industry. When I wrote about sales and marketing, very few of them seemed interested. But as soon as I describe copywriting in connection with social media, and suggested things like rewriting their case studies and press releases as blog posts, they were all ears.

I had assumed the social media aspect was a given, something that would automatically go with any writing I did for them. But really, this was the string that got the cat’s attention.

So how do you find the string? I stumbled on it by accident, but there are questions you should be asking yourself.

First, what are all the benefits of doing business with you? You should have an exhaustive list, and even get a little bit creative. Then look at that list and find the benefits you haven’t really stressed in your marketing. Test these out, and if your clients pounce, you know you’ve found your string.

Red is supposed to get his stitches out in a week. I’ll let you know if he starts barking.