Abused Great Dane Teaches Me a Lesson

This weekend me and my wife had the unique experience of adopting a 4 year old Great Dane named Reuben (we call him Roo).

As you can see he is a magnificent animal. Sadly he had a hard life. He had a life that makes most of our problems look like a winning lottery ticket.

He was saved from a place where the dog is not considered a part of the family. He was nothing more than a burden.

Roo has abandonment issues because he found his home as being locked in a garage. Alone in the dark without very much contact, and that contact not being much better.

This horrid human being decided to crop Roo’s ears, himself. Looks like with a scissors as they are different shaped and have ridges like little stairways going down them.

He arrived at the rescue extremely underweight and showing signs of abuse with fresh wounds on his snout. He had a tumor a little bigger than a softball on his chest. The tumor was outside the ribcage so it was VERY obvious.

He is a loving animal but is aggressive with strangers at first. Danes are not known to be like this so it shows what his life must have been like.

Now he follows us everywhere and plays with our other 2 dogs. Well, he plays with our other Dane as the smaller dog is not interested in getting stepped on

Roo is an amazing dog. At times as I stare in his eyes I can feel the pain he has been through. Both physically and mentally. Part of me wants to cry and the other part wants to beat the crap out of someone.

As I sit here with my daily issues, I only need to look over at my giant friend and know this is nothing. I just imagine what a day must have been like in his 4 years there. His only break from solitude was pain.

As you wake up tomorrow and think about all your problems, remember Roo and what cards he was dealt. Then get off your ass and do what he could not.

Go get some

Paul

 For Whom The Bell Tolls

"I like this offer. I could really use that right now. I will bookmark this page and come back to it later…"

Do you ever think about that? Do you know how often that happens in all forms of advertising? Think about how you handle interesting product or service offers.

How many times have you ended up with 50 expired grocery store coupons in the junk drawer? (aka Drawer Monster). How many times have you got a flyer or postcard for a local service and filed it somewhere to call later?

How many times do you stumble across something online and click away even though you are interested?

Far too many businesses pussyfoot around closing the sale

So many of us worry about the graphics or the presentation that we overlook an immediate reason for them to not wait another second. How do we avoid the bookmark or the drawer?

Scare them!

You have seen the deadlines on ads, normally buried and unnoticable. Sometimes they are bold but uninteresting. If the deadline does not get their attention or the freebie for acting sucks, you’re sunk.

A believable deadline is something that makes the offer the most important part of the ad. Think about the stuff you wanted before and shelved it to come back to later. I bet there are MANY of these.

Life is happening. Not only do we have a nationwide crisis we also have our own personal crisis every day. I am astounded that we think that people will be dreaming about our offer. Most have forgotton it totally 10 minutes after it is out of sight.

Again, look at your own past behavior.

Get them to act now

• Time- Put a real date the offer ends and make sure they see it
• Dates are good, but quantity is effective also- "Only 47 ebooks will be given out", "We will only be able to offer this service to 25 people due to time constraints, act now"
• Tell them what they will lose if not acting by that date. Give a dollar value to each item

Make the deadline sound authentic by giving a reason, not just a date. Why are you only giving out 47 ebooks? Maybe you are keeping the saturation low so more money can be made with a bigger market. If you offer a service, this is easy. Could you handle 1000 calls and give them immediate service? Not likely.

It may also be very possible that even 50 calls at once would be a lot to deal with. State that! It makes sense on the other end.

You can do this with any product or service, just make it bold and believable.

Go get some

Paul

Don’t Be a Butt Head

When it comes to advertising, most businesses have their head up their ass. I had my head so far up mine I noticed I needed two cavities filled.

What happens is we do not realize that we need to create an interest in our product/service. We actually think the product/service sells itself.

Most are lucky if they create ads that have prospects say "that looks like a good service". The problem is that is where it usually stops.

What you want people to say is "wow, I have to have that!"
 

Your ad looks awesome!

There is a big difference between "looks good" and "gotta have it". We forget we are salesman and need to push our prospects, more so with a service or product that can cost them hundreds of dollars.

If I told you how many business owners come to me with "people say my flyer/postcard/ad looked great"…

Both people? Tell me about how many sales came from it. I truly believe that these guys will feel a little disheartened if they quadrupled their response but had less back slapping for their ad. Advertising’s sole purpose is to make money. If you feel you need a reach around for your creative abilities, join an art class.

Most flyers, postcards or any ad usually mimics a business card. It is more like a "here we are, buy some!". We know the quality of our service. Maybe we know/think we are much better than the competition. We feel if we raise the flag they will salute… Sadly the customer does not know or care how good you are UNTIL they buy. We got to usher them to buy first.

All of your ads are your sales force, not business cards. Business owners always tell me "too many words in an ad turns people off". Horse bagels! If that be the case why hire me" It’s  because the 20 word ad they had is not working. Shouldn’t they be saying "less words, less sales", due to past experience?

Too many or too little meaningless words kill an ad

If you were going door to door to sell your service would you read off 12 words? Good salesman cut the crap and overwhelm people with benefit driven sales speak. Your ads need to be conversational in order to keep interest. It is vital to remember that if you keep spiking their interest you will garner more psychological presence. (which repeated exposure can ignite branding)

**A little side note about branding- Most think that branding is due to repeated exposure to a company name. We all sort information and file it away for quick reference. In these files we add meaningful content to associate with the company name. If you think that a business card style ad is pounding your brand into people, you’re wrong. They may file the name but what would they tie to your name? You need to make sure you are the company that can help them_______**

The other guys are just plastering their name everywhere while you are working the prospect from the inside. It is far, FAR more profitable to give people good reasons to use your service.

Don’t follow inline with your competitors; use smart and well planned tactics.

Start separating yourself right now! Go to your biggest competitors websites and write down what makes you different or, redefine something ordinary to sound extraordinary. Emphasize something meaningful that everyone does but does not talk about.

If you are just another _________, you are nothing.

Go get some

Paul

Are you thinking about adding or switching to a heavy dose of online email campaigns?

Likely you are trying to "keep up with the times" and at least flirting with email marketing. For those of you who don’t know my background- I LOVE DIRECT MAIL!

Direct mail is on the decline due to costs and environmentally conscious consumers. Let’s not fool ourselves, direct mail is getting the brush off more so because of $. It is far cheaper to rent/buy a list and sign up with an email service like iContact and start blasting out your offers.

I am all for smart email marketing, but there is nothing harder if you are not contacting people who know and want to hear from you.

Direct mail has a far greater chance of reaching the target (if done right) than email. It is not likely to piss them off either. I have opted out of a lot of people I admire email lists because I get sooo much crap.

The USPS is reporting that 12 billion pieces of mail were delivered this fiscal year. Meanwhile 210 billion emails were sent  yesterday!

With email all we have is a tiny line of text to get them to open it. With direct mail getting them to look is fairly easy. If we cut down or cut out direct mail and utilize only  the cheap email campaigns, does that make us more or less money?

Last time I checked an unopened email is worth nothing. They don’t even get exposed to anything

There is no doubt that extreme caution needs to be taken while doing email campaigns. It will be a very short time before you become labeled as SPAM. Next thing you know that is the only folder your emails show up.

Nobody reads SPAM.

Build a relationship or peak interest using direct mail. Keep in mind how much less mail is going out these days. Create a good letter with a good offer and lead them to you. Once you got them it is up to you to keep them.

Go get some

Paul McQuillan