Are You One of The People Driving Me Nuts?

I’ll tell you what, I see nothing screwed up more than people trying to cram imagery into an ad that does not help it.

I see the "make money" websites with the exotic sports cars, the mansions and the piles of cash staring at me. Do you know what these guys think they are doing? They think they are creating a fantasy life by showing us these images.

What pops into your head when you see a mountain of cash piled in a Porsche? Smells like bullshit, don’t it. Not only that, dreams of wealth are weak. The promise of escaping a current crisis is overwhelming.

Do you stay awake at night thinking about a Mercedes or do you worry about the next car payment on your Ford Taurus?

When people see our ads they do not see them without bias. They know we have intention of picking their pocket. Their defenses are strong and they are resistant.

Being they are already in a heightned state and their bs detector is at maximum, why give them a reason to run away? You know very well that seeing those images on a money making website/mailer make you giggle, yet everyone still does it.

Do you know why they still put them on there? Neither do they, it has become the status quo. I will not even write copy for such a project. I know I will have lost them far before they start reading. Why battle uphill?

Most think over the top images attract attention, it’s true but not always in a good way. Getting attention can be very subtle and far more effective.

Check This Out

Let’s say you have a row of 50 white coffee cups (these being ads in the marketplace). Which cup catches your eye? You will arbitrarily just focus on one or none.

Now let’s tip one cup on it’s side, which one will get your total attention? Same white cup, totally different result.

Napoleon was interesting in many ways, but he knew how to stand out and get the peoples attention. When Napoleon would speak at public gatherings he would put the tallest officers he could find on each side of him. The people’s attention was immediately drawn to him as he stood out like he was on fire.

Every image must serve a purpose. If you put a picture of a house on an ad for window cleaning you are missing the boat. That house does not mean anything to them. Are the people who own it happier or relieved because they had their windows cleaned?

See, the house is an empty image. Now a distraction. A picture of a family playing in the front yard however…. that can put them mentally into the picture.

Your ad is a sales person and it must seduce to get  sales. If you are just filling space with empty images, you will also have a lot more empty space in your bank account….

go get some

Paul

-Next we will look at headlines and how you are screwing them up

"Guess What I am Going To Do To You Next"

I know you must be thinking I am really reaching here, but hang in there.

I have studied martial arts for more than 20 years. The style I study is Bruce’s Jeet Kune Do. ("the art of fighting with out fighting")

Basically JKD is extracting the ‘best of’ from multiple styles of martial arts. (now known as MMA). As you are well aware that is what the best direct marketers do. They don’t waste time with useless brand awareness tactics or passive advertising… they have a small arsenal of proven methods.

Many of you may think that Bruce knew a lot of moves, and you would be right. He could do any high flying kick, all sorts of close range punches, he could whip you to the ground and he could even screw with your mind with his freaky noises.

He could do it all… on the big screen, but in reality he had a very small bag of tricks.

You have seen him do many fantastic things in the movies, but that was an illusion. That was hollywood magic (much like the useless tv commercials and print ads seen these days). What you saw was not real

Bruce used to get into fights quite often. Other Asians were always challenging him (including extras on Enter the Dragon!). They knew if they could beat him or even give him a good run, they would be famous.

Bruce would win most of these challenges within 20 seconds. He used no flying kicks, no speed punches and no wrestling moves. He used what I like to call an open door invitation.

He would stand back and allow the challenger to attack. Bruce turned defense into an unbeatable offense. They would come at him and he would simply stop them and have complete control.

He did this by using a few simple tools.

• Eye poke
  
• redirect
  
• and a stop hit
  

(Eye poke is obvious (and hard to defend when you are attacking). Redirect is when you come in to throw a punch or kick and Bruce would block it and enter with an assault. The last is a stop hit. Bruce was lightning fast and when someone would advance towards him he would snap out a front kick to the guys leading leg- stopping him immediately. Then with momentum, go in for the kill on the off balance foe.)

So with the arsenal of ass whooping techniques Bruce knew, he only used three. He won EVERY time just using these.

Do you see how that is with marketing? We are always trying to learn more and more and more, only to know too much. If you master just a few you could be the baddest mutha around.

Don’t always keep searching for the secret as you may already have the answer. TEST one theory, approach, style or idea at a time. It is very possible you do not need to read 20 books and go to 10 seminars to get "the great idea". Quit buying ebooks and other crap for a minute.

Also, use caution on marketing blogs. Most bloggers don’t talk about tried and true, they talk about theories. Question what their response has been using the idea they’re puking out. (really, ask them. You’ll be surprised at what they don’t know)

Everyone is an expert on the Internet, find out who is real and who is full of shit. Don’t waste your time with the wannabe’s .

Marketing is most effective when it is simple, not fancy or complicated. My most successful ad ever was mind numbingly simple. That ad made a quarter of a million dollars in sales and beat any ad that came before it.

Find out your ‘eye poke’ and master it. Next time your competition throws a punch, you will take him out fast.

go get some

Paul

P.S. if you have not got on my list yet- DO IT. I just alerted people to an awesome $2500 marketing course for nothing (it is over now). I caught wind of a $10,000 free course in December!

You will get treated with respect and you will get my ebook on 101 marketing ideas.

I don’t care what type of business you have, it is VITAL to have a list of people that showed interest in your product or service. Even if they did not buy.

Before I started working with online marketing, I never grasped this. I let hundreds maybe thousands of people over the years visit my site and leave. DUMB

At that time I had a window cleaning business and figured lists are for ebook pushers- WRONG! As you are well aware it is not easy to create an interest in your offering. Usually once we do get them to our site we drop the ball.

You must realize that people leave your site for a multitude of reasons. Many leave because they are not quite ready to purchase. The probelm with that is they forget, lose your website and forget your name.

Now when they are ready they contact whoever, leaving you without a new customer and without their hard to get moolah.

Most of you who are online or getting ready to release a product are well aware of this. For those of you who are running a local service, restaurant, store, whatever… you CAN use this effectively.

How? Glad you asked

You will need to find or create an incentive to get their opt-in. You could create a 7 page report on something relative to your offering. If you are a carpet cleaner a 7 page report on the dangers of allergens in the carpet would be good. If you have a restaurant maybe a free desert recipe. For a sporting goods store you could have a report on the best places to hunt and fish. You get the idea. It does not need to be incredible.

You can also find reports/ebooks from others to give away. (make sure they gave you the right to do so) Notice the sign up for the free ebook on my site? That’s how I get people to sign up.

You’re thinking  "great, but how do I get their email saved in my system?". Easy, sign up for a Aweber account (www.aweber.com). This will give you a fully functional database of people who signed up. Not only does it keep track of everyone it also allows an "opt-out" to protect you from being a Spammer.

Along with the protection you can also segrate your lists. You can put them into groups of a certain type if you wish.

My favorite feature is the personalized broadcasts. Let’s say you are having a early bird special for window cleaning. You simply create your broadcast message and send it to your list. It can list them by their name and use it as the salutation (i.e Hi Mark).

You can also create a follow up of messages to go out on any date you wish. You could write 6 months worth of emails today and put it on autopilot.

You will see who opened the email. You can see who clicked a link in the email and most importantly, you can immediatley find out what is not working so you can change it.

Aweber is only $19 a month and the very tool that million dollar marketers use. Don’t let any more money slip out of your pocket. You need to be on the cutting edge or you will be cut out.

go get some

Paul

Go CSI on Your Product or Service

Many marketers say to work on a killer offer first, then the rest of the ad. I do agree that an urgent and motivating offer can make an ad wickedly effective but, it needs to hook them first.

Offers lose to a hook because the offer is the action inducer, not the attention and interest getter. Most will not get to your offer.

What’s a hook? A hook is simply something interesting/unique about you or what you are selling.

If you sell online memberships, what is it about you or the site that is interesting? If you clean carpets, what makes you different from anyone else.

A hook to me is a spiced up USP. Something that makes you or your offer unique mixed with dramatic appeal. John Carlton is one of my favorite copywriters and a hook finding genius.

Let’s take a headline that Carlton did for a mundane and rather boring financial newsletter. Rather than write the typical sterile "Make Better Investments Using Our Proven Methods", he decided to go Columbo.

What he did was research all the material he could find. Buried in the material was a little quote from Money Magazine referring to this mutual funds wizard as a "human computer". I am sure you’re thinking that was all that was needed.

No, the hook was justified because this "human computer" in a typical quarter could crunch the numbers of 14,000 different companies offering stock… IN HIS HEAD!! So he could now talk about that in the copy.

The Headline?

"Mysterious Arizona "Human Computer" Humiliates Wall Street "Experts" For 21st Consecutive Year!"

I guarantee that grabs attention

That hook can now be the base for the entire ad. Now you are thinking that your carpet cleaning business is different. I have no super computer article to use. Maybe not, but you do have something.

Maybe the way you clean carpets destroys 96% of all allergens within the carpet. Maybe your a single father of three kids…

"Single Dad Protects His Children From Allergens And Now Offers to Keep Your Kids Safe Too"

Put that up against "Get $50 off Any Full Service Carpet Cleaning" and see which one gets more attention.

The single dad headline is true and now has a human interest side. How will the other generic ads out there compete with this guy?

You have a hook, I guarantee you do. You may need to dig into you or your product/service to find it. Write down a list of things that come to mind in your search. As you can see it could be very simple.

Make sure the copy in the ad resonates with the hook. Keep that interest intact. As soon as you get generic they’re gone.

The less interesting you find your product or service, the less interesting your ad will be. Get fired up about what you’ve got. In that aroused state of mind is when you want to start digging and writing.

Go get some

Paul

The dreaded drawer monster is on the rampage…

If you use offline marketing like direct mail, flyers or some other kind of physical ad, do you know what happens to it?

I deal with a lot of small businesses selling locally on a small budget. They send out mailers or they get in a Val-Pak or some other ad that gets delivered to their target market.

I am amazed how some of these business owners show happiness in saying "we are still getting calls from our ad from 8 months ago".

My first question is always- "how many calls did you get when you delivered the ad?". Whenever we create ads and have them delivered there absolutley needs to be accoutability. More so if there is a small advertising budget.

People that call months after an ad is put out are incidentals, not response that can be counted. Direct response devices like direct mail are to do what? CREATE A DIRECT RESPONSE! That response tells you what you need to do for your advertising so you can get on track, fast.

If you mail 2000 postcards and get 5 responses you know exactly what you have. Those 5 customers may have been worth it depending on what you are selling in addition to the lifetime value of the customer.

Let’s face it, if you can get 20 new customers out of an ad you got 5 from in a previous attempt, wouldn’t you do it?

There is only one way to get that percentage higher- immediate and trackable results. The faster you get the results the quicker you can asses your marketing.

Here are a few things you can do that make tracking easy:

• Deadline- Every ad must have an offer with a deadline (I like 2 weeks from delivery)
• Use a code if you have several ads. i.e "Call now and use "summer slowdown" for special"
• Keep written track of the results! Too many of you take mental notes on results. Almost always 100% wrong

I can’t tell you how many times a business will mail an ad and get a rush of calls from Google or yellow page ads. The business owner assumed that the mailing was the source. I have had this happen several times to me.

We are resistant to find out the real results sometimes. I know it sounds counter intuitive but we do not want to know the real results (unless they are great).

Why do you think small companies put out terrible ads over and over? You have seen the ads, you see them all the time.

Nothing will help your business grow faster than marketing smartly. Instant results are your best friend. Instant results help you to make more money. Instant results help you demolish your competition.

These results are your future

Go get some

Paul McQuillan

Onslaught Marketing

Contact me today if you need some help on your marketing

You likely own a business. You likely do your own advertising. You are likely driving me nuts with your crap ads. What is a crap ad?

A crap ad is a sales letter, postcard, website, flyer, banner towed around by a plane or any other device shoved in my face without meaning.

You spend money to bother me and all I get to see is crap.

Do you know why you bug me? Because you don’t spit out anything I care about. I have posted in my blogs many times about not generalizing and realizing what your service is not what I want to buy, the result is.

Do you listen? Why do I still get business owners who read this still sending me scratchy toilet paper? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

(deep breath) It’s okay, you can still change your blasted ways quite easily. I will take you by the hand and walk you through a basic concept.

Let’s say I hire you to do whatever it is you do. You show up and do it very well. Now tell me what the customer is seeing/thinking/feeling after your gone.

Have you ever really thought about what happens once you are out of the picture? There is no doubt you focus on things like doing a great job or having integrity and pride with what you left behind… that is not what they are feeling. They likely are not thinking about you at all if you did well.

They are in the moment. They are enjoying the fact that their carpets don’t smell like dog. They feel more comfortable financially after meeting with an adviser. They love that their lawn is plush and greener than their neighbors.

They are not thinking about you, but that is good. What they will do is connect that plethora of positive emotion to what you did for them. Those are what you use in your ads. Take the focus completely off of your company.

I am not saying don’t mention any specifics about your company but you need to get them emotionally involved with your ad first. Get them to want to know who you are.

When your ad shows up NOBODY wants it. They were not getting ready to contact someone offering your service on the way to the mailbox. Simply announcing you and your service will waste massive amounts of possible revenue over time.

You know the processes of your business very well and that is why you normally focus your ads on that. Nobody cares at first about how you do whatever you do, they care about what they get from what you do.

You need to convey that IMMEDIATELY. 80% of people read the top of an ad without reading the rest. If that headline, caption or image does not connect, they are gone.

If you are not quite sure how people feel about what you do, find out! ASK THEM. I know it is a strange concept but if we don’t take in new information we don’t learn.

Simply ask your customer/client what they liked about your service. Try to get as many as possible and then start creating your ads using those insights as the theme.

Keep in mind if you are using images that they convey the same emotional connection as the rest of the ad. If you do a home service don’t plaster a picture of a home as that is meaningless. If they feel it is meaningless what happens? Yep, they’re gone.

Once you start to know your customers this process becomes easy and you make more money.

Here is a final mental image I wish to leave you with-

You are asleep in your coffin in cold dark cellar. You wake to hear creaking boards but know that no one dare challenge you. The creaking stops and total silence once again puts you at peace.

WHOOSH! the casket flings open to see me standing over you. You mutter “Paul Van Helsing!” and I yell “TO HELL WITH YOU IRRITATING DEVIL! I’LL FINALLY BE RID OF YOU ONCE AND FOR ALL!”

Before you can react my stake centers over your heart, with a massive smash of my mallet I drive the stake into you.

Go get some

Paul

Here it is on a cloudy and cool Tuesday afternoon. This is the time of day I like to go through emails and work on some of the million things I need to do online.

Every now and then people send me a flyer, postcard or some kind of ad for my opinion. With these I also collect local business ads to examine. (it’s kind of a fetish)

When I see the ads sent to me or the ads I collect I notice one common theme, generalized facts. Most small businesses do their own marketing which includes writing the ads. The problem with that is obviously we as the business owner know about what we are selling. We sometimes state things that are obvious to us but a riddle to those not involved.

When we fall in love with our business and lack any real sales skills we can get tunnel vision.

Since most ads in the postcard or flyer format look the same, the consumers stop paying attention; then the ad “fails”. Usually when the ad fails we create an ad filled with more useless generalities with a better coupon.

What are useless generalities? Let’s take this postcard in front of me- here is their focus as these are the words they used:

Experienced, Dependable, Professional and Detailed. This card is for window cleaning but it really does not matter.

Likely all of you use some variation of the words above. Now tell me what those mean to me, the consumer. I suppose you would say “well it is obvious”. I will tell you it looks like all the rest and I would barely glance at it on the way to the trash.

When ads show up and have the exact same formula we stop paying attention. We have fell to sleep 10,000 times before reading this crap.

What you need to do is take a hard look at what it is you are selling and answer one simple question- why. These words- Experienced, Dependable, Professional and Detailed along with best, quality and affordable are meaningless drivel. You said everything that everyone else says.

So why should I pick up the phone and call? Don’t tell me, you are counting on the offer/coupon to win the battle. It likely escaped you that people will not read your offer. They see those all the time also.

You may be thinking that most companies in your business basically do things the same way, and you’re right. Maybe you are emulating a successful competitor hoping some of that gold will land in your pan.

You will likely help your competition by spreading the same basic message. In order to carve out your niche you need to focus on that niche. Instead of “anyone can use this” you need to boil it down so you can speak to your ideal reader.

I don’t care if you are cleaning carpets or own a restaurant, you need to pinpoint whom you want to do business with. Maybe it is young families. Maybe it is seniors. There is no way to advertise to them both effectively.

It can also be said that wealthy people think and buy differently than the middle class. There is no way you can advertise effectively to both. A person that can justify purchasing a $80,000 car does not think the same as the person with the $25,000 Chevy.

If you want to get and keep your ideal customers attention you need to figure out what it is about what you have they want. A great way to get ideas is to ask your great current customers what they like most about what you provide them.

Let’s take a carpet cleaner that uses biodegradable products. Let’s say his ideal customers are young up and coming families. To simply state he uses green products is not enough. He needs to push that he uses green products. I will show you an example of how an ad might start-

…find out 5 reasons why getting your carpets cleaned can make it worse

With this as my hook I would surely add a picture of a baby sleeping with his face on the carpet. Paint that mental image and provoke emotion. It is very rare you see ads that stop you in your tracks, right? This would jolt a mother who glanced at the ad- guaranteed.

What you don’t want to do is deviate from the theme by getting general. You pushed a button now you need to build up a concern they did not have 5 minutes ago. You then need to follow up that concern with a solution to that concern.

Take some of the features and make them a little more interesting and bullet them- (don’t go from a headline into the bullets. In this case I would explain 5 things most carpet cleaning companies do/use they should know about)

Here are some of your benefits when we take care of your home:

• EPA approved products (100% safe for your children and pets)
• Truck mounted unit (for a deep down clean and fast drying)
• No worries (Insured to $1 million for your protection)
• Accountability (your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed)

Notice all the “your” in the copy. Keep them involved by not generalizing

There are many, many companies in all different businesses using the “green” angle. I bet you have not seen one doing it right which means it can be exploited. There is no doubt things in your business you are overlooking.

I can do this type of ad for any business. The way I approach it is really take a good look at everything the company does and uses. This is really hard for the owner of a company. You must really step back and see it all.

Go get some

Paul

Have you ever looked through craigslist at “companies” screaming how they are cheaper than everyone. How they will beat any price. I’ll tell you what, I see legitimate companies having a fire sale every now and then too.

This trend is nothing new and has been around forever. When we don’t realize the value of what we are selling we can only look at how to cheapen it.

I have never really seen the “we’ll beat anyone’s price” work well with a service business. Sure there are people out there looking to get their windows cleaned on the cheap, but do you want cheap customers?
To try and win over a market of people that are void of finding true value and look for cheapest price; is business suicide. We are not selling products made in a third world country, we are selling our time and expertise.

Do you want a bunch of under-priced customers? How would you feel about your service after time? You must not be thinking it is worth very much which will lead to problems.

Most times we hit slow periods because of poor advertising. Some like to blame the seasons or economics or the planets alignment… maybe the ads suck. Maybe you are not putting out enough. I run a business cleaning windows in Minnesota and somehow got a 4% response on a flyer in January. Don’t give me “it’s winter”. You just need more smart effort.

Most hate advertising as they associate it with ads that got no return. You will have flyers and postcards that stink. Insurance companies spend millions on campaigns that bomb, do you see them stopping? Do you see them going broke?

Start adding true value to your service instead of sucking it out. You can’t possibly get away with “cheapest price, best quality”. That does not exist and everyone knows it.

Raise your standards, build value, raise awareness and raise your price.

Paul