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 Genie in the Bottle…

Here is a very interesting direct mail campaign aimed at a very cherry picked target list.

Some company in the computer electronics field tried a very nifty tactic. They bought a couple cases of bottles, created a sales letter, rolled it up and shoved it in the bottle. Then they mailed it to the prospect like that!

You must be thinking that is too crazy, maybe kinda dumb. I guess it was a bad idea since they only got a 98% response!!! Talking about the "power is in the list"

Maybe they were "lucky", maybe the gods felt sorry for them that day. Well, the gods were in a real good mood with this mortgage business too. They sent out bottles to a cold list of 50 Realtors and had 34 calls!!

Do you see ways an idea like this could work for you? Did you think that the mortgage and computer prospects would bite on such a weird approach? If they bit, anyone can bite.

I would try something like this with high end residential prospects, property management companies. I would try it to any prospect that would yield a good profit margin. Maybe even try it with a company you would like to partner up with.

You need to put together a 1 page, 2 sided sales letter (take your time on it). You want personallity AND facts/reasons about who you are and why they need you. Make an offer at the end. Tie a piece of ribbon around the letter (make sure the letter is wound tight so it comes out)

I guarantee you this, you will have their total attention; so use it wisely.

The goal of my blogs is to crack open your skull and allow you to see marketing like you never seen it before. This is not about mailing bottles to people, it is about opening your mind to possibilities.

Whether you do business over the internet or to a local market, always try to be interesting while remaining relevant. As to you online businesses, START UTILIZING DIRECT MAIL!

Go get some

Paul