Never look a gift problem in the mouth…

Sometimes the biggest gains come from seemingly inopportune obstacles that drop into in our path.

Often, ours is a path we’ve worked long and hard crafting, meticulously planning for all the little eventualities… sanding smooth each potential splinter before anyone has a chance to run their hand down the banister.

And then LIFE happens…

The fit hits the shan and everything changes. Nothing is within your control except the results you are still expected to deliver (whether for a client or for yourself).

Here’s a few common “road hazards” you may run into when you head out on the highway:

• A big event gets canceled.
• Physical product fulfillment gets delayed.
• A launch gets pushed back a few months.
• A client or partner becomes unexpectedly sick or injured.
• A mission-critical supplier goes belly-up.
• New laws or government regulation necessitate BIG changes.

One of the ways a brilliant friend of mine deals with this all too common situation is to ask himself this simple question:

“In what ways is this the best thing that could happen FOR me?“

Not happen TO me… happen FOR me…

In what ways does an impending crisis work in your favor?

Are there other resources that can be brought to bear on the problem now – ones that wouldn’t have made sense before?

Does this open a slot in your schedule to work on a project that’s been back-burnered?

In what ways does overcoming the challenge you’re facing IMPROVE your offer?

Can you seize a positional advantage in the marketplace?

How can customers BENEFIT from this “new opportunity”?

In what ways is this the best thing that could happen FOR you?

Focus on the SOLUTION, not the PROBLEM.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Lots of you reading here, some of you even email, tweet and post on FB about these posts – but not many of you are commenting regularly… what’s up, peeps?

Your thoughts and questions are absolutely welcome here and greatly appreciated.

Share your best strategies for keeping a steady hand on the rudder in a stormy sea…

Best,

Brian

"Repurpose... Repackage... Reuse..."

Download Repurposing Assets (MP3)

]]> http://www.brianmcleodmarketing.com/blog/making-full-use-of-what-youve-got/feed/ 0 http://www.brianmcleodmarketing.com/blog/video-ogilvy-on-direct-response-advertising/ http://www.brianmcleodmarketing.com/blog/video-ogilvy-on-direct-response-advertising/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:02:24 +0000 Brian McLeod http://www.brianmcleodmarketing.com/blog/?p=112

You may have seen this already… and so it will be good to watch it again. : )

Once an audio engineer develops their ear enough, they begin to notice things in the audio and the music that the general public never does.

Sibilance… that “SSSSsss” sound that whistles like a spike in your ear.

Hypercompression… that massively squashed “wall of sound” that eliminates all dynamics and makes everything loud as hell.

Tubby bottom-end on the kick drum, flabby bass tone with no definition, grainy sounding sample rate conversion.

It’s MADDENING… because you can never go back to just experiencing the music the way the audience does…

Well, guess what?

…same story as you develop your marketing chops.

You spot something in the sales copy or the offer and your mind says, “AHA!… I know what they’re doing there….”

“They’re using a big promise with specifics in the headline and here comes the social proof… Yep! I was right….”

Often the interpretation of that reaction is, “I hate that….”

Do you really? Hate that?

I don’t believe you do.

Now, don’t get me wrong – crap is crap.

But I’m often a bit amused when I see the pile on that typically develops in these conversations… with people who purport to
have a vested interest in selling things to others…

Inevitably folks begin rattling off all the “marketery” phrases, approaches, tactics, and strategies they can think of.

“I hate ______… As soon as I see that, I’m gone…”

The IM space is full of consumers who think they’re sellers.

And their protestations are more buying criterion than they are marketing philosophies.

You’re hearing sibilance. A tubby kick drum…

Why HATE that…?

I’d rather think about how I’d notch the mids, boost a few db at 4.5K to give it some “click”, then smack the bottom end
with a multiband compressor to tighten it up.

And… yeah. I HATE SSsssibilance too.

Thoughts?

Here’s an excerpt from a reply I made recently on the Warrior Forum.

I will wager that most of you have an entire mailing list of all your paypal customers with shipping addresses that you’ve never mailed a THING to.

Some of you probably have a LOT of them, going back years.

Are you getting any ideas here?

In direct mail, you have an ageless communication channel, one that works on an entirely different psychological level than email or websites do… and it’s sitting there.

Postcards don’t have to be opened. They’re the cheapest, easiest thing to mail.

They work. Especially for getting people to pick up the phone and call (hint).

If you’re not used to paying for your traffic, or spending any money marketing to your existing customers this is going to sound terribly risky.

But if you already pay for traffic in the form of pay-per-click, outsourced SEO or content creation, etc… Direct mail may be a revelatory experience for you.

You can clawback some of that lead cost by squeezing a few more dollars out of your lifetime customer value.

Right now, your mind is probably already starting to click with ideas.

Try thinking in these terms… if you have the list already, your costs are going to be limited to the printing of the postcard and first-class postage:

http://www.usps.com/prices/first-class-mail-prices.htm

http://48hourprinting.com

1000 4×6 postcards with postage is going to cost you around $400 give or take.

If you already ship to your customers, you’re in REALLY good shape, because you can start sending ride-alongs for nothing but the cost of the printing.

A ride-along is just a promotional piece that “rides along” with the primary thing being mailed, goods or packages, an invoice, whatever.

All that “crap” you get with your credit card bill… ride-alongs. STUDY THEM.

Anyhoo… Maybe this will give some of you some clever inspiration.

Let me know if it does.

Best,

Brian

Sales Letters have only ONE purpose - to SELL

The other day, I responded to a question that seems to come up over and over again – “SEO Copywriting”.

Now, as you’ll read below, I’m a huge believer in SEO. It’s not even in question whether or not SEO is important or valuable.

However, a Sales Letter is 100% the WRONG place to be worrying about SEO.

Here’s the question that sparked the whole conversation:

Does anyone know a good SEO copywriter that can rewrite my salesletter with reasonable amount of keyword density?

And here’s my reply:

Ugh…

Plop a blog in a subdirectory of the domain and fill it with all the keyword rich super mega optimized SEO juice you can muster…

But don’t rape your sales letter that way…

Well… the conversation took a fairly predictable turn when replies like this started coming in:

Trying to fit SEO into sales copy I take it for Brian, is like trying to get your hand in a glove that just doesn’t fit lol.

It appears to be a pet hate of his, combining the two.

Now, whilst I see his point, which I hither-to-before disagreed with him about, I can now see where he is coming from, however I still disagree with him to a small extent.

Surely, if one can include the requested keyword / long tailed keyword without it having any dramatic negative effect on the sales copy or conversion rate, then my question is – why not?

Does the copy have to be inferior as a result?

Personally I find that supposition rather daft, no offense Brian.

So, I took a minute to try and spell it out a little bit more carefully and visually. I thought the metaphor worked pretty well. Frankly, it’s the whole reason for this post (and everything you’ve read up to here…!)

Here’s what I said:

Let me try and be more clear about it and I think you’ll find we disagree less than you realize.

Chances are very good that a well written sales letter is by its very nature already quite rich in primary keywords as well as a variety of other important LSI keywords.

Titling the page properly, setting a good meta-description, img alt tags, etc… all of the basic on page SEO 101 stuff really is quite adequate for a sales letter.

Focusing on OFF-page SEO is going to be the real play for results in the SERPS. Think feeder sites, youtube videos, articles, blog posts, press releases and web 2.0 pages – all of which can be optimized with laser-like focus for specific keywords and search phrases.

A sales letter’s ONLY purpose is to get the people on that page now, to BUY NOW. Anything that is not in direct service to that goal is a DISTRACTION from it.

Just because one CAN kw stuff a sales letter cleverly or non-obviously doesn’t mean that it’s serving the larger goal well.

Getting away with it ain’t the goal.

Sell the hell out of it, that’s the goal.

Think of it this way, say I’m making a sales presentation to YOU, one on one on the showroom floor… it does not help my purpose to try and attract other’s attention while I’m trying to close you, does it?

But let’s say I have four “fronters” working for me. 2 stand outside and bally traffic in to see me, and 2 are inside the showroom ready to qualify and warm up the prospect before they sit down at my desk with me.

Sure, I could just PITCH REALLY LOUD or have a huge trade show exhibit behind my desk… somebody walking by might overhear what I’m saying or see something that interested them and walk over to listen in…

Which makes more sense for CLOSING DEALS?

Your sales letter is the most valuable virtual real estate you own and should be treated as such. There’s a thousand ways to attract SEO traffic, why conflate the two?

So, there you have it. Think of your sales letter like your absolute highest paid, highest performing sales person that brings in ALL the money for your company.

You don’t assign him chores like SEO.

Top closers don’t call leads… They CLOSE deals.

Great sales letters aren’t for SEO… They’re for MAKING THE SALE.

Hope this finds you well,

Brian McLeod

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

– George Orwell

Today I wanted to spend a second talking about what I call ”The 3 C’s” of persuasive communication

1) Clarity – How easy you make your writing to read

2) Character – The “avatar” or voice of your writing

3) Conviction – How strongly present your case

Let’s start with #1 – CLARITY

You have no higher aim than that of clarity in your writing and your overall sales message. It’s YOUR job as the writer to put in the hard yards and do the heavy lifting. You have to make it ridiculously easy for your reader to both consume and understand what you’re trying to say.

• Who are you?
• Why should I care?
• What are you selling?
• What will it do for me?
• What will my life look like after I do what you
• want me to do?
• What specifically do you want me to do now?
• How do I do what you want me to do?
• What will happen after I do it?
• What happens when I chicken out and wait?

Tips:

1) Economize on words. Strip away words wherever possible — rarely does it HARM the message, and often it makes it much stronger.

2) Don’t make assumptions about what the reader knows or doesn’t know — reinforcing what someone already knows or believes to be true cannot hurt you, but not establishing a baseline of understanding absolutely CAN hurt you. Big time.

3) Read your writing out loud. Pay attention to your cadence and your rhythm — the best writing usually ”reads like jazz”.

Now, let’s move to #2 – CHARACTER

John Carlton calls it your “avatar”, others call it your “voice” in the writing.

Let’s use a popular example of character driven sales copy — The Rich Jerk.

Does anyone doubt that ALL of the success of this product and promotion came directly as a result of the complete immersion into the character of “RJ”, The Rich Jerk?

Obviously KF/RJ was WAY over the top. That’s not easy to do well. The point is that the overall character of your message should be consistent and well voiced.

You do that by COMMITTING to it.

Don’t be wishy-washy about it. GO FOR IT. It’s what makes it work!

Lastly, let’s look at #3 – CONVICTION

Selling from a position of POWER comes down to how much you believe in what you’re saying.

Persuasive writing does not “sell from its heels” or pussyfoot around. It grabs readers by the throat and DARES them not to agree… It forces a position.

You’ve got to find the angle in your product or service that makes YOU excited and transfer that enthusiasm into your reader emotionally.

Don’t make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone — polarity SELLS. So what if what you say might piss somebody off? If you aren’t stirring up SOME kind of emotion in your reader your writing lacks conviction!

Go out there and sell the damn thing, whatever it is…

I’d love to hear your thoughts about the 3 C’s. Just leave a comment below.