Don't neglect the power of repetition

If you adopt the problem-solving approach to copywriting that I advocate, you quickly realize many of your readers frame their problems in a variety of ways. Sometimes, the problem remains unarticulated, just below the surface of their conscious minds. At other times, your reader might articulate it in a way that is unique and specific to them.

So how do you break through your readers' filters and alert them that you offer a solution to what haunts them day and night? Repetition. I repeat, repetition.

When you repeat your strongest selling points and benefits throughout your copy, you have the opportunity to approach the reader's problem in a variety of different ways or angles, such as:

• Repeat your benefits in the form of examples.
  
• Present testimonials from other customers.
  
• Ask questions that force your reader to admit (to themselves) a need for your solution.
  
• Repeat your benefit statement in the form of a question.
  
• Quote other authorities who back up your claims.
  
• Offer proof of your claims.
  
• Word you guarantee in such a way as to offer money back if your customer does not realize the benefits you promise.
  

By no means should you insult your readers' intelligence. Instead offer them a number of variations on the same theme. By doing so, you will see an increase in response to your offering.

COPYRIGHT (C) 2006, Charles Brown. All rights reserved.

What Is Your Trail of Bread Crumbs?

A few years ago I was asked to teach a class on marketing strategies for a group of unemployed job seekers. As I thought of how I could best help this group of highly qualified, but very depressed executive level people, I came up with the following strategy that will also help you market your business.

The first question I posed to the group was this: "What problems are you VERY good at solving?"

This is a tough question and it took the individuals in my class a lot of hard thinking to come up with a thorough answer. What I was trying to get them to do was to look at their job skills in terms of problem solving, rather than experience. Anyone who is skilled at a job has mastered a set of problems he or she is very good at solving.

The same thing applies to your company. Really, really put your mind to coming up with a focused list of specific problems your business is VERY good at solving for your customers. I want you to think of some poor manager's list of performance goals his boss has handed him to accomplish, or else. Don't stop thinking until you can define these problems in almost the same kind of wording that will appear on this poor manager's performance evaluation next quarter.

This process will force you to look at what your business does from the inside out. Not from the view of an insider looking out at all the possible customers out there, but as an outsider who has a problem and is looking for some outfit that can hand them a solution on a silver platter.

Once you have reduced everything you and your team do to a very short list of problems you are very good at solving, then your marketing merely becomes a matter of helping that problem-plagued manager (and others like hime) find you.

Yes, I really did say, "merely" and I was totally serious.

Here's why. When anyone has a significant problem that causes pain, loss of sleep, stress and all kinds of other unpleasantness, THAT PERSON IS LOOKING FOR A SOLUTION.

For example, I am very good at ghost writing articles for the business person who cannot, or is too busy, to write them for herself. Oh, she knows she could really enhance her reputation and marketability if she could write and publish a number of articles related to her fields.

But since these this individual cannot write these articles for herself, she is looking for a solution to this problem. I am the solution and she is looking for me.

In your business, it is important to understand that there are people out there in your marketplace looking for you right now. They don't know your name or phone number, but they are looking for the solutions you can deliver to them.

So all your marketing efforts from now on, must be directed toward helping these people find you. Lay your trail of bread crumbs with every marketing step you take and make sure the trail leads right to your front door. They will find you.

COPYRIGHT (C) 2005, Charles Brown

Writing The Before & After Formula

The Before and After Scenario is one of the oldest, and best, methods used by advertisers and copywriters. And why not? It works because it paints a vivid portrait for your prospect of how he can realize a major change in his life.

A “Before-Scenario” depicts a person whose circumstances are much like that of your targeted prospect: overweight, broke, stuck in a dead-end job, bald or what have you. This is a person your targeted prospect can identify with because he or she languishes under the very same circumstances.

Then you present an “After-Scenario” depicting one of your satisfied customers who is delighted with the changes your product or service has brought about. She is now fit and trim (and has the requisite bathing suit pictures to prove it), they now has enough money to live the life they always dreamed about, or he now has a full head of hair and is irresistible to the opposite sex.

The simple truth is that now matter how familiar we are with this kind of advertising, it still works because the targeted prospect identifies with your Before-Scenario and strongly wants to escape from those circumstances. And the After-Scenario offers the prospect the very life he or she wants to escape to.

But at times the very familiarity of this formula may simply get old in your market. Nevertheless, there are a few ways to get even more mileage out of this old advertising workhorse by adding a few twists:

1. Create A “Virtual” After-Scenario Sometimes you may not want to use a real person’s situation, but want your reader to visualize his or her own Before and After Scenario.
   
   You do this by injecting a lot of emotion into the problem your product or service is designed to solve.
   
   Suppose your company provides auto financing for people with poor credit. You could create a Before-Scenario by vividly describing the embarrassment of driving an old, dilapidated car. Remind the prospect of the constant fear of driving a car that could break down on a remote highway late at night or on a busy highway in the middle of rush hour traffic. You could also, stir up the humiliation of being turned down for financing from traditional lenders.
   
   Then you paint a second, emotional-filled scene of your prospect driving an attractive, dependable car, after being treated with dignity and respect by your finance officers. Paint an emotional picture of your prospect being seen by friends and neighbors driving this nice looking, late model car and having the peace of mind that the monthly payments are reasonable and that the car is in very good working order.
   
   
2. Depict a Negative After Scenario. Sometimes you have to educate your prospect about why buying your competitors’ cheaper product is more costly in the long run. Here is an example, written by Dan Kennedy, to sell an ordinary product like shoes:
   

   …but if you insist on just wearing any old pair of ordinary shoes, here’s what you have to look forward to in your so-called golden years; fallen arches…intense lower back pain…even pain from just walking around a shopping mall! You’ll be asking your friends to slow down so you can keep up. You’ll be futilely soaking your feet at night like some old fuddy-duddy. You may even need pain pills just to get to sleep.

   
   With a Negative After-Scenario, you are projecting an undesirable future resulting from your prospect’s shortsighted attempt to save a little money now by buying an inferior product, or by not spending any money at all to solve a known problem while there is still time.
   
   
3. A Back-Story Scenario. This Before and After formula is not seen by your reader, but is sketched out for you the writer and marketer. Even if I am writing copy that follows a different format, I will often write out a before and after comparison for my own use when I begin my work. This enables me to clearly see the benefits the prospects are seeking in the form of specific changes they want to experience in their lives.
   
   I want to know what the prospect is dissatisfied with now, and how intensely that dissatisfaction feels. I also want to know how the prospect wants to feel in the future and what changes must take place in order to achieve that desired state and the emotions that will come with it.
   
   Let’s face it, I don’t want to overlook a single benefit that my readers might be seeking. And without my own draft version of a before-after sketch, I might miss the very benefit that will trigger the most response.
   
   

Every worthwhile product or service helps to bring about a desired change. And let’s face it, all of us, regardless of what we sell, are really in the business of selling change. A person who is satisfied with the status quo is not a prospect, and will never be a customer.

But when that person is ready for a change, and has become dissatisfied with the way things are right now, a strong Before and After Scenario can show them the way to find that change.

COPYRIGHT © 2005, Charles Brown

Cure For Boring Corporate Communications

Roger was in a state of near panic. He had come out of his office to investigate the cacophony of unanswered telephones ringing throughout the office, and had been met with a horrible sight. Everywhere he looked, he saw his employees slumped over their desks asleep or staring off into space, as if they had suddenly been struck comatose.

Not a single employee in his entire department appeared to be conscious, and all the while the ringing telephones continued unanswered.

Had some deadly virus suddenly struck his entire staff? Had a toxic gas come through the office ventilation system?

Roger had no idea what could be causing this horror, but he knew that he had to call 911 fast. As he rushed back to his office he saw his secretary slumped over her desk, drooling into her keyboard. Suddenly he saw what she was holding in her almost-lifeless fingers.

It wasn’t a disease. It wasn’t a toxic gas that was causing all his people to fall into this stupor. It was something far, far worse.

Today was the day the corporation’s internal company newsletter had been distributed to each employee.

There is no law that says internal corporate communications must be boring

But you would almost think so wouldn’t you? As you look through a lot of internal newsletters and other corporate communications pieces, it almost seems some writers are afraid they will wind up doing hard time with an overly-tattooed cellmate named Bruno, if they anything out of the ordinary appears in their writing.

Not true.

I think the problem comes from attempting to apply traditional journalistic methods within the confined context of an internal communication. Straight news reporting is fine if you have a steady flow of really dramatic stories like the grandmother who foiled a home invader, the latest national security crises, or a winning professional sports team as material.

But if your subject matter is confined to the happenings within a specific company or industry, you may not have all that drama to rely on traditional journalistic methods. You may have to add a dose of creativity.

Use Good Speechwriters’ Methods

A speechwriter, trainer, presenter or any other type of speaker has a very similar problem as a corporate communications writer. How to convey a lot of factual information and ideas, without putting the audience to sleep. Here are a few techniques used by speakers to balance factual content with style and (dare I use the word) “entertainment.”

• Humor. Humor can be dangerous in advertising or external communications, but generally, depending on your corporate culture, you may have more freedom to use humor internally. It goes without saying that humor can backfire on you in many ways if you are not careful, so use good judgment and get a second opinion before going to print. Keep a humor file of amusing anecdotes, cartoons and photos that you can secure the rights to publish. Also, be on the lookout for the truly funny human beings that populate your workplace. Stories about these funny coworkers will do double duty as a humor piece and as an article where employees can read about one of their own. You can also solicit funny captions for photos and other ideas from the readers. Let your employees write your humor pieces for you.
  
• Second Person When a speaker or writer addresses the listener or reader in the second person, she involvesher audience. But even more, the second person writing process almost forces her to dig for ways to personalize her message and address the concerns and needs of her audience in every way she can think of. Notice that after my introduction about Roger, I have used the second person to present all of my information, ideas and opinions since. Because I am not writing to a nameless “readership,” but to you, as an individual, and my mind is forcing me to explore ways to write about what you want to learn. Try second person writing on your corporate communications writing and see how it affects your creative process, as well as your readers’ involvement.
  
• Stories A study of Readers’ Digest magazine revealed that over half of its articles begin with a story, anecdote or narrative of some kind. Surveys of audiences have repeatedly concluded that speakers who scatter stories and anecdotes and stories throughout their presentations hold their hearers’ attentions far better than speakers who bury them under a truckload of facts and information. I made up the story about Roger because I wanted a way to illustrate the difficulty internal newsletter writers have in communicating their messages in an interesting manner. Stories not only hold your readers’ fascination, they also convey your point with great power. Create your story by simply asking “what if” about the major problem you wish to address.
  
• Turn Numbers Into Vivid Images By its very nature, internal communications within an organization tends to be heavy on the statistics, earnings reports and other number-oriented material. But there are still ways to present your numbers without having your readers go into a stupor. Illustrate numbers with examples. If one employee out of 100 takes advantage of the company's tuition assistance program, interview that employee and tell her story. If the company lost $163,199 last quarter because of employee absenteeism, show how many new employees could have been hired for that amount to ease everyone's workload.
  

This is just a brief list of ideas, but I will revisit this idea again in the future. In the meantime, I would encourage you to adopt the methods used by speakers and trainers to involve their audiences more. You will find a wealth of ideas that can easily be adapted to your internal corporate communications. In the meantime, please help Roger wake up his employees.
COPYRIGHT © 2005, Charles H. Brown

3 Lessons From A Marketing Superstar

I was just rereading Jeffrey J. Fox’s marvelous book, How To Become A Marketing Superstar this week, and had to start jotting down some notes to pass along. Fox has a wonderful knack for distilling his hard-won wisdom into two or three page chapter nuggets that others would have to teach an entire college semester to get across.
Here are a few of my favorites:

• NEVER USE WE. Eliminate the personal pronouns “I,” “me,” “we,” “us,” or “our” in advertising, packaging, sales literature or anywhere else in marketing communications. “We” is about the marketer and its story. “We” is in the first person. “We” is a bad proxy for your brand name or company name. Your job is to draw the customer into the conversation by focusing on her and her story, her concerns, her headaches, her wants. Your job is to build brand awareness, not “we’ awareness…Never use “we,” “us,” or “our” in the headline. The advertisement is not about you, it is not about your success or experience or hard work. It is about the customer and what the product will do for her or him. To confound this sin, these same advertisers often follow their ”we” with trite clichés like, “We put customers first,” or, “We are committed to excellence.”
  
• SELL CONSEQUENCES. Always communicate the consequences to the customer of going without your product…It is always more effective to influence the customer by showing the cost, damage or loss they incurring right now by going without your product. Few customers knowingly ignore consequences and then deliberately buy an alternative product on the basis of a lower price alone.…What is it costing your prospect right now to not be doing business with you each month? What other consequences will occur if she delays taking action right now?
  
• DIFFERENCES. If you flip through any small stack of magazines you will quickly find many examples of ads that inform of such things as “our people make the difference,” or “little details make all the difference,” “feel the difference,” or even, “the right choice makes all the difference.” These are all signs of lazy marketers who have not taken the effort to think through what makes their product “different.” And yet it is these differences that are your selling points and even your competitive edges (or are they just "wishful differences” with your competitor having the real competitive edge.) If the marketer is too lazy to think through the differences and articulate them, how can he expect the customer to do it for him? If you can’t illustrate to the customer why your widget is different and better than the Brand X widget, he will either choose based upon price, or by what his cousin Ernie thinks he once heard someone say about your brand).
  

If you haven’t read How To Become A Marketing Superstar yet, go pick up a copy. I’d loan you mine, but I’m still rereading it.

COPYRIGHT © 2005, Charles H. Brown

Understand Your Buyer’s Pathway

I really wonder how many marketers and other business people really understand the entire chain of decisions potential buyers make, leading up to the point of their final decision to do business.

Every sale is different, but usually this chain begins with a problem. Either the potential buyer knows about this problem or needs to be educated about the problem and its consequences.

In all likelihood, few of your competitors have entered the chain at this point, so if you are able to provide some diagnostic tools, such as a simple checklist, or a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), you could turn all of them into also rans right from the start.

When a potential buyer becomes aware of a problem, he seeks out information. He may ask his doctor, his lawyer, his cousin Ernie or go to the web. If you have not only posted a lot (let me repeat, a LOT) of free information on your site, but you have also provided lots of free content on the subject to other sites, with links back to your site, this buyer will find you.

This person is not yet looking for a sales pitch. He needs information. Information he can understand and use. Think of this person at this stage as an information sponge. At the same time, think of yourself as a solution provider. Your job at this point is not to sell, but to show the way to a solution.

Behind the scenes, the buyer is also looking for credibility. And by showing the way to a solution rather than go-for-the-throat-selling, establishes credibility far beyond anything else you can do.

Sit down today and map out your buyer’s pathway, from problem to you. Note every decision, every question, every want and every doubt the buyer might have before he finds himself at your door. You can remove a lot of the stumbling blocks along the buyer’s way when you know the path he will be taking.

COPYRIGHT © 2005, Charles Brown

One Simple Idea

Right now, no matter what time of the day or night you are reading this, someone’s website is making money –a lot of money- using one simple idea.

It’s an idea you should be using to increase the profitability of not only your website, but every aspect of your marketing efforts as well. And even if you are using this idea to some degree, even small improvements can produce huge gains on your return on investment.

What can this idea do for you?

• It can create a large list of people who identify themselves as being interested in your product or service.
  
• It can also produce a list of people who ask to receive your marketing materials.
  
• It eliminates forever the problem of sending out untargeted junk mail that does not get opened or read.
  
• It generates repeat traffic to your website as long as you keep producing fresh and useful content.
  
• And most important of all, when your marketing message is requested, welcomed, expected and read by interested prospects; your sales rates increase exponentially.
  

What is this simple idea? No doubt you’ve already guessed it is Permission Marketing a phrase coined by Seth Godin when he literally wrote the book on the subject.

Mr. Godin defined Permission Marketing as the very opposite of Interruption Marketing, such as the telemarketer who calls right in the middle of your supper. The Permission Marketer instead obtains your consent to market to you often with the offer of a free booklet or some other free product of value.

As I mentioned last week in my article on , The Magic Free Offer, a free offer “lowers the bar” for a reader to respond and it subsequently enables you to build an ongoing relationship with that person. The whole idea behind Permission Marketing is that it breaks through the clutter of all the other messages bombarding your prospects every day.

Godin calls this getting the prospects to “raise their hands” or volunteer to participate in your marketing. Thereafter, any marketing message they receive is by consent, and they can “opt-out” at anytime they choose, so their involvement is always with permission.

Godin sums up the concept of Permission Marketing as, "turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers." If you aren’t already using Permission Marketing along with your other marketing strategies, you need to get this ball rolling right away.

If you already have some aspects of it in place, keep improving, it will be the best investment you will ever make.

And finally, if you haven’t read Seth’s book, Permission Marketing, I just cannot recommend this book enough. It WILL make you money.

COPYRIGHT © 2005, Charles Brown

Make Your Web Content Search Engine Friendly

Lately I’ve been noticing a lot of website operators who are missing out on a very important opportunity whenever they post a new article or new content to their websites. Sure the new content may be very informative, and well written, but it often neglects one crucial nuance unique to writing for the internet: search engine optimization.

Most new visitors find a site from search engines like Google, Yahoo and their brothers. Your job, whenever you are adding new content to your site, is to make it easier for these search engines to find you and lead visitors to your site.

Hopefully, you all ready have a list of keywords your visitors will be using to look for your site when they start their searches at the search engines. (If you don’t, you have a lot of work to do before you are even at square one. I would start by looking at your competitors’ websites and identifying the keywords they are using).

Once you have your list of keywords, You can use them each time you write new articles or new content for your website.

• Place the list of keywords in front of you each time you write new web content. Whenever appropriate, salt these words into your article. For example, if your site is selling an instruction video on improving a golfer’s golf swing, and your key words are, “better swing,” “longer distance,” “increase distance,” or “improve your swing;” then you will want to scatter these words and phrases throughout the text of your article.
  
• Use sub headings whenever possible. Search engines seem to pay particular attention to headlines and subheadings, even more than to regular text. So don’t pass up the opportunity to use your keywords whenever you have a headline or subheading.
  
• Search engines do not read graphics, they only read text. Very often your carefully-placed keywords are wasted in the midst of a graphic. When this happens, the search engine skips right over it and fails to record its existence. Many highly skilled web designers are simply not aware of this. Their strength is designing nifty-looking graphics and artistic lettering. Unfortunately, there has not been a search engine made with an appreciation for art. Search engines only read text.
  
• Incorporate links to other relevant sites. Particularly sites that utilize your chosen keywords in their names. Not only do useful links make your site a valuable reference for your visitors, the search engines also pick up those links and the keywords in the other sites’ names.
  

Now whenever you write an article for your website, you can also use it to attract the attention of the search engines, and by extension, new visitors. As long as this new content is within the same general theme as the rest of your site, you should have no difficulty salting the new content with the very same keywords you are using to establish your site’s identity.

Good luck! Now go forth and get visitors.

COPYRIGHT © 2005, Charles Brown

Get Your Reader To Act Now

A big part of the battle when writing marketing copy on your web site, your print ad or your direct mail piece, is to get the reader to act right now. If they delay, you have probably lost them.
So how do you get someone to stop what they are doing, pull out their credit card and buy your offer immediately? Let me share some of the formulas I use when writing marketing pieces:

• Scarcity. Nothing motivates like limited availability. When the next Rolling Stones concert goes on sale, you know that it will be compeltely sold out within hours, so you must act fast if you want to hear Mick and the boys do Jumpin Jack Flash.
  
• Premiums. Remember the old Ginzu Knives commercials, "but wait, there's more" ? They kept adding on one extra after another if you acted right now. By the time they had added on about three or four extras, you felt that you couldn't afford not to order right away.
  
• Deadlines. Put a time limit on your offer and you will seldom fail to see an increase in your response rates.
  
• Discounts for fast responses. Have you ever received an offer for a seminar that gives you on price if you pay at the door, a lower price if you pay two weeks before the seminar and an even lower price if you pay two months early? Guess what, early bird discounts work very well with all kinds of offers.
  

Next time you need to bump up your response rate (and when don't you want to increase the number of responses?) try one of these ideas to increase the urgency of your offer, and get them to act now.

COPYRIGHT (c) 2005, Charles Brown

The Magic Free Offer

I’m always amazed at how little original thought many advertisers put into their ads. And how they consequently throw away money. Right now I am looking at several full-page Yellow Page ads for local law firms. These are mostly general practice firms who handle the usual plaintiff’s cases: personal injury, personal bankruptcy, family law and criminal defense.

They aren’t blue chip firms on Wall Street, their business is on Main Street. There is a need for these types of firms and they don’t appear to be ambulance chasers. But there really is nothing about their ads that set them apart from their competitors. In fact, each ad says essentially the same thing as the next ad: 1) a laundry list of the cases they handle, 2) how much experience they have, and 3) grim, no nonsense photographs of lawyers who mean business and are ready to go to war on your behalf.

One thing is for certain; all of these full-page ads cost these firms a lot of money. But what if they could greatly increase their response rates from these ads, and make their ads outperform all of their competitors’ ads, without spending an extra dollar?

Here’s how: By offering free information. Free information lowers the bar for a person to respond to your ad. Instead of having to call, set an appointment and meet with a lawyer, the person can just call or send an email for a free booklet (or you can send a free white paper, a free ebook, a free audio CD, a free DVD, a free tip sheet, a free interactive software program or anything you like as long as it is genuinely informative).

What kind of free booklet? Let’s just focus on criminal cases for now. What if your ad offered the following free booklets:

• 10 Things You Must Do If You Are Accused of A Crime;

• Know Your Rights! What You Must Know If the Police Want to Search Your Home or Your Car; or

• What To Do If Your Son or Daughter is Arrested?

Before people make a serious decision they want to gather information. They may ask their friends or coworkers, they may do a Google search or they go to the library. If they see your ad offering free information, along the lines of the booklets listed above, while they are in the information-seeking mode, they will respond.

But guess what? Not only does offering information lower the response bar, it also generates a lead. Now you have captured an interested person’s name, telephone number, address and email address. You also know something about this person’s need, which enables you to recontact this person in the future. This means that you can turn that single exposure of the person skimming through the Yellow Pages into multiple exposures through your free booklet and your follow up letters or email messages. Your competitors won’t have a chance.

But most of all, the information you provide in you booklet (or article or white paper or ebook or whatever) enhances your perceived level of expertise in that person’s eyes. You have transformed yourself from an advertiser to an expert. And nothing could be better than that.

COPYRIGHT (C) 2005, Charles Brown