How to increase sales dramatically without destroying your brand or losing your soul in the process.

Over the years I’ve had the luxury of working with some of the biggest brands in the world. I’ve also had the pleasure of doing business with three man painting firms, and even sadly, some frauds. (unhappy face). What I learned, however could change your life forever.

The key difference between the brands and the frauds won’t shock you. Frauds build trust way faster, and get sales faster. Heck, a professional fraud can have literally no product, no establishment, no paperwork and even no business card and easily make sales all day long. What they truly lack, and what in fact makes them a fraud, is usually a product problem.

Usually the product they have doesn’t actually *do* what they say it does, or they don’t have a product to offer at all. You see, products in reality only prevent refunds and lawsuits. It’s a crude view, but stick with me. The fact is, you don’t have to have a product to make sales! Granted, it helps the honest salesman sell it when they can believe in it.

Heck, many big companies have been built on products that look amazing, demonstrate well but don’t actually do what they say they’re going to do. Classics like the solar powered car ventilation, The classic historic Veg-o-matic, and others.

What if the fraudster had a GREAT product?

Say the fraudster in our story above happens to actually FIND a cure for psoriasis, balding, cancer etc. Technically, they’re no longer a fraudster anymore… Now they’re simply someone with unbelievable passion, enthusiasm and outrageous claims, followed by a product that actually does what they say it does. Sounds like a match made in heaven, doesn’t it?

The best fraudster knows something that 90% of businesses don’t know. Without this knowledge, brands and businesses can still do ok, but they cannot rake in millions in sales in a short period of time.

What’s a brand, and why do I need one?

Many marketers have hurt small businesses by telling them they do NOT need a brand. They simply tell them that coca-cola marketing is a waste of time, and that spending money on ‘branding’ related activities is unprofitable. They’re only half correct. You SHOULD spend some time considering how you are perceived by the marketplace. What colors you use, what feelings your products/services evoke and all that. It’s actually a good idea to really craft that…

Fact is, you cannot sell something to a farmer wearing a 3 piece suit and tie. You can’t sell something to a lawyer while wearing stained overalls. Your company’s look and feel must match something that your ideal customer would actually feel comfortable with. Just imagine walking into a bank setup inside an old 1900’s, poorly taken care of barn. You just couldn’t imagine putting a $100k into investments there.

Where brands go wrong

In business you can do a lot wrong and still get results. It might cost you more, take you MORE precious time or take a ton more energy, but you’ll get results. Sometimes with big companies, or smaller high margin companies, they spend so much time on their look, their presentation, their emotional story and how they’re perceived, they almost avoid anything that looks like sales like the plague!

There is a nexus point, a crossing.. a zone in the middle where you can have an incredible presentation, high quality look and feel and yet still have an effective sales engine!

Here’s what fraudsters know:

 

#1. Their customer’s biggest pain. Granted, the promise to solve it. Some fraudsters have a gut instinct and can read the crowd or the person in front of them. They can listen to people as they gripe about various issues, then promise with conviction to solve them. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting anyone LIE and say they can solve someone’s pains… but as brands, thought leaders and heck even businesses in general we SHOULD be leading the charge on the pains we DO confidently solve. We should know and listen to our customer well enough that we can easily write a message that would appeal to them.

#2. The fear of staying in this spot. They know customers do NOT want to stay in this pain, frustration etc. Granted, you do not want to go around preaching that the sky is falling.. but sometimes through pictures, video shorts and other ways we can show the realities of not solving a problem without using fear directly.

#3. How to create a sense of urgency. Urgency and scarcity are just SOME of the biggest triggers known to man to help create desire. It’s what makes Apple product launches hot. It’s what separates the Ferarri from the Toyota sales. The pre-order for a Ferrari is a minimum 2-3 year wait, and so the urgency to not wait longer (for fear it might take even LONGER to get what you want, the rare status symbol) is very real.

If there is truly no limit to the product (IE: Apple could easily wait until they’ve manufactured 4 million devices, in fact sometimes they do..) you can create one by not shipping all the product at once and releasing it in batches. When a fraudster sells something, they always play on the deal being offered going away, the product or the opportunity is going away… and why not?

Real companies, getting QUICK and powerful results…

Here’s the big takeaway. Here’s what brands DONT do that keeps them from getting windfalls of sales.
(besides the obvious of knowing your ideal customer’s pain, and proving you can solve it)

#1. Making people feel uncomfortable. Here’s a weird fact about humanity. If we’re comfortable, we stay where we are. It’s only when we’re uncomfortable that we choose to take action and change things. Brands are usually afraid of reminding people of their pain. Sure, they’re usually ok with doing it in a playful way in a commercial on TV with cute things, but rarely do they ever want to actually make someone feel like the old way is painful.

#2. Cause-based marketing. Movement and cause based marketing work so well! They propel us to take up our protest sign and join legions of buyers and customers in the march against something. It could be anything from the old way of doing things, to the big picture vision of what the world would be like with the solution or just simply attaching themselves to a completely unrelated cause like world hunger.

#3. Being human and raw. Most CEO’s, people and companies in general don’t really want to talk about why they made a product. Not the REAL story. They don’t usually want to talk about the struggle, the mistakes, the frustrations and lost investor dollars. Yet these very authentic things are what build trust, and create incredible stories people tell and never forget. Since the dawn of time, humans have loved stories, especially one where there’s conflict, a build up of more conflict and a resolution of some kind. In fact, there are only 7 basic story types in the whole world and they all fall into these categories!

If you do NOT know what your customer’s biggest pain actually is, and you NEED to figure that out, so that all your products can demonstrate the transformation they create in solving customer pains… You may be interested in our COMPLETE market analysis, which provides exactly that and so much more.

Knowing their pains makes writing copy like pushing a hot knife through butter. If you DONT have a budget to hire a team or agency to create this kind of intellectual report, and want to spend the hours to learn to do it yourself, signup here to be notified when the course is completed.

Headlines are both deadly and powerful part of your marketing arsenal.

There are ways that an improper headline can destroy your credibility and your brand. There are also ways a killer headline can drive enormous amounts of traffic and have your marketing piece go viral.

Famous copywriters have said since the 1940’s, spend 50% of your time on your headline, and the other 50% on the rest of your copy. Let’s tune into what John Caples wrote in his book “How to Make Your Advertising Make Money” …

“My interest in advertising headlines dates back to the time when I was a cub copywriter and was not allowed to write headlines. Ev Grady the copy chief, would hand me a layout with the headline already lettered in. Below the headline was a blank space. ‘write copy to fill the space’, he would say.

Evidently I was not considered good enough to write headlines. I don’t know how you can impress a young man more forcibly than to imply that there is a task to which he is not equal. From that time on, I was determined that someday I would write headlines”

Headline writing danger that lurks (the 1940’s advantage)

Seems pretty wild and silly to suggest that a poor headline could damage your brand, or even make you look stupid doesn’t it? Yet… today we have a brand new danger to headlines that didn’t exist in the 1940’s. In fact, one might say the early copywriters had a HUGE advantage over us! Hype wasn’t all that common back then.

We were only one or two generations away from the cultural “dead serious” culture that exists in the UK. (To this day, the UK is strongly against all hype).

Today, we have these websites called “Viral Mills” that churn out gut wrenching, gossipy stories with strange images that we call “Click Bait”. You’ll know you’ve clicked on clickbait when you hit a site loaded with ads and weird images and a super short story or video lifted from some other website. They’re extremely low value, and extremely high eye candy. If you’re bored you can find yourself reading this stuff all day!

Great places to find headlines…

 

Why I bothered to write this blog post…

Let me get right to it. There isn’t a whole heck of a lot of people doing headlines (and the attached content) correctly. It’s just not very common. I read a LOT of content. I could call myself a content junkie and my wife would even agree. However, I’m continually inspired by the writers of headlines at the Washington Post.

Before I dig into the why, let me provide some concrete examples of stuff that just blew my mind:

• “Want to see a great U.S. city in one day? Two math majors show you how.”
• “The startling thing that happens to black girls in preschool”
• “The 9-year-old who setup a lemonade stand to help his parents fund his legal adoption”
• “How Rachel Roy embodies the new trend in celebrity cheating scandals”
• “The future of TV is arriving faster than anyone predicted”

These aren’t earth shattering headlines are they? But they’re interesting, they’re believable and they’re strange/fascinating enough to grab your attention. That’s the magic sauce in 2016. It’s having enough clout to back your headline, be interesting… be fascinating without going over the edge.

LOTS of their headlines are like this. If you’re at all questioning the power of these headlines, checkout the shares… most of these got HUNDREDS of shares and thousands of likes.

STOP! Before you write a DAMN word of a headline…

You have to consider WHO this content should appeal to. If you’re clients are the type that earn under 40k, never attended college or heck, barely finished high school and spend most of their time in front of the TV (bombarded by garbage)… Your headline research should start at the checkout stand… IE: Cosmopolitan, Weekly World News, People Magazine, National Enquirer etc.

If you’re ideal client is a highly intelligent scientist who might buy your special graphing calculator, then your headline research might start in the forums or groups of electronics majors. Perhaps it might start in Scientific American or Psychology Today…

You really should do some kind of ideal customer exercise to really get a 360 degree view of WHO they are before you start writing ANY kind of headline. The formula’s will NOT all work for everyone.

 

Some headline general types:

• • The how to headline (EG: How to do X)
  • The guarantee headline (Guaranteed to ____ within X days)
  • The benefit headline (top benefit of the product)
  • The promise headline (By the end of the article you will…)
  • The testimonial headline (A personal revelation)
  • The question headline “Are you tired of making your boss rich?”
  • The anxiety headline “Does this make your skin crawl?”
  • The news style headline “Scientists are now saying…”

 

 

My personal favourite headline swipes:

Who else wants _____

The secret to ____

Can you pass the ____ test?

The biggest ____ myth

The Toughest ____ Question To Answer

____ Isn’t as ridiculous as you might think…

A man invented _____ because doctors (experts) were tired of _____

Don’t call me a _____

Here’s what’s helping ____ to _____

____ Statistics / Trends you can’t ignore (IE: iTunes trends you can’t ignore)

[Do something] like [world-class example] (IE: Party like Paris Hilton, Speak Spanish like a diplomat)

 

Additional Headline Creator Tools:

• Content Headline Idea Generator (my favorite btw – I use this EVERY time I get stuck)
• Headline Wizard
• Kickass Headline Generator (best for blog topics)
• Hubspot blog topic generator
• Upworthy Generator (somewhat spammy, but would work for some markets)
• Clickbait headline generator (this is actually REALLY good for fresh ideas)

Headline Analysis Tools

• Headline Emotion Analyzer – (tests which audience your headline’s for)
• Text readability score – (check your headline for age level)
• Headline word analysis – Really just another way of getting new ideas

Still reading down here, eh?

 

Stuck and need help? Contact us for marketing coaching support.

Oh boy… Now to prove the title of this blog post is completely justified!

I hate hype

As too much of any good thing dilutes its value, email is facing some interesting challenges. New marketers are placing higher value on social and things like Periscope, Meerkat and Blab.im. Old (experienced) marketers don’t teach what REALLY works in email as much, because it’s just not sexy…

Can I let you in on some secrets?

Email is actually the single most powerful thing on the internet. What? I know, bold claim, but hear me out. Facebook fan pages see 5-7% exposure to their posts unless you boost posts, or get lucky and get tons of shares. Twitter’s like shouting in outer space. Pinterest and Instagram are like hashtag Russian roulette. Google search wants you pay by the click or be at the mercy of their ever-changing algorithms…

Email’s the only medium where you’ll happily get access to 30-50% of your tribe in one click (once you’ve collected them), and… You can easily back them up (download your email database) and move them to another email system. Something you can’t do with followers, fans and likes.

But, I’ve tried email without success… (warning below)

I’m sorry. I spent a pinch of text there above laying a foundation, but here comes the single biggest stupid yet simple secret to email. Nailing this will make everything work.

Be personal.

People are TIRED of getting automated (FirstName) emails. They’re tired of things feeling like yet another marketing story. It needs to sound like someone is talking directly to them. Their hopes, fears, dreams, nightmares, challenges, concerns the whole 9 yards.

Experts “in the know” call them Seinfeld emails.

Why? Because back when Seinfeld started their show, they pitched NBC on launching a sitcom about nothing. It wasn’t really about NOTHING though, it was actually about normal every day life and the things that happen in your day.

Reality TV and social media have single handedly proven people LOVE this stuff. This is no different in email.

Here’s the warning:

You can train your list though. From the very first email they get, you can train them to expect heartless, feelingless content. You can also train them to expect conversational, down to earth GENUINE emails written just to them. A fellow club member, tribe member, and contact that you love and want to share your genius with!

Join my list, you’ll see the kinds of stuff I write, and how I litterally make it a personal letter to my family of email and online marketers. You’d be surprised to hear my average open rate is 54% right now.

Some top experts that I know have a nick named “Bill and Susan” ideal target customer that they’ve written a complete 3D writeup about. They know their likes and dislikes, their enemies and fears.. They can write to these people and imagine their smiles, their frowns.

Bottom line? Be personal, write stories, share and make it feel like a letter directly to them.

 

Reasons a list can go stale:

• You forget/don’t have time to mail them for a while
• Affiliate promotions and customers get used to emails not containing value
• You haven’t sent much relevant email lately
• List fatigue from mailing too often

Whatever the reason, who likes to let a valuable asset go unused? You still long for the realistic (and achievable) goal of mailing something customers really DO want and to rake in the cash… Or hey, never mind the money. Maybe you’re just really looking forward to genuinely helping people with their hopes/dreams/needs. That’s awesome too.

Let me share a few ways you can revive a dead list, share some stories and some wisdom give you all the answers that you’d only ever find by interviewing experts, or paying huge consulting rates.

#1. The famous 9 word email

Many dollars are chased marketing after the wrong people. They inevitably

The subject should just be their first name, ie. “Bob”.

The body of the email should be these 9 words:

“Are you still looking at getting [insert] [your] [service]?”

Typically this is sent one at a time, but weirdly enough it works even if sent via mass blast to a list of unresponsive users.

#2. The “I’m sorry” email

It’s funny, this subject line has been in my back pocket for years. In the spirit of providing incredible content, I feel like I can share this with you. However, I had this one client who for years delivered nothing but affiliate offers to her list of mostly 40+ year old single women who clung to her as their fearless leader. She had kind of abused the relationship and it was a sizable list not worth losing.

In an effort to stop blasting flat content and start rebuilding a relationship, I suggested we apologize to the list. This wasn’t an easy thing for her, as she was a pretty confident person. Either way, out of the 30,000 which hadn’t had an open rate higher than 5% in months, the list responded with a whopping 25%!

That might not sound like much but truthfully any business would jump at a 20% increase in sales. Surely the increased response and activity eventually did the same.

Note: People think the I’m sorry is going to include a gift or a special offer. WARNING. Not just any special offer, a REALLY good offer. Not anything anyone else can get.

You can apologize for not sending enough stories, for not sending often enough or whatever, but the idea is… you recognize you could do better.

#3. The “I’m sad to see you go” email

This one really gets lists. If you find “I’m sorry” didn’t work, this is by far the most powerful strategy. I’ll admit, it has pros and cons but it works.

I typically send an email saying we have run the newsletter since 199_ and started with just 10 subscribers. We’ve come along way but some people aren’t opening our emails…. We’ve decided to create a hot list, only those who open/click our emails will be on it. In a nutshell if you want to stay on the list… click here…

There’s more to this email than that, I have a few other emotional tricks I add. (which you can get if you take my template package free).

Note: You will get people emailing you upset. Some don’t read the whole thing. Some still want assurance they’re on your list, some will be glad to be removed, upset you’d dare remove someone without their permission.

Honestly, this passion to either stay on, or go away is well worth the renewed interest in your stuff. I’m just preparing you, if it’s a big list… instruct your support staff to expect these emails.

In March of 2012 Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights attorney gave a TED talk that entered into the history books.

Not only did Bryan get the longest standing ovation in TED history, but he also received an incredible amount of donations to his cause, all without a pitch… in only 18 minutes!

“In addition to giving Stevenson a standing ovation, the audience assembled in the auditorium that day donated $1 million to Stevenson’s non-profit organization, the equivalent of $55,000 per minute that he spoke.” ~Forbes

He spent 65% of the presentation telling stories about regular people…like his Grandmother.

The stories themselves were gut wrenching, emotional and transcended race, gender and time. They allowed anyone of any status or lifestyle to connect with his message.

• Think about that for a second, one MILLION dollars collected.
• There was no pitch involved or request
• Without any special build up of benefits
• No talk structure a marketer would use

Why Stories Work:

A Princeton University professor conducted an experiment watching brain patterns between a story teller and a set of listeners.

The results were fascinating:

“One of the graduate students in Hasson’s lab, Lauren Silbert, told an unrehearsed, 15-minute story about one of her high school proms — a disastrous experience involving two suitors, a fistfight and a car accident, while undergoing fMRI.

The results showed that, not only did all of the listeners show similar brain activity during the story, the speaker and the listeners had very similar brain activity, despite the fact that one person was producing language, and the others were comprehending it.

This brain coupling, or “mind meld,” attracted media attention in outlets including the website of the technology magazine Wired” – Princeton University

You can literally cause someone to feel the same pleasure, pain, and emotion that you convey in your stories.

If someone’s already experienced the pains of not solving the problem, and the pleasure of seeing the solution in action, you can see how that would make it easy to convince someone to do something differently?

There are many other story formats, too many to list here. Download my outline of the critical elements to a sales story, and how to dig up your own stories to connect with other people and spread your vision and ideas!

A

How to Use Stories:

Now, how about this? What if you used stories as a form of marketing?

Here are a few ideas to get your brain going on creating a story for your products or services.

1. You could use fictitious stories
   One famous such example is the one written by Martin Conroy for The Wall Street Journal. This direct mail advertisement was the control (the main unchallenged converting letter that the publication used) to successfully get new subscribers for twenty eight straight years!

   From 1975 to 2003 they mailed the story of these two fictitious young gentlemen who graduated from the same college, same marks, same upbringing (very much alike) both working for the same company. One became president of that company.

   The difference? One subscribed to The Wall Street Journal.

2. You could use client testimonials
   Have a client that’s wildly successful with your product? Despite the somewhat recent controversy, Jared Fogle is a classic example of this. Jared claimed to have lost a ton of weight, and Subway restaurants advertised his story to show customers how healthy their product was.
3. Start with why
   Simon Sinek, well known for his famous speech titled “Start with why” that focuses on sharing with people the mantra, or mission of you or your company. The vision and the ultimate reason you do what you do.

   That story itself is no better proven than in the company Tom’s Shoes. Blake Mycoskie founded the company on the idea that when you’re buying a pair of shoes from them, you’re also buying some for someone else in the world who doesn’t have any. The infamous “One for One”.

   The shoes themselves aren’t amazing, but people aren’t buying the shoes. They’re buying the story!

I don’t give myself enough credit. So for a few seconds, let me do that.

Since 2003, I’ve personally coached over 300 people. I’ve had clients go from zero to 10,000 subscribers. I’ve also had clients go from 3,000 to 468,000 subscribers, following my advice. That’s not to say that every client has had that kind of success. However, after all these years, I can easily say I’ve seen some patterns in what works and what doesn’t.

I could write a book on this, and I just might! But, for now, let’s dive into some genuine ways you can easily build a massive list of email addresses…

#1. Solve important problems

Ever been searching for a computer bug, a smartphone issue or some other challenge? Maybe why the cat won’t stop peeing on the rug, or what kind of bug you found in your closet? These can all be 3am issues for someone.

Things that keep them up at night worrying.

A completely free solution, that only requires an email address – properly positioned in front of searchers who need this solution, will get results.

I could spend hours talking about how to find these types of people, but… that will have to be another article, for now… just know that EVERY market has something they desperately need information or a product for. No exception.

#2. Give access to a membership site

This is probably THE most successful one, or one of the top options. Every huge company you’ll ever see used this one. Facebook is a classic example. Account creation… Something that WordPress and many free softwares do automatically, is something people don’t think twice about. Signup for my newsletter? No thanks. Signup for access to this website? Sure why not.

As long as the membership site has a clear reason for it’s need/benefit of course. You can’t invent some useless software and hope for a run-away success. That said, it’s not hard to create a free membership site, a free quiz or “online tool” that does a quick analysis of some kind.

This, by the way is how my one client got the nearly 500,000 opt-ins. The $129/year $13/month membership site had a preview (and at one time a free day’s access) to a membership site loaded with content.

#3. Access to software downloads

I guess it goes without saying that software that solves a problem (like something that recovers deleted files, or serves some other function on your mac/pc like an ad blocker or something) is going to get registrations and since they’re getting the software free, you’ll need somewhere to send their registration code.

#4. Valuable tools

Quite similar to the others above, a well known marketer I’m a huge fan of has had a lot of success giving away a Microsoft Excel sheet. It contains some of the industries most complicated formulas all in one sheet to help you easily manage your ads. Obviously he knows his audience well and they need this, so they have no issue trading their email address for it.

Likewise, in your own industry, think of an invaluable checklist, worksheet, excel sheet, template that your ideal customer would love to get their mitts on. This works very well.

#5 . Webinars (sort of)

I’ve seen people build descent sized lists with webinars, but realistically they’re becoming too frequent in the internet marketing market and MLM market. Probably would work really well in a market where there isn’t too many webinars. That said, simply calling them “live trainings” and focusing on specific issues that are best taught in a live training.

 

Now.. Let’s talk about opt-in offers that DON’T work very well anymore:

#1. “Subscribe to my newsletter”

Ironic that in 1999, you could litterally have an opt-in box that just said that and you’d get signups. Mainly because if you happen to have the only scrapbooking newsletter on the internet, or the only free subscription to crochet patterns, well.. you got signups. In 2015, there’s too much spam, this just won’t work (even if you are the only guy in your niche)

#2. “Free report solves..”

There are some free report titles that work as an exception like the one mentioned in the “solve a problem” above, beyond that, this basically has stopped working. People are tired of getting a 1 page download that doesn’t have any value in it.

#3. “Free Video”

Again, if it solves an immediate need like unjamming a Kx-9000 Panasonic printer, it may work… However most of the time the whole free video thing has been over done.

Too many people have ‘sold’ people on a free video, only to have the consumer land on a talking head video of some guy explaining something for 15 minutes that could have been in a one page report.

 

What should your email opt-in be? Post a bit about your business (and even a link if you like) and I’ll try to respond with some ideas!