Note From Shel Horowitz, Owner of this Blog:

I’m posting this not because I agree with everything Jim says, but because I don’t. I’m not going to tell you which parts I agree with and which I’d argue with, at least not yet. I’d like you to have your say first, and when I return from vacation (this post is being scheduled ahead), I might choose to add to the dialogue.

I proudly call myself a marketer. The problem with doing that is that a lot of people think that marketer=scumbag. I get it. Consumers have been burned before and they blame the marketing most of the time.

But that doesn’t make it right.

There’s a big difference between good marketers and bad marketers. Good marketers want to get your attention and make you aware of their wares, whatever that might be. Bad marketers want to deceive you into buying something that you don’t need for profit.

Good marketing is good business. Too often business owners don’t want to do effective marketing because they don’t want to be lumped in with the scammers out there. Here’s a few examples.

In the online world there are people called information marketers. They sell things like membership program and eBooks, and “systems”. These often come as something like a 22-disc DVD set, or online training program. To sell these products, they use tactics like long-page sales letters. You’ve seen those pages before perhaps? Is the page that is one big single column and you have to scroll 20 times to get to the buy button at the bottom. The page is filled with testimonials and bullet points about why the product/service is so awesome, etc… Then it’s got a ton of bonus items.

Here’s the secret to those pages. Know why you see them so often? Because they work… really, really well. As a matter of fact, pages like that are often the top converting page on the Internet today. And in the Internet business, conversion is job #1. If you don’t convert well, you’re losing the battle.

Does marketing with long sales pages letters make them scammy? Not at all. It’s a tactic, and yes, some of the people who sell those types of products are out to rip you off. However, most of them have really good products to sell you. The problem is that because of the tactic they use, they get lumped in with a certain mindset of consumers who will never buy from them.

What about those annoying late-night infomercials you see online? You know what I’m talking about. The late Billy Mays selling OxyClean or Vince selling a Slapchop. Ever notice the “but wait, there’s more” at the end of every tv spot where you get a “bonus” item for ordering now? Again, it seems kind of marketing wrong, right? Actually, it’s there because it works, really, really well.

The point is this. As a business owner, it is your job to drive more sales, leads or publicity to your business. Bottom line. Good business is good marketing. Don’t leave marketing tactics on the table because you’re worried about how you’ll look. At the end of the day, you’re going to need to find a way to improve your business and beat your competition. It might be time to start looking around at new ways to do that.

For over 15-years, Jim Kukral has helped small businesses and large companies like Fedex, Sherwin Williams, Ernst & Young and Progressive Auto Insurance understand how find success on the Web. Jim is the author of the book, “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money”, as well as a professional speaker, blogger and Web business consultant. Find out more by visiting www.JimKukral.com. You can also follow Jim on Twitter @JimKukral.

Good Marketing Is Good Business (Guest Post by Jim Kukral) is a post from: Principled Profit

From a Starbucks press release–the second sentence in the first paragraph, and within the quote, I’ve linked to the full press release:

With the goal of prioritization and agreement on criteria for a comprehensive recyclable cup solution, discussions will address obstacles and opportunities.

Who writes this crap? I’m sorry, but that’s not English. Will someone please tell Starbucks that the purpose of a press release is to communicate, not to obfuscate? Especially when there actually is real news buried under the blather: First, that the chain is committing to 100% recyclable cups within three years, and second, that systems theorist Peter Senge will moderate a summit on the topic.

So why not say so without making people dig for it? If it had been my assignment to write this press release, you can bet it would have gotten right to the point and been understandable by ordinary people.

Starbucks of course is not the only offender. But a press release like this is useless. You want to tell the story, not hide it.

Worst Bit of Corporate Gobbledygook of the Day is a post from: Principled Profit

Watch this ad from Honda about how to be a doer for the environment, and tell me what you think.

Here’s what I think:

I love the message of the ad, that not only gives us specific, easy things we can do to be more environmentally responsible drivers (only the beginning of what’s possible), but also positions Honda as a leader. But I think for a general audience the ad is a disaster, because it doesn’t give one important snippet of crucial context before slowly beginning the sloooow narrative.
I was halfway through before I realized the voiceover was Garrison Keillor (or a very close sound-alike). If people “get” that more quickly, then they will forgive taking 30 seconds or so to even start talking about the issue, because that’s his style. But I didn’t realize that at first, and if I hadn’t been told ahead of time what the ad was about, I would have been gone. So this could be a whole lot more effective if
1) There’s a splash page at the beginning that has a caption like “Garrison Keillor’s Eco-Driving Tips”
2) It aired in places where Keillor is a known quantity

BTW, if you want easy tips to be more eco-friendly in AND out of your car, I recommend my just-published e-book, Painless Green: 110 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle. It’s cheap, and the tips are very easy to implement. Yes, there’s a section on transportation.

Voice, Message, and Audience–Context is Crucial is a post from: Principled Profit

I just made up the word “jrip” and the phrase “jargon jrip.” It’s like drip (as in seriously uncool person, common in the late 1950s/early 1960s)–except it begins with a j to go with jargon.

And I made it in response to these couple of lines that showed up in my e-mail (name withheld to protect the guilty):

an Internet-wide shared-user system for user-centric demographic/privacy control, personalization, advertising and content payment aggregation.

Now, I’m a professional writer; I work with words every day. I know what every one of those words means individually, but they make absolutely no sense when strung together. I have no idea from that phrase what this person is talking about. Other parts of the press release and announcement tell me that he wants to establish a new social network that includes an e-commerce component. But the difficult phrase was in the first sentence! I don’t think most people will get far enough to figure it out.

It’s technobabble like this that gives corporate communications in general, and corporate-speak press releases in particular, a bad name. As a copywriter, I make it my business to try to eliminate that kind of press release from the business toolkit, and replace it with press releases that actually communicate both facts and emotion, yet stay out of the hype zone. When I see this sort of crap, it reminds me that we have a loooong way to go.

Clear writing communicates; jargon blocks communication. Down with jargon! Don’t be a jargon jrip!

Don’t be a “Jargon Jrip” is a post from: Principled Profit

Fascinating article in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Sex Doesn’t Sell.”

This is, of course, complete heresy to marketers.

Two things I want to comment on there: first, this quote:

According to some studies, the “sex sells” adage in misleading if not wrong. Several studies have found ads laced with sexual imagery of women targeted to women actually turn women off to the product. And it’s not a new conclusion about sex and advertising, either.

But the obvious response would be, if you’re marketing to heterosexual women, should you perhaps be using sexy men? And certainly there are plenty of companies that do just that.

Also, remember the old AIDA formula: Attraction, Interest, Desire, Action. In other words, it isn’t enough to attract their attention–which sex does, for sure. They have to move through tthe ladder and take action. I remember one of the worst ads I’ve ever seen. It actually used the headline “Sex. Now That I have Your Attention…” and proceeded to promote a car dealership without even referring to the headline again. It was an all-text ad, no graphics, in our local newspaper. And I made a resolve right there that if this company was going to so insult my intelligence, I wasn’t going to even give them a shot at my business. I’ve bought three or four cars since then, at least, and not once have I ever bothered to visit that dealer.

Yet Madison Avenue, going back decades, seems to do quite well using sex to sell everything from household cleansers to cars to alcohol–but the ads are constructed in such a way that the prospect almost feels like he or she is in bed with someone gorgeous.

The other part I found umm, revealing was this wonderfully snide reader comment:

Two words that prove sex doesn’t sell: Sarah Palin. Other than being a GMILF and former beauty queen who has mastered the art of the saucy wink, she brings nothing substantial to the GOP ticket and has done more to undermine McCain’s credibility with independents and undecideds.

.

Generally, in marketing, we learn to harness both the prospect’s emotion and intellect. Perhaps the problem with using misplaced sex in advertising is that it only hooks the emotions and leaves intellect out of it entirely. In my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, I walk through some of the ways to build the necessary long-term trust to not only follow AIDA all the way down to the second A, but to add more steps: repeating and referring others.

(Thanks to Chris McDonald, who pointed me to this article).

Maybe Sex Doesn’t Sell as Much as We Thought It Does is a post from: Principled Profit

I’ve long been an advocate of writing marketing copy that uses both emotional and rational appeals.

Here’s a specific example: my all-time favorite of the hundreds of press releases I’ve written. I did it back in 1999 when a client hired me to write a press release for a new book on electronic privacy.

Most PR books would tell you to do a press release with a headlne like “Electronic Privacy Expert Releases New Book.” But I say they are wrong! Over 1000 books were released in the US alone every single day of 2007. There’s no news in that headline. So this is what I did instead.

Below is exactly what I produced, except that I’ve changed the author’s name/identifying data/book titles and removed contact info. (Note that had this been a more recent book, I would have brought identity theft into the mix.)

It’s 10 O’Clock—Do You Know Where Your Credit History Is?

ST. PAUL, MN: It’s 10 O’clock—Do you know where your credit history is? How about your employment records? Your confidential medical information?

How would you feel if you found out this sensitive and should-be-private material is “vacationing” in computer databanks around the world—accessible to corporate interests who can afford to track down and purchase it, but not necessarily open to your own inspection?

According to electronic privacy journalist and technology consultant Mortimer Gaines, this scenario is all-too-common. In a groundbreaking but highly readable new book, Information Attack: Privacy at Risk, Gaines explores the twin issues of privacy in an ever-more-wired world, and citizen access to crucial information that governments or corporate conglomerates might prefer to keep hidden.

Gaines, author of over 20 previous books including the acclaimed Internet Guide series (Windows Press, 1993-94), is not a rabid privacy nut. He recognizes that consumers often gain value by sharing personal information, in order to take advantage of express car rentals or frequent flier programs, for instance. But Gaines suggests the transaction should be voluntary, freely given in exchange for a clear benefit.

When, for example, America Online mines data from its customer records and combines it with outside market research to create—and sell—precise demographics with specific identifying information (p. 143), Gaines feels the transaction exploits the consumer, who sacrifices privacy and gets nothing in return. Gaines is equally cogent on issues of citizen access to government and corporate records.

Information Attack: Privacy at Risk, ISBN 0-00000-00-X, includes detailed references to specific websites, a comprehensive index, and a six-page bibliography. The 336-page 6×9″ trade paperback is available directly from the publisher for $25 plus shipping at (phone), http://www.domain.com, or at your favorite bookstore.

Journalists: to obtain a review copy and/or interview the author, please contact (e-mail and phone).

Notice how I started in the realm of emotion, then transitioned to credentials and facts.

In his blog today, master copywriter Clayton Makepeace credits his success to his ability to create precisely that union of right- and left-brained processing–that inexorably leads to action.

Clayton’s better at this than I am, and the post includes a fabulous example. Of course, Clayton also charges orders of magnitude more than I do. He does direct-mail copywriting and has made himself and his clients very wealthy. I suspect he’d not want to get involved with anything as humble and affordable as a press release. But he’s one of a very few copywriters who has a whole lot to teach me, and whose posts I read regularly. Because reading his stuff makes me a better copywriter–and could have the same effect on you.

Makepeace: Emotion + Rational = Sale is a post from: Principled Profit

Blog: Absurdist Packaging
I’m writing this aboard a Delta Airlines flight from Atlanta to L.A. Literally moments before beginning boarding, they announced that the supposedly included meal wasn’t free in the coach section. Hmmm–why didn’t they tell me this three days ago when I requested a vegetarian meal? Or even when I’d arrived at the gate with plenty of time to go find a restaurant.

I’m generally not a lover of airplane food, and I certainly wouldn’t pay for it. So I rushed out to the concourse and grabbed a bag of overpriced trail mix.

I’m one of those people who actually reads packaging. It’s an old habit; according to my mother, I taught myself to read before I turned four, using cereal boxes and mayonnaise jars. And since I’m a marketing copywriter, it’s actually a work-related distraction.

And I’ve long been amused by some of the idiocy that’s written on America’s packages. This little bag of trail mix is a prime example:
The second ingredient is peanuts and the fourth is cashews (or so they claim–I haven’t found a cashew yet. But just below the ingredients list are three absurd statements (capitalization and spelling are exact transcriptions of the original):

1. “This product ingredients are from: USA, India and/or Africia and/or Vietnam and China.” Why don’t they just come out and say “we don’t’ know where this stuff is from, and we don’t care.” And where the heck is a country called Africia? Well, at least they didn’t put an apostrophe where none belongs. Instead they simply left it out, along with the s that should follow at the end of “product.”
2. “ALLERGEN INFORMATION: It contains undeclared tree nut traces.” What on earth is an undeclared treenut? One you smuggle through customs? I mean, it says right on the label that there are cashews, even though none exist. Seems to be this is a case of declared untree nuts, or falsely declared tree nuts, or something like that.
3. “PRODUCT PRODUCED IN A FACILITY THAT PRODUCES PEANUT PRODUCTS. MAY CONTAIN PEANUTS AND NUTS.” Well, hello there. Peanuts are the second ingredient, remember? And I can see them through the window in the front of the bag. Tree nuts would be nice. I love cashews. I don’t much like *raw* peanuts, however, which is what’s mostly in the bag. Oh well, at least they did roast the soybeans, thank goodness. Soy, however, is not mentioned in the allergen section.

Am I snarkier than usual today? Airplanes will do that to me. Especially when this whole situation came about because they lied when they told me I got a meal.

(Postscript: my little bag of trail mix was so unsatisfying that I ended up breaking down and buying an airline meal. My choice was a hummous platter with decent hoummous, pita brushed with balsamic vinegar, and a whole bunch of raw veggies, most of them of reasonable quality. So I have to eat a least some of my words about airline meals.)

(I wrote this a few days ago on my way to Los Angeles–and then forgot to post it. I’m still there.)

Airplane Food Policy and Packaging Idiocy is a post from: Principled Profit

I recently purchased a copy of Paul Hancox’s ebook, “Secrets of a 10% Conversion Rate” from copywriting superstar Michel Fortin. You probably already know that most direct mail and PPC convert at somewhere between zero and five percent, so getting up to 10 is huge. I tell my clients they should be able to make a profit at half of one percent, even though we usually get much higher responses than that. But just in case…

Though it spends rather too much time at the beginning discussing things I already knew, this turned out to be a nice big juicy and informative product, and worth the $50.

There’s a big chapter on testing, covering A/B split and multivariate testing, as well as something new to me: “flow testing.” You send the reader through a series of short pages instead of one long one, and then track where clicks to the next page fall off dramatically. Fixing those holes plugs the leaks in your copy and ups your conversion rate.

Yes, extra clicks mean fall-off–so the challenge becomes making each unique page so compelling that most readers click to the next one, each time. And if one page loses half your visitors, that’s the one to fix.

My question: I wonder if Paul (or Michel) has tested putting not only a link to the next page, but also an order link. I wonder if people would abandon the letters in order to purchase, if they already feel convinced, rather than simply leave because the only option is to keep going all the way to the (unknown) end. It’s something I would certainly test in that situation.

Flow Testing: An Alternative to the Alternative? is a post from: Principled Profit

Specifically, the emotion of empathy.

I’ve been urging my clients for years to do what they can to be seen as the caring humans they are, and not some faceless corporate monstrosity/bureaucracy.

Chris Haddad gives some very powerful examples, including the wonderful idea of the “maybe bullet”:

What’s a “maybe bullet?”

A “Maybe” bullet is a short statement that “paces” the feelings and emotions that your customer are going through and shows them that you UNDERSTAND them.

He also gives two specific examples of empathic copy. Go read it.

In my own copywriting, I often use “perhaps” rather than “maybe.” It does the same thing but sometimes seems more personal–and sometimes I alternate.

Brief, Wonderful Article on Using Emotion in Copywrting is a post from: Principled Profit

I won’t embarrass this company by naming it, but boy, they could use some marketing help. They really haven’t got a clue.

I found their quarter-page ad in the program guide of a play I attended.
here’s what it contained:

I am guessing I will be the only person to type in that URL on the basis of that ad–and only because I wanted to be able to write this blog post. Turns out it’s a financial services firm, ad even that wasn’t obvious at first glance. the home page is dominated by a picture of a park and skyline in a nearby city–but this company is actually located in a nearby suburb.

And the copy–oy! It’s the perfect example of what I call “we, we, we all the way home.” See for yourself:

We are a fully integrated financial services company. Our mission is to help our clients build, protect and preserve wealth to meet their long-term financial goals.

(Firm name)’s centerpiece is our own unique Process approach, which allows us to offer comprehensive advice to our clients. We have an exceptional degree of expertise across four disciplines, including Wealth Transfer, Investment Management, Executive and Employee Benefits. Each discipline works together to meet our client’s goals.

Let’s see…out of 74 words, eight are either “we”, “our”, or “us”. That works out to 10.8 percent.

Now…how many times can you find a “you” or your”? I’ll give you a hint: a four-letter number that begins with z and ends with o. Yup–zero. They do say “clients” or “client’s” twice, d would have been easy to replace those with “you” and “your”, respectively.

Okay, how about any testimonials? None on the home page. How about anything about what makes the “Process approach” (and whose idea was that bizarre capitalization scheme?) different from/superior to any other agency’s offering? Nope.

I’m sure this is a well-meaning company and probably does right for their clients–but I think they could have more clients if they stopped patting themselves on the back, stopped assuming people know what they do by their firm name (two last names), and started positioning themselves as people who can help answer your investment questions.

And yes, I know, the ad that caught my ire was a charity ad that they don’t really expect to bring them any business. But why exclude the possibility?

It would have been just as easy to make the Emerson quote smaller (it fills fully half the ad) and then add a line like “For enthusiasm about growing your investments, please call or visit.”

It would have cost nothing more to make the home page you-focused, and to make it obvious on first click what exactly their offering and what their specialization is. (A headline would help; there isn’t one).

And then people say marketing doesn’t work. Of course it isn’t going to work if you can’t be bothered to even try!

Unfortunately, this is all too typical.

I’m sorely tempted to dig through the contact page and send a gratis copy of my book Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World–but I have a feeling it wouldn’t be appreciated.

Don’t Waste Your Money on Marketing Like This is a post from: Principled Profit