Doom and Gloom... Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now... "Inside Jokes" in Your Copy... and Much More
By Michael Masterson
In today's essay, I pass along a bit of brilliance from Dan Kennedy. It helped me understand why, for example, harping on our lousy economy can be hurtful to your advertising. After that, I explain why budgeting is no way to save money, where I get some of my best ideas, and why three squares a day might be making you fat. And that's just today. We've got a great rest-of-the-week lined up for you. Our expert contributors will be revealing some of the most important lessons they've learned. Alex Green will inspire you with an essay about the only thing that really matters. Follow his advice and you'll be able to say "I've led a good life" when you look back. Clayton Makepeace, a featured speaker at this year's Bootcamp, will explain the "generation gap" that affects marketing success. As he says, some fundamental things about selling will always be true. But you can't use the same tactics today that you did in decades past. Or even a couple of years ago. Success mentor Brian Tracy will show you how to overcome the bottlenecks that are keeping you from achieving your most important goals. What's stopping you? It could be right in front of your nose. And master copywriter John Forde will explain the difference between "need to tell" and "want to tell" in your advertising copy. This is essential reading for all business owners, marketers, and salespeople. (Which means everybody.) John will also help you "redline" the unnecessary cute and clever passages from your promotions. ---------------------------------------------- Highly Recommended ---------------------------------------------------- What MBA Students Have That You Don't (Until Now...) - An unconventional course has appeared in the curriculum at Columbia University's prestigious business school... at the London Business School... and at the Haas Business School at the University of California at Berkeley. Says student Brandon Peele, "I attribute 80% of my $120K MBA price tag to this one class. It changed my life in profound ways." Now you can get all the life-changing benefits of this program... from your home... for less than a thousandth of the tuition. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Focus 90 percent of your time on solutions and only 10 percent of your time on problems." Anthony J. D'Angelo Your Customers Don't Want More Doom, They Want Room to Zoom!
By Michael Masterson For 30 years, I've been having the same conversation with my partners. The subject is: What do our customers want from us -- doom or zoom? - Do they want more news about how bad the economy is? Or how clumsy and/or corrupt the government is when it tries to "help"? Or how completely out of tune media celebrities are?
- Or do they want promises of wealth and health and happiness? Packaged in a pretty little pill?
We have this conversation almost every time we launch a new information product. When brainstorming advertising leads, ideas are offered from both camps, doom and zoom, and the debate ensues. This is an old debate because it represents two very natural human interests: - the fascination we feel when we are discovering something new and shocking
- the pleasure we feel when we imagine ourselves having something we want
One part of the heart wants to be surprised and intrigued and shocked by bad news. The other part wants to be bathed in dreams of self-satisfaction. But since we respond to both gloom and zoom when reading, browsing the Internet, or watching videos, this either-or debate is a false one. The best advertising campaigns have always contained both elements. Still, when creating a package or promotion you have to choose one dominant emotion to appeal to. Should it be doom or zoom? I've always recommended more zoom than doom to my clients. And looking back on the hundreds of packages I've mentored, I feel pretty sure that was correct. I also warned my clients that too much zoom was bad too. For two reasons: - You have an obligation to tell the truth about the world as you see it.
- You don't want to pander to unrealistic hopes.
So what is the right formula for any given advertisement at any given time? There is none. You have to figure it out each time anew. But I've recently read something on this subject that knocked me off my chair. It was a very simple statement that Dan Kennedy made in an e-mail to me after we met in Delray Beach last month. He said, "Buying is essentially an act of optimism." And I thought, "Damn! That's exactly right. That is exactly why you need more zoom than doom in a winning advertising package. In fact, that's essentially the reason why buying stuff is so much fun. It's not the possessing part that gives us pleasure. It is the feeling of optimism we have once we have made the decision to buy." I know what you are thinking: "I knew that when I was eight years old. And here I thought Michael was supposed to be smart. What's wrong with him? Is he having a stroke?" Maybe. But I think I understand what I always understood in a deeper way now. I understand that for everybody -- even people who can't get enough doom and gloom in their lives -- when they buy something they are always buying a promise of zoom. How does this apply to what ETR is doing? Let's see. For about three years, we have been living through a Great Recession. The U.S. economy is as bad as it's been in 80 years. When things are this tough, it is easy to assume that your customers want you to talk about the trouble we are in. They want to know that you understand their plight. I've been drawn into this idea. When I sit down to brainstorm a new marketing campaign, I say to myself, "I have to start by understanding the customer's primary thoughts, feelings, and desires." And so I've tended to favor leads that harped on our troubling times. I know from experience that too much gloom depresses response. But I've allowed it because I felt like doing anything else would be wrong somehow. "We have to keep telling them how bad things are," I'd say to the marketing team. "How right we were in predicting the various collapses, and how much worse things are still going to get." Dan's simple declaration shocked me back into reality. Yes, the recession has created new thoughts and feelings in our customers. But the desires -- the fundamental desires for zoom -- are still the same. I discovered years ago that if you want to sell a product that helps people deal with pain or sickness, the worst thing you can do is dwell on the problem. Anyone who might want to buy your product is very aware of the pain and fear. You don't have to remind him of it. A single word -- cancer, for example -- is enough to stimulate all the gloomy feelings he has. "If you want to help people with health problems, you have to bring them new hope," I've been telling my clients in the health publishing business. New hope means genuinely new solutions. Not solutions they have already tried and given up on. The purpose of any health publication is to discover new products, and the job of any advertiser for such a service is to stir up hope by documenting reasons why the product in question is new and different. Thus the ratio of gloom versus zoom is about 1:9 in health-related products. For investment-oriented products it might be 2:8 or 3:7. "Any advertising campaign that deals with a problem must present a persuasive solution," I wrote to a client recently. In a book John Forde and I are working on right now about writing great leads, we say, "The secret to problem/solution leads is to state the problem as concisely as possible and dwell on the solution." That is true in every market. Whether your customer is buying health services, investment advice, grass-fed beef, or perfume, he doesn't want to be reminded of what a mess the world is. He wants a solution -- and that solution has to come in the form of the product you are selling him. Thanks to Dan's very smart insight, I'm reviewing all the copy my clients are using to make sure they are solution-heavy and problem-light. A quick survey of the most successful campaigns this year convinced me that this was the right tack. As I said, you probably know this already. And you are probably shaking your head and moving me to your D list for "dumb." But just in case you needed -- as I did -- a lesson in the obvious, now you have it. P.S. Every year, I share insights I've gained throughout the year (and the rest of my career) during my keynote address at ETR's Info-Marketing Bootcamp. It's off-the-cuff advice for all the entrepreneurs like you in the audience. And it's the perfect way to kick off the event, which features a dozen other experts at getting into the nitty-gritty of search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, social media, copywriting, paid search advertising, and more. See what Bootcamp's all about here. ----------------------------------------------Highly Recommended --------------------------------------------------- Too Many Sales Can Be a Bad Thing!?! - You've poured your heart and soul into your product and marketing plan -- and it's a hit! But your website just can't handle the traffic, and it crashes after a few hundred orders. That's thousands of dollars in lost revenue. But you can prevent that tragedy with one quick, easy, and cheap online tool... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pay Yourself First and Get Rich Automatically
By Michael Masterson
Take any financial planning book in a bookstore and you'll see the same advice. If you want to accumulate enough money to retire someday, begin by budgeting. By listing expenses and limiting spending, they argue, you can have enough left over every month to save and grow rich. The problem is that when you budget, you pay everyone else first -- the landlord, the credit card companies, the phone company, and so on. And, despite your best efforts, you end up with next to nothing to put in the bank. So you chastise yourself and promise to do better next month. But you never do. There are always unexpected bills to pay, unanticipated sales to take advantage of, and that impossible-to-figure-out $200 or $300 that seems to fall through the cracks. I tried budgeting for about 20 years. It just didn't work. But there is a strategy I discovered later on that does work. In fact, it works very well. And I think the reason it works so well is because it is so damn simple. Here it is: Every time you get paid or make a profit or come into money from any source, put a fixed percentage of it into a savings account right away. Put that money away before you pay any of your bills. Think of yourself as a corporation. As CEO of that corporation, your job is to make a healthy profit. The money you put into this special account is your profit. Everything you spend after that -- on bills and so forth -- are your expenses. Only the portion that goes into the savings account is really yours. You might say, "This is nothing but a way to fool myself. If I have discipline, I can put the same amount of money into that account after I've paid my bills." You might even think doing that is more responsible. But it's not. Your first responsibility as an individual (and as CEO of YOU Incorporated) is to become financially independent. By doing so, you will never be dependant on other people or the government. You will be able to take care of your needs and the needs of your family. That is a very responsible goal. And it's one that you will be able to achieve easily if you pay yourself first! To make the process somewhat automatic, have a portion of your paycheck electronically deposited into your account each month. You could argue that this is actually paying yourself second. The government always gets first dibs on your paycheck. But you can beat the withholding tax racket by setting up a tax-deferred retirement account -- an IRA, SEP, 401(k), or 403(b). I pay myself first by depositing a percentage of any income I receive into a savings account. Then I put as much money as I'm allowed into a tax-deferred vehicle. I pay the government next by creating a separate holding account into which I deposit a percentage of every fee that's paid to me -- the money I'm going to owe in taxes. Then I pay my bills. If you are not doing this now, try it. You'll be amazed at how fast your personal profit account grows. Many, if not most, successful people attribute a share of their success to the books they read. To keep my mind bubbling with good ideas, I read one business or self-help book every week. I don't read these books cover to cover. I use a speed-reading program I devised several years ago. I'm searching for one or two good ideas in each one -- ideas that will make me healthier, wealthier, and/or wiser. When I find those ideas I write them in a journal I keep on my computer. I suggest you do the same. After a while, you may feel that you've run out of good books. When that happens, here's how to bolster your reading list: Ask for recommendations from people you respect. Ask your smart friends and successful colleagues what they've enjoyed. Ask them about the books that have made the biggest differences in their lives. Try it now. Think of someone you like and admire -- someone who knows something you don't or can do something that impresses you. Send an e-mail or call and simply ask, "Can you recommend a good nonfiction book?" He or she will be flattered, and will almost certainly come up with several titles for you. Americans were raised on "three square meals a day." Most Americans are also overweight. So you might be interested to know that changing that time-honored habit can help you lose weight. French researchers found that a group of people who normally ate four meals a day actually gained fat when they switched to three meals per day. A second group that did the opposite lost fat. In both groups, the amount of calories consumed remained constant. When I am busy -- which is most of the time -- I can easily skip a meal. Today, for instance, I had a slice of bread and organic peanut butter for breakfast and nothing else but a protein shake until dinner. But now, I'm pretty damn hungry. So there's a good chance I'll eat like a horse at dinner. When you eat like that you can easily consume a day's worth of calories in a single meal. I think that is one reason why four meals works better than three. You tend to eat smaller portions and you tend to eat better foods. You are not starving so you don't binge. And you don't have a sweet tooth for junk. If you are eating only two or three large meals each day, consider splitting your food intake into at least four meals. Five mini-meals might be even better. That's what I've been doing lately. The objective is to eat the same amount of food (or less) but spaced out throughout the day. Here's my eating routine: Meal One: 7:00 a.m., while editing poetry. Two fried eggs (organic). One piece of toasted hemp bread. Two ounces of fresh juice. Coffee. Water. Meal Two: 11:00 a.m., while writing in my studio. A protein bar and water. Meal Three: 1:00 p.m. or 1:30 p.m., after my workout. Protein shake. Iced tea. Meal Four: 5:00. Chicken or tuna, greens and water. Meal Five: 8:00. A well-balanced dinner. When I eat this way, I feel energized all day. I never have a slump after lunch and I have plenty of pep at night to enjoy my evening at home. If you've had success with this or another regimen, let me know. I'm always interested in hearing about healthy eating programs that work. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Latest News -
Suspense is building as the kick-off of our Info-Marketing Bootcamp approaches. Who is Mr. X, our mystery speaker? The clues so far: His "Ultimate Traffic Driver" generated $5 million in sales for one product -- in just one month. It's a secret Google doesn't want you to know. (It cuts way down on their bottom line.) And most Internet marketers don't even know it exists. Find out more about Mr. X -- and the other speakers we have lined up -- here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Keep giving." "I don't usually give feedback on articles, but I absolutely LOVED reading 'Use Your Time to Make Real Money, Not Count Small Change.' It made me laugh because the message is delivered with such a frank, take-no-prisoners attitude. "I'm with you, Michael... work hard, work smart, and keep giving. "Thanks, Michael, for all of the great tips and information over the years." B.P. ---------------------------------------------- Highly Recommended --------------------------------------------------- Making Money Online Is Not Complicated If You Are Not Greedy - Most Internet marketing programs promise you millions. But they deliver only huge instruction manuals filled with arcane language and sophisticated strategies. Most people could not possibly follow them. But if you are not greedy -- if you are happy making an extra $250 to $500 a day working less than an hour -- there is a new marketing method you should know about. It takes advantage of the most commonly used Internet application -- e-mail. Read more... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's Words That Work: Polymath A polymath (POL-ee-math) -- from the Greek for "learned" -- is someone with broad knowledge in several fields. Example (as used by David Kushner in Wired): "Will Wright is the great polymath of interactive design, weaving theories of architecture, astrophysics, and urban planning into his videogames." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We want your feedback! Let us know your thoughts on today's issue. Email us at: AskETR@ETRFeedback.com | 
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