| Henry Ford once said: "You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do." Well, some people keep trying. You've seen it. The ne'er-do-well who keeps bragging about his big plans. The office screw-up who keeps apologizing for his mistakes and committing to do better in the future. You probably don't do that kind of thing. But if things fall apart, you may be tempted to climb out of the hole by making promises. Resist the temptation. You've already established your good reputation. It was built on what you did, not on what you said you would do. If you want people to keep thinking highly of you, do more and talk less. Promises are powerful weapons, but they lose their impact when they miss their targets. -----------------------------------------------------Highly Recommended ----------------------------------------------------- The Simple Six-Figure Marketing Strategy - Paul Lawrence spent less than $100 to start his first business. He used just one marketing plan. Soon he had so many customers, he hired someone to do the work. He went after new business. He used his marketing plan again. Almost instantly, he was making $4,000 a month. The people he sold the business to (so he could finish college -- paid for by the sale, by the way) used the same plan. They are making $100,000 a year. Read more...
"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." Jack London Use a Swipe File to Write Promotions Better and Faster
By Bob Bly A "swipe" file is a collection of promotions -- mailed by successful marketers -- that you have saved. "A good swipe file is better than a college education," says my old direct-marketing "professor," master copywriter Milt Pierce. The swipe file provides inspiration and ideas that you may be able to use in your own promotions. With a swipe file, you can overcome writer's block and write copy better and faster. Lots of copywriters keep swipe files of promotions in their industry. Milt, however, always preferred using promotions for products other than the ones he was writing about. If, for example, a client who was selling insurance asked him to create a direct-mail package, he would look in his swipe file for ideas -- but not in the section where he filed insurance packages. Why? The reason is simple. "If you create an insurance package that looks like every other insurance package, you're just being a copycat," says Milt. "However, if you check through other types of packages, you're likely to come up with an original approach." A good example is a recent ad I saw for a Stauer watch. The ad shows a photo of the watch. The headline above it reads: "We Apologize That It Loses 1 Second Every 20 Million Years." The style and approach seem to be inspired by David Ogilvy's famous Rolls-Royce ad. The headline for that ad was: "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock." If the Stauer ad were for a car, it would seem derivative. But by adapting Ogilvy's fact-based approach to a watch, the copywriter created something new. It's an approach not typically used for watches... so it supports Milt's claim that applying ideas used in one industry to another can have interesting and effective results. One interesting footnote to the story... David Ogilvy has been accused of stealing his Rolls-Royce headline from another copywriter. I have also heard that he found the fact about the Rolls-Royce clock in an automotive trade journal. Others now say he took it from an ad for another car: the Pierce-Arrow. And the Pierce-Arrow headline, published years before Ogilvy's Rolls ad, is remarkably similar: "The only sound one can hear in the new Pierce-Arrows is the ticking of the electric clock." Today that ad is forgotten -- but Ogilvy's is one of the classics. The best results I've seen from using swipe files have come from the cross-pollination of ideas between industries. For instance, I was looking for ideas to sell trading software. I started with my file of options trading promotions. Nothing. So I flipped through my other swipe files. In my health swipe file, I came across a promotion for a vision supplement. The headline: "Why bilberry and lutein don't work." I knocked off the headline -- and tripled my client's previous response rate. My headline: "Why most trading software doesn't work... and never will." A non-profit organization sent a free paperback book to potential donors. The "book" was actually a promotion written to solicit donations, and it did gangbusters. A major financial publisher copied the format (now known as a "bookalog") to sell an investment newsletter. Their book, titled "The Plague of the Black Debt," was one of the most successful promotions of all time. When you swipe from another industry instead of your own, you steer clear of copycatting charges -- and you are credited as brilliantly original when your ad works. P.S. Using a swipe file is just one of the "tricks of the trade" I teach in the Internet Cash Generator program. It's a top-to-bottom guide to starting and growing your own part-time-work / full-time-income Internet business. Find out more about here. [Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. To subscribe to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and claim your free gift worth $116, click here now: www.bly.com/reports.] -----------------------------------------------------Highly Recommended ----------------------------------------------------- A Few Hundred Bucks a Week - Everybody wants to make millions online. But would you settle for $200 to $400 a week? You set up your business once. Then it's fully automated. You look in your bank account, and the money is there. That's a car payment... your rent or mortgage... whatever you want, taken care of. Read on to find out more...
You are trying to persuade someone to do something. He is resistant. You suspect it is because he has misgivings he prefers not to talk about. You don't want to upset or offend him, but you do want to get his okay. What do you do? According to LL, a young colleague of mine who's recently become a real-estate broker, you should hit the prospect with "is its?" "You want to sell the house, don't you?" "Well, yes." "And you plan to list it with a broker, right?" "Well, I suppose so." "You appear to be hesitant. Is it because I'm a woman?" "Oh, no. Of course not." "Is it because I'm too young?" "No." And so on, until there are no more "is its?" "It really works," LL says. LL didn't say so, but I'd guess you would not want to offer an "is it?" that really could be "it." For example, you wouldn't want to say, "Is it because I've never sold a house this big before and I couldn't possibly know anybody rich enough to buy it?" Ask a question like that, and you might be stumped by a "Yes, that's exactly it." That qualification stated, the "is it?" technique makes a good deal of sense when you are dealing with irrational objections. The Cardio Myth Jon Herring
Managing Editor, Total Health Breakthroughs
You don't have to spend hours on a treadmill or run for miles. In fact, doing that can be counterproductive.
As Dr. Al Sears writes in his book, The Doctor's Heart Cure, endurance exercise actually makes the heart, lungs, and muscles smaller. They can perform longer with less energy -- but what you gain in efficiency, you lose in reserve capacity. In your later years, it is this reserve capacity that protects against heart attacks.
To improve the health and strength of your heart, focus on short intervals of intense exercise punctuated by brief periods of recovery. Predict Your Future By Tom McCarthy
To accomplish great things, you have to set specific objectives. Then you must take the appropriate actions to reach your goal. Just as important is how you think about your goal. Do you "hope" you can achieve it? Does it seem like something you'll try to do... and see what happens? Or do you think of it as if it has already been accomplished? To achieve the extraordinary, you need to feel that kind of certainty about it. Use this strategy with your team. Start talking about what you want to have happen in the future as if it has already happened. You will see amazing results. [Ed. Note: Tom McCarthy (www.transformationtechnologies.com) is a success coach and business consultant. As the emcee at ETR's recent Info-Marketing Bootcamp, he kept attendees motivated and working toward their goals. You can see Tom in action, along with a dozen experts in business building and Internet marketing, in the Bootcamp DVD home-study program.]
Latest News -
Have you checked out the Info-Marketing Bootcamp home-study program yet? It's like inviting a dozen of the top Internet business-building experts into your living room. We had a really great group this year. And they told attendees all about the latest things that are making them money right now. Social media, video, list building, product creation... and much more. Check it out now.
"Finally! Someone tells the truth. Michael, you're brilliant. Issue #2795 was right on the mark. Small productive actions taken consistently change attitude (and reinforce taking more actions) faster than anything else." Stacey Morris
New York
-----------------------------------------------------Highly Recommended----------------------------------------------------- How the "Missing Link" can kick your online business into overdrive Every inefficient system... whether it's an overweight body, a sputtering car, or a losing football team... has a "missing link" that prevents it from operating at full capacity. It's the same thing with a floundering online business. There's a "missing link" that keeps it from bringing in big-time revenues. But once you pinpoint this "missing link" and get it taken care of, you can make more money online than you ever dreamed possible. And the best part is, it is so easy to do, you'll kick yourself for not thinking of it. Let me show you how...
The Language Perfectionist: All About You
By Don Hauptman
In a recent article reporting on "e-signatures" for contracts and other documents, this quotation appeared: "How do you know it was me who signed it?" The proper uses of I and me are among the first grammatical rules that schoolchildren are taught. Yet even as adults, writers and speakers sometimes get it wrong. The distinction is not that difficult to keep straight. Grammarians call I the nominative case and me the objective case. So use I when you're the actor: "I'm going to the office." And me when you're the object of the action: "Please give the package to me." True, a few situations arise where following the rules might create a stilted or pretentious result. "It's me" sounds more natural on the phone, for example, even if it's technically incorrect. (Officially, "It's I" abbreviates the phrase, "It is I who is speaking.") Similarly, "How do you know it was I who signed it?" is a trifle awkward. But problems like this can usually be solved via adroit rephrasing. One possible option: "How do you know I was the person who signed it?" This column brings to mind two movies that were popular when I was growing up. The title of The Egg and I was admirably correct. But Me and the Colonel was ungrammatical. Of course, the filmmakers knew what they were doing.
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.]
We want your feedback! Let us know your thoughts on today's issue. Email us at: AskETR@ETRFeedback.com | 
No comments:
Post a Comment