| You don't need to be a marketing genius to have a successful entrepreneurial business. You can get by very well by identifying marketing genius in someone else and leveraging it. I had lunch recently with "John." He owns and runs one of the most successful direct-marketing jewelry businesses in the country. They sell their products directly to their own customers and indirectly through the catalogs of some very large and well-known chain stores. When I met John, about 15 years ago, his business was doing about $10 million or $20 million annually. Today, it grosses more than $150 million and is very profitable. He credits his success to a database marketing program that he developed over several years. "I'm no marketing genius," he told me. "I don't write copy. I don't come up with amazing ideas. I'm just a careful thinker who looks at the numbers and tries to understand what they mean." For John, the numbers are customer-response results: how much and how often certain groups of customers make purchases. By reviewing marketing and sales reports, he can identify which advertising campaigns bring in customers with the greatest lifetime value to the business. "When I find a copywriter or marketer who improves lifetime value, I reward them with a slice of the pie. That gives them an incentive to work with me in the future. They do the hard work of coming up with the new ideas and offers. I just have to keep track of their performance and make sure they are well compensated when they succeed." In the time I've known John, I've seen him build his business exponentially. I've seen him do that while many of his competitors have struggled and even failed. Included in that group of losers are several bona-fide marketing geniuses. But they made critical marketing mistakes because they didn't pay enough attention to the numbers. In the direct-response business, nothing is more important than the math. We all like to come up with the creative breakthrough. But if we neglect the quotidian work, all the bright ideas in the world will not save us. -----------------------------------------------------Highly Recommended ----------------------------------------------------- How pinpointing the "Missing Link" can kick your online business into overdrive
Every inefficient system... whether it's an overweight body, a sputtering old 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.
The good news is, once you pinpoint this "missing link" and get it handled, you can make more money online than you ever dreamed possible.
And the best part is, this is so simple to do, you'll kick yourself for not thinking of it first.
Let me show you how...
"Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you." Roger Ebert Before you can write an effective piece of marketing copy, you have to know what your prospects are feeling -- understand what we call their "resident" or "dominant" emotions. How do you do it? There are several techniques I use. But one of the best is to put myself in their shoes. As I sit down to write, I simply close my eyes and let the people I'm about to speak to speak to me first. I did exactly that with my first Health & Healing promotion. I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, and mentally inserted myself into the shoes of our target demographic -- a 50- to 70-year-old man with chronic health problems... enduring endless doctor visits... taking fistfuls of costly prescription drugs every day... suffering horrific side effects from those drugs... and never really getting any better. I saw myself showing up at the doctor's office on time, cooling my heels in the waiting room and reading magazines for an hour until my name was called. I vicariously experienced being ushered into the exam room. And then, being made to wait even longer. Finally, I saw the doctor hurriedly burst through the door, ask me a cursory question or two, make a few chicken scratches on a prescription pad, and vanish as quickly as he had come. As I saw myself experiencing what my prospects experience every day, I started to feel the emotions they were feeling: Frustrated by health problems their doctors couldn't seem to cure. Afraid of the consequences of failing health. Worried about the cost and side effects of conventional medicine. Embarrassed by the intrusive poking and prodding. And disgusted with doctors who never seemed to take a personal interest in them. Wow! Did that exercise ever bring my copy to life! Being the prospect is even easier when writing for the investment and finance markets. You don't even need an imagination. You can experience precisely what your prospects are feeling every day of the year. Here's what I tell every young copywriter who's eager to break into the investment field -- before we even begin talking about the writing process or the principles of great direct-response copy: "The first thing you do, open a brokerage account. Take all the money you have in the world and put it into that account. No fair using a few hundred bucks you wouldn't miss if you lost it. You've got to have enough at stake so that you'll be thrilled when your principal grows and crushed when it declines. "Then, start investing. "Get advice from a broker and follow it with some of your money. Subscribe to a couple of investment advisories, and follow their gurus' advice with another chunk of your money. Do some research on your own, and put the rest of your money into stocks and mutual funds that you like." That's it. I don't have to say another word. Nobody who takes that advice, and follows it to the letter, ever again has to wonder how investors feel. Suddenly, CNBC is the most riveting channel on TV, and the thrill you get from reading Forbes makes Playboy seem dull by comparison. The announcement of a quarter-point interest rate hike sends chills down your spine. A half-point hike gets you quaking in your boots. When someone talks about an investor who struck it rich, you hang on every word. And you have an irresistible urge to knock on wood when you hear about someone who was taken to the cleaners. And the rumor of soaring earnings at a sexy young company gets you almost excited as... well, I'll leave it up to you to fill in your own metaphor. Then, things really get interesting. You get your first monthly brokerage statement. How does that make you feel? Are you eager to open it? Or do you feel like hiding it quickly before your spouse sees it? You open and read the thing. How does that feel? Are you thinking that plastering Xerox copies all over your bedroom walls will get you lucky tonight? Or would burying it along with Rover's droppings in the backyard be a better idea? Or, do you just feel disappointed -- like you took a huge risk, suffered through intense emotional highs and lows, wasted a whole month of your life, and have nothing to show for it? Now, imagine that you have all these feelings and you're just a few short years from retirement. Every month that flies by brings you 30 days closer to having to live on income generated by the paltry balance on that brokerage statement. How do you feel? How do you feel about your broker? Is he a saint? Or a bum? What do you want to do to those gurus whose advice you followed? Kiss them? Curse them? Does this experience -- whether good or bad -- leave you wanting to find other investment advisories and give them a try? Or does it convince you that you could do better on your own? Whatever your answers, chances are they're the answers the vast majority of your prospects would give, too. Since they were investing in the same markets you were, at the same time, odds are many, if not most, of them shared similar experiences -- and have similar feelings about those experiences. Because I write mostly for the health and investment markets, I drew the above examples from what I know. But no matter what you're selling -- no matter who you're selling it to -- the process is the same. Putting yourself into your prospects' shoes can get you a long, long way toward connecting your product's strongest benefits with their most compelling emotions. [Ed. Note: Master copywriter Clayton Makepeace publishes the highly acclaimed e-zine The Total Package to help business owners and copywriters accelerate their sales and profits. Claim your 4 free moneymaking e-books -- bursting with tips, tricks, and tactics that'll skyrocket your response rates -- at MakepeaceTotalPackage.com. Clayton Makepeace was a featured speaker at ETR's recent Info-Marketing Bootcamp, along with a dozen other experts in Internet marketing and business building. If you weren't there... bring the conference home with our Bootcamp Home Study Program.] -----------------------------------------------------Highly Recommended ----------------------------------------------------- Who Do You Listen To? - When it comes to financial news... who do you trust? The cable news talking heads? Newspaper and magazine columnists? Well, guess what? They're biased at worst. Incompetent at best. Why not try an independent voice?
Over at our sister publication, Investor's Daily Edge, they've just interviewed resident bond expert Steve McDonald. And if you're the type of investor swayed by cable news hype or what's on the bestseller lists, you should take a look. Here's an excerpt: Andy: What investment book would you recommend to our readers? Steve: I stopped reading investment books in the early 80s! I started investing as a hobby while I was still flying for the Navy. I began investing because that was all anybody talked about in the "Ready Room." It was the Reagan Revolution, and for the first time people were putting money into IRAs... buying mutual funds... shares of stocks. The guys I flew with were all reading investment books. And I tried reading them. But most of the books had the same introduction and same conclusion with maybe one or two ideas in between that might work. I didn't get much out of them. When people ask me, "Is there anything I could read that could help me?" my answer is "No. The best thing you can do is take $2,000, start a portfolio with a few shares of stock, and follow some solid fundamental rules. You learn a helluva lot by putting your own money at risk. You learn those lessons when you see your money going away. And when you see something working that you'd thought would work before you did it, that teaches you more than any book. That's the way to do it." For more of this interview and Steve's unconventional take on investing (including the influence of long-legged blondes), go here. Then sign up for Investor's Daily Edge to get a truly contrarian take on today's markets. -----------------------------------------------------Advertisement----------------------------------------------------- Sleep Like a Baby... Then Wake Up and Kick Butt! Has it been a while since you've been able to get 8 hours of deep, restful sleep? The kind of sleep where you hop out of bed refreshed and ready to kick butt? Now you can, thanks to a breakthrough finding by Dr. James LaValle. He's identified how to eliminate the hidden "stress hormone" that keeps you awake at night. Reader Cindy Collins writes in to say, "Within 24 hours of starting my new program, I was sleeping 100% better and feeling better." If you're ready to finally get a good night's sleep, click here now to get started.
I used to make this mistake all the time -- copy a "sensitive" e-mail to the wrong person. And then try to explain that I didn't really mean what I had said in black and white. It's so embarrassing! And so unnecessary. The last time it happened, I belittled a colleague's proposition, calling it "insane." I thought I was speaking only to my partners. But I had neglected to check the "recipient" box before I sent it off. He had been copied on the previous e-mail. And so he was unintentionally copied on mine. There's an old bit of wisdom that goes something like this: "Always speak about other people as if they were in your presence." I've never been much good at following this advice. An amazingly high percentage of the calumnies I utter find their way back to the victims. It's never pretty. When you say nasty things in print, it's worse, because it's permanent. And with e-mail, it's worst of all, because it is so easy to broadcast the recrimination yourself... and it happens so fast... and you have no control over who forwards what to whom! I did it at least 50 times before I finally trained myself to be more careful. When writing e-mails today, I follow three simple rules: 1. Never write anything about anyone in an e-mail message that you would not want that person to hear about. 2. When you simply can't resist a witty barb, think twice before clicking on any button that allows you to send the message automatically to a group of people. 3. Double-check the recipient list every time you send an e-mail. Check the last name, not the first. What you want Paul Smith to read might infuriate Paul Jones.
Latest News -
New Year's Eve is in just two days. With the holidays, things are no doubt a bit hectic -- maybe even chaotic -- right about now. But resist the urge to put off everything you possibly can until after Jan. 1. Don't wait to take that first step that could change your life. You can get started right now.
Let's Hear It for Our Fellow Early Risers We got a flood of responses to Michael's recent article on rising early. Here's what one reader had to say: "Well, it is 6:10 a.m. here in the mountains, and my early morning purpose today is to get my bills paid, my e-mail cleared, and some self-paced training done before my family rises and needs their breakfast. You see, I work from home -- so adhering to my most productive hours is very important to my success.
"For Early Risers, I believe the early hours are the most productive part of their day... that it is like a built-in clock. In my situation, I am most productive in the early hours from 5-10. In the case of a special project or something with a timeline, I have learned to discipline myself to just do whatever it takes. But my CLOCK is definitely set for 'early productivity.'
"Be Blessed and Pass it ON, and thank you for your inspirational articles. I am always learning with you."
Trisha Donaldson -----------------------------------------------------Advertisement----------------------------------------------------- "As of today, my account stands at approximately $123,500..." - That's how much novice trader K.N. made in six months, according to bestselling author Keith Cotteril. And, Cotteril says, Terry Hodgkinson racked up more than $2,700 in his first seven days alone. These are just two of the dozen people he says have profited from a new trading program. It's from Agora's U.K. partners. You can read their stories here...
Today's Words That Work: Calumny A calumny (KAL-um-nee) -- from the Latin for "to deceive" -- is a maliciously false statement intended to disparage or discredit someone. Example (as used by Michael Masterson today): "An amazingly high percentage of the calumnies I utter find their way back to the victims."
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