May 2010
1 post
5 tags
Where are you looking?
Where’s your focus? Are you looking forward?
Or are you looking backward?
Sometimes, it’s difficult to keep your eyes on where you’re going.
We’re all pretty busy looking where we’ve been when we really ought to be looking at where we are RIGHT NOW, and where we’re headed NEXT.
We’ll only get to where we want to be by building on the strengths we...
April 2010
5 posts
2 tags
People ... give it up for Mr. Blake Havard
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WatchIf you can create great content and keep it to 30 seconds or so, THIS could change the way you do business forever.
Are you magnetic?
There’s a strange magnetism connected to success and failure.
On one hand there’s the feeling that if you don’t make a go of something, you cannot fail.
Many people use this as an excuse to avoid failure, to, in effect, protect themselves from disappointment and rejection.
While to certain people there may be some sense in this thinking, it’s also counterproductive:...
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March 2010
3 posts
2 tags
Praying for Angels
We had a house guest up until Sunday lunchtime a week ago.
His name was Teddy, and he was a two year old Corgi. On the Sunday before Teddy’s unexpected arrival I prayed for the first time in over 35 years. I prayed for guidance, for help, for a sign, and for Jesus to show me what to do.
That evening a friend sent an e-mail in which there was an image of an angel along with a short ...
New perspectives
I’m beginning to do things differently.
I’ve been stuck in a rut and trapped in old habit patterns for far too long. True, I may not have all the power I could wish for, at least, not yet. However, that’s beginning to change and there ARE powerful factors I can and am beginning to exert an influence over.
On our morning walk yesterday my wife said she’s noticed I’m...
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Got Superpowers?
As kids (and regardless of age), who among us didn’t at some point secretly want to be some kind of superhero?
Be honest.
If you’d have been given superhuman powers such as the ability to fly and have bullets bounce off you, or to be able to run at 1,000 miles per hour while also having the strength of 50 elephants and the ability to see through mountains, would you have passed...
February 2010
4 posts
4 tags
All the world's for sale
Every now and again, it seems as if we live in one big market place.
I’m on so many marketing lists that I often “miss” offers that promise to change my life (for a one time payment of only $1,997). Were I to buy into every one of these offers I’d be broke.
Yes, everything has a price, though often, it’s not what we pay that matters most, it’s what the action...
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Priorities
Imagine making a killing in some huge business deal, only to then lose your sense of fun and your joy of life.
How would that be?
How would your life be if nothing ever made you smile, cry, live, feel or laugh ever again?
What would your life be like if, despite having pots of cash, you suddenly become way too serious, pompous, self centred, and self important?
Could any amount of money or...
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How Super Affiliates Are Crushing It
At the recent Las Vegas Affiliate Summit the main points that many attendees took away with them were that of the SAs (super affiliates) who are doing really online (and by “really well”, I mean people earning 7 and 8 figure incomes per year), many of them make over 80 percent of their total revenue from just a handful of niches. In most cases, it was just one or two niches. The big revenue...
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Super bowl ads
I only saw the highlights of the ads on NBC this morning, but of the few I saw, in terms of brand awareness and continuity, the E-Trade baby ad was good—NOT as great as the originals, but still good. Direct-response wise (and a great example of an ad that TELLS A STORY) Google’s tale of France was a DELIGHT.
I’ve worked in and studied brand-based advertising for over 25 years. As a...
January 2010
7 posts
3 tags
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There are basically two kinds of buyers: one you...
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Got superpowers?
As kids (and regardless of age), which of us didn’t at some point secretly want to be some kind of superhero?
Be honest, if you’d have been given superhuman powers such as the ability to fly and have bullets bounce off you, or to be able to run at 1,000 miles per hour while also having the strength of 50 elephants and the ability to see through mountains, would you have passed on...
3 tags
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Productivity, copywriting, and Ernest Hemingway
A note on productivity for all those copywriters out there, from Ernest Hemingway:
“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next.
If you do that every day … you will never be stuck.
Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day.
That way your subconscious will work...
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Is Your Balloon Sagging?
It might well sound like an odd question, but, as you’ll see, it’s an important question.
Whenever your prospects, clients, or customers receive or interact with your message, they receive not one message, but two.
Yet they only pay attention to one of those messages. It works like this:
Imagine each message is an inflated red balloon tied firmly to a string.
One balloon sits on...
December 2009
1 post
3 tags
Is Your Picnic Short of a Sandwich?
A few weeks ago I was paying for a book in a second hand bookstore when a man walked in and announced to the store owner (who happened to be ringing up my book) that he’d started a sandwich shop around the corner. He sandwich shop owner quoted prices and rattled off a few sandwich options before assuring us that his prices wouldn’t be beaten. Then he turn on his heel and left.
After...
November 2009
3 posts
2 tags
What You Think Matters Isn't Important
Business owner? Entrepreneur? What You Think Matters Isn’t Important. If you’re a business owner, a would-be business owner, or a well-established entrepreneur, read that headline again.
What You Think Matters Isn’t Important.
Brusque? Perhaps. But regular readers know that I don’t suffer fools (or idiots) gladly.
At least, not when it comes to marketing.
...
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Joy to the World?
With Christmas coming up, are you tempted to place press ads wishing all your customers a good one?
Before you do that, take a moment to think.
To create market share for yourself you need LOTS of repetition, particularly for press ads. So, do you REALLY think one little ad wishing people Merry Christmas (although it might look nice) is going to drive much traffic your way?
Newspapers are NOT...
How will YOU Crush It?
On Friday of last week I bought Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book CRUSH IT!.
This wee book (it’s only 134 pages) has been on my list since it came out a few weeks ago and I know Gary’s been promoting the living daylights out of it on his whistle-stop tour of the US. If you’re a regular on Twitter you’ve no doubt read Gary’s tweets about where he’s going to be...
October 2009
10 posts
1 tag
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WatchLast week, I wrote about Dean Hunt and Ciaran Doyle’s new site designed to help you become an astonishing success: www.blisteringsuccess.com.
If you HAVEN’T READ this piece, scroll down and you’ll find it in all its glory.
Before that piece went live, I asked Dean to read through it. His considered review? “Awesome!” and people, to me, and coming from Dean himself,...
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How Blistering Will Your Success Be?
Blistering. The word itself summons up all kinds of images.
For me, it summons up the word speed. Ever driven a go kart?
Even though you’re only doing 25 mph you still get the sensation of blistering speed AND you get to feel like Nigel Mansell zooming around Brands Hatch!
And all with your backside just three inches off the tarmac!
Then there are descriptions of meteoric rises to fame—you...
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Where Are You Looking For Your Keys?
Where Are You Looking For Your Keys?
An old man who lived in a remote village arrived home late one night and realized he’d lost his house keys. Turning every pocket inside out he figured he’d dropped his keys somewhere, so he got down on his hands and knees to search for them in the light of his front porch.
Twenty minutes later the man’s son arrived home. The son asked his...
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Never quit. Ever.
Ever wanted it all, wanted it now, and wanted it to come easily? Ever expected a smooth, free, and easy ride to success? Here’s a little piece of advice for you.
Ready? Wake the hell up numb nuts cos it ain’t gonna happen!
Mr. Chambers, my high school English teacher would hate the grammar in that last sentence, but he’d applaud its brevity.
When tasks are tough we are all tempted to quit. No...
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The Power of Testimonials
As regular readers probably know, I’m a fairly frequent contributor to the Know-How Exchange over at MarketingProfs www.marketingprofs.com/ea
Earlier this week, I chatted via e-mail with a student in South Africa about a question he raised connected to the economy and the ways a certain group of people spends money.
Here’s what he had to say by way of a testimonial:
“I’m...
September 2009
6 posts
41 Expenses That Ignore the Economy
Following an answer I gave just recently on MarketingProfs about the economy and the things that impact people’s spending habits www.marketingprofs/ea , the questioner asked me to expand on a point I’d raised, which was this:
“What other factors BESIDES the economy influence your target group to either spend or save money?”
So, here’s a laundry list of other...
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Tales of Sales Prevention
On September 13, I decided to upgrade the operating software of my 4-year old Apple Mac G5 computer. I needed OS X 10.5 (Leopard): an upgrade that’s long overdue.
About two weeks before this, Apple had introduced their NEW OS, “Snow Leopard”. But my Mac’s a non Intel-based machine and Snow Leopard won’t run on it. So, I ordered a 4 Mb memory upgrade, AND a...
Interests or Compulsions?
A few months after Sue and I got married in the summer of 2005, we were visited by Sue’s cousin Lynn, Lynn’s husband Brian, and their two little boys, Brian Jr, and Colin, ages 4 and 2.
Brian Jr. seemed fascinated by the books and nick nacks on the shelves in out living room and I, hearing he was interested in fossils and dinosaurs, told him about a limestone fossil sitting on the...
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Would You Like to Hear a Story?
What follows is based on (of all things) a recent horoscope from Jonathan Cainer. No, I’m not going all metaphysical in my old age, but Jonathan’s original post initiated an interesting view on the world of marketing.
Have you ever sat and told a child a bedtime story? If you have, no doubt you’ll be familiar with hearing little voices urge you to read the tale again and again.
...
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How Much is That Doggie in the Window?
Whether you’re well established or just setting up shop, here’s a marketing lesson I first learned the hard way back in 1986.
Most of your customers or clients either won’t—or don’t—care about you.
I learned this lesson when I wrote my first business letter to a printer. I spent three days crafting my message, adding little jokes and odds and ends, only to...
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It's NOT what you know, it's who you associate...
Using “The Power of Positive Association” here’s an Award Winning Copywriter and Designer, a Writer and Marketing Guru, and a leading contributor to the “Know-How Exchange” page of MarketingProfs, a site that received 41,900 unique visitors in August, making it one of the Web’s leading marketing sites, here’s that person (er, that would be me) … with...
August 2009
2 posts
But Soft, What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?
I want to talk about something that to me, is almost sacred.
In the same way many people are devout in their religious beliefs, I am devout in my faith in the written and printed word. For me, there was a time when a trip to my local book store was part pilgrimage and and part adventure, something to be held in awe, something to be almost worshipped, and something to be cherished. Armed with a...
Don't Moan About the Economy Until You've ...
The news of doom and gloom on the economic front is everywhere. I don’t know about you, but personally, I’m sick of it.
Why? Because it is pulling people and businesses down and holding back success.
It’s really, really easy to apportion blame for any business ill on outside forces, and for the last year or so, the blame has been laid firmly at the foot of the economy.
It’s...
July 2009
6 posts
Down
What goes up must come down. Enthusiasm. Hope. Dreams.
What do you do when you’re down? How do you move through the blues? What techniques do you use to pull yourself out of the blues? And what colour do you use to describe the opposite end of the spectrum?
Everyone gets one of those days, or one of those afternoons, or hours. I’m in one now. Can’t put my finger on what it is,...
Is your marketing comforting, or confining?
The sleeves?
They’re longer than you thought. Aren’t they?
And those clasps? They’re not that easy to undo, are they? And as for the shackles? Well. You’re hog tied, aren’t you? Every way you turn, you’re fighting. And before you know where you are, you’ll probably be raving.
Sound familiar? Before I learned about the power of direct response...
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Fat ads? Or skinny ads?
“Pudding! Where can I find pudding?” The question came from a rather large man and it was directed to an employee in my local supermarket. The guy asking the question must have weighed 500lbs, and it prompted me to wonder “Er? Haven’t you had enough?” Fortunately, I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut. On first glance you might think the question has nothing to do with marketing. But you’d...
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The Ten Commandments of Marketing. Pt. 3
Thou shalt covert they neighbours marketing.
This does not mean steal, it means see what’s working for your competitors, or even in an area outside your niche or category, and highjack the elements that work best, or that will appeal most to your audience (that’s your audience, not you), and then, as Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy suggest “swipe and deploy”!
Now, if...
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How not to write a sales letter and STILL make...
Today, I received a piece of direct mail from a company that has a luxury many businesses lack: they have a mailing list of thousands of names in a high profile niche, a niche that spends millions of dollars every year on marketing, branding, and share of mind development.
I don’t know about you but I know of marketing people who would sell their grandmothers to get their hands on a list...
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Fans are not necessarily shoppers
When it comes to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, it’s vital to consider an important distinction between user’s attitudes between social media and any kind of static, sales-based website, and it’s this: fans and followers are not necessarily going to be shoppers. If you’re keen on affiliate links and if you use Facebook and Twitter as vehicles to distribute...
June 2009
7 posts
Are you seeing the Grail?
To wander—perhaps aimlessly, as would a nomad? Or to root in one place and forever wonder what else is out there?
When it comes to their marketing messages many small business owners and entrepreneurs think
those are the only choices they have: one or the other. They’ll often say: “I don’t need a new message,
I just need new customers! Bring ‘em in and I’ll sell...
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Are we having fun yet? Adventures in HTML coding.
First of all, a huge, huge thank you to James Schramko in sunny Sydney for being simply astonishingly generous with his time and good humour over the last few days. James, thank you. And to all my loyal readers, if you value your success, if you truly want to learn more than you could have thought possible, go now, swiftly and hither: to www.internetmarketingspeed.com
You will not be sorry.
Now...