Karen Goldfarb, Copywriter » conversion

How to get people to buy from you, right now

Karen — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:05:01 +0000

I’m going to tell you one of the Great Marketing Strategy Secrets to Still Making Sales, Even in This Crazy Economy.

It’s not copywriting. Or art direction. Or social media, video, or SEO strategy. (Although all those things can help.)

Ready?

It’s the offer.

Offer something of value to your customers, something they really want, and they will buy it. Simple marketing strategy. Works every time.

Case in point.

I just helped Mountain Travel Sobek, a leading adventure travel client “get the phones ringing off the hook” with a good, old-fashioned offer.

Normally, this travel company mails one big, 200-page catalog of all their trips, once a year, along with a handful of smaller books. It’s an expensive proposition. Now, especially because of the economy, their business was down a significant percentage, as was the rest of the industry. And this was after continuing growth over the past few years. They were ripe for something new and ready to try it.

When they brought me in, they were planning to mail one of their regular mini-catalogs and thinking about testing different creative approaches—tone of voice and visual style. Despite the economy, there was a chance that it would bring in some business. After all, getting out there with some frequency can be better than not at all.

But times are tough right now. Travel is particularly down. And my client’s in the high-end. Their trips start in the $2,000 range, without air travel.

The better marketing strategy, I suggested to them, was to include a compelling offer.

If you know direct marketing, you’ve heard that a successful campaign is something like 40% offer, 40% list, and 20% creative.

They already had a plan to test a rented list against their own house list. And a good idea. Why not see if going out to some new names can bring in business if you can rent a good-quality list? (BTW, I know the person in charge of their list management and there’s no way it wasn’t going to be a good list. If you need list help, I’ll give you her info.)

So we talked long and hard about offers. Especially about what kind of offer wouldn’t diminish their brand, since they’re known for quality.

Fortunately, as it happens, they’re celebrating their 40th year in business. So I suggested an offer that’s easy to understand and had a lot of punch. 40th anniversary, 40 free trips. I mean, who doesn’t like to travel for free?

They decided to go for it. We structured the giveaway as a buy-one, get-one free. When you purchased one trip at the full price, you got a free companion ticket.

There was no social networking. No blogging. All promotion was done with direct mail via an 8-page catalog. Plus a restatement of the offer on their website, where a ticker counted down the number of trips remaining vs. the number of days left.

To meet their lead-time for July 1st bookings, we had to move fast. The catalog was at the printer just 10 business days after our first conversation, then out into the mail soon after.

We crossed our fingers.

Then, something amazing happened. After less than one week in people’s homes, the catalog was not only selling trips, it was selling A LOT of trips. In fact, they sold out of all 40 within two weeks of the mail drop.

How did this happen?

A great offer. One that’s easy to understand. One that people want to buy. That’s it. Simple marketing strategy.

Want more proof?

Take a look at Restaurant.com’s recent, ongoing promotions. Normally, they let you buy meals at participating restaurants for 50% off. So you pay $25 and get a certificate worth $50 at the restaurant.

For weeks, they’ve been sending me offers for 50%, 60%, even 70% off their certificates. So I was able to snag $25 certificates for my favorite restaurants for just $3 each. Which I did. And no doubt, other people did, too.

Restaurant.com has been sending me these offers every week for a month. In my experience, that may be a little too frequent. But if it’s working, why not? After all, the restaurant industry is also down. If this is getting people in the doors, do it.

Hopefully, Restaurant.com is doing the smart thing and tracking each of these offers. And even better, sending different ones out simultaneously to really test which work. That’s another key marketing strategy–always test your offers.

Intuit had a similar idea. On April 1st, they offered 50% off all their major QuickBooks and Quicken products, just for the day–and just in time for Tax Day, when accounting is top-of-mind. That’s a great deal, easy to understand, great timing. Did it work? Wish I could tell you. I can say, if it comes up again, we’ll have our answer. (They won’t do it again if it didn’t generate revenue. Or, at the very least, they’ll change the discount.)

So yes, the economy’s difficult. And yes, there are a lot of new tools for reaching people. Lots of new techniques to engage them. And lots of ways to track what they’re doing and where they’re going.

But the fact is, if you have customers, you already know you have something someone wants. The power to drive more business is in your hands. Give your customers and prospects a deal they can’t resist.

You can do it, no matter which industry you’re in, whether you’re B2B or B2C, or what size your business.

Email me and let’s talk about what you have to offer.

Jimmy Wales on direct marketing vs. branding

Karen — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:34:53 +0000

The rathole of direct marketing, according to Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, via John Battelle, in an interview with AdRants.

Quick copywriter synopsis: Wales says, because everything online is very measurable, we measure everything. Impressions, click-through rates, conversions. But traditional brand advertising has to be measurable in other more traditional ways, like consumer awareness. Because we haven’t had a lot of that online, brand advertising online is extremely cheap. If you want to reach 40 million college students in the US, you can use Facebook and pay a lot less than advertising on TV.

My two cents is that marketers understand the direct marketing effect. We know when we send something out intentionally, under our own control, how to apply measurement. You send out an email, people click or don’t, you measure it.

But branding online is different. We can control the initial launch, but the ripple effect is harder to forecast or measure because once a brand campaign is online, it’s out of the advertiser’s hands. You have to be more sophisticated about measuring awareness that continues to grow organically. It’s worth doing, however, as well as applying more traditional branding measurements, as Wales suggests.

ad:tech SF ’09: Jimmy Wales Talks CGM, Branding and Wikipedia from Angela Natividad on Vimeo.

Lead generation and Loch Ness

Karen — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:12:49 +0000

Leviathan. The Loch Ness Monster. The Kraken. The Devil Fish. What do these infamous sea monsters have in common with leads?

For one, there’s certainly a lot of mythology about them. After all, do these creatures really exist?

The answer is yes, some of them do. Leviathan may have been a blue whale. The Kraken is what we now know as the giant squid. The Devil Fish came to be known as the manta ray.

Of course, it’s easy to mistake the myth for the real thing. You see a lot of commotion in the waters these days. Surely, like sea monsters, your leads are out there. But where? And how do you cast a net that pulls them in?

Studies show that advertising still motivates half of all purchasing decisions. Advertising is one of the best tactics for generating leads that you can deploy–even now, when the market is down. Because while it seems like there are fewer fish, there are also fewer competitors casting their nets.

Advertising can also get you word of mouth. You’ve probably seen ancient mariner maps with ominous drawings of sea monsters in the open ocean. Interestingly, ocean exploring began in earnest in the 15th century. A mere 100 years later, all marine maps depicted these terrifying sea creatures. That’s a short time for word of mouth to spread in a world without email. So imagine what advertising using today’s techniques, such as direct marketing, advertising, and social networking can do to generate leads for your business.

So, when you’re fishing for leads, here are a few tips for creating an advertising campaign that brings you a return on investment:

•Place ads in the most targeted publications that your target market reads.
•Consider inexpensive ads in email newsletters and web sites that your target market reads.
•Use direct response advertising techniques. ALWAYS ask the reader to respond for more information by phone, mail or via your website.
•Be proactive. Know your sales cycle and create a system of follow-up to get maximum results from your advertising dollar.
•Use compelling headlines that highlight the biggest benefit your product or service offers.
•Make them an offer that they can’t refuse so they’ll take the action you want them to take.

Good fishing. And if you see Nessie, let us know whether she’s a plesiosaur or a basking shark. Those are the two main contenders.

Need help casting your net? Email me and we’ll venture out onto the waves together.

Stop killing pre-qualified leads

Karen — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:06:55 +0000

There’s a simple mistake many marketers make day in, day out that kills pre-qualified leads. Leads that are coming in via organic search, paid search and paid advertising.

It goes something like this.

You’ve isolated the keywords your potential customers are most likely to use. You’ve put them in your meta tags, your copywriting, maybe even in the text wrapper around your videos. So when a prospect types in “mousetraps”, your extermination company ranks pretty well in Google.

Then one of a number of things goes wrong.

You take these potential customers to your home page, which talks about everything you do, including termite control, wasp nest removal, snail abatement, plus your green story, pictures of your trucks, and, and…

Or you give them a little bit of copywriting about your years in the extermination business, maybe a sentence or two about your mousetraps and then ask them for their email address.

Or you give them some decent copywriting about your mousetraps, show a few pictures, and the conversation stops.

See the problem?

The person who typed in “mousetraps”, in all likelihood, wants mousetraps. Now’s your chance to use a little basic marketing strategy to give them—wait for it—targeted copywriting about mousetraps. Stuff like the benefits of the mousetraps you use, your fast mousetrap delivery process, your cruelty-free catch-and-release traps that don’t harm Mr. Rodent, your money-back guarantee if your mousetraps don’t catch the little guy within 48 hours. Get the picture?

Now that your prospect is excited about you, that’s when you ask them to take the next step. Invite them to buy. Ask for their email address so you can follow up. Whatever the next logical step in your sales cycle is, this is the time.

This kind of marketing strategy holds true no matter what type of medium you’re using. Twitter. Social networking. Online video. Direct mail. Direct TV. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you understand your sales process and think about where anyone coming into it is in that cycle.

This is why so many people writing about social networking talk about being relevant, friendly, “paying it forward” with useful tips and advice. This is, after all, networking. When you’re just putting your shingle out there, you’re trying to get noticed for being good at what you do and who you are. You’re casting a wide net with a view to the long term. That’s personal branding. The chances of getting a sale right away are much lower. They happen but not as often.

It’s also why your list and offer count so much when you’re sending a printed direct marketing piece. You’re relying entirely on the quality of the list (right people), your offer (right thing) and your timing (right time). The rest is up to them.

But when someone knocks on your Internet advertising door asking for mousetraps, they’re right there, asking for what you have. You’ve got a unique opportunity to guide them into a decision right there. But you still must guide them. Don’t distract them with everything else you sell. Don’t ask them to decide without paying off your promise.

One great way to do improve your sales cycle is to write it down where you can see it. Get a bird’s eye view by diagramming out all the possible places your suspects and prospects come to you. Then you can determine each point where you should take them. Look at the actual moments when a sale happens. Then look at your follow-up once they become customers. Once you’ve done that, you can compare your ideal sales cycle with your actual process and make refinements where needed.

Need help? Email me and together, we’ll build a better, er, you know the rest.

7 superior alternatives to Google Adwords

Karen — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:16:48 +0000

Seven is indeed a lucky number so here are seven tips on selling more, but with a twist. This one is from an unusual source. Tammy Kahn Fennell runs VintageRareStuff.com, a site devoted to selling antiques. Here’s what she says has worked for her when she needed to find ways that outperformed Google Adwords. Looks like soon, everyone will know about direct marketing in all its forms, old and new. Enjoy! (You can see her original post here.)

Those of you who know me know that I spend my of my days dealing with in antiques and collectibles. I love feeling the history in my hands. This is in stark contrast to the way I sell these treasures… through the Internet. Nothing tangible, and I have to try to reach my audience amongst a sea of ‘noise.’

There was a time that I was spending a large part of my budget on Google Adwords to try to get people to find me. And yes, I was getting clicks, but the conversions were very, very low, which was both costly an ineffective. This is why I came up with a new plan. Here are the 7 ways I get people to find us without using Adwords. And guess what? It costs a heck of a lot less!

1. Create a mini site. What is a mini site, you may ask? Well a mini site is an ugly little site with a niche-specific domain name that forces people to make a decision. My shining example of this is www.HummelsHumels.com. First of all, the name is very specific to the Hummel Figurine, which is highly important. The search engines find it easier than my main domain, ‘vintagerarestuff.com’. It has a lot of good words in the top bar above where people can type in a new web address, which also gets Google’s attention. But the most important thing is that it’s SIMPLE. It addresses the topic “Do you have a question about selling your Hummel collection?” and then it gives the person a place to fill in their name and email address to find out how. Very simple. One page. Ugly little site, but does wonders.

2. Start building a list. Once you have a few mini sites out there with forms to contact you, make sure you save their info. I use mycontactform.com and contactology.com. This way, when you have a product of interest, you can send it directly to people who would actually want to know about it. Sending an email to 500 people who care about a subject is better than getting 1,000 clicks from people who are just ‘curious’ on Adwords.

3. Have a presence on eBay. I know, eBay has become a bit of a pain in the you-know-what lately, but they are still the largest e-commerce site, period. Having a presence there gets you higher in Google searches by virtue of the fact that eBay gets higher on Google.

4. Get an account on LinkedIn and join groups. There is a group for nearly anything you can think of on LinkedIn and it’s a vastly underused feature! Recently I posted in 4 collectibles groups “looking for people to interview on Collectibles Corner TV.” In 48 hours I had 5 responses. Do you know how long it used to take to find someone to interview? The same can be done for anything. You sell panini grills? Join the restaurant owner group and start a discussion about commercial grills, then casually mention that you sell them. The exposure is really targeted. Make sure to check the box to be emailed if someone replies so you’re able to follow up.

5. Write a free guide in your niche. Distribute this in every form imaginable. Post it as a page on your web site, devote a mini site to it, sell it for 99 cents on eBay with free shipping in the niche you are catering to. Giving free information is one surefire way to get people to trust you, consider you an expert, and notice you.

6. Write articles and go negative. You can write articles for free on a lot of different sites, and you can also write directly onto your own blog. But negativity often works better. In our panini grill example – a good title would be “Why you NEVER want to buy a 240 Volt Flat Grill made in China”. Then explain why and offer them a solution – something that you can provide

7. Get video. This is the MOST superior alternative to Google Adwords. Search engines love good videos that are well tagged. It’s actually quite amazing. There are services out there that can do this for you for under $600 and will literally take care of everything from production to distribution. When you think about how quickly $500-$600 can go on Adwords, it’s a no-brainer.