Karen Goldfarb, Copywriter » video

Dirty Jobs’ Mike Rowe on lamb castration, PETA, and the war on American labor

Karen — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:58:43 +0000

Drawing on his experiences picking up roadkill, feeding swine, and castrating a lamb with his teeth, Mike Rowe, host of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs, discusses how modern American culture belittles necessary labor. And, as he points out, not only is the labor these people do necessary, but many of the people doing it are actually–wait for it–happy. Fascinating to think how we all may still get it wrong in our marketing strategy endeavors to understand “target markets” and psychographics in so-called blue collar industries. How refreshing to think that social networking can just mean grabbing a beer with some buddies. All lessons this copywriter will try to always pass along.

The Vendor Client relationship – in real world situations

Karen — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:55:20 +0000

No related posts.

SAP and Cisco Conference Opening Video

Karen — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:43:54 +0000

I wrote the script for this video which was the cornerstone of the announcement of a new partnership between tech giants, Cisco and SAP. It was shown before the keynote speech to an audience of 18,000 at the Cisco Global Sales Conference in August of 2007.

Google TV Ads

Karen — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:59:40 +0000

Quick and dirty copywriting for Google TV. It was fun. Sometimes the best projects as a copywriter involve being as creative as possible with tight constraints, such as budget and time. Related posts:7 superior alternatives to Google Adwords Related posts:

7 superior alternatives to Google Adwords

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.