Category: Weekly Story

When a half-ton grizzly bear walks through your campsite, 20 feet from where you’re sleeping, you take stock.

I should know. That happened to me two weeks ago in Alaska.

After sleeping soundly, I crawled from my tent to find my pals comparing notes. They’d heard it, splashing through the creek bed next to our tents.

“Had to be a bear,” they were saying.

Then we saw the tracks. Big as dinner plates.

Then came the stock-taking.

Profound questions like “How am I still alive?”

Turns out there’s a logical answer.

In mid-August, the land in southwest Alaska is covered with ripe berries, and the streams are filled with spawning salmon. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet for grizzly bears. Easy pickin’s.

Bears know: Why bother trying to take down a nasty, pepper-spraying, gun-toting, punch-throwing, boot-stompin’ human being when you can get your fill with far less effort and risk?

Call it strategic targeting.

Grizzlies do it. So should you.

Ask and answer these questions…

Who are your best, ripest, most plentiful prospects?

Where do they reside?

What are the costs and risks in pursuing them?

Which are easiest to land?

If you’re not asking these questions, you’re probably wasting time and energy chasing difficult prospects…

…while a bounty of opportunity surrounds you on the hillsides and in the streams.

If you are asking these questions, but aren’t sure how to answer them, I can help. I know a ton of great strategies and tactics to help identify and target your best prospects (see p.s. below).

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. Want to discover how to identify your best prospects and target them most effectively? We can help you do that. MarketVolt’s experts can help you devise creative, smart strategies and tactics for your marketing campaigns. We can help you with content planning, copywriting, email production, blogging or other content marketing. We can show you how to do it, or we can do it for you. If you want to learn more, give me a call (314-529-1431) or email me. 

When I was a kid, you couldn’t move through a big-city airport without being pestered by people pitching their religion and begging for money.

The “Hare Krishnas” were the most notorious. With their shaved heads and orange robes, the Krishnas would approach harried travelers, offer a small gift and then ask for a donation.

When they started this routine, Krishnas gave out small flowers. Travelers usually tossed those in the trash and rushed off without donating.

Then the Krishnas tried a new strategy. They gave out small American flags.

Travelers were reluctant to trash the flag. So they would pocket the gift, or pin it to their lapel.

And then…

…They would dish out some dough to the Krishnas.

After Krishna’s switched from flowers to flags, donations sky-rocketed.

Why so? Because when we humans receive a gift we value, we want to return the favor.

The key word here is value.

Give me a little flower, and I think, “Meh,” as I toss it in the trash and move on. Nothing of value here.

Give me a flag — even a tiny plastic one, fastened to a toothpick — and I have something more valuable. Sure, it’s not a diamond ring. But it’s not something I want to dump in the trash.

So I keep it. And now, even if I’m not conscious of the impulse, I want to return the favor.

Airports banned the practice, and courts upheld the bans. So the Krishnas are long gone from Terminal A.

But the marketing lesson lives on.

Give and you shall receive…

…as long as you give something of value.

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. Want to discover how to create business-building content that delivers value to readers? We can help you do that. MarketVolt’s experts can help you devise creative, smart strategies and tactics for your marketing campaigns. We can help you with content planning, copywriting, email production, blogging or other content marketing. We can show you how to do it, or we can do it for you. If you want to learn more, give me a call (314-529-1431) or email me. 

Police in New Hampshire arrested a man at a Planet Fitness health club last month after he stripped and began yoga-ing in front of other patrons.

Naked yoga isn’t my thing. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to see it.

(And I feel bad for the customers who were disgusted or threatened by this maniac.)

But I also have to hand it to the guy…

As police hauled him away, he acted all innocent and said, “I thought this was a ‘judgment-free zone.’”

That’s funny.

You see, Planet Fitness plasters the airwaves and internet with ads promoting itself as, yep…

…“The Judgment Free Zone.”

(You can see a bunch of the ads on the Planet Fitness YouTube Channel.)

Planet Fitness has 1,500 locations and 10 million customers.

The ads have a lot to do with that success.

The ads work, not because they’re funny. Funny ads are dime-a-dozen, and many of the funniest don’t drive business.

Planet Fitness ads work because they speak directly to the prospect.

They say to the prospect, “I know you. I know exactly how you feel. I understand your fears and anxiety. I have an answer for you…”

All successful marketing starts with knowing your prospects. That’s true with for-profits, nonprofits, business-to-consumer and business-to-business organizations.

Most unsuccessful marketing starts with product and service pitches: “Here’s the product or service I sell. Here are a few features. Wanna buy?”

Watch the Planet Fitness ads. No mention of treadmills or barbells or yoga mats. Just stories that say, “I know you.”

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. Want to discover how to create business-building content that says, “I know you?” We can help you do that. MarketVolt’s experts can help you devise creative, smart strategies and tactics for your marketing campaigns. We can help you with content planning, copywriting, email production, blogging or other content marketing. We can show you how to do it, or we can do it for you. If you want to learn more, give me a call (314-529-1431 or email me). 

I wrote last week about the “King of Facebook ads” who went from $4,000 profit per day to the poor house — almost overnight.

Poor Guy put all his eggs in one basket (Facebook). When Facebook changed the game, the eggs (and his business) went rotten. 

Poor Guy reminded me of a former client who removed email from his marketing mix when social media became the new “Big Thing.” 

The client was a consultant whose services started at $2,500 per month.

He figured the Big Thing was just the ticket to market those services. 

It wasn’t. 

Former Client’s story ends like Poor Guy’s — with a basket of rotten eggs. 

But their journeys were different.

Former Client never raked in $4,000 per day in profits from Facebook. In fact, he didn’t rake in anything. He didn’t close a single sale via his Facebook posts and ads.

That’s because Facebook alone can’t do it all for your marketing and sales funnel. — especially if you’re selling business-to-business services such as $2,500/month consulting. 

Facebook is great for building brand awareness and attracting leads. But if you want to close a $2,500/month sale, you have to nurture prospects with more than Facebook posts. 

That’s where email comes in. That’s where the telephone comes in. That’s where face-to-face meetings come in. 

Former Client’s story ends happily. He added email back to the mix.

He used Facebook to attract leads and drive them to landing pages where they opted-in for email.

He used email to nurture and educate prospects and to track who was most interested. 

He used the telephone to follow-up with qualified prospects and invite them to meet face-to-face. 

He closed sales in those face-to-face meetings. 

Lots of baskets. Lots of sales. 

Former Client used to post and pray. Post the promotion on Facebook. Pray that the phone rings with a prospect ready to buy. 

That’s a recipe for failure even if Facebook doesn’t change the rules. 

Former Client got on track when he recognized that marketing works when you employ multiple channels — using each for its best purpose. 

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. Want to learn where to put the eggs? Want help managing those marketing baskets? MarketVolt’s experts can help you devise creative, smart strategies and tactics for your marketing campaigns. We can help you with planning, testing, tweaking, and measuring. We can show you how to do it, or we can do it for you. If you want to learn more, give me a call (314-529-1431 or email me). 

I came across a sad story on a marketing forum the other day about a guy who “went from millionaire to broke.”

Poor guy. Literally.

He described what happened: “I was the king of Facebook Ads in 2013-2016. I was making about $4,000 profit per day,” he said.

Then things went south.

“I consider myself an expert on FB advertising. But for some reason, nothing works profitably for me anymore.”

He speculates that Facebook may have flagged his account as “low quality advertiser.”

Could be. But when it comes to Facebook, Google and other online advertising services, no one knows for sure.

Poor Guy is not alone.

I know several people whose businesses tailed off or collapsed after putting all their marketing eggs in one basket — Facebook or Google or Instagram or some other can’t-miss advertising channel.

Several of them paid big bucks on courses to learn how to master the channel.

Then they were downgraded to “low quality advertiser” or the internet giant changed how it ranked their site or some other system they mastered suddenly changed without warning.

Don’t get me wrong. All of those marketing channels can be very effective under the right circumstances.

But as one wise fella noted in response to Poor Guy’s story, “If your entire business model depends on the policies of another single business you do not control, that’s not a sustainable model.”

Amen, brother.

That is reason enough to diversify your marketing channels. Don’t let the internet giant — Facebook, Google, etc. — pull the rug out from under your business.

But it’s not the only reason.

Tune in next Wednesday for another, even more important reason. 

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. Want to learn where to put the eggs? Want help managing those marketing baskets? MarketVolt’s experts can help you devise creative, smart strategies and tactics for your marketing campaigns. We can help you with planning, testing, tweaking, and measuring. We can show you how to do it, or we can do it for you. If you want to learn more, give me a call (314-529-1431 or email me). 

A new prospect asked me to estimate the return on investment for an email marketing campaign he was considering.

“I don’t know enough about your business to answer,” I said.

He didn’t like that so he persisted.

He may as well have handed me a gas can and asked me to estimate his miles-per-gallon…

…without telling me what kind of car he drives.

“I’m flying blind here,” I said. “But I can tell you this: Some studies estimate email marketing returns $44 for every $1 spent.” (That’s a popular stat that lots of email marketing advocates toss around.)

He seemed pleased. I wasn’t.

I had to call it like I saw it: “But I think that’s a garbage stat.”

“A garbage stat?” he hissed.

Who’s on your list, qualified prospects or ice cold leads? The better your list, the higher your ROI.

What’s your process for closing sales? In many businesses, an email campaign may nurture a prospect, but salespeople still have to close the sale.

If you spend $1,000 for an email campaign, you might nurture 25 qualified prospects. What’s your ROI if you close one sale? Five sales? All 25? The more you close, the better your ROI.

How much much revenue do you earn from an average transaction? If you spend $1,000 on marketing and earn $44,000 in sales, your ROI would be 44 to 1. But I can’t estimate 44 to 1 when I don’t even know how you price your products.

I’ve seen email campaigns generate better than $44-to-$1 ROI. I’ve seen email campaigns generate 44 cents. I can’t tell you where you’ll land without knowing about your list, your sales process, your revenue model and other factors. Those who say they can are lying.

I wasn’t picking a fight. I was just trying to help him.

But now he was pissed. “Look,” he barked, “I can tell you exactly how much I spend on SEO each month. And I can tell you exactly how many sales I generate from the SEO each month. So I can tell you my ROI. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”

The guy’s co-worker chimed in: “Actually, we’re not sure which sales result from SEO and which come from other channels.”

The silence in the room was deafening.

The guy didn’t hire me to run his email campaigns. I’m not surprised. I’m not sad, either.

It’s no fun to anger a prospect. But my job is not to sugar-coat or to tell happy lies (i.e. “Your ROI will be 44-to-1.”)

My job is to help you succeed with your email campaigns.

Part of that job is to help you measure success.

If you want to know the ROI of your email campaign, I can help you.

It’s not rocket science. But it’s also not some number I’ll pull from thin air.

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. I won’t promise 44-to-1 ROI, but I can promise this: MarketVolt’s experts can help you devise creative, smart strategies and tactics for your email campaigns that will improve your chances to maximize ROI. We can help you with planning, testing, tweaking, and measuring. We can show you how to do that. Or we can do it for you. If you want to learn more, give me a call (314-529-1431 or email me). 

In 1911, Bobby Leach went over Niagara Falls in a barrel. On purpose.

He broke a few bones and spent a few months in the hospital.

But that was OK with him. He survived…

…and then he cashed in on his fame.

He wasn’t the first person to survive that fall. A woman named Annie Taylor owned that claim-to-fame. She purposely fell over the falls a few months before Bobby.

Annie made a few bucks speaking about her adventure, but never built a money-making publicity machine.

Bobby, on the other hand, traveled the world, exhibited the barrel, posed for pictures and boasted, “Anything Annie can do, I can do better.“

A few years after the big fall, Bobby brought his publicity tour to New Zealand.

While there, he slipped on an orange peel and injured his leg. The leg got infected. Gangrene set in. Amputation followed. Complications ensued. Bobby died two months later.

Ouch!

Bobby learned the hard way: If you make your living by falling, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Same is true if you’re marketing a business.

What worked for you yesterday, may injure, or even kill, your business today.

That’s why testing, tracking and tweaking are critical marketing practices.

I’ve been reading and writing marketing advice for more than 20 years.

A lot of the stuff I read — and wrote — doesn’t work as well as it once did. (I even purge content periodically from my blog if the advice is out-of-date).

I know what’s working because I measure results. I know if something worked better a few years ago than it works now.

Sure, if choosing between options, you may start with something that has worked in the past.

But remember: “No guarantee.”

Pay attention. Test and track to assess what works. Tweak to improve results.

Whatever you do, don’t sit on your laurels…

…and watch out for orange peels.

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. Here at MarketVolt we license the software you use to create, deliver and track email campaigns. But we also can help you plan how to use it. Planning, testing, tweaking. We can show you how to do that. Or we can do it for you. If you want to learn more, give me a call (314-529-1431 or email me). 

I caught a radio ad recently for an ear doctor who encouraged listeners to get their hearing checked.

She said most people will rush to the eye doctor if they have fuzzy vision.

But when people notice their hearing get fuzzy, many will put off a checkup. Sometimes they’ll wait for years.

Don’t wait, she said. If you wait too long, minor hearing loss becomes major.

Good point, Doc…

…but bad marketing.

By highlighting people who wait for their checkup, you imply that waiting is normal.

We humans want to be normal. We want to join the crowd.

So if you describe a crowd that waits to visit the ear doctor, we’ll join ‘em. We’ll wait, too…

…even if you tell us that waiting is a bad choice.

So what’s the poor doctor to do?

Encourage listeners to get their hearing checked…

…without telling them about the crowd that puts off checkups.

Better yet, make hearing tests the “new normal.”

Tell listeners about the “crowd” that rushed to get their hearing checked. Tell them how you’ve treated hundreds (or thousands) of people whose lives improved following the test.

Emphasize how those people made the “smart choice.”

That’s the crowd you want your listeners to follow.

Marketers and behavioral economists call this “social proof.” 

Smart communicators use social proof to make their copy more persuasive.

Highlight the wrong crowd, and you encourage the wrong action.

Use social proof to highlight the right crowd, and you encourage the right action.

By the way, you are not encouraging the “right” action if you trick people into acting against their interests.

Unfortunately, some marketers use social proof and other persuasion methods to “trick” people into buying stuff they don’t need. 

This gives all marketers a bad name, and it gives “persuasion” a bad name, too. 

Using social proof and other persuasion techniques is not a bad thing…

…unless you use them for a bad purpose.

If you intend to provide value and to offer something for those who need it, there’s nothing wrong with making your copy as persuasive as it can be. 

Social proof is one way to make your copy more persuasive. See the p.s. below if you want to discover other ways…

Thanks for reading. 

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s.Here’s a free report that might interest you: “7 Ways to Make Your Marketing Messages More Persuasive.” 

I got a call last month from my son, Jacob, who declared, “I’m never flying United Airlines again!”

Here’s why he was so upset…

Jacob was at the Denver airport, at one of those self-serve check-in kiosks. It was crowded and hectic. There was a long line to get through security. He was frazzled. He worried he might miss his plane.

Jacob had one bag to check so he needed to run his credit card to pay for it. When he reached down to insert the card into the slot, he found a previous customer’s card still in the kiosk.

He pulled the card from the slot and looked around for a United attendant.

He spotted one across the room, caught her eye and raised his hand, waving the previous customer’s credit card in the air.

The attendant’s shoulders slumped. She frowned. And then she stormed across the room toward Jacob.

As she arrived at the Kiosk, Jacob said, “Someone left his credit card in the…”

The attendant wasn’t listening.

Without a word, she snatched the card from Jacob, pressed the pay now button on the kiosk screen and inserted the card into the slot.

Transaction complete.

“Ummmm…” Jacob said. “That wasn’t my card. I found it in the slot when I went to check in.”

Slumped shoulders again. As for the frown, it never left, but now it was bigger.

“Why didn’t you tell me that!?” she barked.

“I tried to tell you but…”

Again, she wasn’t listening. She grabbed Jacob by the arm and yanked him toward the check-in counter.

After a few minutes of furious typing, even-bigger frowning and lots of heavy sighing, the attendant undid the previous transaction and charged Jacob’s credit card.

She tagged the bag, tossed it on the conveyor and handed Jacob his credit card.

Her only words: “OK. You’re all set.”

She didn’t say, “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t say, “Thank you.”

After Jacob told me the story, I told him that United’s slogan is “fly the friendly skies.” 

Jacob laughed. “Yeah, right,” he said. 

What’s the lesson for you? 

The United attendant could have prevented so much damage if only she hadn’t assumed my son was a dummy who didn’t know how to operate a kiosk.

If only she asked the customer, “What do you need?” If only she listened to the customer when he told her what he needed.

So it goes with marketing and sales.

Too often we assume we know what the prospect or customer wants. We act on assumptions. We act without listening. And then we cause damage.

Smart marketers devise strategies and tactics

…to converse with their prospects and customers…
…to listen to them…
…to learn what they want and need…

And then smart marketers respond accordingly.

Want to discover how B2B and B2C marketers use email to converse with their customers, listen to them and learn what they want and need? Register for one of our on-demand webinars (see below).

Thanks for reading.

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. Our on-demand webinars reveal great ways to build connections with prospects and customers. We’re currently running two webinars. We’ll be adding other topics soon. 

• 5 Ways B2B Businesses Use Email Marketing To Simplify & Accelerate Connection-Building & Sales
    
  
• 5 Ways B2C Businesses Use Email Marketing to Increase Profits