From the category archives:
If you haven’t seen the film Inception yet, don’t worry.
There are no spoilers here.
But there’s an important lesson in the movie for marketers and evangelists alike.
In the film, Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is talking about the act of “inception” – planting an idea in another person’s mind.
Here’s what Cobb says:
“What’s the most resilient parasite? [...]
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We buy because of emotion, and we justify the decision using logic.
Good sales people identify the emotion driving their prospect, and then line up the “reasons why” the purchase is a good idea. They use logic to close the sale, but logic is not making the sale.
“Reason why” selling even worked with Captain Kirk on [...]
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Most advertising is an expense – or worse – a mystery expense. It works like this, most of the time: spend money on some ads, not knowing whether those ads will work, and hope for the best.
Ogilvy is famous for saying 50% of his ads work – he just didn’t know which 50%.
It doesn’t have [...]
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Most copywriters and marketers would agree that if you could read your prospect’s mind, you could be a lot more successful writing copy for – and selling stuff to – those prospects.
Because you’d know their world.
You’d understand their pain.
You’d know their deepest fears, and you’d understand their highest aspirations.
So how do you do that? Here [...]
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Seth Godin points to this incredible resource for browsing vintage ads. Just type in your subject and the Vintage Ad Browser shows you the results (this search on “success” turned up and ad for Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”, for instance).
This is a resource you’ll have fun playing with – and it may spark [...]
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Inspired by Seth Godin.
As you’re crafting your next marketing campaign, here are 7 questions to ask yourself.
Answering them will virtually write your sales copy for you.
It’s easy to do.
But very powerful. Try it and see.
What problem are you solving?
What is your solution?
Who is it right for?
What will it do for those people?
How does it work?
What [...]
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There’s a lot of chicken feathers flying.
People are in a flutter about the new FTC guidelines.
This affects you if you are a blogger, and affiliate marketer, or an Internet marketer of any stripe.
Now, there are a lot of snake-oil salesmen who are ready, willing and able to take advantage of your FEAR of the FTC.
Usually [...]
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Yesterday (Monday, October 5, 2009) the US Federal Trade Commission rolled out a brand new rule: bloggers who endorse products must disclose any financial benefits they receive for doing so.
Failure to live up to this rule could get bloggers fined up to $11,000.
Per violation.
There are lots of questions about what this means for affiliate marketers, [...]
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In the Internet Marketing world, a 10% conversion rate is often considered outstanding.
But is it?
Not really.
Online retailers do much better.
Check out Futurenow’s posting on “the top 10 converting websites for December 2008“.
Here are the top five:
1. ProFlowers 31.1%
2. LL Bean 25.7%
3. Amazon 23.7%
4. VitaCost 23.0%
5. Coldwater Creek 22.4%
Hmmm.
What do they know that you don’t? Something [...]
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You need content for your blog or newsletter or ezine.
It needs to be relevant – in other words, you need to write about stuff your market cares about.
Most bloggers (and newsletter/ezine publishers, and speakers, and authors, etc.) don’t have a clue what their market cares about.
Oh, they think they know what the market wants. That’s [...]
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In the past, I have scoffed at the idea of affirmations. You know, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me.” That sort of thing.
I don’t feel that way anymore, because I have realized every human being on the planet practices affirmations. It’s simply that most of us do it [...]
I’m not usually a fan of “what if” questions. That’s because most of the time, those words (”what if…”) usually precede negative prophecy about something. Negative prophecies like, “What if nobody comes to our new store? What if nobody likes the new product? What if none of our salespeople makes a sale today?” Those are [...]
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I ordered a sandwich this past week at McDonald’s, from the drive-through window.
After pulling out of the drive-through lane, I discovered that my sandwich was cold. The bacon was uncooked. I circled back through the drive-through lane, and explained my dilemma to the young lady at the window. She distractedly held out her hand, reaching [...]
Things got all stirred up here in Ray-land this past week, what with my post about the “gurus”. In today’s podcast I talk about what that was really all about…
As always, if you have feedback or suggestions I’d really like to hear from you.
Call in your questions or comments to our new, fancy “request line” [...]
I got a royalty check from a client in my mailbox. That always makes me smile.
And as I was looking at that check, it made me think about how much fun this particular client is to work with — and I was reminded that I had an audio interview with this guy somewhere in [...]
Wow, I got a lot of feedback on my last podcast about thinking bigger. And not all of it was positive.
So in today’s podcast, I address some of the biggest questions that keep cropping up.
Two main topics today:
1. A tool to help you breakthrough to bigger thinking.
2. A way to overcome your biggest limitation (it’s [...]
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