These are worth thinking about as we enter the New Year.

1. The transmission of information does not equal  the creation of understanding.
2. More time does not usually create better decisions.
3. The message you are preaching is not nearly as persuasive as the message you are living.

Funny story.

Back in my radio days, one of the shows I was in charge of was a morning radio team.

And this particular morning team had a regular feature where a couple of psychotherapists woud come on each week.

When I say a “couple”, I mean it. They were actually a COUPLE, and they were both actually THERAPISTS (can you imagine the dinner table conversations?).

Anyhow, I knew this couple only as characters on this particular morning show. “Judith and Jim” was how I knew them. And I knew only their voices.

Fast forward a few years later.

I had left the radio business, and was at an Internet Marketing seminar.

During one of the presentations, I noticed this couple sitting near the front, and I noticed  they were asking lots of questions. And their voices sounded familiar. And their names were… Judith and Jim.

We connected for the first time in person, and we’ve been friends ever since. (Okay, so it was “funny” as in “coincidence” and not funny as in “LOL”).

To continue my story…

I discovered that Jim and Judith ventured into online marketing just four years ago. Along the way, they had to overcome their technical deficiencies and learn to make friends with their computer. Even more so, they had to, in their own words, “open our minds to an entirely new way of being in the world, a whole new and very different mindset-a marketing/business mindset”.

But there was a problem. As they attended lots of marketing conferences, they felt something was wrong.

According to Judith and Jim, “We always felt a sense of displacement, a feeling of not belonging, of somehow being outsiders.”

As they connected with people at those same  conferences they learned that others had the same complaint. And they noticed a pattern: All those who voiced this kind of discomfort were service providers, care-givers, change agents of some kind, men and women who had dedicated their lives to helping others-heart-to-heart.

“It became clear that there was a segment of the Internet marketplace that was not being served,” says Judith.

Jim chimes in, “That segment is peopled by soft sell marketers-all of us who are care-givers and life-change artists as distinct from accumulation artists whose focus is money first and foremost.”

And now these two friends of mine have written a book on the subject of soft sell marketing for service providers… and for people who don’t like hard-sell approaches. I recommend you get a copy of The Heart of Marketing.

There is money hidden in your business. Money that you could be using. Money that, unless you do something about it, will slip through your fingers and vanish without a trace.

Where is this money – and how do you get it?

Most businesses have many hidden opportunities for discovering “windfall profits” – but I want to focus on just one of those opportunities in this article.

That “opportunity pocket” is: marketing and advertising.

In my experience, almost every business – whether it be retail, service, professional practice, or “business to business” in its nature – is unconsciously letting profits slip away.

Your biggest opportunity most likely lies hidden inside your underperforming sales copy (copy that isn’t selling as many units/contracts/ memberships as it potentially could be).

If you want to make more sales without spending a single dime in additional ad costs, this article might be the most important document you read this year…

Make Piles of Money With “Upside Leverage”

“Upside Leverage” is a concept I learned from marketing genius Jay Abraham.

We all know what leverage is: using other people’s money to build your business, or other people’s efforts (through delegation, for instance) to increase your own productivity.

“Leverage” involves using one asset (the lever) to increase the value or power of another. The only problem with using “leverage” is the potential downside: if you use financial leverage to borrow money for a business project, the project could possibly fail, and you would be forced to pay back the money. If you use the leverage of delegation in order to make yourself more productive, there’s a chance the person you’re relying on might let you down.

“Upside” leverage is leverage that involves little or no potential downside.

It’s my belief that underperforming sales copy is the most potentially profitable of all forms of “upside leverage”.

Please read that sentence again, because it’s too easy to let the profound meaning it contains slip past you:

Underperforming sales copy is the most potentially profitable of all forms of “upside leverage”.

Think of it this way: any ad or promotion costs the same whether it performs well or not, right? If you spend $100 on an ad, and you get $500 in business as a result, you made a 5-1 return on your investment. That’s a good return. You did what you set out to do, you made a profit.

But… what if you could take that same ad, and change it in some way that made it 10 times more effective?

What if now it returned $5,000?

You spent the same $100 for the ad… but you got back $5,000.

Instead of a 5-1 return, now you’re getting 50-1! That, my marketing friend, is “upside leverage”!

Change Your Copy, Change Your Income

There is so much bad copy on the web, it’s almost laughably easy to be better than most of your competitors.

Why is that?

I believe there are a number of reasons, but here are a few of the common ones:

1. Some people just don’t realize their copy is bad. They wrote it themselves, or their brother or their niece wrote it. They think it’s wonderful – but in reality it stinks like a dead skunk.

2. Others don’t realize how important their sales copy is. This is a naive belief, and it astounds me that so many people hold it – but they do. Some people seem to think that as long at the copy has “just the facts”, that’ll be good enough. It never is.

3. Some people are just cheap. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to start a business, buy furniture, hire staff, provide benefits, etc., but when it comes to the one piece of communication that might actually cause someone to buy from them – they don’t want to pay for it. They “delegate” this crucial task. Big mistake.

Are you making any of these mistakes? If you are, this is your wake-up call.

Take advantage of the potential “upside leverage” that exists in every ad or promotion. Make sure you ads are performing – that they are making you sales every day. And that they are making you more sales this week than they did last week, etc.

You do this through constant improvement and testing/tracking.

You also do it by either hiring a copywriter, or investing in educational materials that will teach you how to write your own copy. Either one can work – it’s up to you. If you love to write, and you think you have a knack for it, then by all means get a good home-study course on copywriting and do it yourself.

Don’t put it off – do it right now. Otherwise, you’re throwing money away that rightfully belongs to you.

The Story: One of the first steps in creating online businesses is deciding what to sell.

How do you do that?

The Point: There is a “magic trick” that will allow you to always know what to sell from your website.

The Resource: AskDatabase

3 Ways To Decide What To Sell Online

1. Ask your customers what they want to buy.

2. Look for things you’re passionate about and springboard from there.

3. What are you good at — what’s easy for you but difficult for others?
Click for the Podcast Audio:

Click Here

I just read on Valleywag that Southwest will soon start offering in-flight wi-fi! I’m a happy flier.

I fly Southwest frequently. Not only are they economical, they’re almost always on time and their employees are unusual in the air travel industry; they’re not bitter refugees of the Air Travel Wars. They haven’t had their souls crushed by corporate greed and bureaucratic stupidity.

In other words, they’re nice people.

So now I get quality air travel, nice people performing the service, and wi-fi too. Life is good.

It’s 2008.

New Year.

New possibilities. Many resolutions being made today by lots of folks — and as we all know, many of them will be broken before the calendar changes to February.

However… that’s no excuse for not attempting to change your results and circumstances in the new year. For me, resolutions represent hope and aspiration. I applaud everyone making resolutions; and I challenge you to stick with them! Change can happen, and does; it is possible for you to stick with your resolutions. The real question is: will you?

Here are mine — a simple list, but high-leverage…

Ray’s 2008 New Year’s Resolutions 

1. Love God.
2. Love others.
3. Create value.
4. Simplify.
5. Create happiness.
6. Clean up messes.
7. Be here now.

How about you? What are yours? Post them below — or post a link to your own blog entry.

My friend Stu McLaren is getting married today. He made this kooky video to explain his “fat lip” dilemna… and to explain why he’s having this sale.

He really is offering some discounts on his products that are just… well… crazy. But hey, don’t let that stop you from taking advantage of him.

]]> http://rayedwards.com/stu-mclarens-pre-wedding-video/feed/ 4 http://rayedwards.com/myspace-or-yours-marketing-101/ http://rayedwards.com/myspace-or-yours-marketing-101/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:11:01 +0000 Ray Edwards http://rayedwards.com/blogging/myspace-or-yours-marketing-101/

The Story: One of copywriting’s oldest maxims points out one of marketer’s biggest failures.

The Point: It’s not your website. It’s theirs (if you want to succeed).

The Resource: YouTube

How To Make It About The User:

1. Know your users.
2. Know your users.
3. Know your users.

Click for the Podcast Audio:

Click Here

The Story: Britney Spears knows how to get your attention.

The Point: While there’s a lot of debate about Britney’s musical talent, career choices, and parenting potential, nobody can argue that she doesn’t know how to get our attention.

You can learn a lot from a diva.

The Resource: Attention Age Doctrine

Keys To Capturing Your Prospect’s Attention:

1. Be relevant to their lives.
2. Give them more of what they want.
3. Don’t betray their expectations.

Click for the Podcast Audio:

Click Here

The Story: You can learn a lot about selling by watching what Tony Robbins does at his seminars.

The Point: Sometimes it’s more important to emulate what people do than to listen to what they say. Study what Tony does to drive the revenue stream at his company.

The Resource: Tony Robbins

3 Simple Selling Tips From Tony Robbins:

1. Sell people what they want; give them what they need.
2. Create a subculture with its own language.
3. Engage the power of commitment and consistency.

Click for the Podcast Audio:

Click Here