1. Let’s say you run a little 10 cm x 3 column ad each week. It’ll be costing you around $2000 a month.  That’s around two grand a month, to hopefully reach the 120 or 200 people who might be looking for your carpet products and services that week.
2. Your ad this week won’t reach people who decide to do their carpet in three month’s time, or next year, so you have to run your ad every week to make sure you have all your bases covered.
3. How about if you cut the size of your ad in half? I can hear the cries:?You won’t be able to fit all your advertising in an ad half the size, right?

Wrong. You only need a smart headline to get their attention, maybe a photo, your logo and contact details . . . invite them to call you if they want to speak with you personally, and most importantly of all – invite them to your website.

Your 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week website. In full colour. With all the bells and whistles. And with interactivity.

You can actually serve your customers while you’re asleep. You can show them your wares. Or they can check you out from the comfort of their own home, when it suits them.

With your advertising now cut to only $1000, you can really afford a great website. Grab your share of Top 10 in Google and get more business through your door.

No matter what’s the size of your advertising spend, I guarantee I can work out a solution for you and your business.

Hey, and don’t think I’ve got a dirty on weekly newspapers. I don’t. I owned the Byron News for years, before the internet was invented, and back then it was the best value advertising anyone could get for miles around.

But things have changed. The web has it all now, for much, much less money that print advertising costs.

I have a young mate, typical of today’s under 35 generation, who claims, and I quote,  “The only time I ever look at a newspaper is when I pay for my petrol at the servo. And that’s only the cover!”

Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

Need to find out more about cutting your advertising to get more customers? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743

The Function of a Testimonial

A good testimonial attracts attention, conveys a benefit, and achieves credibility. If a testimonial sounds so good that you couldn’t have said it better yourself, then it probably won’t sound credible to the reader.

A Different "Voice"

The reason that testimonials work is that they tell about your product in a different "voice" than yours. The more colloquially it is said, the more credible it will feel to the reader. The more specific the quote, the better. If someone says, "Yours is the best product of its kind in the whole world," it doesn’t get much traction. Much better would be: "I used to be upset about the scar just below my left eye. But since I’ve started using Coveralls Skin Mask, nobody notices. In fact, no one has asked me about that scar for the past 14 months. What a relief!" Placement of testimonials is important, too. A testimonial belongs at the point in the sales process where you’re dealing with a particular objection. So don’t cram all your testimonials together. Space them out with other parts of your sales copy where they belong in the natural flow of your presentation.

Securing Good Testimonials

How do you get good testimonials? I use two approaches:

1. Unsolicited e-mails. When someone writes a kind note praising my work, I write back requesting to use an excerpt in my marketing. Every time I have asked, I’ve received an enthusiastic positive response.

2. Evaluations. When we’ve completed a client’s successful project, I ask him or her to evaluate the job. In one part of the evaluation I ask respondents to write a two or three sentence recommendation from which they give me permission to use an excerpt in my marketing. Most of these comments aren’t helpful, but 5% are just what I’m looking for. It pays to ask. It’s important to note that I ask specifically to use an "excerpt" of their words.

I cut out all the extraneous verbiage and keep just the phrase or sentence that contains the juicy words I want for the testimonial. It’s important that I don’t misrepresent what they intended to say.

But shorter is better. Ask to use an excerpt. Should you try to get a recommendation from someone well-known in your industry? Of course. But carefully selected testimonials from "normal people" can have a powerful positive effect. Don’t neglect them.

Need to find out more about using testimonials better to improve your bottom line? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743

• Landing page headlines — the large words that appear at the top of a landing page,
• Webpage titles — the hyperlinked words displayed in search engine results,
• Pay-per-click (PPC) ads — the first line in a Google AdWords ad, and

Subject lines for e-mail promotions.

With thousands of marketing messages being shoved in front of your prospects, they’ll ignore all but those few headlines that pop out enough attract their attention. And if they get to your landing page, they will leave in a flash unless your headline grabs them by the collar and compels them to read further. Excellent headlines are vital.

The best copywriter in history was John Caples (1900-1990), best known for his classic book Tested Advertising Methods (5th edition; Prentice Hall, 1997, ISBN 0130957011) and his famous ad, "They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano, but When I Started to Play!"

Caples taught generations of copywriters how to write a headline. I can’t do justice to headline writing in a brief article — it took Caples four chapters — but perhaps I can whet your appetite.

Basis of Appeal

Headlines that work nearly always center around:

1. Self-interest, that is, reader benefits.
2. News, something that the reader didn’t know.
3. Curiosity, something that piques the reader’s inquisitive nature.

Of these, self-interest has by far the strongest appeal. A closely related element to self-interest is "quick and easy." Curiosity by itself, without help from one of the first two elements, probably won’t produce a strong enough headline. A winning headline nearly always includes at least one of these three factors.

The Purpose of Headlines

Headlines, according to Robert Bly in The Copywriter’s Handbook (Owl Books; Henry Holt, 1985, ISBN 0805011943), have four functions:

1. Get attention,
2. Select the audience,
3. Deliver a complete message, and
4. Draw the reader into the body copy.

Overly cute headlines may titillate the copywriter’s desire to be clever, but without conveying a full message, such headlines seldom work. The copywriter’s chief job is not to be creative, but to sell.

Three Key Questions

How should you go about writing a headline? Bly suggests asking yourself three questions:

1. Who is the customer at which this ad is aimed?
2. What are the most important features of the product or service?
3. Why will the customer want to purchase this product or service — which feature is likely to be most important?

When you’re able to answer question 3, you have arrived at your key selling proposition. Now the task is to state it in the most clear, compelling, and interesting way possible. The copywriting books suggested above provide a number of additional suggestions to help in the process.

Customer Focus

Remember that you are in the business of selling to customers, not to yourself. The title that appeals to you — or the person who pays your salary — is not likely to be the one that appeals most strongly to your customer. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Find trusted people you can run ideas by who will help you sharpen them.

Try writing a dozen or two headlines. Then put them aside overnight. The next day, select the strongest headlines and develop them further. Don’t throw the others away. Rejected headlines may well become subheads in your sales copy.

Test, Test, Test

Test your final headlines. Google AdWords has a built-in way of testing several ads to see which one gets the best click-through rate and conversion rate. Take full advantage of this. Google Website Optimizer (www.google.com/websiteoptimizer) also provides a way to do A/B split-tests on landing pages. Marketers have found that testing various headlines is the most important way to improve landing page conversion rates. Yes, it’s work, but it will pay rich dividends in getting sales.

Need to find out more about writing effective, throat-grabbing headlines? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743

Part of our marketing plan included door-to-door letterbox drops. You know the type — an A5 sheet, so you get 2 out of an A4 piece of paper, printed in a coloured ink, slipped into your letterbox along with every other letter and junk item for the day.

Our challenge was to make Errol’s message not only stand out from the rest, but also to be kept, not thrown in the bin straight away.

I called a long time printer mate of mine, John Mulliss from Jack Flash print. A quick check confirmed my plan would be viable.

In the past I’ve found that people are more inclined to keep a smaller junk mail item, like a business card. But we need to get more info to them than a business card would allow.

So I designed a 99mm x 72mm card, which will give you 12 cards to an A3 sheet.

The good news was, Errol got 1000 cards from Jack Flash for the same price as 1000 A5 flyers on normal bond.

And here’s the kicker: Errol got 800% more response from the cards as he did on one of his previous A5 flyer campaigns!

I watched a video by the Chaser Team called Door to Door Spam. It was hilarious — they went from home to home and asked the very same questions spam emails ask . . . except this time it was face-to-face.

You could easily see by the response of the interviewees that what at first glance appeared a viable option in an email turned out in fact to be ludicrous. Imagine someone with bank ID coming to your door and asking you to provide your account numbers, user name and password!

To double check your sales letters and emails, do this: Simply ready them out loud to someone . . . preferably someone who knows you, but nonetheless could possibly be a prospects for your offer. You’ll be able to tell from their reaction how “real” your message truly is.

And then change it accordingly.