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LESSONS
Several tips for your education
The Secret Behind Million-Dollar Ads
By David Garfinkel
Want a little secret to turn your advertising into an irresistible magnet for customers?
Dale Carnegie knew the secret, and that's one reason his book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" has sold more than 15 million copies. In fact, British Airways recently named it, "The Business Book of the 20th Century."
It's a great book. But if Dale had titled it "How to Remember People's Names and Curb Your Incessant Urge to Argue," do you think it would have sold as well? Probably not. There's great power in good titles.
What you may not realize is the words "How to Win Friends and Influence People" are not only the title of the book. Those words were also the headline of a mail-order ad, which sold the book. The ad ran successfully for many years and sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
So what does this have to do with turning your advertising into an irresistible customer magnet?
Here's what. Behind the title and headline is a "secret code" that makes it powerful. Dale knew it. Great advertising copywriters know it. And now, you're going to know it, too.
The "secret code" is actually a generic formula that gets attention and creates desire in your prospect's mind. Every winning headline has a unique generic formula hidden inside. Here's the formula in Dale Carnegie's book title and headline:
How to _____ and _____.
Let's see the formula at work. Say you are an executive Recruiter, and you help companies find new executives. In reality, your biggest problem is finding the executive candidates in the first place. So, to increase your group of candidates, you decide to run an ad in your local business journal. Here's how you could use this formula to write a headline for your ad:
How to Get a Better Job and Make More Money
Let's say you run a martial arts school. Here's how you could apply the formula in an advertising headline to get you new students:
How to Stay Fit and Protect Yourself
Do you see how powerful that is? You've just zeroed-in on people who are likely to be interested in learning martial arts.
The brutal reality of advertising: An ad with a good headline, and even mediocre copy, will get you a response and generate sales. But with a poor headline, even the most brilliant copy will get you little or no response. Why? Because without a good headline to get their attention, most people won't read any further.
The good news is, once you have identified a good headline that works in one industry or market, you can adapt it (like we did with the Dale Carnegie headline, above) for your own business. Great headlines work as subject lines in emails, titles on Web pages, and of course as headlines in print ads and sales letters. Great headlines will literally transform your sales.
How does this work in today's economy?
Recently a client asked me to help him introduce a new service to Internet Service Providers. (Note: To understand what you are about to read, you should know that ISPs call their suppliers "backbone providers.") I wrote a direct mail letter and my client sent it out to ISPs. Because my client was revealing new information his prospects hadn't heard before, we used the following "teaser headline" on the front of the envelope:
What Your Backbone Provider Isn't Telling You
Was this an entirely original headline? No. I had seen a similar "teaser headline" on a successful mailing to promote an investment newsletter:
What Your Broker Isn't Telling You About High-Tech Stocks
So I merely identified the "secret code" in the original winning headline, and applied it to my client's market, ISPs.
The response to the mailing was overwhelming! Nearly 10% of the entire ISP industry responded to our letter -- and my client has added eight figures of new annual revenues as a result of the business that developed.
I'm telling you this not to brag, but to point out the awesome power of good headlines. While many people spend hours and hours trying to come up with "the perfect headline" for their ads, there is an easier way. Find proven headlines that already work for another business in another industry, and adapt them to your business.
Then prepare for a flood of new customers!
About the Author:
David Garfinkel has been described as, "the world's greatest copywriting coach." He's a successful results oriented copywriter and the author of Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich, which shows you exactly how to adapt proven money-making headlines to your business.
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The Hypnotic Power of Confusion
By Joe Vitale
"Did you walk to work or carry a lunch?"
Huh?
My father asked me that question more than 25 years ago. I still remember it. Why? Because it's a ridiculous question.
A famous comedian in the 1950s used to ask people, "Got a banana?" The question might make sense if asked in the right situation, but he asked it everywhere. I've forgotten the name of the comedian, but I still recall his question. Why? Because it's strange.
As I write this, I am creating new business cards for myself. I decided to add a confusing line to it. After some fun brainstorming with my girlfriend, I settled on, "Ask me about the monkey."
Why is "Ask me about the monkey?" worth putting on my business card? As with my father's question and the comedian's question, it stops your brain in its tracks. It makes you pause. It makes you focus on ME. The theory is that once you stop someone with a confusing line, you can then implant a hypnotic command right after it.
In other words, if I write something like, "Apples desk fly dirt," and then follow it with, "Read my new ebook," the chances are very high that you are going to want to read my new ebook.
Why? Because the first line jammed your mind, and the second line slipped into your brain while you weren't looking. I've just upped the odds that you will buy my new e-book. And if you don't, of course, it doesn't matter because I never really told you to go buy it. See?
The same thing will happen on my new business cards. Since I'm now known as "The World's First Hypnotic Marketer," I wanted a strange, confusing line on my new card. When someone sees, "Ask me about the monkey," and then asks me about the monkey, I can simply point out that I practice hypnotic selling and I just got them to do what I wanted.
The Japanese practice this "hypnotic confusion," but probably unknowingly. A friend of mine who flew to Japan reported to me that the English phrases on all the Japanese products were bizarre. A tube of toothpaste might say, "Green days you not sing." A box of cookies might say, "Wood above fish."
How can you use this secret right now? Don't be afraid to be confusing. People tend to sort out whatever you say anyway and make sense out of it using their own terms. If you are describing your product in great detail, be willing to toss in something odd. It may increase sales.
If not, swirl up!
About the Author:
Joe Vitale is recognized by many to be one of the greatest living copywriters. His latest project, the Hypnotic Writer's Swipe File is a collection of over 1,550 copywriting gems that took him years to compile. This is his personal swipe file that he uses to create world famous sales letters responsible for generating millions and millions of dollars of revenue. Click here to learn more.
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What do People Want Online? It's not what you think it is.
By Jay Conrad Levinson
What people want online is a question guerrillas ask themselves a lot. Whether it's for fun or work or something else, understanding a consumer's motives once he or she logs on is a necessity. But the experts don't seem to agree on what people want.
Some folks see the web as a vast, new field for advertising messages, assuming that while people may want to do something else, if we can entice them with flash, we can sort of trick them into paying attention to our products and services.
Guess what. That's not gonna happen.
Other folks seem to subscribe to the notion that people online are looking for entertainment on the Internet, and therefore they construct messages aimed at persuading while playing. And, in other cases, the time-honored direct-response model wins out: Grab people when you can, get 'em to take an action, and then market, market, market. The answer may be that the consumer has and wants a lot more control than we give him/her credit for.
Today, webmeisters are in control. Sort of. In a perfect cyberworld, people will be in control. Sort of.
Two recent studies shed light upon this dilemma. One was conducted by Zatso. The other was conducted by the Pew Research Center. Zatso and Pew. (Those guys didn't spend much time reading "how-to-name-your-company" books, I guess.) Still, both of their studies illuminated the answer as to what people want to do online.
The answer, as most answers, is very utilitarian: People want to accomplish something online. They're not aimless surfers hoping to discover a cybertreasure. Instead, the average Net user turns out to be a goal-oriented person interested in finding information and communicating with others -- in doing something he or she set out to do.
Look at the Zatso study. "A View of the 21st Century News Consumer" looked at people's news reading habits on the web. It revealed that reading and getting news was the most popular online activity after email. The guerrilla thinks, "That means email is number one. How might I capitalize on that?"
One out of three respondents reported that they read news online every day, with their interests expanding geographically -- local news was of the most interest, U.S. news the least.
Personalization was seen as a benefit, too. Seventy-five percent of respondents said that they wanted news on demand and nearly two out of three wanted personalized news. The subjects surveyed liked the idea that they, not some media outlet, controlled the news they saw. They feel they're better equipped to select what they want to see than a professional editor. Again, control seems to be the issue. Again, guerrillas think of ways to market by putting the prospect in control.
The Pew Research Center study revealed that regular net users were more connected with their friends and family than those who didn't use the Internet on a regular basis.
Almost two-thirds of the 3,500 respondents said they felt that email brought them closer to family and friends -- significant when combined with the fact that 91% of them used email on a regular basis. That's 91%. It took VCRs 25 years to achieve such market penetration.
What did people in this study seem to be doing online when they weren't doing email? Half were going online regularly to purchase products and services, and nearly 75 percent were going online to search for information about their hobbies or purchases they were planning to make. Sixty-four percent of respondents visited travel sites, and 62 percent visited weather-related sites. Over half did educational research, and 54 percent were hunting for data about health and medicine.
A surprising 47 percent regularly visited government web sites, and 38 percent researched job opportunities. Instant messaging was used by 45 percent of these users, and a third of them played games online. Even with all the hype in the media, only 12 percent said they traded stocks online.
What does this mean to e-marketers? It means that if you're constructing a site for goal-oriented consumers, you'd better make sure you can help facilitate their seeking. Rather than focus on entertainment, flash, and useless splash screens, the most effective sites are those that help people get the information they want when they need it. Straightforward data, information that invites comparison, and straight talk are going to win the day.
A client buddy of mine showed me his website which heralds his retail location and attempts to sell nothing online. He said it has been the biggest moneymaker in the history of his 35-year-old company. Then he apologized for its lack of glitter and special effects. He asked how his site could be so successful even though it lacked anything to add razzmatazz and dipsydazzle.
Now, you know the answer.
About the Author:
Jay Conrad Levinson is probably the most respected marketer in the world. He is the inventor of "Guerrilla Marketing" and is responsible for some of the most outrageous marketing campaigns in history -- including the "Marlboro Man" -- the most successful ad campaign in history. In his latest book, "Put Your Internet Marketing on Steroids" Jay reveals how you can use marketing steroids legally to make your business insanely profitable
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