June 8, 2009
- Copywriting For Profit – Turning Your Words Into Gold
You, Too, Can Learn How To Turn Your Words Into Gold When Following Simple Steps To Profit
“Do You Struggle When You Write? Does It Seem Easy For Others But Not For You? Have You Dreamed About Turning Your Words Into Cash?” - Are you tired of spending hours on your website and blog and getting nowhere?
- Are you not building a relationship with people who might purchase something from you and they just pass you by?
- Are you losing money, taking steps backwards, and not growing a business that you have spent hours creating – making you nervous that you might lose your whole business?
Who Else Wants To Turn Their Words Into Emotional Responses By Buyers?
People often asked me, "Charlie, how can I write better so that after all my hard work, I can actually SELL my products and services?"
Like those asking me this, do you struggle when it comes time to write? Does it seem easy for others but not for you? Do you fear the time when you'll have something to sell but then you'll blow it when it comes to putting words in front of prospects?
You're not alone.
Other than Public Speaking, one of the things that most small business people fear is writing.
Even a blog like this one is a chore (painful chore!) for some people.
Believe me, I'm not a born writer. I didn't get A's in all my English classes. I haven't always enjoyed it or done well with it.
But once I learned how to do it, the fear fell away and my success started to rise.
After all, I sold more than $247 MILLION in real estate and most of it started with direct-mail pieces I sent out… so I had to be doing SOMETHING correctly.
Here's Why I Do So Well Now!
Several years ago I LEARNED Read more on Copywriting For Profit – Turning Your Words Into Gold…
May 25, 2009
- Marketing and Selling: Do You Practice Sales PREVENTION?
Sales Prevention: Do You Allow Poor Sales Techniques to "Unsell" your customer?
Let me give you an example where the sales person UNSOLD something and then didn’t follow-up:
A woman went to buy tires. Her husband had asked her to get 4 Michelins for the Explorer and when she went to the chain tire store, she was told that 4 tires would cost approximately $1200.
“1200?” she exclaimed, never having bought tires for this large vehicle before. TRUCK tires, I might add.
“Well, let me show you some different tires for $800,” the salesman said.
“Wow, I’m still confused. That’s a lot of money.”
“Well,” the salesman said, doing the best he knew how, “I do have some OTHER tires for $600.”
The woman was confused, called home to her husband who just murmured, “Come home, dear.”
Marketing Follow-Up – Did The Salesman Follow-Up?
It’s been weeks since that day, but do you think the salesman even once called the man and woman about the tires? Read more on Marketing and Selling: Do You Practice Sales PREVENTION?…
May 21, 2009
- Marketing Lessons From American Idol – Adam Lambert vs Kris Allen
American Idol is NOTHING if it isn't about Marketing – the whole thing is designed around making money… here are some lessons from the 2009 season
So… did the best man win?
Read more on Marketing Lessons From American Idol – Adam Lambert vs Kris Allen…
May 14, 2009
- Success Marketing: Using A Campfire To Improve Your Marketing
Circle The Chairs In One Of Charlie Seymour Jr's Campfire Meetings At BDR (Business Development Resources)
It wasn't your typical business meeting.
I've been a member of Business Development Resources (BDR) in Media, PA USA for many years. It was my turn to lead the group's educational program, so I decided to start off with something I'm "famous" for: A Campfire.
And Jerry Rafter said after the meeting: “Marshmallows are sweet….but nothing is better than the morsels of marketing knowledge you share for FREE”
As you can see in the photographs, we convert the regular meeting space by bringing our chairs around a paper "campfire" that my younger daughter, Liz (LizSeymour.com), created for me so I could use it in meetings like this.
Pulling our chairs to the center of the room changes how we approach the topic and each other, and let's us get into creative thinking mode, not simply analyze mode.
Read more on Success Marketing: Using A Campfire To Improve Your Marketing…
May 11, 2009
- Questions To Help Your Business Profit
When Preparing For A Consulting Meeting With An International Foundation, The Following Questions Were Asked
The following questions are modified for this post. But they are very similar to what I'm asking my consulting client.
Each of us needs to look at our business with fresh eyes (I guess that's why consultants like me get paid and why so many of us use Mastermind Groups to challenge our thinking and assumptions).
See how many of these can help YOUR business:
1. If someone is looking for you, what are they looking for? (Dig deep on this… if for photography, for instance, are they looking for pretty pictures OR are they looking to preserve memories. Are my marketing success clients looking for more leads OR are they looking to serve a specific market while producing 20% higher profits. See what I mean?)
2. How do you spread the word about what you do? What methods do you use to get the word out. Are you limiting yourself to ONE way of getting new business? Many of us feel that ONE is the worst number in business (one person inside your business knowing how to update your website, for example. Or one printer or one mail house – when they get busy or go out of business, THEN what do you do?)
3. How do you find “new” people? What do these “new” people primarily want from you? Are you attracting people to you OR are you hunting them down and trapping them like in the old wild wild west? You need information working for you 24/7 and if you don't have it, let's chat about how you can GET it.
4. What words do you use to describe what you do or what you are looking for? Are you narrowly focused with your "keywords" or are you attracting people who use "long-tail search terms"? (Examples: Marketing Consultant is a HUGE term with lots of results. But if you provide services to Read more on Questions To Help Your Business Profit…
May 8, 2009
- Oprah – KFC Didn't Honor The Coupons You Promoted On Your TV Show: A Marketing Lesson
If Oprah was angry when an author lied to her about his credentials, imagine how she'll feel when a major company promises to feed people for FREE and then turns down the coupons it distributed
Do you remember "New Coke" and the marketing fiasco it created.
Welcome to KFC's attempt at retraining our taste buds to like GRILLED Chicken instead of deep fried.
There's a marketing lesson here, so please pay attention!
Lesson 1. The way to a man's heart is through his stomach.
Lesson 2. The way to get a man angry is to promise him food, let him smell it, and then tell him it's not for him!
Lesson 3. It's much more difficult to recover AFTER a problem than it is to CAUSE the problem.
KFC Blows It – Simply Put: They Weren't Ready For This
I never saw the Oprah show when KFC offered its coupons for a free GRILLED chicken meal. I did see, however, that you had a short window to download the coupon and then about 10 days to redeem them. (Mothers Day was clearly marked as NOT one of these days.)
But when I went today to a suburban Philadelphia, PA USA KFC (the Friday BEFORE Mothers Day), I waited in line with lots of people. Sure looked like the marketing campaign worked! Lots of people were standing there, printed coupon in hand.
Wow! Very successful, it seemed.
The chatter was hushed (I guess people were hungry by 1:12 PM) though I did hear a bit of grumbling that it always takes so long to be served.
Looking behind the counter I saw why: one person cooking, one person at the service counter, and one person at the drive-through window serving the 11 cars in line.
Oh… and one person sitting out front on the sidewalk (I guess that was for a break, even though the line was long) and another slowly clearing off tables in the restaurant. (Bad enough when people take a break when the crush of the business's traffic arrives, but then don't do it so all of us can SEE that you are present but not waiting on us.)
Why is the sign so small when the news isn't good?
After waiting in line for 27 minutes and finally working my way up close to the counter, I happened to see a note that said something like:
We can't honor your coupons – please turn them in for a rain check.
WHAT?
Read more on Oprah – KFC Didn't Honor The Coupons You Promoted On Your TV Show: A Marketing Lesson…
May 4, 2009
- Twitter For Business: Top 37 Steps You Should Take Immediately
Twitter, When Used Correctly, Is A Great Part Of Your Marketing System
Too many people don’t understand how to use Twitter for business, but that hasn’t stopped them from blogging about it.
Twitter, the micro-blog that lets you send 140 characters across the Internet to anyone who has followed you (and then be resent (ReTweeted) by others), is a highly-targeted tool for marketers – and it works well with other social media marketing tools.
For those of us old enough to remember party-line telephones, it’s like listening into the conversations of your neighbors and then adding to their chat only when you have something that applies to them. No need to send messages about photography to people interested in politics or television. So in THIS way, Twitter lets you laser-target your messages.
For me (and I admit there are other ways to approach this), I have 10 Twitter accounts, each based around specific keywords. For some of my accounts I’m building a list of followers who are interested in businesses I already have operating. For others, I’m building lists around topics that interest me and will figure out later how I will monetize them.
After all, having a LIST of interested prospects is the most important part of marketing and running our businesses.
So, with that as prologue, here are my top 37 steps you should take immediately to use Twitter for your business.
Twitter: Get Set Up
1. Set up an account at Twitter.com, using a keyword phrase as your username. You have 14 characters, so be succinct. (Two of mine are UltimateWAHDads and PhotoCharlie)
2. Add some personal information to it – people like to do business with people they like and they like people who are like them.
3. Add a photo – not one of you and you cat, not one that twirls around (I guess those folks are trying to attract more attention, but most people find them distracting), but one of YOU that shows you clearly.
4. Add your business’s website URL (you DO have a website, right? If not, stop this, find another blog about setting up your own website that includes a lead generation name capture form, and come back to this one!).
5. Step away from your computer, grab a pad of paper, and write down at least FIFTY keywords someone might use to describe what you do and use when they search for someone like you in Google. Most people skip this step and never come back to it… and then wonder why they aren’t successful.
Read more on Twitter For Business: Top 37 Steps You Should Take Immediately…
April 24, 2009
- Marketing Power of Bit.ly – Use Bit.ly To Shorten And Track Your Links
Sharing With My Mastermind Group, I Want To Be Sure To Share With You Too
Thought I'd follow up about Bit.ly since I'm using it extensively and it has taken me a while to figure it out.
1. Did you see that TweetLater is now using Bit.ly? Nice endorsement for this sweet F*R*E*E product that shortens your links AND lets you track the results!
2. I was confused about HOW I could FIND the metrics once I shortened a link and used it in Tweets, blog posts, etc. Then I discovered the SEARCH capabilities – if you put your Bit.ly link in the Search box and press Enter, you get the graphs of how well you've done. HOWEVER, that is only what has been done on TWITTER. Still good info, but not all the info I want.
3. THEN… probing further, I found out how to find ALL the results. Just add a "+" after the link and you get all the info. Really sweet.
For instance, if you click http://bit.ly/me7q, you go to my Lead Generation Video on Lead Generation. (It's a Lead Gen free giveaway magnet designed to show people some of my knowledge and trade this 68 minutes of jammed-packed info for their name and email address.)
HOWEVER if you click http://bit.ly/me7q+ (notice the "+" at the end), you go to the page of all the metrics. And they can be VERY helpful.
I used to use Ad Trackers in 1ShoppingCart all the time so that I could see how well my campaigns were doing. HOWEVER, when 1SC would screw up, not work properly, fight with Comcast (my ISP) and blacklist a whole section of the US (which I used to discover even when even they didn't know it had happened), I couldn't find any metrics AND my site would shut down because my links wouldn't work. I'm hoping that Bit.ly (without the possibility of email blacklisting since it doesn't send emails for people) will be much more reliable.
Now… how do you know what your Bit.ly link is when you have HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS (as I now do)?
Read more on Marketing Power of Bit.ly – Use Bit.ly To Shorten And Track Your Links…
April 20, 2009
- Marketing – Get Them Off The Raft Marketing vs Teaching Frogs How To Drink Beer Marketing
Marketing For Work At Home – Why NOT To Use Institutional Advertising!
OK… so these are MY terms not known to you. But when you listen to this short podcast, you'll see my institutional advertising is ONLY for the rich (or those not very smart).
Get Them Off The Raft Marketing vs Teaching Frogs How To Drink Beer Marketing: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
April 4, 2009
- Advertising Mistakes – Tropicana Retreats To Old Branding
Marketing, Branding, Image Building – What Do They Mean To Entrepreneurs?
I'm not a huge fan of "branding" or doing marketing to "build a brand" for an entrepreneur.
Those who have millions of dollars to throw at building a look, offering television commercials, and hope that when you stand in front of the refrigerated case you will remember what you are to purchase can build a brand, but not you.
We all remember "New Coke" and the near disaster that Coke worked its way through several years ago when it changed its formula to make it sweeter and taste more like Pepsi. Hey, if I want Pepsi, I'll ask for Pepsi. Millions of dollars were lost as they admitted their mistake (hey, it's not failure, it's feedback… and believe me the market gave them plenty of feedback!).
And now there are the marketing and branding changes from which PepsiCo (the owners of Pepsi and Tropicana) have done an about-face for the top-of-the-line orange juice, Tropicana.
Tropicana Sales Nose Dive: Marketing Changes Are To Blame
As reported on AdAge.com, "Tropicana's rebranding debacle did more than create a customer-relations fiasco. It hit the brand in the wallet.
"After its package redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22, costing the brand tens of millions of dollars. On Feb. 23, the company announced
Read more on Advertising Mistakes – Tropicana Retreats To Old Branding…
March 27, 2009
- Grape Nuts: New Advertising Campaign Targets Men
Wall Street Journal chronicles that finally they figure out that men have some say about the food we eat!
The Wall Street Journal article starts with a subheading that says that the new Post Cereal campaign aimed at men marks a departure for cereal advertising campaigns.
(Now let's make it clear: the type advertising being talked about here is what I call "Teaching Frogs How To Drink Beer." I won't go into the whole topic (you can listen to what I said before on my GetThemOffTheRaftMarketing.com site:
[media:http://www.GetThemOffTheRaftMarketing.com/doitnow/GTOTRMvsTFHTDBM.mp3]This is NOT the type marketing I suggest for most entrepreneurs, but it is what car companies and even cereal companies use.)
But we're told that to revive the crunchy Post Foods Grape Nuts, marketing geniuses have come up with cheeky commercials aimed at men.
"That Takes Grape Nuts" is the catch phrase as if the cereal were ubiquitous and we'd all know what that meant. We don't. And I wonder how many people will be lured to a magic website where lots of 2-minute videos will show how many circumstances call for "That Takes Grape Nuts" fortitude.
And to butch up the site to be sure that real men will feel comfortable watching videos about and talking about cereal, they pack the website with tips on restoring vintage cars and other macho topics.
And the print campaign will run in Sports Illustrated featuring men fishing and golfing.
HOWEVER… as silly as it all sounds, learning that this is the first time cereal isn't aimed at Mom and her kids made me wonder:
What the heck have they been waiting for?
The article points out that Grape Nuts is mostly eaten by men, but there has never been an advertising campaign reinforcing that – like all the other cereals, advertising has been aimed at women figuring that they do most of the grocery shopping.
What – I can't make up my own mind about what I want to eat and either write it on the grocery list or ask my wife to shop for it when she goes weekly after church (and visiting my folks for lunch at their retirement community) each Sunday?
And if the reason for my eating it were compelling enough, I'd stop myself to get some.
Read more on Grape Nuts: New Advertising Campaign Targets Men…
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