Category: Marketing Techniques and Philosophies

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies

The other day, I got invited to help promote an Internet marketing report. Since I don’t endorse anything I haven’t seen (unless I make it very clear that it’s a favor to a friend, etc., and I haven’t personally evaluated), I asked for a copy–and boy, was I appalled.

The model these folks were pushing was to steal content, intersperse enough meaningless blather so Google doesn’t think it’s a duplicate page, and build traffic/ad revenues.

Eeeeeeew!

I let it simmer for a couple of days, until I could respond with enough politeness to get read, and until I could find a way to talk to the part of these people that wants to be better (with a tip of the hat to my friend Bob Burg, who taught me how to do that), and then responded this morning, thusly:

“Let me know what you think, good or bad. I appreciate your opinion.”

OK, you asked. I read it over the weekend.

I’m sure you have good intentions, but frankly, I find your business model unethical. It is one very small step above splogging; the only difference is you’re adding meaningless content around someone else’s words instead of just presenting someone else’s hard work.

It devalues the Internet as a useful information medium; I’d hate to see search results be as useless as e-mail, but if people follow your model, they contribute to poor search results.

And then there’s the matter of making a buck on other people’s hard-earned intellectual property without compensating them in any way, or even asking permission, and doing so in a way that most definitely violates the Fair Use provisions of the copyright law.

I think with the intelligence and understanding of the Internet that underlies your black hat approach, you could come up with a business model that would be just as profitable and a whole lot more palatable. Come talk to me when you’ve done so.

Postscript: I got a response, quickly, that basically said, “well, that’s fine, but I disagree.” Needless to say, I won’t become her affiliate any time soon.

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By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies

I won’t embarrass this company by naming it, but boy, they could use some marketing help. They really haven’t got a clue.

I found their quarter-page ad in the program guide of a play I attended.
here’s what it contained:

  • An attractive, professionally done logo with the firm name (but no clue either in the name or in the graphic representation about what this company actually does)
  • This very pleasant quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm” (Still don’t know what they do)
  • Street address, phone number and Web URL–which is such an abridgment of the firm name that it does nothing to reinforce brand identity

    • I am guessing I will be the only person to type in that URL on the basis of that ad–and only because I wanted to be able to write this blog post. Turns out it’s a financial services firm, ad even that wasn’t obvious at first glance. the home page is dominated by a picture of a park and skyline in a nearby city–but this company is actually located in a nearby suburb.

    And the copy–oy! It’s the perfect example of what I call “we, we, we all the way home.” See for yourself:

    We are a fully integrated financial services company. Our mission is to help our clients build, protect and preserve wealth to meet their long-term financial goals.

    (Firm name)’s centerpiece is our own unique Process approach, which allows us to offer comprehensive advice to our clients. We have an exceptional degree of expertise across four disciplines, including Wealth Transfer, Investment Management, Executive and Employee Benefits. Each discipline works together to meet our client’s goals.

    Let’s see…out of 74 words, eight are either “we”, “our”, or “us”. That works out to 10.8 percent.

    Now…how many times can you find a “you” or your”? I’ll give you a hint: a four-letter number that begins with z and ends with o. Yup–zero. They do say “clients” or “client’s” twice, d would have been easy to replace those with “you” and “your”, respectively.

    Okay, how about any testimonials? None on the home page. How about anything about what makes the “Process approach” (and whose idea was that bizarre capitalization scheme?) different from/superior to any other agency’s offering? Nope.

    I’m sure this is a well-meaning company and probably does right for their clients–but I think they could have more clients if they stopped patting themselves on the back, stopped assuming people know what they do by their firm name (two last names), and started positioning themselves as people who can help answer your investment questions.

    And yes, I know, the ad that caught my ire was a charity ad that they don’t really expect to bring them any business. But why exclude the possibility?

    It would have been just as easy to make the Emerson quote smaller (it fills fully half the ad) and then add a line like “For enthusiasm about growing your investments, please call or visit.”

    It would have cost nothing more to make the home page you-focused, and to make it obvious on first click what exactly their offering and what their specialization is. (A headline would help; there isn’t one).

    And then people say marketing doesn’t work. Of course it isn’t going to work if you can’t be bothered to even try!

    Unfortunately, this is all too typical.

    I’m sorely tempted to dig through the contact page and send a gratis copy of my book Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World–but I have a feeling it wouldn’t be appreciated.

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    By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News

    Over at Publishing2.com, Scott Karp takes the Washington Post to task for using the same old coupon-style discounting offers they’ve used for decades–when in order to get him to pick up a physical newspaper, they’d have to speak to why it’s a better option than just logging on to read online.

    He cites one motivation that might have worked for him: enjoying an unplugged no-computer day kicking back with in-depth analysis he wouldn’t normally have time to read.

    Fr me–and I still read the print form of my local daily paper–a key argument might be reduced eyestrain. I’m always looking for ways I can get offline to do some of my work.

    I discuss in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and elsewhere, why discounting is often a poor strategy for lots of marketers. It’s always better, as Scott points out, to show the real value you add.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Web 2.0/Social Media

    Yeah, I know–viral marketing and all that. And I actually love referral marketing, but not like this.

    But am I the only one offended when someone gives me a tell-your-friends page before I even see the product? It’s happening more and more lately. These unfortunates happened to be the ones to push me into ranting about this trend, but it could have been any number of others.

    At least these guys were smart enough to do a “no, thank you” link where I could still get the download. But I value my reputation and I’m not in the habit of sharing e-mails of my friends with strangers who send bulk mail. Had the only way to get the report been to fill in e-mails, I’d have either given phony names or bailed out.

    Maybe this is one of the factors contributing to the growth of social media at the expense of e-mail. Successful marketers can still be clueless when it comes to human relationships.

    In fact, when I get to all those petition sites (and I confess, I sign a lot of political petitions), the thank-you page invariably asks for addresses of my friends. I never give them. Instead, if I find the petition worthy enough to send, I’ll forward the e-mail, bcc, to my politics list.

    And at least there, I’ve had a chance to see the text, decide if it’s something I want, and pass it on. Why marketers think I’m going to feed their mailing-list fish tank before even seeing the fish… Yuck!

    If you like this rant and want more about how to run and market an ethical, successful business, you may have a look at my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First. You can get the first few chapters as a no-charge download, and you don’t have to fill in a squeeze page OR a tell-a-friend page to get it. So there.

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    By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Web 2.0/Social Media

    Copywriter Drayton Bird recently talked about the element of surprise. Here are two brilliant ads that harness that principle.

    First, Shirley Golub, who is a progressive candidate challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the Democratic Party nomination for Congress. Watch her video here (scroll down about half a screen).

    This is an example of how to be extremely effective on basically zero budget. One camera, one talking head, no special effects, I’m guessing a single take–and twisting a metaphor of Pelosi’s in an unforgettable way. And then spreading it through the power of social networks like the People’s Email Network, which put up that page and notified its thousands of activists.

    If I were directing the shoot, the only advice I’d give Golub is to not look down so much–put the script somewhere you can see it while appearing to look at the camera.

    On to the other ad: a slick, commercially produced, expensive (large cast), quite salacious and extremely funny bit that’s rapidly making its way around the Net. And boy does it ever harness the element of surprise (Yes, I have some issues with the politics of the surprise but to say more would spoil it–suffice it to say I recognize and criticize the issue). Don’t watch this one if you wouldn’t see an R-rated movie.

    The surprise is there, all right, and it will get tons of viral exposure–I got the whole huge Youtube video e-mailed to me, and I’m betting it’s making the rounds on MySpace, Facebook, etc. But I wonder how many people will remember the product 24 hours later. In other words, was it a good investment for the manufacturer?

    Bet someone does some research on this, eventually.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Copywriting, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies

    Yesterday, I was listening to an interview with a very smart-sounding marketing copywriter. It was all about trust, integrity–the stuff I talk about in this blog, in my award-winning book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and in my ethics newsletter.

    Thinking that this was someone I needed to know, and thinking about all sorts of mutual-benefit ventures we could do, I went to the writer’s site.

    And boy, was I shocked!

    It was a hard-sell, blowhard, I-know-so-much-more-than-you snow job, and the only credibility builder was the very generous use of testimonials. Let’s just say I did NOT feel ready to trust him.

    Well, guess who I *won’t* be approaching with any partnership offers. We’ll never know what might have been, because he led me in expecting one sort of thing, and delivered something entirely different.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Web 2.0/Social Media

    Whether we use Facebook and other Web 2.0 sites, email discussion groups, blogs, or even Usenet newsgroups, one of the key advantages for solopreneurs/very small companies is our ability to use social networking much more effectively than big corporations. This has been true all the way back to BBS systems in the 1980s.

    We can be nimble, we don’t need committees to approve our posts, and we can be authentic. And this is one medium where dollars don’t mean as much as quality.

    As someone who provides marketing consulting and copywriting to microbusinesses (many of them home-based businesses), I have been urging my clients (and the readers of my books) to pick a social medium that works for them, and work the niche since at least 1993.

    E-mail discussion lists in particular have been very powerful in growing my own business from a local to an international clientele. They have allowed me to brand myself very powerfully in front of a carefully target group of prospects, and I get many clients as a result of a consistently helpful and well-informed posture.

    What’s your experience?

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    By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Publishing

    Novels have been used to persuade since at least the days of Gulliver’s Travels. Books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Huckleberry Finn had a major influence on 19th century social policy; in more modern times, authors from Ayn Rand to Joseph Heller to Phillip Campbell have used novels as a platform for their agenda.

    Now comes a novel that teaches the very skills of persuasion–something I’m not sure has been done before (though the late Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus trilogy skirts the edges).

    Advertising maven Ben Mack’s Poker Without Cards goes deeper into the human psyche than even the very provocative Daniel Quinn, and with the same kind of unexpected mind twists. Set up as a dialogue over several months between Mack’s alter ego Howard W. Campbell and a hospital psychiatrist who believes Campbell holds the key to understanding a particularly difficult case, the book is a page-turner even without trying to have any kind of real plot. The places the two men go in their discussions may change your mind to the whole idea of what’s possible and how the brain actually works–while providing a gripping, if not particularly easy, read.

    And speaking of persuasion, he’s managed to persuade people who seldom write blurbs to endorse his book, including not only Wilson himself but also Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brodie (author of Virus of the Mind as well as the original MS Word) and Internet marketer supreme Mark Joyner, among others.

    As a marketer, I recommend this book without hesitation to marketers who want to understand persuasion on a deeper, more personal level than you can get from nonfiction. And as a planetary citizen, I recommend it to consumers who want to understand what’s being done to them by forces they may want to understand.

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    By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News

    On one of the many Internet marketing newsletters I read, I got this link, and this teaser:

    Over 82% of the people who have viewed this
    video have opted in for more information.

    Must be pretty powerful, eh? So I went to check it out.

    What I found was a short and extremely well-produced video from one of the masters of Internet marketing, someone who has been behind the launches of a dozen or so successful “continuity” programs–where you pay a fee each month until you tell the company you want out. Most of the continuity programs out there sell membership programs; this guy sells software tools, as well as a very popular seminar series.

    And he’s someone who very much understands the power of focusing on benefits, and of delivering value–and has parlayed that understanding into many millions of dollars.

    So it was a shock to watch this video. It’s an exercise in non-benefit-oriented brand-building, and the call to action at the end is extremely week in my opinion–what I call “empty calories marketing.” In other words, the sort of thing you’d expect from a large ad agency that wants to make its client feel good but doesn’t care about actually generating results, and not one of the most sophisticated direct marketers on the planet.

    Well, maybe he knows something I don’t. I wasn’t moved to leave my name of the squeeze page at the end, but if that copy in the e-mail blast is to believed, better than 4 out of 5 visitors do leave their names.

    I’ll be curious to learn what kind of results he gets from this. And also whether other marketers disagree with me and feel the ad is effective.

    Note: the link above is the affiliate link for the people who sent me the e-mail. I am not an affiliate of this program.

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    By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Web 2.0/Social Media

    Mark Joyner has deservedly enjoyed a reputation as one of the online world’s most creative and successful marketers, going back many years.

    He and I have become Internet friends after he bought a copy of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First over my website and I responded with a personal note.

    Now Mark is trying another viral experiment with his new blogging course: giving it to anyone who posts the following text on his or her blog.

    I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

    It covers:

    • The best blogging techniques.
    • How to get traffic to your blog.
    • How to turn your blog into money.

    I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

    That’s Mark’s language. i don’t write like that. I’d just say that anything Mark is giving away is certainly worth exploring. I own three of his books (one of them, The Great Formula, even has half a chapter by me. I’m going to get my copy.

    But anything Mark does is also worth studying. As a marketer, this is what I see:

  • A clear attempt to go viral with the power of free
  • Canned text that will show up on hundreds or thousands of websites, and in most cases without any added commentary
  • My own need to add commentary, in part because I don’t like to pass off other people’s words as my own, and in part because I want to differentiate this page for the gazillion identical pages this will generate

    • If I were Mark, I’d have actually encouraged people to do their own text, and use his link. But that wasn’t my call to make.

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