Twice in two days, I’ve had the same conversation with marketers suffering from the same confusion. Both are organizations that rely on lead generation as the first step in their sales processes. That is to say, they expose prospects to their marketing message in an effort to move them to contact the company, learn more, and finalize a sale.

The problem both companies had (and I see this all the time) is they were falling into the trap of over-communicating in their marketing materials… telling their whole stories… every detail… forgetting that the goal of their marketing is not to close the sale on the spot. Rather, the goal is to motivate a prospect to call and engage in the sales process.

I find this happens most often when companies write their own marketing copy. They are so close to what they’re doing, they lose their ability to trim down their story. They can no longer write copy that engages prospects quickly, established the firm’s credibility, yet leaves enough to talk about that it makes sense for the prospect to call.

This problem is VERY easy to stumble into. I struggle with it myself when I’m writing about products or services that I’ve been part of creating.

Here’s what seems to happen…
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a big fan of user reviews.

As a consumer, I refer to them whenever they’re available, and I find that they influence my purchase decisions. Short of a product demonstration, as an instrument of persuasion, the user review has to be among the most effective tools we have at our disposal.

Consider for a moment the difference in your own mind between a user review and its big brother, the testimonial.

As similar as I suppose they are in theory, I regard the two very differently.

To me the very designation – testimonial – suggests that the message will be positive… one notch down from its slippery sibling, the endorsement.

Particularly online, testimonials have been so abused, bastardized and corrupted that unless they are particularly well presented, I find that I view them all as counterfeit… sales copy from deceptive marketers.

User reviews on the other hand, at least for now, remain relatively pure in my mind.

For some reason, I feel like the user review is a more authentic, unscripted expression of a real person’s real-life experience with a product or service. Probably naively, I expect to hear both the good and the bad.

I trust them more.

So what do if you’re a testimonial junkie and don’t yet have the facilities to cultivate and display user reviews?

Read the rest of this entry »

A short while ago, I wrote a post discussing one of three key marketing principles discovered and well-documented by the Eureka! Ranch (Overt Benefit). I’ve gotten a lot of feedback since, and thought it would be worthwhile to complete my review of all three principles as we should all have them at the forefront of our minds as we undertake our work.

The second principle speaks to the skepticism that all of us feel when confronted with marketing. Let’s face it… life experience has taught us to believe little of what we hear from marketers.

For this reason, strong statements of benefits – no matter how compelling – fail to move people to action without the help of REAL reasons to believe what you’re saying.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re like me, you’ve noticed and begun to appreciate the utility of online videos. The professional applications for this technology are nearly endless… tutorials, customer service & tech support content, online sales presentations, educational seminars…. And when the content is relevant to your visitors’ interests and professionally delivered, it can really enhance the online experience (and your conversion rates).

Contrary to popular belief, they don’t have to be expensive to create.

I learned today (and have since verified) that Camtasia Studio, an application that has been widely applauded (and that I plan to begin using) is offering a full version of its screen capture video software, Camtasia Studio Version 3 at no cost. Yes – FREE for a limited time.

If you’ve ever considered offering online video, recorded webinars and sales presentations, here’s your chance to dip your toe into the water at no risk with a pretty solid application.

Here’s what you have to do…

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s difficult in the marketing world to define marketing principles that are truly more than mere theories…

But the Eureka! Ranch has managed to do it.  Over the last decade, it has compiled and analyzed thousands of client cases related to the introduction of new product/service concepts and new marketing messaging for existing products/services.

This research has produced and quantitatively validated a number of well-proven and very practical conclusions for marketers of all types.

One of the key principles that emerged from this research dispels a dangerous marketing myth and therefore needs never-ending reinforcement. And it applies consistently across industries and consumer/business segments.

I’m referring to the critical importance of communicating what the Eureka! Ranch folks call your “overt benefit.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Saranne Rothberg is the Founder and CEO of The ComedyCures Foundation. Her blossoming non-profit brings laughter and therapeutic humor programs to children and adults living with illness, trauma and disabilities through large and small-scale comedy events.

She founded the organization from her chemo therapy chair in 1999 (she is a stage-4 breast cancer survivor) as a manifestation of her own experience with the healing power of laughter. Since then she has been featured on Good Morning America, Oprah, and most every other major news media you can imagine.

Her awards are too numerous to list, but Oprah has featured her as her “Hero” in her book, Live Your Best Life.

Her events are booked out for years.

We met for the first time by phone last week to discuss the possibility of aligning her foundation with a breast cancer related initiative I’m working on. She was in the familiar position of selling the power of her organization. And she did it remarkably well.

Here’s how she described her events.

“Take the spirituality of Deepak Chopra, the motivational energy of Anthony Robins, and the comedy and music of Saturday Night Live. Put it in a blender. And serve it with a stage-4 breast cancer miracle as the cherry on top. That’s a ComedyCures event.”

What a beautiful description. In a few quick sentences you’ve got it… lodged in your brain… no need for repetition.

I wrote a post a while back on the power of being concrete in your communication. What a great illustration. I was reminded yet again that we don’t have to use business-speak to be compelling when we describe our businesses, products and services.

Communicating like this… is it any wonder that this one woman has managed to touch hundreds of thousands of people?

How long can you hold your audience’s attention with a message that starts out with ambiguity? This is a question for TV and radio advertisers, copy writers, and public speakers alike, and getting it wrong can be embarrassing – or worse…

Sometimes a mysterious opening can be powerful and have great impact upon resolution. Other times it flops. Not unlike humor in advertising, people tend to respond with either love or hate – rarely neutrality.

Here’s an exercise for you. Watch this advertisement. I guarantee you haven’t seen one like it before. Show it to a few folks around your office, and watch the varied responses that you get.

Then, see if you can piece together a pattern of reactions among the people you show it to such that you can predict who will like it and who won’t. Herein lies the litmus test for when to steer clear of ambiguous, mysterious openers in your communications.
Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all heard the age-old admonishment. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

What a joke.

In a time when we are all subject to constant information overload, there literally is no time to judge a book – or anything else for that matter - by anything more than its cover.
Read the rest of this entry »

What a joy it is as a marketer to promote a product for which there is an objective, compelling argument… when the numbers simply speak for themselves… when people would have to be crazy not to buy it.

This type of product doesn’t seem terribly common, but my guess is that there are a lot more of them out there than we know.

We’d all like our products or services to fall into this coveted “no brainer” category, and as clever marketers, we do our darndest to build and convey the compelling case for our wares. So often, we make our arguments quantitatively.  After all, who can resist when the numbers speak for themselves?

The problem is that even when they do… often they really don’t.
Read the rest of this entry »

For almost two years, I’ve been working on the development and launch of a portable electronic health record for consumers to carry on a USB thumb drive. This is a very challenging undertaking for reasons I’ll likely share in a future post. But today something happened that prompts me to write on the danger of familiarity. I see it all the time in product development, marketing, sales system development, and even among entrepreneurs raising money for new ventures.
Read the rest of this entry »