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 »

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 »

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know my position on the importance of cultivating referrals – particularly for smaller businesses.

This is a realm of marketing that is commonly overlooked… typically botched… and is often arguably the highest return marketing activity a company can invest in.  Literally… Infinite Return Marketing when executed properly and consistently.

Yesterday I had breakfast with the owner of a small service business.  As is typically the case, he is not only the owner and manager of the business, but the chief client relationship manager and evangelist for the firm.

The topic of referrals came up, and I was struck by a confession he made. So much so that I wanted to quickly offer up this brief post for anyone else who may also be hindered by his fear.
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 »

Brian Korte is an artist pioneering a new and fun medium. He builds mosaics – big pictures – out of LEGOs.

I can remember the time he told me he was working on his first one – a portrait of two of his friends who had recently married. With limited expectations, I took a look, and WOW! pretty darn cool!

What’s really interesting about his LEGO art, is that once you understand HOW he does it, unlike other forms of art that so often require freakish talent, most anyone could do this with his level of precision.

He has leveraged this sense of attainability to create a following of enthusiasts. Kids can (and do) actually help him complete his work.

Now he has built a growing business called Brickworkz out of this form of LEGO art, and by all indications, he’s doing quite well. You should have a look. He’s being commissioned to build his mosaics for individuals and businesses around the country, and he’s creating a growing buzz.

I mention this for two reasons. First, he’s a creative inspiration, and he’s succeeding at breaking into the crowded art community in a new and exciting way. It’s worth watching.

Second, and more to the point of this post, he wrote something recently that highlighted a phenomenon that has intrigued me for several years now as a marketer. It is a counter intuitive quirk of human nature that many of us marketers should recognize and exploit.
Read the rest of this entry »

I had a meeting today with a man who owns a rental property in Nags Head, NC. He commented to me the property management firm he used had done a nice job, but the changed the way they offer their services from a turnkey bundle to an a la carte menu of services.

For this reason alone, he switched property management companies.

Interesting… This property management company decided to give control to its customer - to allow him to customize their service to his own needs. I would guess their motivation was to retain customers. But it produced the opposite result.
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 »