The Ads That Didn't Make It

Over the course of your business life you are probably going to be forced to write many different advertisements from flyers to brochures, print ads to radio spots…possibly even the odd TV commercial.

So doesn’t it make sense for you to make those ads as persuasive as possible…and to continually be tweaking your ads with the aim of improving your conversions year in year out.

“That sounds like a lot of work”…I hear you say.

Depends on how you look at it.

Is it considered work if you spend an extra hour crafting a p0werful ad that doubles the sales your business gets from the ad that week?

It probably is…its just much more profitable work than pretty much any other task you do on a daily basis.

Persuasive Copywriting Increases Your Leverage

Leverage is the ability to get more from an existing task or resource. Ad writing is something that you need to do – so why not do it well. Continually be aiming to increase the response your ads get every time you run them.

In this article I’m going to tell you the four things that should be included as part of every ad you write. This is just the minimum – there are other elements which can be included depending on the size of your ad, where and what you’re promoting etc.

1) A Powerful Headline

While this is generally the shortest part of your ad, it should actually be the area you spend the most time on. Between 70-80% of people will read no further than a headline, so this is where you really need to work hard at capturing their attention.

Think of your headline as an ad for you ad – you are trying to convince people that your ad has some really valuable information that they should read immediately.

2) Irresistible Offer

Every ad should contain an offer to the reader. This is probably the part of the ad that gets left out by most business owners, who are content to write down a simple description of their business, their opening hours, blah blah blah.

Booooooooring.

You need to offer the reader a reason to buy from your business today. What can you offer them that separates your business from the hundreds of other businesses trying to get the attention of the reader?

3) Risk Reversal

Risk reversal is the process of removing all of the risk from the buyer and placing it on yourself. The most common example is the money back guarantee.

This is one of the most powerful elements you can include in an ad but many people are scared to do it because they are worried that customers will take advantage of them.

It has been consistently proven that businesses that offer powerful guarantees, outsell those that don’t.

And contrary to what you think will happen, very few people actually take you up on your guarantee. They just need to know that you stand behind your product, and are so confident in its value that you will refund any unsatisfied customers

4) Call To Action with scarcity built in

People need to be told what to do next in clearly stated terms.

• “Call this number now to receive…”
• “Visit our website now to download your free report…”

And you can make this even more powerful by creating a sense of urgency. Limit the amount of time they have to take you up on your offer. Or limit the number of spots available.

So In Summary

If you were to start writing ads tomorrow that included all four of these components, you would be far ahead of the game and would notice an immediate improvement in conversions from your ads.

I would recommend that if you want to improve your ad writing you start analysing ads in newspapers – and I’m talking all industries here, not just your competitors.

You’ll be surprised at how many ads out there are ineffective once you understand what makes a persuasive ad.

In the next few articles I’ll break down each of these four components and offer you some simple strategies you can you use to improve their effectiveness.

Craig

Weigh Up Your Options

If you’ve read any of the articles or reports from this website, than you will know that I am a strong advocate of using an autoresponder service as part of your overall marketing strategy

Autoresponder services allow you to prepare a follow up email marketing campaign that is set and forget. Once you have all your emails created, uploaded and spaced out at your desired intervals, all you need to do is convince people to sign up.

There are dozens (probably even hundreds) of autoresponders out there – but which ones are the best for a small business email marketing campaign?

There are two autoresponders that I would recommend to a small business owner, Aweber and Constant Contact. I have done individual reviews of both of these which you can read by following the links below.

• Aweber Review
• Constant Contact Review

In this article I’m going to compare the two, and talk about the strengths and weaknesses for you as a small business owner.

Aweber

Aweber is renowned as being the top of the pack in the autoresponder market – they are the preferred choice for many people who do a large portion of their business online.

One of the real strengths of Aweber is their low tolerance of spam – they have built a strong reputation in the industry based on this USP, and as such their delivery rates are considered to be the highest in the email marketing industry

They have achieved this position as a result of two key factors.

1. Their requirement that all people who sign on to your list must go through a double opt-in process. This is where they initially give you their email address, then immediately receive an email that requires them to click a link confirming they do in fact wish to receive emails from your business.
2. Their rule that if you want to import email contacts from another source, they still need to go through this process. This prevents people from buying dodgy lists of tens of thousands of email addresses.

So for some small businesses this may be a bit of a negative.

Many of the email addresses that you could potentially collect would be in-store at the time of purchase, or with a promotion you run that captures a prospects details when they are entering or leaving your store.

So does this mean a small business owner should rule Aweber out as an option altogether?

Not at all – you just need to weigh up where and how you are going to be collecting the majority of your email addresses. And even if you think this is going to be in your store, there are still strategies you can use to ensure a high rate of success.

For example, lets say you are currently capturing email addresses by running a competition, with an entry form in store. There are two ways you could go with this.

• The first option is to ask the customer to enter your competition at your website.

This has the advantage of pushing them to your online presence, which gives you a greater opportunity to market to them online as well as off.

The disadvantage here is that you are definitely going to get fewer people on to your list this way – its just human nature. Not everyone is going to remember, or be bothered to visit your site when they get home.

• The second option is to import the list yourself.

The key to doing this well, is to make sure that at the time they leave you their email address you let them know that they are going to receive an email from you that asks them to confirm their subscription to your list.

You also need to be clear in the subject line and ‘from’ email address of this confirmation  email who it is from to ensure they actually open it and confirm their subscription.

Constant Contact

If all this seems like it is going to cost you sign-ups then you are possibly right, and you may want to use an alternative autoresponder service such as Constant Contact.

Constant Contact allows you to import your email addresses without requiring them to confirm that they want ot be on your list, so for many small business owners this may be a better option.

The thing is, Aweber has slightly better delivery rates  so in the long run this will probably balance out.

And the larger your list is, the more important a high delivery rate becomes. So if you think your business has the potential to build a list of many thousands of people, this is a factor that you will need to consider.

So which one should you choose?

They are both good, and you can’t really go wrong either way. In many instances it simply comes down to a personal preference for the ease of use of the autoresponder service.

Both Aweber and Constant Contact offer risk free trial period, so maybe you could sign up for both, look at each interface and decide for yourself which one you prefer.

Craig

Nurture Relationships With Your Prospects

I mentioned in an earlier article that one of the keys to encouraging people to sign up to your list is to offer them an incentive…what some people might call a bribe.

You want to give them something of value and in return they give you their name and email address.

It is entirely up to you to decide what you think would work best in this situation based on what you know of the needs and desires of your prospects.

Some examples of incentives you could offer include:

• Coupons: after they sign up they receive a special coupon that gives them a larger discount than they would be able to get any other way.
• Entry into a draw: people love to enter competitions. If you offer a monthly prize to anyone who signs up to your list it will not only encourage people to sign up, it will also make them more likely to open your emails, just in case they’ve won
• Free gifts: maybe you’ve got some excess stock that you could give away for free, or you can negotiate with a rep to get some of their promo stock.
• Your time: if you are in the service industry you could offer to do a free consultation or a free session. This is known as a soft offer – you can apply a value to it, even if you don’t charge that value. For example on this web site I offer business owners a free SEO analysis, which is valued at $200.

Then there is the information product.

I believe this is one of the most effective incentives you can offer…and the best thing is that it costs you nothing to give it away

Over the next couple of articles I’m going to be giving you some ideas and tips on how to go about creating an info product that is valuable enough that you could sell it if you wanted to…but you will more likely give it away as an incentive to join your list.

An info product will generally take the form of a digital ebook – but can also include audio and video files that are easily downloaded from your website.

No matter what industry you are in, it is almost a certainty that your customers and prospects will have questions…and your info product can provide the solution

• A gardener could offer a free report that gives 7 tips for setting up a veggie garden.
• A personal trainer could offer a recorded interview with a dietitian talking about the strengths and weaknesses of all the fad diets that are currently popular.
• A hairdresser could have an ebook that offers tips on maintaining healthy hair
• An accountant could compile a list of the answers to their most frequently asked questions about end of year tax reporting.

I could go on and on – once you realise the potential you’re options are only limited by your imagination

Now at this stage there are probably a couple of questions floating around in your head:

• If you could sell it, why would you want to give it away?
• If you’re not a writer how can you create a book?

The answer to the first question is simple – in the majority of cases you will earn more from the person as a subscriber on your list, then if you were to sell them your info product.

Your info product gives you the opportunity to gain their trust and makes them more likely to become a repeat purchaser in the future

As for the creation of the product, I’m going to be giving you some simple strategies you can use to do this yourself, as well as showing you how you can get it done by someone else without having to pay a fortune.

So what you should do between now and the next article is start thinking about your target market – what problems do they have that need to be solved?

Can you give something away for free that solves that problem in exchange for their email address?

Craig

Email Marketing For Small Business

Constant Contact is an autoresponder service that specialises in small business email marketing. They have been steadily improving their service over the past few years and are now considered one of the top autoresponder services available.

Unlike Aweber, one of the strengths of Constant Contact for a brick and mortar small business owner is the ability to import your emails from any other source and slot them straight in without having to get these people to confirm their subscription.

This makes it much easier for you to collect emails in-store via promotions or value-added offers.

Strengths Of Constant Contact

Use Of Templates

Constant contact makes very good use of templates to help you in the design of your email newsletters. You can simple use one of the templates provided, or you can take a base template and make simple modifications to it to customise it more to your liking.

Customer Service

Constant Contact have excellent customer services systems in place. Their staff are knowledgeable and are generally quite quick to resolve your problems. If you are new to email marketing this is definitely a plus

Creation Of Surveys

One of the key selling points that Constant Contact use on their website is the ability to add surveys to your email marketing campaigns. This can be a very powerful tool you can use to gain a better insight into your customers and prospects, which then allows you to tailor and improve your marketing to satisfy any unmet needs.

Weaknesses Of Constant Contact

The major weaknesses of Constant Contact are not really applicable to almost every small business owner. These weaknesses are related to such things as in depth analysis of statistics and subscriber management

For a small business owner these aren’t really issues – you’re just looking for a simple to use service that covers all your needs, and Constant Contact definitely delivers on that

60 Day Free Trial

Constant Contact has a 60 day free trial period where you can import up to 50 email addresses and test out their service risk free.

Click here now if you’d like to take advantage of that 60 free trial offer.

If you have any questions about this Constant Contact review, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Craig Crooks

Keyword Research Is Crucial For Good SEO

In this article I’m going to introduce you to the concept of keyword research, and explain why it is so important for your business if you are looking to receive traffic from the search engines.

Then I’ve got a video for you that will teach you the basics of how you can do your own keyword research.

Why Is Keyword Research So Important

Keyword research helps you create a strategy for your SEO that will deliver the best possible results for your business in the shortest possible time.

By taking the time to do this properly you won’t be wasting time, effort and money optimising your site the wrong way for the wrong things

So What Is Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of figuring out what search terms people are using to look for information related to your line of business.

By knowing exactly what these phrases are, you can makes the necessary changes to your website to give yourself the best possible chance of being highly ranked for those phrases.

The more targeted a search term is, the more valuable it is for your business – I’ll explain this concept in the video.

For those of you who aren’t quite sure, a keyword doesn’t have to be just one word – it is a term used to describe a string of words, long or short, that are typed into Google to search for information.

So the word ‘golf’ typed into Google is a keyword. The phrase ‘cheap golf courses in Hobart’ is also considered to be a single keyword.

When there are a number of words used in a single keyword, it is also known as a ‘long-tail keyword’. These are more targeted search phrases that in general you want to achieve rankings for because the competition is lower, and the person doing the searching is closer to making a decision to spend some money.

Start Broad And Narrow Your Focus

A good technique to use when you first start off with your keyword research, is to look at the broad phrases related to your business and then narrow your focus to the point where you have a nice list of highly targeted keywords.

I’ll demonstrate this technique in the video

The tool that I use in the video is the Google External Keyword Tool.

This is a free tool that I’d highly recommend you at least have a bit of a play around with, especially if you’re looking to improve your rankings in Google.

If there is anything from the video that you don’t understand, feel free to leave a comment or a question below and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Craig

Click Here To Watch The Keyword Research Video

Can You Write Persuasive Ads?

How good are you with words?

Can you write an ad for the newspaper, knowing with confidence that it will drive eager customers through your doors, credit cards out, ready to spend?

How about an ad for the radio or TV – can you knock up a 30 second script that has the phone lines jammed?

For many business owners advertising is considered a necessary evil. You have to do it because the competition is doing it and you won’t get your share of the pie if you don’t run your usual ads.

But what if you started looking at your advertising from a different perspective.

“What if you changed your mindset and starting looking upon advertising as an investment in your business?”

If you knew that you would get a $4 return for every dollar spent on ads, would you be worried if you had to pay $1,000 or $10,000?

Of course you wouldn’t…you’d have that cheque written faster than the winning dog at Dapto.

But one of the main reasons people can’t adopt this mentality is because they’ve never been shown how to write a good ad. Never taught the power that words have to influence the thoughts and emotions of people.

You just aren’t shown as a small business owner how much of a difference powerful advertising can make.

I’m not sure if you know much about the world of copywriting, but a good copywriter can name their price when it comes to crating a direct response piece – and their price normally includes a cut of the profits.

But the good news is – being able to write persuasive copy is an acquired skill not one you’re born with.

These million dollar wordsmiths didn’t wake up one morning with the ability to crank out sales letters that read like a Dan Brown novel.

They worked hard at their craft, and honed their skills through trial and error.

And learning this skill is something that should be high up on the to do list of anyone who is looking to be in business for the long haul…including you.

Think about the next ten years, and how many different advertisements you’re going to run in this time.

Now imagine that you were able to increase the conversions of all of these campaigns by just ten percent a year for those ten years.

That would give you roughly an extra full years worth of income for the same time period.

Now if learning to write good copy seems like a daunting task, check back here regularly. I’m going to break the whole process down for you and give you valuable tips and insights that you can immediately incorporate into your advertising campaigns

I’ll start off with the biggies – the four most important factors that should be included as part of every piece of advertising you do.

And just a quick note – after reading a few of my articles you’ll soon learn that graphics have very little to do with good advertising. Words sell, not pictures.

Graphics should only be used to enhance your advertising message – they should not BE your advertising message.

The sooner you can move away from graphically based ads, and start running ads that sell – the sooner your bottom line will begin to fatten up.

Craig

Are You Out Of The Loop?

Unless you’ve been camped in a Himalayan mountain cave, chanting to heathen gods for the past five years, I’m sure you’ve heard of blogs and noticed how popular they’ve become.

And at this stage you may be wondering how running a blog has any relevance for a small business owner like yourself, operating out here in the real world as opposed to cyberspace.

After all, blogs are for kids and tech-geeks right?

Well…not really – not anymore.

Blogs have become one of the most powerful marketing tools used by businesses around the world, regardless of how much business they do online.

Blogs are being used be anyone from a small business owner such as myself (technically this website is a blog), all the way through to multinational giants such as Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Nike & Xerox.

Why Is That?

The reason is actually fairly simple – blogs are all about communication. And not just the one-way communication of the old style website – I’m talking interaction between business and consumer.

Prospects can have their questions answered and businesses can learn what their prospects want. It’s a two way street that benefits both parties.

I’ve listed below some reasons why blogging for business can be such a powerful tool. These aren’t the only reasons, but they are among the most powerful.

If you think any of these are relevant to your own business, than it might be worth thinking about installing a blog of your own

Building Relationships

I’m sure as a business owner you know all about the marketing funnel – you get people into your buying funnel when  they are in the research phase of the decision process, and you move them through to the point where they become a (hopefully) loyal customer.

Blogs are extremely effective at streamlining this process for your business. If the prospect isn’t ready to make a purchase yet, you direct them to your blog where they can find more information about your business and what you can offer.

This gives you a greater chance of convincing the prospect they should choose your business over your competitors

People Trust Blogs (For Now Anyway)

This is kind of a strange one – its almost an example of psychological conditioning.

At the moment people are less wary of blogs because of their origins as a means of communication. There is almost in innate sense of trust that if you visit someones blog they are not going to put the hard sell on you.

As an example, if you were to send out two emails to your list – one which said ‘go and check this out at our website’, and another which said ‘go and check this out at our blog’, I could almost guarantee that you would get a higher conversion rate from the second email than the first – even if they were pointed at the exact same content.

So while this situation holds true, you might as well take advantage of it – but make sure that your blog doesn’t become an extended advertorial for your business. Content is king in the blogosphere.

Turn Your Loyal Customers Into Advertisers

There is no more powerful form of advertising than word of mouth. A positive experience from one satisfied customer has the potential to generate large amounts of new business for years to come

Blogs allow you to turn your customers into spokespeople for your business. If they regularly read valuable information on your blog, they will be more than happy to pass the website on to their friends, creating streams of new prospects for your business that cost you nothing to acquire.

NB – this article stretched out a bit more than I thought it would so I split it into two parts

Click here to read the other 4 reasons for having a business blog.

Ability To Generate Customers From Outside Your Geographical Area

Connect With Prospects Worldwide

Following on from the above point, a blog allows you to more effectively market outside your geographic region. As a general rule blogs rank better in the search engines than static websites.

So if you regularly add content to your blog that is specific to your industry, over time that blog will begin to appear in the search results on Google.

This will deliver new prospects to your business from all over the country (and even the world).

Differentiate Your Business By Building Relationships

One of the major reason that a prospect doesn’t purchase immediately upon coming into contact with your business, is because of that skeptic inside of us all that wants to know a little more info before letting the moths out.

This is particularly the case where your product or service is complex, or where there are a large number of competing businesses in the market

Do you have a local business that you buy from, even though they may be a bit more expensive than a larger competitor – a butcher maybe, or a corner store?

People like to buy from people they know, and your blog gives your prospects the chance to get to know you, making them more likely to buy from you at some stage in the future.

This will differentiate you from the competition, and over time will lead your business to becoming the first that comes to mind when people are looking for the products or services that you offer.

Platform Allows You To Use Many Useful Tools With No Tech Experience

The most popular software for creating your blog is known as Wordpress, which is a free Content Management System that makes creating pages on your blog as simple as typing up a document in Microsoft Word.

Over the years Wordpress has evolved to the point where there are now literally thousands of free tools that you can add to the basic package, which enhance the user experience on your site.

• You can add picture, video and audio with the click of a button.
• You can tie your blog in with other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
• You can add free downloads, newsletter subscription forms and a whole range of other tools, all of which can help you market your business in new and exciting ways.

And while there is a learning curve (isn’t there with anything?), the major reasons blogs are so popular is because of their ease of use.

Becomes A Business Asset

One thing that people don’t talk about much when it comes to websites, is their value as an asset to your business.

Lets say you were going to sell your business -  the asking price would reflect both the physical assets (land/property/equipment)  and less tangible assets such as goodwill, your client base and brand strength.

Well here’s some news for you – if you have a website that is an extremely powerful tool for lead generation and customer relationship management, you can increase the selling price of your business accordingly.

Your website needs to be looked upon as a business asset – a marketing tool that helps your business grow. If your website systematically delivers new leads to your business, and helps convert them into paying customers then it adds value to your business.

The Next Step…

OK…so there’s seven reasons why your business should have a blog. Your next step is to make the decision to go ahead and add a blog to your website.

In the next article I’ll talk a little more about the world’s most popular blogging platform, and run you through the steps involved in setting your blog up.

If that all sounds like way too much work and you’d like to have it all done for you, feel free to get in touch via the contact form.

Craig

Keyword Mapping Is Vital For Good SEO

Once you’ve done your keyword research, and identified the phrases that you believe to have the most relevance and profit potential, you need to match each of these keywords to a particular page on your site.

This is a much better strategy than just attempting to get your home page to rank for all the keywords on your list – I’ll explain why.

One of the most important factors that helps determine the rankings success of a web page is relevancy.

How well does the content on the web page match the particular keyword you are targeting?

I’ll give you an example that should make things a little clearer for you.

Let’s say you run an alternative health studio that caters for a large range of classes from Yoga to Pilates, Bowen Therapy, Swiss Ball classes, maternity classes and any other class you can think of.

Option A

You attempt to have your homepage rank for as many of these keywords as you can. You figure it doesn’t really matter which keywords get ranked, as long as people find your site, they will see what else you offer and will be able to make their decision accordingly.

Option B

You create a separate page for each specific class that you offer, then work towards having each of those pages rank for just two or three very specific keywords that are highly relevant.

Now obviously the second option will take a little more work to set up, but I’m sure you can see how much more powerful this strategy is.

By narrowing your focus you give each page a much better chance of ranking for the selected keywords.

Once that page is ranking well, your visitors will be finding the exact information the were looking for as opposed to being greeted with a generic home page and then having to look for the information themselves.

People’s attention span is short online, so if the navigation of your website is not clear, you will lose a visitor that cannot quickly locate what they’re looking for.

Keyword Mapping – A Simple Strategy To Use

Keyword mapping is simply the process of taking your list of words that you put together in your keyword research, and deciding which pages on your website they are most relevant to. This gives those web pages the best possible chance of being found in the search engines.

Keywords vary in how specific they are. Some are broad, some are much more specific. The more specific a keyword is, the deeper inside your website the page should be that ranks for that keyword.

Broad keywords such as men’s birthday present would be mapped to a general page on your website such as your homepage.

A more specific keyword such as men’s designer wallets would be mapped to a slightly more targeted web page such as a product category page that shows a range of different wallets from a number of designers.

Highly targeted search terms like Marc Jacob men’s wallet should be targeted at web pages that sell individual products from that brand.

So What You Need To Do

To effectively map your keywords, you need to break your business up into its various components – the different products and services – and then make sure that you have web pages that are focused solely on each of those.

If everything you have and do in your business is lumped onto one or two pages, you will reduce the ability of your website to rank for as many keywords as possible.

This process does take some work initially – keyword research, keyword mapping, building extra web pages – but if you are serious about having a website that works, this process is vital for your success.

Craig