Sales Letters: Teasing Your Way To Higher Response

It’s estimated that your prospect is inundated with 17 different solicitations in his mailbox every week. So, like most of us, he checks his mail with his sales-defense shields on high. He sorts his mail standing over a trash can, giving each piece about 3 seconds consideration before deciding its fate.

Your job is to get past those defenses and get your letter opened. And your envelope has a lot to do with your chances for success.

There are two common tactics in sales letter envelopes. Tactic #1 is to try getting in under the radar: Leave the envelope blank, hand write the address if possible, and leave the return address blank (or include only the actual address, with no company name). Hopefully, your prospect will mistake you for an actual personal letter, and you’ll at least get opened.

Tactic #2 is to come out with phasers on kill: Not only does your envelope admit to carrying a sales message inside, it actually launches into that message before it’s even opened – with a headline printed right on the outside.

So which one works better? Well, Tactic #1 may be opened more often. But Tactic #2 will usually have a better response (with one important caveat, which we’ll talk about in a minute). Why?

Because Tactic # 1 gets your envelope opened, but unfortunately, it’s for all the wrong reasons. Your prospect tore it open thinking it could be a letter from Dear Aunt Susie. Or perhaps an old Sweetheart – who knew? Instead, he’s hit between the eyes with a sleazy sales message! He’s immediately disappointed and a bit miffed, and the letter winds up in the round file after all.

Tactic #2 works better because it’s honest. When well done, it connects with the prospect’s core buying emotion and sets him up for the sale. It draws him in, tickling his desire from the get-go.

Notice I said, “When well done.” (That’s the important caveat). Teaser copy on an envelope is just like a headline: It’s got to be good to work. Boring, irrelevant teasers get tossed. “Me-based” teasers get tossed.

But great teasers, the ones that look at the package from the prospects point of view, and speak directly to his core desires and emotions, get opened. And, if the letter inside continues to tap into those emotions, and fulfills the promises made in the teaser, a great teaser can deliver on the promise of a great response.
Lisa Packer - EzineArticles Expert Author

Does your marketing forge an emotional connection with your prospects? It can. Lisa Packer is "The Copywriter You Can Count On" for powerful, persuasive copy delivered on time, every time. Visit http://www.lisapacker.com and unleash the power of words in your business today.

Marketing - The Never Ending Story

This article is in response to a number of conversations I’ve had recently with business people who ask about changes to their website. Usually the conversation goes like this. “Can you take a look at my website? I want to increase the traffic. I don’t seem to be getting many people to the site and don’t get any business from it.” I look at the site, get back to them with suggested changes and additions, and talk about what it takes to drive traffic and sales on the web.

They consider the proposal and say to go ahead. They also ask, “So is that all I have to do? Am I done then?”

Then the resistance factor takes over. Websites are something they don’t understand, can’t do themselves, but think they need, and consider just another expense. It’s like having a tooth pulled…they just want to get it over with.

There is so much hype from people that have something to sell that will “revolutionize your business” or “allow you to make money easily without working for it”. They imply, if they don’t say outright, that you put up a site and immediately started raking in the money, the leads, the sales. It does happen sometimes. BUT do you want to depend on luck? It can take up to 2 months for the search engines to discover your site and if you have broken any of the cardinal rules in the content or technical end of your site, they might not be back. Then again, just because people find your site, doesn’t mean they are interested in buying what you have to sell.

If you think of your virtual business as being an integral part of your bricks and mortar business, it makes sense to work on it. It should receive the same attention to grow and evolve. Think of it as a pipeline to deliver qualified prospects or as an opportunity to create another, not so hands on, income stream that completes sales electronically. It’s a chance to reach clients who may not be attracted to your more traditional marketing and advertising.

Plan to either pay someone to work on your site on a regular basis or have your site designed with a content manager so you can easily update the site yourself. If you have to hire someone to make every little change, are you going to do it? Decide what you want to call each page of your site. Write each name on a separate piece of paper and lay each out on the floor so you can see if the navigation of the site makes sense. There is a good reason that most sites are laid out with similar navigation. It works; so don’t try to redesign the wheel.

The area of your site that fits in your browser without scrolling is the most important part of your site so put what’s most important to your customers in that space.

Less is more, especially with website copy. People scan websites so consider that when writing and designing the layout of your copy. If you can’t tell visitors everything, at least tell them the things that are going to persuade them you can solve their problem.

One topic on one page. On a website there is no one door to access your business, there are as many entrances as you have pages. Help the search engines figure out what each page is about by being as specifically focused as possible in the content of each page.

Add content on a regular basis to encourage the search engines to keep coming back to your site. The single greatest reason that people search the web is for information. Give good information to them and they will come back and bring their friends.

Have someone experienced in SEO do your html titles and meta tags once you have your basic site content done and your site is live.

Create multiple opportunities for people to find your site by encouraging other relevant sites to link to your site. Above all, keep looking for chances to promote your site whether it’s at networking events you attend, trade shows, or in traditional marketing & advertising.

Change is a given. Life changes, people change, their wants and needs change. Successful businesses look at current results, watch trends, examine socio-economic factors, and look for opportunities. Responding to these opportunities requires non-stop marketing and modifications to keep appealing to your niche. The greatest advantage a small business has is the ability to turn on a dime.

You can write the ending of your own story in any number of ways but if you intend to stay in business, marketing must be written into the script!

For over 20 years, Nancy Fraser has worked with business owners to improve their marketing and advertising results. If your results are less than stellar, contact Nancy and her team to work with you to ramp up your results. http://www.notable-marketing.com, http://www.logo-design-tips.com

Salespeople: It Only Takes One To Break A Slump!

In my book, How To Sell Like A Natural Born Salesperson, I tell a story about what happened to my dear dad, late in life.

He was a career salesperson, who dabbled in producing TV and radio. In his middle 60’s he accepted a sales job that should have been a breeze for him, but for some reason, he just couldn’t seem to “crack the nut,” as he put it, and earn his first sale.

This was excruciating, inasmuch as he was always the top rep and moneymaker wherever he worked.

I talked with him during this time, and occasionally we got together for dinner.

And to his credit, he never got down on himself. In fact, he told me: “Gary, it only takes one!”

I had heard this line before, when he was standing in the bleachers, as I was at bat. “It only takes one!” he would shout as an encouragement.

Of course, he was right.

You just need to put a good swing on a good pitch, and the rest will take care of itself.

Dad came through.

As it turned out, Elvis Presley’s manager, the famous Colonel Parker, gave him a huge order, the prestige of which carried dad on to one success after the next.

It just took one “king” to re-anoint another king, and peace came to the realm, once more.

Let this be an inspiration to you, when things aren’t going well. It just takes one success to turn everything around!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

Today's Marketing: The Art of Hustling Air, And Then Some!

If you could go back in time, to say 1985, and tell a venture capitalist that you had a great idea, taking water and putting it into plastic bottles and selling it for a buck or more a shot, what do you think he’d say?

Perhaps, “You’re crazy! No one will pay for something that they can get, free!”

And what if, in the next breath you said, “Better yet, I’m going to sell bottled air that people will inhale through nostril tubes, and I’ll call the places where they get their snorts, oxygen bars.”

Or, what if you said you had the contrarian idea of placing the label of a shirt on the outside of the collar, for advertising purposes, instead of the inside; or that you could get $300 and up for used looking jeans with holes cut in them?

How would these brainstorms go over?

The auto club just came out with a platinum card. It isn’t for charging goods and services.

It’s just an “elite” card that gives you a longer, tow, when your car breaks down. Maybe, there is some other bell or whistle attached—I don’t remember.

But there’s no question, this card is a moneymaker, and will probably become successful, because a certain number of people want the best, no matter what it seems to be.

I expect someone will package premium, 100% organic, gold label, rainforest-ripened, limited edition, manure, soon. Maybe they do, now, calling it a lawn builder.

The market is booming for ego products, and for nearly anything that sounds new or effete or trendy.

I’m not putting this down; I admire the marketers and entrepreneurs who are creative enough to pull off these coups.

I want to be like them when I grow up, if I can only be so audacious!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

New Marketing And Promotional Ideas

New marketing and promotional ideas! Free! Most are related to internet-based businesses, but even those can usually be adopted in some way to other businesses. Here are half a dozen marketing ideas to get you thinking.

A one-hour coupon. Offline businesses that want to increase the traffic to their websites can announce an "internet coupon" good for a free drink (or whatever). The coupon would be up on the site for an hour, sometime on a Friday, say. Visitors will return again and again to try to be there at the right time to get the freebie. If you collect pay-per-click advertising fees, this repeat traffic might be especially profitable.

Free gift article teaser. A free gift is certainly not a new marketing idea, but it hasn't been done much in internet article "resource boxes." My click-throughs from articles increased when I started putting in the author's resource box, "For more information and a free gift, visit..." The gift is usually a short course, or an e-book. If you don't want to write an e-book, you can find one with free distribution rights.

Word links for sale. Maybe you have heard about the entrepreneur that sold a million pixels on one web page for a dollar each. Advertisers could buy a minimum of 100, and the image would link to their site. I've seen many copycats, but I haven't yet seen anyone selling words. This could be even better for advertisers, because they could buy the words that are relevant to their products. A page full of random words isn't pretty, but these things get publicity and traffic for their novelty.

Product user contests. If you have a product that's used in many ways or many places, this is a great promotional gimmick: a contest to see who has used their cell phone, watch, or whatever in the wildest place or the most unusual way. ("I took my walkman to the north pole!") Customers could post their stories and photos directly to your company web site. They wiould return repeatedly to see new stories, and the results of the competition.

Advertising on cereal boxes. A lot of time is spent staring at cereal boxes. Perhaps you could get a good rate on advertising on them. There have had some advertising, but no boxes covered in ads yet. Brokering ad space on cereal boxes could be a good business to get into.

Pay for article placement. Many of us distribute articles to generate traffic to our web sites, and many also pay to advertise. Since articles are especially good marketing tools, why not pay to have other webmasters put them on their sites? This is done for free now, but not often enough. Maybe offer a small one-time fee, with a minimum time commitment. Explain that leaving the article there forever can generate search engine traffic.

Put ads on private cars, advertising on sidewalks, have a contest to see who can get your product mentioned on and seen on TV - there are endless possibilities for new marketing and promotional ideas.

Steve Gillman has been exploring new ideas for decades. Visit his site for invention ideas, business ideas, story ideas, political and economic theories, deep thoughts, and more. Get a free gift too: New Ideas (http://www.999ideas.com)

The 7 Commandments of Marketing

Marketing is the key to success with any business, online or traditional. You can have a website or business location. You can have a great product. However, if no one has heard about your business or your product, you have NOTHING!

Marketing is everything you do to promote yourself and your business. Without an aggressive marketing effort, your website is just one of EIGHT BILLION listed on Google. Without an aggressive marketing effort, your store better have a location next to Walmart and hope for their overflow. How do you stand out from the crowd?

There are seven (let’s call them) commandments for your marketing efforts. Keep these in mind and you are well on your way to creating an effective marketing machine. Remember, there is only one way to score the effectiveness of your marketing efforts – SALES!

Commandment #1. Use a Rifle NOT a Shotgun

Rifles leave a neat, clean hole where you point them. Shotguns scatter shot in the general direction you point them. Most failed marketing efforts are born in a scattered marketing message aimed at the world.

Let’s say you were trying to sell a snowboard. To effectively sell a snowboard to a fifteen year old requires an entirely different conversation than selling the same item to his mother. Therefore, commandment #1 directs us to segment our possible customers into different groups who share common concerns. If your product could be sold to a fifteen year old or a 40 year old, you’d better decide who you are going to focus your marketing efforts upon for the greatest success.

Commandment #2. KNOW Thy Customer Like Thyself

Following commandment #1, we selected a targeted group of people for our marketing message. Now, we MUST understand that targeted market as well as we know ourselves. We must crawl within their mindset. We must understand what they think about our product, what they want from our product, and the alternatives they have to our product.

Customers buy for their reasons, not yours. If you want to sell them your product, you MUST sell to their concerns, not your own. Every piece of marketing copy must FOCUS upon them. If you don’t speak their language, you don’t get their money.

Commandment #3. Be PASSIONATE About Your Company & Your Product

Attitude is infectious. If we are around upset people, we begin to take on that attitude ourselves. If we are with positive people, the same phenomenon occurs. Most people like to associate with enthusiastic people. And, most of us like passionate people. If you aren’t passionate about your company and your product, why should anyone else be? Commandment #3 means to show passion for your product by speaking and writing about it with enthusiasm. Talk about what your product can help people accomplish in their lives. If you can’t work up enthusiasm for your own product or business, find another business or product.

Commandment #4. Accept the fact that “NO” won’t kill you

In the process of running a business and selling a product, you will hear “no” more frequently than you hear “yes” (if you’re doing it right). What? By “doing it right”, we mean you are TRYING things. Some work. Some don’t.

Whenever you think of a new marketing approach, remember, the worst that can happen is they say “no”. So, try it! This is not a matter of life or death. This is a great experiment!

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” - Charles Darwin

Commandment #5. Wear a CLOWN SUIT! It’s hard to ignore!

The cheapest and easiest marketing in the world is free advertising. How do you get free advertising? Wear a clown suit! Do something OUTRAGEOUS! Become news worthy. How?

When Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream first tried to expand to a nation-wide operation, it had trouble finding distributors. They determined the problem was that Pillsbury put out the word to all distributors not to work with Ben & Jerry’s. Pillsbury’s edict effectively blocked Ben & Jerry’s from the services of the national distributors. What to do? Put on a clown suit!

Ben & Jerry’s set up a one-man picket line outside Pillsbury headquarters. The picket sign read “Who’s the Doughboy afraid of?” The result? National-wide FREE publicity on television and newspapers. Publicity they couldn’t afford to buy.

In order to differentiate yourself from the crowd of competitors, you MUST be DIFFERENT! Design your own clown suit and wear it proudly!

Commandment #6. NEVER Give Up!

Albert Einstein said, “Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up“.

In marketing, everything you do moves you forward. If one campaign fails, you are that much closer to the one destined to succeed. Watch others. Learn from others. Learn from your own mistakes. BUT KEEP GOING!

Commandment #7. Always Be Closing

“Always be closing” is often referred to as the “ABCs of sales”. However, it also applies to marketing. The objective of marketing is to increase sales. Not to “inform”, “educate”, or “entertain”. I repeat: The objective of marketing is to increase sales.

Therefore, this last commandment directs us to write all marketing copy with the sale in mind. Only information that moves a potential customer toward a sale is allowed in our marketing copy. How do we know what should stay and what should go in our marketing materials? Read through it asking yourself one question – “So what?”

Another way of stating “so what?” is asking “why should the customer care?” You’ve been in business since 1972. So what? Your product folds flat. So what? You’re a family owned business. So what? The alternative?

“We have been in business since 1972 so you’ll always know where to find us. Since we are a family-owned business, you’re always talking to an owner who can answer your questions and solve your problems. Our product folds flat to save you valuable office space when not in use.” See the difference? Now you’re talking about the customer’s issues, not yours.

There you have my seven commandments of marketing based upon 33 years of business experience. “Commandment” is defined as “A formal pronouncement or rule”. Keep in mind and put into practice these seven commandments of marketing. When you do, your marketing efforts will result in the only true value of marketing – increased sales!

Michele Schermerhorn has over 30 years experience in the business world and over 12 years running her own successful online businesses. She is President of Online Business Institute Inc. (http://www.obinstitute.com) and regularly conducts free online seminars. Online Business Institute Inc. exists to “Create Successful Online Business Owners One Person At A Time”.