Archive for September, 2009

The Renegade Millionaires’ Simple Litmus Test

By: Dan Kennedy on: September 30th, 2009 36 Comments

The job site CareerBuilder.com reports that 1 in 5 employees admits to giving bogus reasons for coming to work late. Some of the best are:

I dreamed I was fired,so I slept in. When I woke up I realized I was dreaming so I hurried in.
I went all the way to the office before realizing I was still in my pajamas and had to go home to change. That took a while.
I saw you weren’t there, so I went out looking for you.

Well, this sort of thing is to be expected from employees. Bogus or not. But not from entrepreneurs. And never from Renegade Millionaire entrepreneurs.
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The Top Secret to Success They Don’t Want You To Know

By: Dan Kennedy on: September 29th, 2009 34 Comments

There is a tendency amongst authors writing about “success” as well as entrepreneurs, small business owners and CEO’s telling their success stories to be warm ‘n fuzzy and present classically popular ideas palatable to the largest number of people. To say that nice guys win. That having a positive attitude and drawing little smiley faces above the i’s you dot will not only endear you to people but actually attract prosperity.

In truth, there is little evidence of this. None of it is harmful in moderation, but it conceals fundamental truth about ultra-high achievers: they tend to be tough, intolerant, hard-driving, demanding, competitive people often viewed as difficult, mean and ruthless by others. And they tend to have a profound sense of superiority usually viewed as arrogance. It sometimes gets them in trouble, but it is also an essential factor in their success.
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The 5 Elements of a Good Direct Response Ad

By: Bill Glazer on: September 28th, 2009 19 Comments

This is my quick checklist of ESSENTIAL Elements of a good direct response ad

1.) REASON FOR ADVERTISING other than your desire to get customers or sell something. BIG NEWS (other than announcing a new logo), BIG IDEA, a breakthrough solution to somebody’s problem. The biggest reason for advertising failure is advertising just because you need to advertise.

2.) ATTENTION-GETTING HEADLINE that telegraphs the news, the idea, the breakthrough…and”sells the ad.” The Headline’s first job is to compel the reader to stop whatever he’s doing – like reading the news in the newspaper- to, instead, shift his attention to your message.

3.) AS CLOSE TO AN ‘IRRESISTIBLE OFFER‘ AS YOU CAN GET. Most ads have no offers or weak, dull, plain vanilla offers. You have no right to response when you offer little.

4.) URGENCY:REASON(S) TO ACT IMMEDIATELY, made believable.

5.) DIRECT,CLEAR ‘CALL TO ACTION’ which connects #3 and #4 to INSTRUCTIONS to the customer of how to respond and what will occur when they do.

There are many additional helpful elements – such as proof, credibility,celebrity, pre-emptive answers to skepticism and reasons not to respond,risk reversal, and others.

But the above five are the absolutely mandatory components.

If you lack any, you do NOT have an ad at all.

Create Marketing Fireworks by SUCKERING ‘EM IN

By: Dan Kennedy on: September 25th, 2009 20 Comments

“SEX.”

“OK, now that I have your attention, let me talk to you about financial planning.”

This is an ad gambit as old as the hills. Call it whatever you like: lying, bait ‘n switch, trickery.

You yell out one thing to grab attention, then switch to an entirely different subject once you have eyes and ears. Sometimes it works. More often it backfires because the people instantly feel cheated or conned, and either exit as quickly as they entered or are loathe to trust you.

When it does work, the switch needs to be to something pretty darned interesting itself, and leads to such an appealing offer that people with distrust still in their mouth respond anyway. So, in the above example, it would at least need to go from the big SEX headline to “Slashing Your Tax Bill By At Least 33% (Guaranteed)Is Even Better Than Sex! – that’s what my top clients say.”

THE QUESTION FOR YOU is: is “suckering ‘em in” a strategy you ought to use? There’s no easy answer.
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What’s Your #1 Job?

By: Bill Glazer on: September 24th, 2009 20 Comments

I had a recent consulting call with a client. I asked him about his progress on what we talked about during our past call and he reported that hardly anything got done because he had a lot of other things to do in running his business and was constantly being interrupted by employees with questions or who required advice.

That’s when I went into my rant that…

“What we talk about and agree to get accomplished should NEVER take a backseat to anything else he needs to get done. I reminded him that his #1 job as the owner and President of the company was the MARKETING!”

After all, it’s the marketing that’s driving sales and withOUT sales there is no need for anyone else to work in the company. No need for an accountant, customer service representatives, buyers … no one.
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Bill Glazer Shares 7 Small Business Marketing Tips About Offers

By: Bill Glazer on: September 23rd, 2009 11 Comments

You should have one! Never, ever fail to make a specific offer or offers, and have a clear call to action. So much bad advertising fails to tell the reader/listener/viewer exactly what is expected of them, what to do next, and how to do it, in clear terms. Most ends vaguely: here’s where we are, here are our hours, here’s our phone number.
Build an appealing offer. Most are very unexciting, plain vanilla. A strong offer inspires the prospect to rush – RUSH – to respond. Has him excited about everything he’s going to get.
Tie the “here’s everything you get” part of the offer back to previously presented benefits. Don’t stop at listing products or services.

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Pity the Foolish Small Business Owner

By: Dan Kennedy on: September 22nd, 2009 10 Comments

Any moron can make money with new media where only little folks play.

But when the big, dumb, brand advertisers arrive – as they have in PPC advertising – the media cost skyrockets and that’s that. This should never be a sudden surprise – or a gradual one, either – to anybody with even small quantities of small business marketing knowledge, historical perspective and common sense.

The Big Lesson is what immature, under-priced media giveth, mature, over-priced media taketh away.

For a while, independent specialty retailers in jewelry, handbags, shoes, spicy foods, even electronics had this space to themselves, so search ads that popped up when someone typed “diamond necklace” or “DVD player” worked.

Now that BestBuy, Zales’ Jewelers, etc. have arrived in those categories, buying with little regard to direct ROI, the price per click on such ads has risen to unprofiable numbers. And that will continue to worsen as even bigger, dumber companies cheerfully pay more.
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Is Dan Kennedy Anti-Brand? The Surprising Answer

By: Dan Kennedy on: September 21st, 2009 13 Comments

This post, I’ll address a question I get confronted with a lot, about “branding” – the tough guys pointing out that I rail against branding yet obviously engage in brand-building myself.

Actually I’m not “anti-brand” at all, and as you can observe, have diligently turned myself into a personality brand (go ahead, Google ‘Dan Kennedy’ and see what turns up. Be sure you’ve packed a lunch. You’ll be there a while.), and have “NO B.S.” as a brand extending over books, newsletters, products; “RENEGADE MILLIONAIRE” to a lesser extent.

I do counsel AGAINST investing directly into brand-building, especially with large-company style ‘image’ advertising that cannot be accurately and ruthlessly held accountable. So here are a few principles and tips about your brand identity:
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How To Rob People Legally and Leave ‘Em With a Smile on Their Faces

By: Dan Kennedy on: September 18th, 2009 9 Comments

A past issue of the Sunday New York Times included this article, headlined:

IS THIS CREAM WORTH $500.00?

Although I’m sure it was not the reporter’s purpose she prepared a marvelous marketing tutorial.

What’s in a name?

The company behind Deep Repair Facial Serum, Z. Bigatti, “a name that might conjure images of Milanese scientists…” – the owner, feet firmly planted in St. Paul, Minnesota, says his business partner just made the name up, because it sounded exotic and sexy.

Later in the article, a plastic surgeon, Dr. Brown, named his skin care company Re’Vive, which he admits is a contrived, bogus French name. He and his glop are from Louisville, Kentucky.
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How Gene Simmons Can Put Your Small Business Marketing On Autopilot

By: Bill Glazer on: September 17th, 2009 9 Comments

Celebrity P-O-W-E-R!

I first learned about the power of celebrity from Dan, but I really didn’t fully embrace it until I saw it with my own eyes. Dan has often used his client, Guthy-Renker, as an example of how they have become the ‘top dog’ in the infomercial world by using famous celebrities such as Victoria Principal, Jessica Simpson, and Sean John (a.k.a. P-Diddy).

Why is a celebrity so powerful? Think about it. What happens when you’re up late at night and you’re pushing the remote control button while watching TV and all of a sudden you arrive at a show where you see Jessica Simpson (or some other celebrity you recognize)? What do you do? It makes you stop channel surfing and say to yourself…what’s Jessica doing on at 2 AM in the morning?
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