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Archive for February, 2010

Handwriting Grabs Attention!

By: Mike Capuzzi on: February 16th, 2010 11 Comments

One of the most effective copy cosmetic techniques to grab your readers attention, online or offline, is by using simulated handwritten notes and doodles. In this day and age of computer-generated everything, the power of handwriting stands out.

You cannot help seeing this technique used more and more. It’s in the advertisements in your weekend paper; it’s on television commercials and in magazine ads. I’ve even seen it used effectively on book covers. You are now starting to see it used on Web sites, blogs, and squeeze pages.

The use of simulated handwriting goes back a long way in advertising, however many copywriters and marketers give me credit for this most recent and widespread use of handwritten doodles with the creation of my CopyDoodles™.

Marketing guru, Bill Glazer called CopyDoodles, “the biggest enhancement I have seen in the last 10 years for people that are writing copy for bumping the response and making the copy much more interesting.”

Before CopyDoodles, it was tedious and time consuming to add handwritten doodles. Now you can add these powerful doodles to your marketing in mere seconds.

Over the years, I have done a number of split tests and across the boards the materials containing handwritten notes and doodles always perform better than those without them. Of course you have to know how and when to use them appropriately (just slapping a bunch of CopyDoodles on your materials without proper context can be counter-productive).

Why is simulated handwriting so effective?
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The Most Important Part Of Any Ad

By: Dan Kennedy on: February 15th, 2010 14 Comments

Let’s talk about the basics of effective advertising and writing effective advertising copy.

The first critically important key is the development of effective headlines. The headline is the most important component part of any type of advertising. It must work or nothing else matters.

Next in importance are the subheads that are used to break up long blocks of copy.

Next are photo captions. Photo captions are marvelous opportunities to make persuasive arguments. People are drawn to pictures and often read the captions beneath the pictures before reading just about anything else.

The same basic guidelines apply to headlines, subheads and photo captions.
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How To Get Your Point Across by Answering 4 Simple Questions [VIDEO]

By: Mike Koenigs on: February 12th, 2010 8 Comments

This video featuring Mike Koenigs, co-founder of Traffic Geyser, addresses how to get your point across to the 4 different personality types by answering 4 simple questions.

The Most Important Small Business Marketing Skill You Need To Possess

By: Dan Kennedy on: February 11th, 2010 18 Comments

I want to take a break from our topic of the aspects that go into successful direct mail and spend a little time tell you about one of the most important skills that any entrepreneur should and can develop.

The ability to write good advertising copy.

There are two chief reasons you don’t want to take this subject lightly!

First, it’s very costly to have your advertising materials written by a good professional copywriter or consultant.

Second, no matter how much you pay to get the very best outside help no one can ever have the same feel for your business and your clientele that you do. I’m often surprised how business people hire high priced advertising agencies to write their sales and marketing materials when the agency knows nothing about their business and doesn’t even attempt to get to know it.

On the other hand, most entrepreneurs ‘live and breathe’ they’re businesses. They’re often the front line people who speak and hear from the #1 most important asset of the company…its customers.

In fact, several years ago, I was hired to write a sales letter for Weight Watchers in order to try to beat their current letter they were mailing.

What did I do?
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Are You Being Consistent with Your Social Media Profiles

By: Brian Horn on: February 10th, 2010 30 Comments

I’ve been noticing two problems with many of my “friends” within the social media world lately (and maybe I’ve made one of the mistakes too).

First….profile pictures.

So, here’s the deal. After you have become friends with someone online and finally meet them for the first time, what happens next? You are excited. Which is great…except that you didn’t recognize them because their picture was from 10-15 years and 30 pounds lighter ago.

Or even worse…they don’t use a picture of themselves at all! Listen, I know people love their kids or pets, but come on….this is about YOU. You must have your picture on your profile. This is integral to your personal branding.

…now my possible mistake. This was a little embarrassing, but I’m still not sure if I should make a change or not. I went to the Grammy Awards and an all day mastermind last month with a group of entrepreneurs.

While being introduced to a VERY well known female entrepreneur for the first time, her opening comment was, “You’re the SEO guy who’s not wearing a shirt in your Twitter profile, right.”

The whole group got a good laugh. (this is the profile in question…but you have to be logged into Twitter to see it)

So, on one hand…the profile pic did a good job of getting a very high profile entrepreneur to remember me. On the other…do I really want to be known as “they guy without a shirt.”  It’s really just a pic of me on a boogie board in Playa del Carmen from last summer.  Not some Marky Mark pose.  :)

Jury is still out…would like your feedback on this one in the comments section.

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Grumpy Old Man!

By: Mara Glazer on: February 9th, 2010 9 Comments

CJ Bronstrup won the OUTRAGEOUS Advertising Contest at the OUTRAGEOUS Academy and Workshop with his Grumpy Old Man videos. I thought you might like to see one of the videos he presented at the event so I inserted it below. Let me know what you think in the comments section. Enjoy!

How To Tell Your Prospects What They Need To Know…

By: Dan Kennedy on: February 9th, 2010 7 Comments

…Before you even meet them.

We’re still talking about the three aspects that make for a successful marketing strategy and so far, I’ve identified the first two…the list and the offer.

Of course, the third stepping stone to direct mail success is the mailing piece itself. If one is the list and two is the offer, then three is what we might call the packaging or the presentation of the offer.

In mailing development you will basically deal with copy, graphics and format. I want you to understand that it is not necessary or even necessarily advisable for you to engage the expensive services of graphic designers or ad agencies to create your direct mail pieces.

If you will make the format decision yourself, write the copy yourself and provide some graphic components yourself, all of which I’ll help you with during our journey together, then you can have your piece prepared by a small store front printer and his typesetter.

An ad agency or graphic designer may charge you thousands of dollars to prepare a single mailing piece. If you choose to use such services, you must stay in control and avoid creativity for creativity’s sake, or pretty or clever at the expense of function.

But given today’s PC’s, just about anybody can do much of this themselves, especially if sticking to simple, serviceable formats.

There are two commonly used formats that can serve most of your needs….
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Elite Glazer-Kennedy Member Carries Olympic Torch

By: Mara Glazer on: February 8th, 2010 19 Comments

Elite Glazer-Kennedy Direct Marketer Wins Contest To Carry Olympic Torch In Vancouver Today (February 8th at 4:49 PM Pacific Standard Time 7:49 PM EASTERN).

Info MASTERMIND Member Rory Fatt has been selected, and today is carrying the Olympic Torch.

I had a chance to interview Rory, and he said “Once I found that out It required writing an essay I knew I would get selected because I could use my direct marketing skills to win over the judges for the few spots that weren’t taken by sponsors and celebrities.”

Congratulations Rory!

You can watch the Torch Relay LIVE on the internet by clicking here.

How to Reduce the Waste Factor in your Direct Mail

By: Dan Kennedy on: February 5th, 2010 7 Comments

Yesterday I covered list selection, which is the starting point of the direct mail marketing process.

Today, I want to hit on the development of a ‘matching offer.’

The offer you make in a direct mail package needs to be carefully thought out and matched as closely as possible to the interest, needs, and motivations of the list. And as a general rule of thumb the more specifically matched the offer and list are the higher the response rate.

Here are two simple examples to help you understand this idea.

Example one, John’s Sporting Goods Store mails a brochure about his upcoming sale on skiing and hiking equipment to every resident in his store’s neighborhood. His offer may be great, 25% to 50% discounts, a free gift for everyone who comes in, but his response will still probably be very low because of a high waste factor in his mailing.

Let’s say John mailed 10,000 brochures. As few as 15 to 25 people may come in. A response rate of only one half of one percent or slightly worse but that’s deceptive because of the waste factor.
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How To Find Prospects Who Are Interested

By: Dan Kennedy on: February 4th, 2010 7 Comments

The first stepping stone to a successful direct mail campaign is acquisition or development of the right list.

Since the main virtue of direct marketing is targeting to specific prospects it makes sense that the selection of those prospects will have a great deal to do with the success of the whole process.

Most experts agree that list selection has a 30% to 50% impact on the overall effectiveness of direct marketing. In selecting a list you want to target people most likely to have an existent interest in what you have to offer as well as some things in common with your present good customers.

These commonalities might be found in age, sex, occupation, income level, neighborhood or geographic area, credit card ownership, family size, magazine subscribed to, or any number of other demographics.

These factors are called demographics and the professional sources you might rent mailing list from can be incredibly sophisticated in finding or compiling a mailing list of people who conform to your set of desired demographics.
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