heartharmony.com.au

I admit it. I have been distracted lately as I have been watching my mother age before my eyes. You see just 2 short years back my mother was a vibrant active member of her community. The church organist for two local churches, choir master for her community choir, and a support to other aging people in the community. Then suddenly something changed – and her world started to shrink.

As I have watched mum and how she interacts with the world I couldn’t help think about the psychology of aging. When we see old people we often forget their lifetime of experiences, attitudes and beliefs. We just see them and their behaviour in a present day vacuum – forgetting what it took to get them there.

What do I mean? Well … think back to when a child is first born. Each milestone they achieve is met with hoy and celebration. The first time they learn they have fingers and can wave them. The first time they get up on wobbly legs and start to walk. The first time they can use a spoon by themselves. Successfully using a “big boy or big girl” toilet. Being able to make their own sandwich.  First day at school. Getting your license … and so on.

Each milestone is met by a huge upwelling of pride and a sense of achievement. Photos are taken and the adoring family audience applauds.

Aging is this in reverse. I call aging “the unknowing”. Suddenly things that you have done all of your life and which were a major achievement at the time – are instantly unknown. You no longer know how to walk on steady feet. You no longer can drive safely. Decisions that took seconds now take days. Adult nappies join your grocery list along with a growing list of medications.

But unfortunately with the body’s unknowing, if the mind is still sound then the sense of loss is profound. This time there is no pride – there is no achievement – there is no adoring family applauding in the wings. This time there is only shame, embarassment and frustration for what used to be so easy.

Is it any wonder that our aging people “fight the signs of aging”.  Why do we wonder why someone doesn’t want to accept meals on wheels or to go to a nursing home. There is no celebration – only loss. That is why the words dignity and respect are the most important words when you deal with elderly people and clients.

My mother is in this fight at the moment. She went back into hospital yesterday after yet another fall and really needs full time care – but she has yet to accept this fatal blow to her pride and sense of who she is and who she was. We will not push her – just like parents can not push a child to walk. She will make this decision in her own time and in her own way.  We need to respect her timing no matter how hard or how much we worry – it is her time and her decision.

But gee it is difficult to not try to take over to make it easier for her. Patience is not just a lesson for the aging person – but it is also one for the children of the aging person. To learn to wait – to learn to allow time – to learn to support without taking over. Patience was never my strong point – I guess this is something I will be learning more of in the coming months. I need to take a leaf out of mum’s neighbours books – their constant gentle support and respect for mum has been wonderful to watch. They are the true heroes in this story.

Why this post? Well the next time you look at an elderly person – consider the unknowing and remember the loss. It may help to understand why they are crabby, frustrated or zoned out. These are coping mechanisms. Your role is to understand this and help take the sting out of the issue as much as possible. After all – we will all be in that situation in years to come.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer

Speak to any parent (particularly any single parent) and if you catch them on an honest day they will tell you that combining parenting and work is not easy…  In fact it is darn hard work. Giving birth was easy compared to everyday life in the average household.

There simply isn’t enough time in the day to fit in all the everyday things you have to do – let alone all the “good parent” things you “should” be doing. If you have a child sick or injured, then life gets even more complex. Throw on top of it aged parent care and the juggling act starts to look like a three ring circus (or in my case the circus is on warp speed).

I spent a number of years as an EEO & Diversity officer (equal employment opportunity) and I have to tell you that work life balance is a total myth. Sometimes work wins – sometimes home wins, but at no time will it ever be perfectly balanced. The best any mortal can hope for is that over a lifetime that things sort of even out.

That’s why one of the most powerful marketing messages you can promise to parents is a simpler, easier life and more time. Parents crave that little bit of breathing space or “me time” in the same way a junkie craves drugs.

That’s why instant meals and take-away food is on the increase. That’s why personal concierges and to do list specialists are booming. That’s why the “short break” out performs long holidays.That’s why workplaces that offer flexible hours have higher morale and more loyal staff than those with rigid policies and inflexible work times.

Parents are some of the most under-rated people on the planet. The best thing you can do with your business marketing is to reinforce that they are doing a good job, help them to reconnect with their inner wisdom and assist them to give themselves a break. Parents are already under enough stress – give them a break and you will create loyal customers.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer

Many businesses focus just on cutting costs and providing cheap options in order to win market share. But what they forget is there is always a percentage of the marketplace who are willing to pay for a premium level experience. The psychology of marketing says you should look at what motivates different customers. Premium customers enjoy additional levels of service and support, and find that the value that this brings outweighs the additional cost.

A case in point is Gold Class Cinemas. Videos and DVDs were going to be the death knell of cinemas (or so the doom and gloom merchants said). So rather than cut the costs of a cinema experience, some smart businesses introduced Gold Class cinemas at a premium cost.

They took the cinema experience and worked out how they could add value at each part of the equation.

Seating - These cinemas have only limited numbers of seats, and the seats are of high quality recliner standard rather than traditional seats.

Food - Meals are available to be delivered to the seats (at premium prices) and going “Gold Class” is seen as something special, reserved for special dates, occasions or to impress someone.

Exclusive access – check in is akin to a private club, with separate entry, plush decor and muted tones. No pushing and shoving at the candy bar for Gold Class.

Higher class facilities – bathrooms are of a higher standard than regular rest rooms.

And are they popular even in an economic downturn? Try and get a Gold Class seat to the latest release. Each session is fully booked at least a fortnight in advance!

One tip Bob Bly (one of the greatest living copywriters) gave me was to always provide a Good, Better, Best price option for your clients. Each option should demonstrate the great value you provide, and don’t be afraid to include a premium option.

If something as simple as watching a movie at a cinema can have a premium option – what can you do for your business? Look at each and every step along the process and work out how you can add significantly more value at each stage. Create a good, better, best pricing structure and watch your profits increase.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance writer

If every you have been through a company merger, acquisition or buy-out, there comes a time when you need to talk with your staff. Most letters sent to team members are quite stilted, formal and written in heaps of legalise.

Today when Amazon bought out Zappos,  the Zappo CEO (Tony Hsieh) sent the most extraordinary & brilliant letter to his team. It is a very long letter so you may want to follow this link to read it in full.

What made it brilliant?

1. It is written from the heart. Period.
2. It is very funny in places – who else would describe the acquisition as “I personally would prefer the headline “Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree…”
3. It answers the burning questions for employees about their jobs, the management team & the culture in very clear, unambiguous, non-spin language.
4. It introduces the Amazon CEO in a very personable way – via a You Tube Clip.
5. It is very clear about who will be doing what and when.
6. It has sections for finance types and legal types to read (these are right at the bottom of the letter and are clearly marked so “regular” people don’t have to read them).
7. It doesn’t look like a professional copywriter, HR team or lawyer had their fingers all over it – but something that well crafted would have had a whole team of professionals adding in their thoughts.
   

I have been through more mergers than I care to mention over the years, and I have to say that this is definitely a letter to go into your swipe file as the best example of an acquisition letter you will see.  Take the time to read it – I’d love to hear what you think.

Exuberantly yours

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriter

Get Response is an autoresponder company – a very successful one. Previously many businesses chose to use them due to their reliable delivery, great pricing structure and useful features. They were rapidly closing on some of the big companies such as Aweber. But then …

… things turned sour. They undertook a massive overhaul of their system. This overhaul was announced to subscribers as a brilliant event that would give even more functionality and features. They explained that there may be the odd one or two glitches on changeover but to rest assured that within 24 hours all would be ironed out.

Hopes and expectations were high. The IT community waited and watched. Changeover day. One by one web forms failed through their 93,000 customers. Emails were sent multiple times or not at all.  RSS feeds failed, attachments disappeared and newsletters no longer were delivered. Basic features such as unsubscribe or change my details no longer worked. A litany of errors created a massive train wreck.

Aside from the techincal failures, they also had business failures. Pricing – one of the main USPs of the company was jacked up to the same level as Aweber, removing that competitive advantage. So people now were paying the same fees for a bug riddled system.

Throughout it all the customer support people wrote warm reassuring “your feedback is important to us … send us a ticket and we will get back to you” comments on the forum. Meanwhile tickets were never answered, Live-Chat timed out, forum posts only recieved the standard response and the phones rang out.

The CEO disappeared into hiding – throwing in the odd comment about how “the majority of customers were happy” without realising that the majority of his customers probably had no idea that their autoresponder system no longer worked. His big clients – the ones who made thousands of dollars per day or who simply were IT aware and tested things were not happy … And more importantly were telling all and sundry about their unhappiness on forums, Twitter & blogs.

Yes, errors are slowly being resolved day by day (it is now nearly 3 weeks since the changeover), but clients have to totally recode all of their webforms, and in many cases rewrite each and every email campaign. People are defecting in droves and it is a PR disaster of monumental proportions for Get Response.

What could they have done differently?

In the testing phase they could have listened to the feedback they were given.  Reading the forum posts, people who were involved in the testing had advised GR of the problems that resulted. Do not ask for feedback from your customers unless you are going to action it.

Test on all major platforms and browsers. Looking at the forum posts people are being advised that GR works in Firefox. That’s lovely but the majority of the world still uses Internet Explorer. In addition WordPress is the market leading blogging platform – it would have been useful to test the changeover on a test WordPress site.

If a program you launch generates the online equivalent of the Exxon Oil Spill – you need to hire a disaster recover PR company and get cracking on providing a highly visible, co-ordinated response. The CEO needs to be seen everywhere, explaining the situation and the steps to resolve it.

Rolling back to the previous version (similar to the Facebook debacle and New Coke launch) is a definite option that shouldn’t be discounted in the early days when it becomes apparent your launch has bombed.

Get back to people - if people complain with an issue, then the least that can be done is an acknowledgement of some form. Ideally there should be an ongoing list of bugs and the status of the fixes.

Hire people who can speak English and who can spell. The new website (aside from all the technical bugs) is full of spelling errors, typos and is very poorly written in parts. This is totally unacceptable for a major company. At the very least hire an editor to proof everything before going live.

Compensate loss – at the very least offer some compensation such as waiving of fees in acknowledgement of your error.

It will be interesting to watch over the coming months whether Get Response works its way out of the mess it has created, or whether the huge weight of public opinion and bad press will crash the company.

In the meantime – my apologies to each and every one of my clients. Please let me know of any further or continuing problems that you may encounter with my emails, newsletters, product delivery thanks. I will find a workaround wherever I can.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

In Australia we are coming to the end of the first series of Masterchef. There have been tears, surprises and interesting twists as we have watched non-chefs compete to be the first Masterchef. But what are the business lessons from this program?

• You don’t have to be perfect all the time. Sometimes you will be brilliant and sometimes you will stuff up. As long as you don’t stuff up more than your nearest competitor you will survive.

• Have a passion for what you do. Being passionate about your job or calling is the magic ingredient. You can’t fake passion.

• You can be nice and still succeed. The obviously obnoxious or competitive fall by the wayside. Nice people can succeed in the longer term.

• Practice and think about what you are doing. If you looked at the bags and rooms of each contestant throughout the series, each had favourite well thumbed cook books full of notes. They continued to re-read, learn and plan while they were competing. They didn’t stop learning. The ones who didn’t make it were the ones who thought they knew it all.

• Plan your implementation. Once you have a clear idea of what you are going to do, plan how you are going to implement it.

• Improvise. Not everything goes according to plan – at times you have to find another solution or “wing it”.

• Learn from your mistakes. Some things go really really badly. Work out why it failed and then learn from it. Failing doesn’t make you a bad person – it means you gave something a go and you needed another attempt. Practice and review your failings until you have mined all of the lessons from them.

• Take calculated risks. At times you need to take a risk to see if an idea or concept works. Calculate the return for the risk before you take the risk and work out a plan B in case it fails.

• Put your learning into practice. Each week they would be given a masterclass in some aspect of cookery. The ones who did well took aspects of that masterclass and immediately applied them into their next dish – with their unique twist or amendment.

• Have a clear vision. If your vision is fuzzy you get fuzzy results. The clearer your vision – down to colours, textures and taste – the better you will succeed. Vision is something that you discover – it takes time and trying out different approaches until you find the right vision for you.

• A bit of stress never hurt anyone. Two of the greatest stress monkeys have wound up in the finals. Yes, stress has cost them at times, but at other times it lifted them. Use your stress to give you that extra lift.

• Remember the bigger picture. This is a competition where one of the prizes is your own cookbook. It is not a competition to find the best amateur chef. These may be mutually exclusive goals. Remember you want to sell cookbooks – which means you need to appeal to a broad enough audience that will buy your book.  Don’t lose sight of why you are in the competition anyway.

• Make great friends and greater contacts. People will come your way – some will be friends and some can boost  your career. Be polite, warm and friendly to everyone you meet – you may never know which is which.

• Celebrate your successes. Bask in the warmth of success. Take time to celebrate and enjoy your achievements.

• Learn from the best. If you really want to succeed, watching a master in action can shorten your learning time. Take opportunities to learn from the best.

• Competition can lift your game. If you have no one to compete against you can become complacent and stale. A little bit of healthy competition can force you to lift your game to the next level.

• The most talented, consistent or gifted doesn’t win. Just because you have a gift doesn’t mean you will win. At times the other factors outweigh the gift.

So what about you … what business lessons have you learnt from Masterchef?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance writer

In another example of proving that sayings having a basis in fact, a study by the University of Dusseldorf in Germany reported in New Scientist has tested whether people really can smell fear.

The favoured lab rats of Universities (a group of uni students) had absorbent pads placed under their armpits before their final exams and again as they exercised. Some other students (who were probably not paid near enough for their participation) then sniffed the pads and had their brain activity measured.

The bad news is that smelling the exam pads – full of anxiety or fear secreted chemicals,  lit up the students brains like New Year’s Eve fireworks.  The researchers concluded that anxiety triggers the release of a chemical outside our conscious control, that automatically triggers similar feelings in anyone who sniffs it.

What does this mean for business? Well if you don’t want to make your customers nervous you may want to rethink placing highly anxious people on your front line. You may also want to up your anti-perspirant deoderant levels before big events – perhaps bathing in it may help stop the transmission of the chemical via your sweat.

Other than that – be aware that people can really smell your fear.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriters

In Australia, the Federal Government decided to give homeowners with no insulation a grant of $1600 to get their homes insulated. It is a very generous system as most homeowners should be able to get their homes insulated at no or little additional cost.  It was announced a few months back to give people time to plan, and give the industry time to get organised. So what have we seen?

As one of the households potentially gifted with insulation I took the system for a test run.

Well – lots and lots of new businesses have been formed to install insulation. The trouble is that almost none of them have websites, let alone any form of marketing material. They are relying on the Government site with it’s less than useless search facility to send them business.

The Government site was designed by a bureaucrat with no knowledge of how people actually search for something on the net. We never think …  “I will type in AVW Family Trust to find insulation installers in Brisbane”. The message is – you will need to find your insulation installers some other way – don’t rely on the government site.

If you hunt for a particular form of insulation (eg: foil batts or foil insulation – the best option for Brisbane homes) on Google you will find the manufacturers – but very few true installers. This tells me that the insulation installers websites that do exist are not well optimised for search engines.

I checked out the local papers – as I always try to support the local guyus. Zero ads (Remember – this was the first week of the new scheme. I would have expected at least a few ads.) Scratch that as an idea. I had no recall of any TV ads or radio ads – so that was no help.

I raided my business card index from all my networking contacts and events. No insulation installers amongst the hundreds of contacts.

I then blew the dust of the Yellow Pages that had been used as a door stop for the past year, thinking that as a last resort they may be useful. To put it bluntly I was wrong. The ads were great examples of how not to write Yellow Pages ads. Lots of same old same old ads – designed to promote the brand – and not promoting the types of insulation to be installed.

I finally tracked down 3 numbers of insulation installers who installed foil type insulation. Only 2 phones were answered. That left two quotes. Both were professional and turned up when they said they would. One took the time to educate and explain the differences between products in depth – explaining the pluses and minuses and being brutally honest with their products.  The other worked hard on the upsell of many extra features (would you like fries, chips and potato wedges with that).

We ended up going with the one who appeared more honest (if you install y instead of x you may get half a degree temp difference but it will cost another $300).

What is the lesson for other businesses? The ones who will benefit from this new scheme are the ones who are out front beating their drums to grab attention. Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you – get out there!

If you have no idea about the keywords people type into search engines to find you  – get professional SEO help. People use search engines to research products and to find businesses. If you can’t be found on the first few pages – you are not found full stop.

It’s OK to admit the failings of your products. Don’t try and make them something that they are not.

Finally – take a look at my process for finding a business. I really wanted a particular product and was prepared to dig for it.  Will your customers do the same or will they give up at the first hurdle?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriters

Recently I tweeted  “If you are not writing from the heart you are not communicating. Heartfelt words are the most powerful sales words on the planet.” The response was fascinating.

I had stacks of emails and direct messages from people from the “right on” camp as well as the “no – you have to write to the heart of the reader and not connect with your own heart” camp.

I have to disagree with the second camp. For me writing from the heart is the most important step.

In my experience many people get into copywriting from the perspective of making money. They may have been a great admin assistant but wanted to earn more money – so they put the title copywriter after their name. Many other people can be found in word factories in India or the Philippines – churning words out for cash.

Recently I tried a few of these word factories and ex-admin newbies out to check the quality of their writing – to say I was underwhelmed was an understatement. The words were formulaic, bland, and had very poor grammar. There was no spark, no passion and nothing to get excited about.They were writing from the chequebook and not the heart.

The best copywriters write because they have a burning desire within to express themselves in words. They have a passion for the businesses they work with and spend ages discovering the most amazing things within each business that they feel they just have to share with the world. They love what they do and the businesses they work with. They write from their heart and only put pen to paper when their hearts are bursting with excitement and joy for the business or product they are writing about.

The best copywriters are like diamond cutters – they find unremarkable lumps of rock and through their vision, skill and passion show the brilliant diamond within – showing everyone the true shining heart of that business or product.

When a good copywriter first connects with their heart and then applies their skill to their writing – then magic happens. It is at that moment that they also connect with the hearts of their readers – and sales automatically follow.

They connect on a deeper, emotional, almost visceral level. Their words vibrate with power and clarity and people naturally respond to the words. That’s what I mean by saying that heartfelt words are the most powerful sales words on the planet.

Without this heart felt connection with the words and the business, then the words are the same as fast food. They fill a space but they don’t nourish the soul.

So – which would you prefer? Words from the Heart or words from the chequebook? For me it’s a no brainer – it’s a heartfelt response.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriter

Last weekend I helped a client and friend at the Mind, Body, Spirit Festival. If you have never been to one of the MBS, they are the main alternative health and New Age tradeshows in Australia.  They are packed with niche businesses selling to passionate people interested in all things New Age – the perfect combination … if you know what you are doing.

So in today’s post I thought I would share with you the story of two very different stalls. My client’s stall and the stall opposite her.

The stall opposite had a great product that would naturally appeal to many of the visitors. It came in four different price points to suit all buyers. So far so good. But the problems with their strategy and marketing meant that they lost a lot of potential sales.

What were their mistakes?

• They only had enough brochures for the first day of the tradeshow and no business cards. The ultimate sin!

• The brochures they did have were bland, boring and had no call to action – so even if someone did take one, there was no reason for them to call, visit the website or buy the product.

• They did have one professional sign at the back of the stall – but the rest of the walls were blank. This made the stall quite uninviting and not worthy of a second glance.

• There were no prices on the products. The owner just told the people a price based on what he thought each person could afford. This meant his prices varied wildly throughout the day and were subject to his own desperation on how many sales he was/wasn’t getting.

• The display itself was monochrome – nothing to grab the eye or highlight features of his products.

• They didn’t make use of nearby poles to put up posters or publicise their products.

• The sales person spent a lot of time on their mobile phone and not engaging people walking by with either eye contact or a simple hello.

On a plus, they took advice – so by day 2 their sales improved and on the final day they did quite well.

So what about my client? Well Julie McLeod from Kharma Consulting is a very savvy marketer and had a very different experience of the MBS. She had massive sales and her website traffic after the show has gone through the roof.

Here’s a few of the things Julie did right.

• She knew her audience and stocked the products that her audience were looking for. She stayed within her niche and didn’t stock products outside her area. Narrowly focusing on your niche generally increases sales – you are seen as an expert.

• Even though her business is online – she used offline strategies to generate business to her online store. Use offline marketing to drive business to your website.

• Julie researched all of the issues her customers had asked about in the previous 12 months and ensured she had products that specifically addressed the issues. For example – she had a shelf display for “fertility” and another for “abundance” rather than just a loose collection of products. People looked at the issue and then chose products to solve their issue (the old features vs. benefits).

• She did a major purchase of a low price ticket item (incense) and due to her bulk buying could offer a massive offer (2 for $3) that still made her a profit while generating a lot of sales.  People taking advantage of the offer also spent time looking and buying additional items on the stall. Create a bargain offer with a low priced entry point into your business.

• All items were clearly priced. There were bright ‘shelf talkers” and large colourful star burst price tickets to grab attention. Make it easy for people to buy from you.

• All purchases (no matter how small) went into a colourful bag that included compelling marketing material directing people back to the website. Her trade stall banner was her website address. Always take the opportunity to cross promote your business and reinforce your brand.

• Small items of old stock from her store rather than being written off was wrapped in gift paper and added to the lucky dip box. The lucky dip box was on the opposite corner to the incense and grabbed people’s attention as they came from a different direction. This was very popular and again had the effect of people stopping to look and buy other products near the lucky dip. Shift old stock at cost price or below rather than writing it off and throwing it away (assuming the product is still safe).

• One of her incenses (loose sage leaves) were burning the whole event. People smelt the incense and then bought the product. People are attracted by smell – use it in your marketing.

• Julie planned the layout of her stall based on estimated direction of customers. No matter where the customers spotted the stall – the layout was eye catching, and had interesting products begging to be looked at. Have you looked at the view into your store from different perspectives? Do the highest foot traffic areas display the most profitable and highest selling items?

• She provided expert advice on each of her products if required (she adopted the strategy Pharmacists use in  explaining how to use medications – the shop girls could say the same thing, but it carries more weight if coming from someone “official”) Expert advice is valued. Who is your business expert?

• A number of high ticket items were included on the stall. These sold well – people are not afraid to spend on what they desire. Don’t make assumptions on what people can and can’t afford.

• She selected the stall based on busy foot traffic. It was a corner stall right near the main stage. Yes, during some speakers the aisles were blocked, but all that traffic had to go somewhere after the speakers – back past her stall and a large percentage stopped and bought. Always place your business near passing traffic.

• She had a sign on sheet for her newsletter. People signed up in droves to get more advice from Julie. She didn’t offer a prize for sign-up – just good quality information. Customers who asked Julie a question about the products they were buying were prompted to sign up for the newsletter. Her ezine list grew dramatically over the weekend. Never forget to get the email details of people and send regular informative emails to them with a minimum of 80% content. People value information – if you are heavy on the info and low on the sell you gain loyal customers.

• Finally, she spent a lot of time getting the energy and approach of her stall and her team feeling “right” and staying right throughout the days. Keeping everything balanced meant customers picked up on the feeling and were more comfortable with their purchases. How does your business feel – calm or frantic?

So, here were just a few of the many great strategies. What could you use in your business?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter