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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

Day 2 dawned and I missed the first speaker answering the 121 emails that had lobbed into my in-box overnight (the joys of running an internet business!)

Ari Gelper was the first speaker we saw. Fascinating how someone could create a 2 hour presentation out of the message “to get more sales – put in a chat box onto your website”.  He kept telling us how he was giving us amazing content – the best we would ever see. Well – in the words of Shakespeare “methinks he doth protest too much”.  Yes the software was useful – but two hours of rah rah about what was in effect a widget for a website – give me a break!

After lunch the brilliant John Carlton spoke. John is one of the world’s best copywriters and one of the people I learnt my craft from. I had never seen him present before – so wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Irreverant, rude, funny, challenging, shambolic, hilarious – all are words that come to mind … but the content was superb.

His view is that every person is in sales, and that sales is just a conversation between friends. If you have a great product that makes a difference to people, you are doing yourself and others a disservice if you do not do everything in your power to get the message out to the people who need it.

He took through audience through a brilliant process to craft their elevator chat – helping people craft their USP in real time, and critiquing the drafts. People chosen to have their elevator speech savagely critiqued were rewarded with an autographed bottle of beer (gives you an idea of the presentation).

John also looked at the rational and lizard brain reasons people make buying decisions – and why in all sales you need to provide people with rational reasons they can tell their friends as well tapping into the real reasons people buy.

The final speaker was Kerwin Rae. Kerwin was entertaining, funny and high energy. He looked at the science behind setting up effective joint ventures by analysing successful JVs such as McDonalds and Disney.

Things to consider:

1. Identify who is your target market
2. Identify their patterns of interest (what is the common theme amongst your target market)
3. Identify non-competing businesses that serve that market
4. Create a compelling and irresistible offer for both them and their clients
5. Make it a win-win-win offer
6. Identify all actionable steps
7. Set a deadline
8. Get an endorsement from the JV partner
9. Check the results
10. Work out what next

So what were my main take-aways from the weekend?

• Some of the best speakers were the least polished. They gave greater content and shared more of themselves in the process.
• There are lots of brilliant courses out there to build your skills that don’t involve formal study. Follow where your heart leads to take the next step in your business.
• In case I didn’t already know – copywriting rocks!  It is one of the least understood skills and the most critical for ongoing business success.
• Informal discussions with people who have already been there – done that are very powerful ways to fast track your development.
• Plus … a huge addition to my to do list of things to polish/improve/refine for our business

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Day 1 of the Ultimate Marketing Seminar saw 4 world class speakers grace the stage here at Brisbane – Siimon Reynolds, Adam Ginsberg, James Schramko and Brad Fallon.

It was fascinating watching them each tackle their topic (basically how to grow your business) from different angles – and how they wove their pitches to buy their seminars throughout their content.

Siimon Reynolds is definitely a showman. His pitch was very fast paced and content rich. His gems from decades in the marketing game were certainly high quality.

I particularly loved his stories of campaigns that worked like Bamboo Lingerie – a local lingerie store in the US that chalk stencilled onto the pavement “From here it look s like you could do with new lingerie. Bamboo Lingerie 200m”. Very clever, funny and cheap as chips to create.

I also liked his analysis of USP/ESP & TSP. USP = unique selling proposition, ESP = emotional selling proposition (the emotion you build your brand about) and TSP = Tribal selling proposition (where you create a tribe around your brand).

His question “Is what you’re doing living up to your marketing of your company” is one all businesses need to ask themselves – as if your marketing is creating one impression, but your company misses the boat on key customer touch-points then you are setting your business up for failure.

Adam Ginsberg is the most successful e-bay seller in history. Unfortunately his session was basically one long pitch – with zero real content. It was entertaining and amusing to watch – but without content to back up the fun, it left me hollow.

James Schramko is one of the truly nice guys in internet marketing. I have been fortunate to see James present a few times and to meet with him socially. He is as my grandma would say “one of nature’s true gentlemen”. He is a doer and not a polished high gloss speaker – what you see is what you get – honest, genuine and real. He spends most of his time happily building his business and and has only recently started presenting after much badgering by his colleagues.

James knows his stuff and went through what was in effect abeginners guide to the world of internet marketing. Showing many possibilities and ideas – and stretching imaginations. Having someone put together a coherent picture of how all the internet marketing pieces fit together and how people can harmonise them into a thriving business is rare. All I can say is if you truly want to succeed in Internet Marketing – James would be one of the ones to learn from. Check out James’s blog and get his e-book to get an idea of the sort of things he can teach you.

Finally Brad Fallon from Stompernet took the stage. Brad is an icon in the internet marketing world and this was the first time I had seen him present. What really stood out for me was how well read Brad was – his speak was littered with references to amazing books to tap into (and as you know my love of books you can imagine Amazon’s joy when I go shopping over the next few days to pick up the main ones).

So here’s a few to look for “Execution”, author Felix Dennis, “Predictably Irrational”, author Ken Fisher, “The Choice”, “It’s not luck”.

Brad’s presentation looked at a whole raft of business blocks that stop people from succeeding drawing from the best business theorists.  The insight that “every business has 1 thing that limits throughput the most”  and our job is to identify and eliminate the one thing is quite powerful. Think about it for a moment – “if you could make a lot more money in the next 6 months if I just (fill in the details about the one constraint)” – what would you do?

Brad demonstrated the power of the word free in campaigns and why the free line has shifted over the years.

He looked at four core limiting things that trip people up:

1. Reality is complex
2. Conflict is inevitable
3. Others are to blame
4. The sky is the limit

Finally he looked at how to create a “Mafia Offer” – one that customers can’t say no to. Very very clever and worth joining Stompernet to learn.

What else did I learn from the seminar – the value of upgrades. I paid for an additional upgrade package – which meant access to a VIP room. So what? Well at the simplest level it meant coffee without queueing, lunch and snacks. It also meant meeting people who were serious about their business (and I booked 2 new clients yesterday during the breaks).

The highlight was access to a cocktail party in the evening to chat with the speakers and other like minded businesses. From my side of things, talking with John Carlton (one of my copywriting heroes) was priceless. Catching up with James with my colleague Donna-Marie Coggins was also brilliant.

Well – off to get ready for Day 2

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

You don’t have to pay the national debt of a third world country to pick up great marketing lessons. Over the past 10 weeks I have sat through a group of Year 8 students from the local High School learning to debate – and the lessons that businesses can pick up from their experience is worth a motza.

1. Matter – manner – method. You will be assessed on your matter (information), manner (how you say what you say) and method (how organised is your approach and thinking). This holds true no matter which business you are in.
2. A little bit of confidence goes a long way. If you present confidently, it hides a multitude of flaws. Be confident in who you are and the power of what you have to say.
3. Drama is important. You need to create light and shade with your voice, build drama with your approach and use appropriate physical gestures to engage your audience. People love drama and to be entertained. No one bought something because they were bored into it.
4. You need to create signposts. People want to know what you are going to say, when you are going to say it and you need to remind them what you said at the end of your pitch. Signpost your pitch so people can follow along and they know exactly what you want them to do at each point.
5. Think of objections and counter them. People will always find reasons not to agree to your pitch. You need to think about what they may say and find real and compelling reasons to counter them. Even if you hear an objection you hadn’t considered, you need to find a great counter for that objection and persuade people that this objection is not relevant.
6. You can over-prepare. If you sound like you have pre-recorded your speech – people will not engage. People like the immediacy of your thoughts and ideas – which includes stumbles, falls and trips over words. People buy from people and not from recordings.
7. A smile is still important - as is eye contact. Use both regularly.
8. Take your time. When you pitch, you may come out of the gate speaking at a rate of knots. The floor is yours. It is OK to grab a sip of water and gather your thoughts before the first word is spoken.
9. Success is a team sport. You need to know the roles each of your team play in a pitch – and not cut across each other, but back each other up and reinforce each other’s points,
10. Facts are good – but don’t overdo them. Yes people like to hear the facts – but they also want to be engaged and emotionally involved. Long lists of facts put people to sleep. Balance facts with engagement and interaction

So there you have it. 10 brilliant marketing and copywriting techniques you can instantly apply in your business – and they came from a year 8 debating competition. And if the kids can learn this over a 10 week period through trial and error while still carrying full study workloads, there’s no excuses for business not to have a go!

Oh – and before you ask, yes … I am a proud mum. It was great to see the progress my daughter made over the time and given the constraints the team had. It was also interesting to watch team personalities come into play – with some of the kids more focused on self rather than team and winning rather than learning- but that is all part of the lessons of life that the kids have to experience. No … they weren’t ace debaters at the end. They did what they set out to do – which was learn, give things a go and to step up the plate. Each kid tried their best – even in the face of their fears of speaking in public – which is all you can ask of anyone.

Adults can learn a lot from kids at times. When was the last time you were willing to face potential public ridicule doing something new and terrifying – yet these kids all did it.

Look around you for other day to day opportunities to learn to build your business. Enlightenment comes from unusual sources.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Something really really bad has been happening to Australian TV ads. They are gradually being taken over by inane jingles sung by fiercely jolly people rather than providing actual content.

Case in point – the ever so annoying “Happy EOFYS” flogging Foxtel pay TV. The last thing anyone wants or needs is another celebratory holiday throughout the year. And to make it worse Foxtel seems to have an unlimited advertising budget which means it is played once per ad break for each of the major channels. I would prefer to sit through endless primary school musical performances rather than listen to this ad.

Then you have all of the products targeting men. Back in the 60′s all products aimed at women were accompanied by song – remember Mr Sheen anyone? Someone somewhere realised that singing to women about cleaning products was less than effective. But the descendants of these advertising imbeciles have grown up and have decided that men only buy products if there is music attached.

In Australia it was a mandatory advertising code for decades (well it seemed like it) that all beer ads must be accompanied by deeply inspiring music and preferably a good roughly sung jingle appropriate for a bunch of drunken blokes to sing along to.

This has trickled over into all men’s products in the last 6 months so everything from chainsaws to tinned food now has an accompanying jingle attached.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the jingles were actually interesting and told you something but with jingles like “the fully loaded man has balls of meat” (thanks Campbells for that literary gem), you begin to wonder what planet a lot of the big advertising types are on.

I know in a recession it has been shown that people look for greater entertainment – but whacking a jingle onto an ad and calling it entertainment is as about as effective as whacking a bikini clad female onto the bonnet of a car and calling it highlighting the features of the car.

Those advertisers who work on convincing their clients that a jingle would be great for them should be forced to go back and rewrite 1000 times

“Advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything” David Ogilvy.

David Ogilvy was the father of modern advertising and his words still ring true today. Jingles don’t work because:

• people have trouble hearing the words in jingles and
• selling is a serious business. How would you react if you went into a Sears store to buy a frying pan adn the salesman started singing jingles at you.

If you want to sell your product – focus on the basics. Highlight what makes it unique and interesting, and what difference it makes to people’s lives.  Do that and you will be half way to writing a decent ad that gets results and doesn’t irritate the heck out of potential customers.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriters

Ever heard of slick talking salesmen? Well it appears that they were right on the money.

Research reported in New Scientist has shown that people who use phrases such as “you know”, “I mean” and “isn’t it” are seen as less credible than those who don’t when they are speaking.

The study looked at a salesperson selling a scanner. If the person used hesitant language, even if the product they were promoting had better features and a lower price – then people were less convinced to buy the scanner.

… And if you really want to convince people, talk confidently non stop, really really quickly, without any pauses or hesitation which means people have no time to think about what you are saying (gee sounds a lot like one very popular self help guru on the market at the moment who talks like a rocket).

It all goes to show that persuasion is not just what you say, but how you say it. And the less time you have to think about something, the more the style of delivery matters (You Tube Videos fit that category – you have only a few short minutes to persuade someone).

So, if you catch yourself stumbling over your sales pitch or tripping over your You Tube spiel – you may want to spend some time rehearsing it to iron out the umms and ahs. Toastmasters anybody?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writers

If you have a website, chances are you want to learn how to boost your traffic numbers and customers to your site. One way you can do it is by improving your rankings in search engines through things such as SEO copywriting (which is where we can help you), or through other SEO on-page optimisation strategies and off-page strategies such as link building.

The other way to grab more traffic is through using Adwords. Adwords are the results that appear in the right hand side column of search engine results and the advertiser pays each time someone clicks on the link to learn more about the ads.

Adwords are a great tool – but if you don’t know what you are doing it can be very costly with little result. The good news is that you just need some basic knowledge and information to make the most what is a fantastic tool.

So how do you get the information? Donna-Marie Coggins was one of our Heart Harmony team and has her own business teaching newbies to the world of the internet exactly how to do each of the main steps you need for an online business.

Donna-Marie has the patience of a saint and is one of the loveliest and warmest people you will ever meet. She has a real gift for teaching people the internet basics.

Recently she interviewed Arran Robertson, an expert at Google Adwords campaigns and has agreed to share the interview for free to readers of this blog. If you want to listen to the interview then hop over to this special interview - http://worldinternetmarketers.com/adwords-interview/

It is a great interview and worth listening to if you want to test the waters of adwords.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – SEO copywriters

Recently we have seen a massive growth in video and podcasting for businesses with a web presence, with many copywriters now being called on to help create scripts for these new areas.

We know with these mediums it is not just the words you say but how you deliver them that creates the best result, which is why I was fascinated by this study in New Scientist that found woman’s voices become more attractive when they are the most fertile in their cycle.

The study tested both men and women rating the attractiveness of women’s voices counting from 1-10 at different parts of their menstrual cycle. Both men and women rated the voices to be most attractive in the peak of their fertility and least attractive if the voice was recorded during non-fertile times. This was borne out by a second study that found lap dancers earned more tips during their fertile days.

This leads into a whole new interesting question of marketing and voice-overs. Can you imagine only recording voice-over spots during certain times during a woman’s cycle? Can you see a rotating group of female newsreaders who only present during their fertile days?

Like all marketing science, you need to test and measure to see if this makes a significant difference in your marketing results. If you are a female and do your own speeches, recordings, podcasts or videos – it certainly can’t hurt to try recording at different times in your cycle and testing the result.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – SEO Copywriter

If you haven’t heard the name Susan Boyle in the past few weeks you have been living under a rock. This is the middle aged Scottish spinster who wowed them on the Britain’s Got Talent. Many people have been asking me why her – why now – why has she caught the imagination of people around the world?

To answer this question we will delve back into psychology and go back to when you were a child. Remember back to the days when you were tucked into bed at night and your parent would read you bedtime stories of heroes and gorgeous brave women.

These stories cross all cultural boundaries and follow what is now termed archetypal stories. These are themes of universal appeal and generally include good overcoming evil, triumphing after long odds or one of the most popular archetypes of all – the person whose outside didn’t reflect their inside talent and through some form of magical transformation their beauty finally shone through.

Think of Cinderalla, the Swan Prince, Beauty and the Beast, and in more modern times Nanny McPhee.  We love to hear of stories where people are more than what they seem on the outside and are transformed.

With Susan Boyle she has all of the elements of a number of archetypal stories. Susan is the classic Cinderalla story – pure and chaste and her outside appearance hiding her inner beauty.  She also has an element of the hero’s journey thrown in for good measure – fighting the evil judges who stunned by her voice cower back in amazement.

In down economies people want hope – they crave success and transformation. They want to believe that some day they too will be recognised for their unique gift to the world. They hope and dream of being special – and stories like Susan’s show that it is possible.

Is it any wonder that she has become such a phenomenon with over 26 million people watching her video on You Tube?

What can you learn from this? Quite simply archetypal stories and parables are powerful tools to tap into the psyche of people. If appropriate, use these themes in your marketing and you will have brilliant results.

Of course – it doesn’t hurt if you have a great voice like Susan!

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

When you buy a house, you want one that is safe and in a good neighbourhood.  But what about one that is safe from the risk of strokes?

A recent study reported in Scientific American used some pretty funky maths to show that your risk of having a stroke is correlated with how many fast food restaurants are in your area.

If you have more than 33 fast food restaurants in your area, you are 13% more likely to have a stroke than those with just 12 fast food restaurants. The risk increases by 1% for every single additional fast food restaurant in your area. Fast food restaurants in this study are defined as selling pre-packaged food, offer take away service, have limited or no waiting staff and require people to pay before giving them food.

Of course some of the big fast food chains are not happy with the findings and have resorted to Yes Minister style rebuttals:

• discrediting the evidence
• undermining the recommendations
• discrediting the person producing the report

Reading Yes Minister “The Greasy Pole” episode should be mandatory for all people in marketing, government and business to learn how to deal with negative press.

What does this have to do with marketing? Well – for real estates think of how you could use this study to your benefit in your listings (13% less chance of strokes if you live here!  People would contact you if nothing else to ask you about the stats and then you could have a brilliant chance to pre-screen them for your properties). For personal trainers – how can you use the negative stats in your area to boost your business (If you live in the x district you have a 13% increased chance of stroke. Want to reduce your risk?)

The point is any statistical report is a marketing gold mine. You just need to find a way to link the report to what you are selling.  Keep an eye out for any great surveys or reports and then get creative with your marketing.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter