Cunningly Clever Marketing
The Inside Secrets of a Marketing Legend
By Andrew Wood
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 Legendary Marketing
Legendary Marketing
http://www.LegendaryMarketing.com
800-827-1663
License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
What people are saying about
Cunningly Clever Marketing
“I love Andrew Wood’s book. It made me laugh, wince, nod in agreement, howl, point out a statement to my wife, and become wiser in the ways of both marketing and reality. A superb read!” - Jay Conrad Levinson, author, the Guerrilla Marketing series
“Every auto dealership in the world should read this book; it’s time to do things differently!” - Mike Steventon, Head of Automotive Unit, KPMG, UK
“I found the new and practical concepts in this book, BRILLIANT!” - Alan Sutherland, CEO, Environmental Technologies
“This is a must-read book for every business owner. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, it’s insanity to keep doing the same marketing over and over again and expect to get different results. Yet, as the host of the radio program New Construction Strategies, my guests describe how their old marketing approaches are not working as their profit margins continue to decline. Fortunately, Andrew Wood’s book, Cunningly Clever Marketing, provides a path for every business owner, including contractors, to shake up their marketing approach and increase their profits. Why do I recommend a competitor’s product? Simply because it’s that good. - Ted Garrison, author, Strategic Marketing for Contractors
“Andrew Wood understands what many marketing professionals fail to grasp: Marketing should produce a profitable response. You will enjoy his personal story and powerful insights into building a successful business through cunningly clever communications. - Troy Waugh, author, Power Up Your Profits and 101 Marketing Strategies
“Short, to-the-point chapters focus on aggressive marketing that pays for itself. The author emphasizes building a list of prospects and hard-hitting, dramatic communication with them.” - Dan Janal, founder, PRleads.com; author, Dan Janal’s
Guide to Marketing on the Internet
~ ~ ~
Summary Contents
(A detailed Table of Contents follows)
Section 1: The Critical Paradigm Shift to Cunningly Marketing Clever
Section 2: Your USP: Powerful Positioning
Section 3: The Art of Optimum Pricing
Section 4: Print Advertising that Actually Works
Section 5: Turning Your Website Into a Money-Making Marketing Machine
Section 6: Cunningly Clever Email
Section 7: Cunningly Clever Sales Letters
Section 8: Marketing as Entertainment
Section 9: Cunningly Clever Offers
Section 10: Maximizing Your Profits
Section 13: Marketing Sabotage
Section 14: Cunningly Clever Marketing
~ ~ ~
Detailed Contents
Introduction
Every Book Comes with Your Own Personal Marketing Vault of Additional Cunningly Clever Ideas!
* * *
~ Section 1 ~
THE CRITICAL PARADIGM SHIFT TO CUNNINGLY CLEVER MARKETING
1 Almost Everything I Learned About Marketing I Learned in a Karate School!
2 So What Do You Want to Sell Me? Good Luck with That Marketing!
3 David and Goliath - Millions in Sales on a Shoestring!
4 The 20 Top Reasons Why Most Marketing Fails!
5 Mastering the Paradigm Shift from the Type of Marketing that People Expect You to Do to the Marketing that Actually Works!
6 Why He With the Biggest Database Always Wins!
7 There Are Only Three Ways to Grow a Business…Any Business!
8 Preach to the Choir - Don’t Try to Covert the Muslims
* * *
~ Section 2 ~
YOUR USP: POWERFUL POSITIONING
9 Businesses Unclear on the Concept
10 Claiming Your Unique Selling Proposition Before Someone Else Does!
11 Digging Deep for the Difference that Matters
12 Avoiding the Muddle in the Middle
13 Southpaw Marketing
14 What’s in a Name?
15 The Awesome Advantage of Cunningly Clever Names
16 Put the Benefit to the Customer in Your Business or Product Name
17 Leverage Existing Perceptions, Don’t Fight Them!
18 Keep It Simple
19 Cunningly Clever Logos
20 Does Your Business Have Customers, Clients, or Partners?
* * *
~ Section 3 ~
THE ART OF OPTIMUM PRICING
21 How to Double Your Profits Overnight!
22 The Millionaire, the Plumber, and the Dentist - Timeless Lessons in Value Pricing 61
23 The Most Profitable Expansion I Never Made!
24 When the Customer Says No to Your Price - Double It!
25 How an Ad in the LA Times for Motivational Guru Anthony Robbins Made Me $18,000 in Less Than a Minute!
26 Make the Entry Easy - Then Upgrade
27 Jay Abraham and the Dumbest-Ever Five-Million-Dollar Marketing Idea
28 Change the Experience - Triple Your Price!
29 Accomplishing the Million-Dollar Turnaround Two Bucks at a Time!
30 Beating the Discounters by Changing the Game!
31 The Law of Three
32 How to Quickly Raise $250,000 in Cash without a Loan, a Rich Uncle, or a GUN!
* * *
~ Section 4 ~
PRINT ADVERTISING THAT ACTUALLY WORKS 85
33 It’s Really No Fun Being a Lemming - They Fall Off Cliffs and Die!
34 Cunningly Clueless Advertising
35 No Awards, Just Profits - How to Design a Winning Ad in 60 Seconds!
36 Getting Inside Your Prospects’ Heads with Your Marketing Message 95
37 He Never Cleaned His Room Before...
38 Have Some Fun with Your Advertising Photos to Attract Attention!
39 Why You MUST Grab Your Readers’ Attention with Your Headline or Kiss Your Money Goodbye!
40 The 12 Formulas for Writing Headlines that Make Prospects Want to Read Your Copy!
41 The Most Powerful Word in the World
42 How to Get a Thousand Times More Value from Your Print Ads - Stop Trying to Sell
43 How to Cut Your Ad Budget in Half with No Loss of Response!
* * *
~ Section 5 ~
TURNING YOUR WEBSITE INTO A MONEY-MAKING MARKETING MACHINE
44 How I Turned 360,000 Website Visitors into Dust Instead of Cash!
45 Why Your Current Website Isn’t Making You Any Money!
46 Why Your Company’s Current Web Strategy Is Almost Certainly Wrong - and Costing You Millions in Lost Revenue!
47 Rapidly Building Your Prospect Database
48 The Unknown and Largely Ignored Secrets of Effective Website Design
49 How Much Information Is Too Much Information on Your Website?
50 The Importance of Being Content Rich If You Don’t Want to Be Poor!
51 Why Your Website Should Be an Ad Salesman’s Worst Nightmare!
52 The Great Search Engine Con - Are You a Victim?
* * *
~ Section 6 ~
CUNNINGLY CLEVER EMAIL
53 Content Is King When It Comes to Building Lists, Traffic, and Income!
54 The Changing Face of Email Marketing - How to Boost Your Delivery Rates!
55 Quick Ways to Get Opt-In Subscribers for Your Ezine and Offers!
56 Slicing and Dicing Your Database for Optimal Response!
57 E-bolt Campaigns for Maximum Conversion of Leads to Sales!
58 Use In-Bound Emails as Sales Leads
59 An Embarrassingly Brilliant Mistake!
60 How I Made $75,000 in Three Days from an 11-Page Email No One Read!
61 Email Response and Conversion Rates
62 Quick Start to Major Profits!
* * *
~ Section 7 ~
CUNNINGLY CLEVER SALES LETTERS
63 It’s Hard to Beat Old-Fashioned Direct Mail
64 Why You Should Go to Ridiculous Lengths to Handcraft Your Prospect Mailing List…If You Actually Want an Astonishing Response to Your Mailings!
65 Building Your Million-Dollar Mailing List in Six Weeks or Less!
66 Send Cunningly Clever Sales Letters to Old Lists to Uncover Real Prospects
67 A Short But Critical Course in How Prospects Sort Mail!
68 20 Proven Techniques to Massively Increase the Chance Your Mail Gets Opened and Read!
69 The Lost Art of Storytelling: Connecting with Your Readers!
70 $1,742 in Actual Sales per Letter Mailed!
71 The Seven-Million-Dollar Sales Letter - Are You Insane?
72 Thunderbolt Marketing - The World’s Most Devastatingly Effective Marketing Strategy
* * *
~ Section 8 ~
MARKETING AS ENTERTAINMENT
73 The Fine and Profitable Art of Entertaining Prospects While You Pitch Them!
74 Outrageous Marketing Campaign Generates a Million Dollars in New Business for a Michigan Resort!
75 Informational Magazine Drives Product Sales While It Entertains
76 A Soft Sell with Big and Lasting Results!
77 Building Your Client Base Early
78 Spreading the Good Word - Connecting with Customers After They Leave
79 Instructional DVD Entertains as It Sells
80 Trump, Dr. Phil, Ozzey, Little Richard, Elvis, and Dr. Evil Lend a Marketing Hand
81 Why You Should Treat Your Customers Like Dogs
* * *
~ Section 9 ~
CUNNINGLY CLEVER OFFERS
82 Your Secret Weapon in the Battle for Massive Response!
83 Why Understanding Lifetime Customer Value Is the Key to Unlocking Your Irresistible Offer
84 WAIT! - My Product Is Wonderful and My Clients Are Sophisticated - I Don’t Want to Offer Hokey Discounts and Special Offers!
85 Offers Do NOT Have to Be DISCOUNTS!
86 Do Over-the-Top Offers Really Work?
87 Offer Terms to Enhance Your Irresistible Offer
88 Reduce Risk and Build Trust to Make Your Offer Even MORE Irresistible
89 Ask for Specific Action on Your Offer
90 Quick, Quick, Hurry - Create a Sense of Urgency for Your Offer!
91 Test a Series of Different Offers to Tap into Different Motivations
* * *
~ Section 10 ~
MAXIMIZING YOUR PROFITS
92 Hunting for Big Game!
93 Cruising on the SS Income Maximization
94 Black Belts, Blizzards, and Sunscreen! The Critical Importance of Perfect Timing
95 Cashing In on Your Hidden Assets
96 Customer Audit Reveals Hidden Gold
97 Powerful Strategic Alliances
98 Getting Your Message to the Perfect Target Market - for FREE!
99 Building a Referral Machine
100 Understanding the Psychology of Referrals
101 How to Ask for Referrals So You Get Them from Every Single Customer Without Fail!
102 Be Specific When Asking for Referrals
103 Diamonds under Your Feet - Opportunity Is Everywhere - You Just Have to Look
* * *
~ Section 11 ~
PERSONAL BRANDING
104 So What Do You Do for a Living?
105 Would You Buy a $200 Pair of Jeans from Bruce Lipshitz?
106 Bag Boy Doubles His Profits with a Cunningly Clever Change in Job Titles
107 How You Can Become the World’s Leading Expert in Your Industry in Less than 60 Seconds!
108 Once You Are on a DVD, You Are on TV!
109 Top 10 Ways to Quickly Enhance Your Personal Brand and Industry Status!
110 Standing Out from the Crowd with a Personal Signature
111 How to Become an Instant Author
112 24 Realtors - Hmmm…Which Should I Choose!?
* * *
~ Section 12 ~
NINJA MARKETING
113 Stealth Marketing Techniques So Cunningly Clever Your Competitors Will Pull Out Their Hair!
114 Taking Out Your Competition with a Bottle of Dom Perignon
115 Tricks of the Trade Shows
116 Sponsor Yourself to Success
117 Customers Want Recognition! Give It to Them!
118 Fish Where the Fish Are If You Want to Eat Tonight!
119 Uncovering Your Competitor’s Customers in a Matter of Minutes
120 B2B Customers Lists Are Even Easier to Find!
121 Free Product Uncovers Competitors’ Clients with Devastating Effect!
122 Yellow Pages Savvy Increases Calls by 500% While Decreasing Ad Size 50%
123 Getting Other Businesses to Willingly Attract New Customers for You
124 Enlisting Friends and Family to Come to Your Aid
* * *
~ Section 13 ~
MARKETING SABOTAGE
125 Why Personal Prejudice Destroys Most Brilliant Marketing Campaigns Before They Even Start!
126 But Everyone Loves My Ad!!!
127 In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man Is King!
128 A Strange Visit to Budget Fantasyland
129 Seduction by Numbers
130 Why Perfection Kills Great Campaigns
131 Use Speed as Your Strategy!
132 Are You Wasting Your Marketing Money?
133 I Have Seen the Enemy and the Enemy Is Me!
* * *
~ Section 14 ~
CUNNINGLY CLEVER MARKETING
134 Selling the World’s Most Precious Commodity - Time!
135 How to Ethically Clear Out a Bad Product Without Discounting a Dime!
136 How a Cartoon Character Grabbed My Heart and Yanked Me by the Wallet into a Bowling Alley 14 Miles Away!
137 Cars, Boats, Books, and Bucks - The Important Art of Getting Paid
138 Getting Paid! Marketing to Past-Due Accounts
139 Getting Free Ads and Media Time
140 The Complicated Way Customers Think About Your Business
141 Selling Ferraris on eBay and the Power of the Damaging Admission
142 How to Attract Perfect Clients and Weed Out the Riffraff!
143 The Secret to Exponential Growth for Your Company
144 Going Global by Following a Marketing System that Works Anywhere!
145 The Simple Secret to a Massive Increase in Sales
~ ~ ~
INTRODUCTION
MUST READ
Very Important Introduction
Every Book Comes with Your Own Personal Marketing Vault of Additional Cunningly Clever Ideas!
This is no ordinary book. In fact, the pages of this book are just the beginning of your journey into the secret world of Cunningly Clever Marketing. Along with this book you get direct links to hundreds of additional samples, case histories, websites, and other priceless information.
The Cunningly Clever Marketing Vault gives you instant web access to audios, videos, ads, special reports, brochures, software - in fact, almost everything mentioned in this book is at your fingertips if you want to dig deeper into any strategy or concept discussed!
But that’s all an additional priceless bonus let’s talk about this book!
In the following pages I’m going to share with you a lot of exciting ideas and concepts. I’m going to give you specific examples and case histories. I’m also going to tell you in detail about what works and what doesn’t.
Best of all, I’ll prove to you why something you have suspected for years is almost certainly true: Most of the money you spend on marketing is a disgusting waste of money!
Your current marketing is just not working the way it should!
In fact, it may not be working at all!
Websites are launched with almost none of the necessary back-end tools in place behind their flash façades to automatically increase business.
Direct mail is sent to people who have no interest in what you are selling.
Ads are run in publications that few people actually read. Agencies are obsessed with “brand,” “image,” and “feel” because they don’t understand how to actually make their marketing produce results. They would rather focus on THEIR abstract terms instead of YOUR revenue.
In this book I’m going to give you the inside secrets to squeezing every ounce of revenue from any marketing you ever undertake. Along the way I’m going to destroy a number of marketing myths and help you make the paradigm shift from the type of marketing most people think works to the type of marketing that will actually make you millions!
While the examples in the books are rooted in those businesses I know best, these ideas and techniques can be adopted, tweaked, and used to improve response in any business, in any country!
Let’s get started...
Andrew Wood
P.S. A campaign is Not Cunningly CLEVER unless it increases leads and, ultimately, sales!
~ ~ ~
Section 1
The Critical Paradigm Shift to Cunningly Clever Marketing
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER 1
Almost Everything I Learned About Marketing I Learned in a Karate School!
For a little more than 10 years, from the mid-Eighties to late Nineties, I was in the karate business. I built one small school in San Marcos, California into a national chain of 400 schools, starting with just $5,000 in cash and big dreams.
Along the way I learned some very important marketing lessons. The kind you only learn firsthand, when every single penny you spend comes out of your own pocket and has to produce results for you to survive!
Later I published my own magazine, owned a catalog company and advertising agency, and built a world-leading software company. While my knowledge of marketing increased rapidly along the way, I never forgot the lessons learned in that first small karate school.
Nor did I ever forget that the real goal of marketing is to produce income!
But allow me to share with you how my passion for marketing all started...
All I Ever Wanted to Be Was a Golf Pro!
Lack of talent held me back from a career in golf - but golf launched my career in marketing!
But one small detail held me back from a career on the PGA Tour: lack of talent! I was good, but not nearly good enough.
As fate would have it, my life-long love of cars paid off one dreamy afternoon as I waited to get off work. I sat on the bag rack outside the clubhouse in the balmy Florida air, having not seen a car for four hours. Suddenly I heard a loud whining noise and a silver 308 Ferrari screamed into view at the bottom of the driveway. Ignoring the posted speed limit by at least 40 mph, it quickly stopped in front of me. I took the clubs out of the passenger seat, the only place they would fit, and attached them to a golf cart.
The stocky, moustached owner got out and handed me a tip.
“Nice car!” I beamed.
“Yeah, thanks,” he said and drove off to park.
As he walked back I bombarded him with questions about the car, all of which he gladly answered. Then he said, “Hey, kid, do you play golf?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Are you any good?” he asked. “Yeah, I’m off scratch,” I said. “Think you can help me?” “Sure!”
“Okay, what time do you get off?” “3 pm,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll hit balls ’til then. Come meet me on the range when you’re done because I suck; maybe you can help!”
As it turned the out, the man in the Ferrari was in the karate business and we swapped golf lessons for karate instruction. Soon after, I was accidentally thrust into a new career in the martial arts world.
My lifelong love of cars also contributed to my career change!
The Turning Point to Greatness
I bought my first school in San Marcos in 1986 from an older instructor who was moving to a larger town in an effort to grow his business. Not surprisingly, he failed.
Meanwhile, I turned his old school into a modest success in that I made enough money to make my car payment and pay the rent. However, I soon realized that whatever I was making was not enough, and so I did what everyone in the karate business does when faced with that situation: I opened another school!
In late 1987, I bought a second small karate school in Irvine, California with no money down from a doctor who had invested in the business and just wanted his name off the lease. The first month the business lost $1,000, the second month it lost $1,000, the third month it would have lost another $1,000 except I was already broke.
Sure, the phone rang occasionally or someone walked in with a coupon, but the weeks came and went with little real progress and zero profits.
Finally, one day in utter despair I sat down with a yellow pad and began some serious soul searching.
First, I asked myself what I was doing wrong.
Second, and perhaps most important, I wondered what I was going to do about it.
The simple act of writing questions down on paper can bring amazing clarity. I quickly realized (surprise, surprise) that the first thing I needed was paying customers. I also realized that my ads were not working, since the phone wasn’t ringing.
Please understand what kind of Quantum Leap thinking was going on at this point. Most business owners or managers don’t ever think like that when it comes to growing their businesses. Instead, they are far more likely to subscribe to the Professor Slutsky theory.
The Professor Slutsky Theory
For those of you not familiar with the good professor’s work, allow me to digress a moment. The noted professor did pioneer work with frogs. He started his experiments with a perfectly good frog. He yelled “jump” until the frog moved and he then measured the leap.
Then, under anesthesia (in the most humane way possible), he amputated one of the frog’s front legs and repeated the experiment.
After measuring again, he amputated the frog’s other front leg, yelled “jump” and measured the leap, which as you can guess was decreasing. The frog’s back left leg was cut off and again the professor yelled “jump.” The frog’s wobbly attempt was duly measured, whereupon the final leg was removed. The professor yelled “jump” once more but the frog did not respond. At which point, Professor Slutsky concluded that, “after amputation of all four legs … the frog became deaf.”
I mention this story because whenever marketing does not work, most business owners immediately point to the medium rather than the marketing itself. The newspaper doesn’t work, TV doesn’t work, radio doesn’t work, and the web is just worthless hype! Rarely, if ever, do they consider the simple fact that their marketing SUCKS!
Eureka!
I came to that exact realization one October morning in 1987. What followed was a decision that changed my life forever.
After acknowledging that I didn’t REALLY know the first thing about marketing, I rushed to the local bookstore and bought all eight of their marketing books. The first was David Ogilvy’s classic, Ogilvy on Advertising.
I was amazed to learn how changing a simple headline could produce a 500% increase in response.
How adding a picture of scissors next to a coupon could increase redemption by up to 35%, how reverse type (white letters on black) sharply decreases readership, and so on.
Before I finished the second book, I ordered 20 other books! I was like a man possessed… highlighting, underlining, and taking notes for 30 straight days. All through the Christmas holiday I soaked up marketing information like a sponge.
After taking it all in and completely changing my approach (see advertising chapter), I designed some new ads to run the second week of January.
Bingo!
The phone rang off the hook. I signed up 30 new students in a single month, as opposed to the five I typically signed up! I was ecstatic, but realized there was still work to be done. If I could get such a massive increase in response just by studying the gurus of marketing, perhaps I could capitalize on these leads even more by improving my sales skills. I purchased tapes from the likes of Dale Carnegie, Tom Hopkins, Joe Girard, Zig Ziglar, and others. Suddenly, instead of closing two out of ten leads, I was closing eight out of ten and it didn’t cost me a dime more to do it!
Next, I turned my attention to techniques like customer retention, newsletters, thank-you cards, and follow up. I adopted the tactics I found in books like Carl Sewall’s Customers for Life. By the end of the year customers were staying an average of six months instead of three!
Imagine what it could do for your business if customers bought twice as much or stayed twice as long!
Nationwide Franchise from Scratch in Just Six Years!
At 27 years of age, my second year in business, I walked out of a 1250-square-foot karate school in a suburban strip mall with $128,000 in my pocket - a net gain of $121,000 over my previous year’s income. Six years later, I had 125 franchise schools plus 275 affiliates nationwide and was making millions.
Lots of people built martial arts empires based on teaching styles or their fighting reputation. I did it solely on the RESULTS of my marketing system. I did it by creating a sales and marketing system that could be duplicated. Regardless of teaching style or location, a school owner could follow the blueprint and be guaranteed a predictable result for his time, money, and effort.
It’s a system I have used in hundreds of businesses since and one whose foundations I am about to share with you.
There is no quicker way to grow your business than by improving the RESPONSE of your marketing.
A single Cunningly Clever campaign can vault your business to the very top of your industry!
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER 2
So What Do You Want to Sell Me? Good Luck with That Marketing!
Do you want to sell me a house? A car? A vacation? A club membership? A new credit card? A funeral plot? Life insurance? Stocks? Whatever it is, I am, like you, on the “A” prospect list. People like you and me make a decent income and we are not afraid to part with a little money to buy things.
But - and it’s a BIG BUT - most of the marketing we receive to entice us to part with our money is doomed to failure.
This week American Express/Delta sent me six letters (all the same letter) addressed to every company I have ever owned, two of which I dissolved a decade ago! I left all of the letters out on the dinning room table to take a picture of them, which I was going to use to illustrate waste and poor mailing list quality - especially interesting since American Express sells their mailing lists!
Unfortunately, my wife, who has a cleaning fetish, threw them away. She thought they were junk mail “since they were all the same letter!”
I need not have worried, the following week all six letters showed up in the mail again.
What does it say about a company that has such incredibly wasteful marketing practices? I mean, the odd duplicate is acceptable, even expected, but a dozen letters in a week!
You’re killing trees, people!
How about the $50 coffee-table book and boxed writing set that a North Carolina real estate development, The Cliffs, overnighted to my 14-year-old son as “sales material” after he visited their website and requested more info? A beautiful package full of photographs that told you absolutely nothing useful about the land or homes they were attempting to sell to a 14-year-old with five hundred bucks in the bank (which is not likely to stay there beyond the next version of Xbox!)
Or Porsche of North America who sent me a $100 sales kit for their new turbo rather than a simple letter offering me, an existing customer, the first test drive when the new model arrived in my local showroom. I sold the sales kit on e-bay for $48 and bought a different car when the leasing department told me I had to pay the same rate I had paid the first three years (although the car was now half its original value) if I wanted to continue to own the car. Or I could drive 150 miles to the dealer and negotiate new terms!!
A high-end resort sends me an e-mail offer in 5-point type. I can read it but I know for a fact that 55% of people over forty can’t, so they won’t! I also know most of their prime customers are in their 50s! Amazing, but typical of many high-end resorts. Some 23-year-old web-graphics guy thinks big text looks uncool so he uses small-type text. No one thinks to actually check this “small” but important fact and so the email offer is doomed to deletion before it’s ever read. If you look at the resort’s website, you will see the trend continued! Nice, neat, and un-readable to well over 55% of their potential customers.
Nike, after a brilliant long-copy campaign a few years ago, just ran a series of two-page ads in 8-point reverse type (white type on a black background). It looks way cool, only it’s so small you can’t actually read it!
All of these examples are current, insane, and true. Big companies, small companies, and probably your company waste untold fortunes on ineffective marketing.
Just because a company is BIG or well known does NOT mean their marketing works (that is, produces leads and sales) and certainly does not mean their marketing is worth emulating.
Most large companies have TERRIBLE MARKETING!
Don’t copy them!
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER 3
David and Goliath - Millions in Sales on a Shoestring!
At the same time as most organizations waste billions on ineffective marketing, others turn small budgets into Cunningly Clever results. Take Garland, the Michigan Resort that this year generated 1.7 million dollars in sales from just over 1,100 plain old sales letters, without discounting anything, in perhaps the worst economy in the United States of our lifetime! That figure does not include the onsite spending of those booking, so in reality you are looking at over two million dollars in sales from a campaign that cost just $20,000!
Or take the start-up franchise that grew from one location to over 150 franchisees in just 24 months with a relentless direct mail campaign aimed only at a hand-picked list of 197 opinion leaders in the industry!
How about the daily-fee golf club that built an opt-in email list of 60,000 golfers in just nine months using an insane idea. They simply offered free golf at the beginning and end of their season two months when they never made any money anyway!
Or the business-to-business website run from a garage that was making $15,000 a month its third month in business, with a start-up cost of just $6,000. Their secret was a collaboration that got them access to 15,000 business owners in their industry for free! Now there’s a dot-com success story!
How about a struggling consulting business that, instead of discounting, tripled its price and quadruped its business in just three months.
Imagine a single-page sales letter that starts by questioning the reader’s sanity. That’s made millions in numerous different industries!
Insulting and insane, but immensely profitable!
Just because a company is small or has out-of-the-box ideas that you might THINK are from another planet does not mean they will not produce spectacular results!
Most Cunningly Clever marketing does not look like everybody else’s marketing!
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER 4
The 20 Top Reasons Why Most Marketing Fails!
In the TWO minutes or so you will spend reading the next few pages, I am going to save you hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of trial and error by detailing exactly why most businesses fail to reach their marketing goals. This is not subjective; this is not my opinion; it is based on over 20 years of research into the science of marketing and the analysis of several hundred clients.
Here are the 20 top reasons why businesses fail at marketing.
Read them, believe them, and resolve not to do them!
1. They don’t collect enough leads or prospect data because most of their marketing is NOT focused on lead generation.
2. They don’t do enough with the data they do collect to convert leads to sales.
3. Their websites are ineffective because they are not set up effectively to collect, sort, and follow up on large numbers of leads.
4. They do not track their campaigns so they have no exact way of knowing which ads or promotions were really effective and which bombed.
5. Their ads stink! They have cute headlines, pretty pictures, impotent copy, and insipid offers that all conspire to eliminate any meaningful response.
6. They run marketing campaigns that their “people” like the looks of rather than ones that actually get the phone to ring.
7. There is no written sales process or scripting or training of the people answering the phone. This is the frontline of all sales success.
8. Follow up to all requests is not automated or systemized, so follow up on leads is poor.
9. They do almost the exact same marketing as ALL their competitors. They are afraid to take a risk.
10. Brochures, ads, and letters are written in boring, generic corporate-speak and wouldn’t motivate a drunk to leave his seat for a free beer.
11. Their budgets are based on a percentage of gross or a number someone handed down from head office instead of being based on the goals they are trying to reach. In other words, the budgets are pure fantasy with no connection whatsoever to the income needed.
12. They discount to get more business, rather than look for ways to add more value.
13. They do NOTHING to set themselves CLEARLY apart from others in their marketplace. But still they say “We have the best customer service” (yeah, yeah, yeah, tell it to the judge - as my kids would say)!
14. Their service is really about 80% worse than they think it is! They have no system in place for measuring service so they never really know how good or BAD their service TRULY is!
15. They fail to thank their customers with letters, cards, and small gifts.
16. They confuse loyalty programs with discount programs! Loyalty is earned, NOT BOUGHT!
17. They fail to outsource the things they don’t do well - like telemarketing, web marketing, and sales training.
18. They don’t capitalize on the automation that’s available to help them maximize their operations.
19. They don’t spend enough time studying or doing marketing. You tend to get best the best results from the things you focus on the most!
20. They keep doing what they have always done because it’s easier than changing to a more systematic approach that would actually work. Meanwhile, their market-share is sinking faster than an elephant in quicksand.
Now you have the key information why most businesses don’t get where they want to go. I’ll tell you more about each of these topics later. For now, just accept them as gospel.
DO NOT make any of the above mistakes if you truly want to maximize your marketing.
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CHAPTER 5
Mastering the Paradigm Shift from the Type of Marketing that People Expect You to Do to the Marketing that Actually Works!
Day in and day out my biggest challenge is convincing partners and would-be partners to make a radical and fundamental change in their thinking towards marketing [“partners” is how I refer to and think of my clients; see CHAPTER 20]. I want them to break twenty or thirty years of tradition and the bad habit of doing whatever everyone else does and make the switch to a more effective direct-marketing methodology.
Even when businesses cross the chasm and embrace the Cunningly Clever Marketing Methodology, all it usually takes is one ad from their competitors in a regional magazine to fire up ALL the staff naysayers.
“LOOK, OUR COMPETITION IS ADVERTSIING IN...[take your pick...the local newspaper, regional magazine, trade rag, or style magazine]...and we sit by and do NOTHING!”
“THEY ARE GETTING all our business!” cry the staff and the marketing lady!
“You cancelled all our ads!” they say, pointing at me. “You are KILLING OUR BUSINESS!”
“The sky is falling!!!”
When this happens, as it frequently does, I ask a simple question. “Did you run ads in all these places last year?”
“YES!” they cry in unison!
“Did you also lose $500,000 last year?”
“Well, yes,” they say in muffled voices as they look uncomfortably around the room at each other.
“Then...WHY do it again?”
“But,” they always say, “look what our competition is doing!”
Yes, look, at what they are doing - blowing thousands of dollars on ads they aren’t tracking and that don’t work! Running direct-mail campaigns in reverse type that no one can read. Distracting people with their fancy flash website while failing to collect any data!
They are spending their way towards oblivion while you, my friend, are building the largest database of prospective customers of any business in the state. A database of real people who buy the products and services YOU sell.
In the process of building this huge prospect database you will drive more business by accident than your competitors do on purpose. Not only will you drive more business, but you will also have a huge database of people who have identified themselves as potential customers who you can now contact for almost nothing though email, and at an acceptable cost through highly targeted direct mail.
Until you have a database of qualified prospects large enough that selling 20% of them allows you to easily reach your goal, you should spend not one dime on anything but growing your database.
Make the critical paradigm shift from traditional advertising and marketing to database-driven direct-response marketing and find the marketing tools to effectively build your prospect lists!
If targeted, direct-response driven marketing does not work for your business then I can guarantee that neither will print, radio, TV, or billboards!
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CHAPTER 6
Why He With the Biggest Database Always Wins!
Like it or not, the title of this chapter is a fact!
This is a fact most business owners are not really very happy about since the total sum of their data collection efforts over the last 20 years amounts to 750 names and addresses and the 113 emails they collected this year but haven’t yet gotten into the computer!
This may not be you but - trust me on this - I talk to hundreds of business owners a month and this example is better than average!
The size and quality of your database is your foundation for the long-term success of any marketing campaign yet the simplicity of this fact is lost on many. When I ask seminar audiences full of business owners and marketing executives what’s the first thing they would do to market a new business, buying a database of people who have an interest in that product is rarely, if ever, mentioned. When it is, it comes way down the list of suggestions after running ads, going to trade shows, and even renting billboards.
A Tale of Two Corvette Stores
Imagine two businesses in Los Angeles that sell parts and accessories for Corvette sports cars. One has a database of 600 Corvette owners while the other has a database of 6,000.
Who do you think is in the position of strength?
One can market to a large enough database to maintain a healthy business while the other must run his business while constantly searching for more prospects.
It does not matter what business you are in. You need a large enough database of people who have put their hands up as qualified prospects so you can sort through them to find an adequate number of actual customers.
Most businesses do a terrible job of building their databases. Golf courses that have seen 50,000 people a year play their course for two decades have email lists that total 750 names (honestly, that’s the average!).
Car dealerships selling hundreds of cars a month can’t find 1,000 good addresses to mail to.
Local electrical, air conditioning, water purification, and lawn services do hundreds of transactions but never collect data on their customers. They are forced instead to run endless coupon ads looking for new customers when everyone they ever needed was already in their grasp!
If you are selling coffins, build a list of very old people. If you are selling video games, build a list of teenagers and young adults. If you are selling homes in Florida, build a list of affluent people who are about to retire. If you sell cigars, build a list of people who smoke them. If you sell stuff for weddings, build a list of people about to get married.
NOTHING is more important than building your database!
He with the biggest database of prospects wins!
Not occasionally, not some of the time, but all of the time, every time!
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CHAPTER 7
There Are Only Three Ways to Grow a Business…Any Business!
Most people overcomplicate marketing with talk of image, brand, feel, look, style, and culture. These are all important, relevant factors - if you are a multinational company - and all are of little importance if you are not!
What is important is the simple fact that there are only three ways to grow your business.
1. Increase the number of clients. This is where most businesses focus their effort, although it’s very often the hardest of the three ways to increase income.
Large growth in number of clients usually comes from a change in pricing or a change in marketing focus.
When we changed one partner’s prime marketing media from print advertising to targeted direct mail, we were able to add over half a million dollars in income the second year and over a million the third - with a small decrease in spending!
2. Increase the average transaction value. How can you get them to buy more of what you sell each time they call, visit, or click?
If ten people stand at the counter to buy a widget for $15, the 80/20 rule says that if all where offered the chance to buy six widgets for, say, the price of five, two people would do it, increasing your transactional value by over 53%!
Simple, but most customers rarely receive the offer. While the person is standing in front of them, daily-fee golf clubs sell one round instead of five. Shoe stores don’t add socks or polish to a sale. Hotels sell that night’s stay in the summer without trying to sell a return stay in the fall, and so it goes. There’s no cost other than the few moments of time to make the offer:
Mr. and Mrs. Jones, have you ever had the pleasure of being up here in Vermont when the leaves are changing? It’s stunningly beautiful. Our fall packages just came out this week but they sell out very fast. Shall I go ahead and reserve yours while you are here today?
3. Increase the frequency of repurchase (or the length of time they stay as a customer). How do you get them to buy more often to get more residual value out of each client?
I helped a software company massively increase its income by simply changing to a residual pricing model. Instead of charging $4,000 plus a small annual fee for maintenance, they now charge a set up fee of $1,500 and a $400 a month license fee. Since their average customer stays seven to ten years, you do the math! A simple change of marketing strategy that turned a struggling business into an extremely profitable enterprise.
There are a thousand things you can do in the name of marketing. Focus on exploring these three, in detail, first!
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CHAPTER 8
Preach to the Choir - Don’t Try to Covert the Muslims
Converting people from one set of values, beliefs, or vendors is a difficult, tiresome, expensive, and often dangerous or thankless task.
My first how-to manual sold a whopping 1,148 copies in its first year. Which at $150 each in an industry of 12,000 or so people was not half bad. Over the next decade I came out with over 50 additional products or services and for years I marketed them to the list of 12,000 business owners I had in that industry.
Never, not even by accident, did the 10,852 people who did not buy my first manual ever come close to reaching the sales of the 1148 people who did!
Eventually I resigned myself to the fact that, like it or not, my market in an industry of 12,000 business owners was in fact 1,148 people.
It took me years to reach this conclusion and tens of thousands of dollars in wasted printing, mailing, and postage. Once I stopped trying to convert more customers and instead started to focus on what other products and services I could sell to my existing customers, I was able to quadruple the size of the company in a matter of months!
Focus your effort first on existing customers, then on prospects, then on prospecting.
The first will always out-produce the other two!
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SECTION 2
Your USP:
Powerful
Positioning
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CHAPTER 9
Businesses Unclear on the Concept
Do you really know what business you’re in? Sounds simple, but very often I find that business owners think they are in one business while the customers think it’s another business. For example, in the karate business, where 80% of the students are under 12, most instructors mistakenly believe that they are in the business of teaching karate or self-defense.
Ask any of the parents of these children why they signed their child up for lessons and one, perhaps two at the most, will say for karate or self-defense. The real reason parents sign their children up for karate is to help them gain self-discipline, focus, and concentration, to improve their grades in school, and to develop the traits of confidence and positive self-esteem. Having done extensive research into this particular market, I can tell you unequivocally that karate is rarely even mentioned in the top ten reasons.
Despite this fact, the great majority of instructors still fail to maximize their marketing efforts. They continue to advertise karate, the business they think they are in, while the customer continues to buy self-improvement for their children. Those schools that realize this, and change the focus of their marketing to self-improvement through karate, may teach the same physical curriculum as those who believe they are in the karate business, but they can expect to enjoy three to four times the response from their marketing efforts.
This poster for karate lessons focused on what parents are actually hoping to buy.
As Charles Revlon once said, “In the factory we make perfume, in the stores we sell hope!”
Remember, people buy for their reasons, not yours! You might brew the best coffee in town, but if everyone is coming to you for your donuts it would be better to focus your marketing message on donuts. It doesn’t matter if you own a coffee plantation and grow the beans yourself - if your customers are coming for the donuts, it will pay you to go with the flow.
Forget what you are trying to sell and focus instead on what your customers are buying!
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CHAPTER 10
Claiming Your Unique Selling Proposition Before Someone Else Does!
The term Unique Selling Proposition (USP) was first described more than 50 years ago in Reality in Advertising, the classic book by Rosser Reeves. While given much lip service, the concept of USP is seldom understood or executed well. Reeves said that your USP must meet three criteria to be complete and powerful:
* It must say to your consumer, “Buy this and you will receive this specific benefit.”
* Your USP must be one that your competition does not, or cannot, offer.
* It must be strong enough to attract new customers to you.
Your USP is the foundation for your marketing and advertising efforts. It is your unique advantage you use to sell your business. Your USP should be so strong and memorable that it will both distinguish you from your competitors and attract new business. It should also be memorable enough to generate word of mouth to drive referrals.
Most businesses don’t have a USP and therefore they never build a strong marketing program on a secure foundation. Instead they bounce from idea to idea and don’t portray a consistent theme! In fact, I’ve had new partners who have proudly shown me the twenty different ads they had run over the last five years - each touting something different! This approach wastes lots of time, lots of money, and a great deal of effort!
What Comes to Mind When You Hear Domino’s Pizza?
“Domino’s delivers in 30 minutes or less or your pizza is free.” That was Domino’s unique selling proposition and it fueled one of the most rapid business success stories ever. Domino’s wasn’t really selling pizza - what they were selling was fast delivery. There are hundreds of different chains around the country that sell pizza. But when you think of Domino’s, you think: Domino’s delivers in 30 minutes or less. You might be interested to know that the ads with the 30-minutes-or-less guarantee haven’t run in over two decades (ever since a driver was killed trying to get his pizza delivered on time). Yet the 30-minutes-or-less perception remains!
The same is true in the shipping business. There’s UPS, the US Postal Service, Airborne Express, and a host of other services that claim to get your package delivered directly to your customer, across the country, overnight. But when you absolutely, positively, must have it there overnight, who would you use? If you said the Post Office, move to the back of the class! (They lose 100,000 packages a day!)
If you absolutely, positively, must have it there overnight, the only company to use is FedEx. That perception has survived even through their name change from Federal Express. They have a legendary reputation for fast and reliable delivery and practically own the word “overnight.” You must do the same - own a concept in your market that defines what your business is all about. This will attract people to you like a magnet!
What benefit or word does your business want to own in the minds of your customers?
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CHAPTER 11
Digging Deep for the Difference that Matters
What is unique, truly unique, about your business, unique enough amidst the common clutter of shared features and benefits to get me to spend my money with you?
Let’s switch gears for a moment and get you thinking in another direction about this very same topic. Within a given price range, what’s the difference between one hotel and another?
Not much! But sometimes even something small is enough to influence a person’s purchasing decision. I now try to book my stays at Westin hotels not because they are particularly better in any respect from other higher-end hotels, but they do offer and MARKET very cozy beds. They call them “heavenly beds,” but whatever they call them, I can tell you this: It’s the closest thing to sleeping in my own bed when I am on the road. What’s more, I’m willing to travel a little further out of my way and pay a little more to get it! At a lower price point and for, say, driving cross country, I would choose Wingate Inns because I KNOW they will have working high-speed Internet access, for free! It astonishes me that ALL hotels these days don’t, but they don’t, so why get stuck?
There is another hotel chain that struck a deal with the NBA by buying longer beds!
Motel Six is the clear leader in the perception of cheap! At Holiday Inn kids stay and eat free!
These all are simple yet potent examples of positioning yourself as better and different in an incredibly crowded market!
So what ONE Unique SELLING Proposition (USP) are you going to build on and CHAMPION in your marketplace?
All it takes is ONE, but without it you are just another business saying how good your service is…and they all do that!
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CHAPTER 12
Avoiding the Muddle in the Middle
In every market there is a Ferrari and a Yugo, a Rolex and a Timex, a Ritz Carlton and a Motel 6, a Neiman Marcus and a WalMart. The closer you are to the top or the bottom of your market, the easier it is to meet expectations and to price your product or service correctly to maximize profits.
The problem is that most companies find themselves drawn to the middle of the market. This muddled area is where they are neither the best nor the worst, the most expensive nor the cheapest, the newest nor the oldest, the quickest nor the slowest.
The middle of the market is by far the most difficult area in which to compete. You should first try to move towards one end or the other by either increasing your service and offerings to increase your price, or by decreasing service and offerings to lower prices and increase volume.
In my experience, the latter is actually the harder of the two to accomplish successfully. In contrast, it’s relatively easy to add something that moves you up and differentiates you in the marketplace:
* the hair salon that greets you with a glass of champagne while you wait
* the gym that has video games built into the rowing or cycling machines so you compete on-screen in a simulated race against others
* the bar with a plateful of trendy appetizers (to offset the even trendier prices) that is delivered just as your first drink is almost gone so you stay for a second drink as you eat the food
* the only parking lot in town that offers a free car wash
* you create a new category - a category that you can lead
Take yourself out of the muddle in the middle by doing something different that allows you to be a leader in your own category. The only business in your category that also offers X - where X is a strong enough factor to create a new, or at least stronger, position within your category.
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CHAPTER 13
Southpaw Marketing
In the Nineties, the Japanese company Yonex had a little run with a graphite-headed golf club that was selling well. They also had one other thing going for them: They signed one of the PGA Tour’s most popular players and the world’s undisputed best left-handed golfer, Phil Mickelson.
I spent almost a year trying to convince them that their USP should be “The world’s best left-handed golf clubs.” Statistically 10% of the 27 million people who play golf are left handed. No one in the world had ever claimed to be the world’s best left-handed golf clubs, so the position was OPEN!
HELLO!
AN OPEN UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION in this overcrowded marketing world!!!
This was, and still, is a serious marketing opportunity!!!
But the wise people of Yonex thought that .000000001% or whatever they have of the right-handed market was better than total DOMINATION of the left-handed market!! They just couldn’t see pigeonholing their market like that!!!
Why be the undisputed leader in a US market of 3 million left-handers, and a worldwide market of 30 million or so, when instead you can be a nobody in the worldwide market of 150 million right-handers? HELLO!!!
You will eat better being a big fish in a small pond!
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CHAPTER 14
What’s in a Name?
Choosing the right business or product name is an area that is very touchy for many people. That’s because the chances are that you already have a good deal invested in a name. You might like the name you have. You have almost certainly invested in business cards, stationery, and signs. You might have been in business in your town or industry for a great many years using this name. You might feel that no matter what else you might change, you just have to stick with the name you already have.
You don’t!
In fact, not changing your name may handicap you from ever achieving a big goal at all!
While a bad name can forever put you behind the eight ball, a good name, a simple name, a catchy name, can play a huge part in building your reputation quickly. So can aligning your name with existing perceptions. Yet human nature being what it is, most people will go to their graves defending a name they have already taken rather than making a simple change that can have a huge impact on their businesses.
The same goes for the name of your product or service. The name can be critical to your success. It’s hard, if not impossible, to build a legendary reputation on the back of a lousy name. Despite this fact, many companies, big and small, soldier on, handicapped with a bad name because they feel they cannot change it!
Sometimes when you move on in business, or introduce new products, the name you started with is not a very accurate way to describe what you do now.
When I started out in business and didn’t know any better, I used the generic name Andrews International. As my karate consulting business grew and more and more people entered the my consulting market - a market I practically created - I saw that some of them were better positioned than I was just because of their names. Immediately upon realizing this, I changed the company name to The Martial Arts Business Association. That was a much more descriptive and accurate definition of what we did. We offered seminars, consulting, a trade show, an industry magazine, and various publications. The name implied that this would be the case, whereas Andrews International needed a lot of explaining.
I frequently advise partners to change their business names and logos to something that is more interesting, something that stands out, something that gives them a clear edge, something that people want to buy!