Do you believe in magic?
Marketers tend to. They are suckers for miracle cures – and here’s why.
We all know our customers are lazy. That’s why the words “quick” and “easy” always increase readership of any headline.
Show them how they can do something – lose weight, learn a language – with less effort, and you probably have a winning proposition.
You must package it well, though – preferably with an impressive name.
So it’s not listening to and repeating words and phrases; it’s “programmed learning”. That makes you feel you’re doing something important, doesn’t it?
And guess what? Marketers are just as lazy as customers – hardly surprising, as they are customers every day. Most (as I learned from asking them to define it in many countries) are is too lazy to even learn what marketing is – let alone what “direct marketing” means.
Anyhow, that word “direct” … doesn’t it sound distressingly close to direct mail? And we all know what that means, don’t we? Junk. Ugh. That certainly doesn’t sound very flattering, does it?
CRM sounds much better. People love it. Though I cannot for the life of me see how it differs from what I’ve always done.
Mind you, it took me about nine years to get any good at what I do, whereas a few years ago Oracle’s ads said: “Start today and have global customer relationship management in 19 days.”
Sounds a lot better than hard work, doesn’t it? Mr. Super CRM would whiz into their office and take care of everything for them! No wonder it took off.
Many firms started CRM divisions before even knowing what the heck it really was – or meant to their business.
No wonder that a few years after it first came into fashion, the US magazine Advertising Age reported that over 70% of firms who tried it said it didn’t work.
I shall discuss why in a moment, with some good, practical advice you can act on from somebody who has specialised in this field.
In the meantime, here’s a little reminder that miracles only happen in the movies.
The word ‘loyalty’ is often used about CRM. But as a former chairman of Marks & Spencer observed, “Customers are not loyal nor should they be. We have to earn their loyalty every day”.
His firm forgot that and it nearly ruined them.
Sober people know the obvious: nobody sane wants a relationship with their bank or supermarket. They have enough trouble getting on with their families. And a “programme” won’t cure any dodgy relationship.
But the intelligent use of data does pay. Here is a good example. Ocado sent my partner Marta this, based on things she had bought before.
CRM schemes fail above all because your business lives or dies on its attitude to customers. And a quick fix doesn’t change attitudes.
So here is check list for you. It was put together by my associate Peter Hardingham, who has worked with me on and off for 20 years, and revised by me because I interfere with everything that leaves this office.
Is CRM right for you? A 15-minute quiz
Step 1
Unless you have answered these four questions, there is absolutely NO point in boarding the good ship CRM.
- Do you really know what your customers want?
- Do you know what they think you promise them? Are they the same things?
- Can you clearly identify these desires and beliefs, before and after they have become customers?
- How will you find out? Do so before anything else!
Step 2
Set realistic expectations, and deliver what you promise or you can end up worse off than if you never started.
- Can you deliver what your customers want – and, just as important, what they think you promise?
- If not, what can you deliver now, and in the future?
- If it is in the future, how quickly? And how will you keep them happy in the interim?
Step 3
A customer in the dark is an angry customer. A customer in the know can end up buying more.
- At what points in the purchase process will you tell your customers what they want to know
- About their order?
- To reassure them?
Step 4
- Can you identify the points from step 3 in every customer transaction?
- Are you sure your IT team can deliver?
- If you have retail outlets, can the staff get this information – quickly and easily?
Step 5
Many firms still have separate databases for customer and transactional information If your marketing database can’t access both, you’re in trouble.
- Can you record what happens at all every point in the transaction?
- On a database all those who may need to know can access?
The moment of truth.
Did you answer the first 5 steps mostly ‘yes’? If so, you stand a chance of CRM working for you. If you said mostly ‘no’, stop right now and get it right.
If you’re talking to CRM consultants politely ask them to leave. Their time is expensive, and you’ll lose your shirt.
Step 6 – start the ball rolling
- Tell your customers what you plan to do
- Manage their expectations
- Involve, motivate and train all your
- Make sure everyone – particularly retail staff – gets the same respect
Step 7 – attend to detail
Remind yourself what you’ve promised, and deliver it. Often, essential processes are not part of firms’ structures. They don’t appreciate what skills and structures you need.
- If this is an incentivised scheme, how will points, miles or other benefits be allocated, captured, and communicated to the customer?
- How will redemptions be handled?
Step 8
Most customers won’t tell you they are unhappy. They tell their friends – and walk away.
- Set up a monitoring process in your company
- Make sure you identify any weak links that appear in the chain
Step 9
- Ask your customers how they think you’re doing
- Loyalty can improve just by making it easy for them to tell you what they think
- Allow your customers to suggest improvements. It’s the best research you’ll ever get
Step 10 – it doesn’t stop
Don’t imagine this is something you just “put in place”.
- Keep listening to your customers
- Keep learning from your customers
- Keep refining your system
- Keep training and re-training your people
When should you refer to these questions?
When your IT director says, “We’ve got this wonderful CRM software…”
When the board says, “That’s a brave move you’re making there, this CRM stuff…”
Just take out this quiz, and re-read it. You’ll know more than many CRM consultants. You might even keep your job.
If that interested you, you might find half an hour with Peter worth your while. I sent him along to three clients a while ago, and all wanted to know more. One – a travel destination – had him on a plane within a week.
Best,
Drayton
www.directmarketingcourse.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com
Have you heard of Eben Pagan? or David DeAngelo? That’s a trick question, because he’s the same guy.
Eben Pagan, or rather David DeAngelo, is the mastermind behind the Double Your Dating site. An Information Product business he has grown to almost $30 Million in sales – starting out at his computer in his bedroom…
http://gurublueprint.directanddigitalmarketing.com/
At the end, he walks you through an exercise to target and identify the knowledge YOU have that you can turn into an “Information Product” to sell online (and if you own an Info business already, it will give you a new mindset that will really take your success to the next level).
There’s also a free PDF download of the exercise for you to print out – which is cool.
In the video, you’re going to learn:
- How a simple eBook that was written in a few weeks became an “empire” of almost $30 Million in sales – with a business that’s run FROM HOME
- Important new insider trends in the Information Industry that you NEED TO KNOW if you want to succeed
- The mistake that most Information Marketers make that prevents their products from succeeding
- The key mindset shift that allows you to identify market and product opportunities… where there are buyers who NEED to buy Information Products – but don’t have products to buy
And again, you’ll get a free PDF “Blueprint” exercise (and step-by-step guidance through it) to target the knowledge you ALREADY HAVE that you can turn into an Information Product (or Coaching) that you can sell for high prices online.
This is a SUPER-high value honest view into an online money-making machine that will blow your mind.
Just opt-in to watch the video. No obligation, and you don’t have to buy anything (in fact, there’s nothing for sale on the website). Go check it out now:
http://gurublueprint.directanddigitalmarketing.com/
Best,
Rezbi
Filed under business, Dating Site, David Deangelo, Eben Pagan, Info Business, Information Product, internet business, Marketers, Mastermind, Mindset by on May 13th, 2010. Comment. 
This is a blinding glimpse of the obvious – yet completely ignored by most marketers. But unlike the first, it comes with a special offer you might find even more helpful.
More on that in a moment, because first I’d like you to join me you on a journey back in time.
If you study advertising – and I imagine you do, or how can you improve? – you will notice that most is very bad. A good example from people who should know better ran a while ago on the London Underground. It was a poster from the Advertising Standards Authority which read:
“We’re here to make advertising better. Not to make better advertising. (Sorry.)”
This is what I call “creative masturbation” – produced entirely to please the writer, with no discernible purpose whatever. It does absolutely nothing to satisfy the question in every reader’s mind: “What’s in it for me?”
But what do they mean by “better” advertising? More original? More “creative” – which for many means the same thing? Or with more “impact” – whatever that means?
Did you say, “yes” to one or more of the above? If you trust the real giants of the industry, they are all wrong.
To explain why, let me take you to a modest office above a bar in Chicago 103 years ago. There the first good definition of advertising emerged. Even now many marketers – even very big ones – don’t know it; but those who do have a priceless advantage.
Until then many vague phrases were used to describe advertising and how to do it. Most famous was the motto of A.J. Ayer, then the leading US agency. They said to get good advertising you must “Keep everlastingly at it”. True; but not very helpful.
The office above the bar belonged to Lord & Thomas, a small firm destined to enjoy enormous success as a result of that evening. The intellectual curiosity of a young man who had just started running the firm had led him to seek a clear definition of his profession.
He was Albert Lasker, and he went on to make more money from advertising than anyone else, before or since. He realised that the way you define what you do determines what you do.
What built some of the world’s biggest brands
On that night I mentioned a man in the bar below. He sent him up his card with a note saying: “I know you want to know what advertising is. I have the answer. Send back the card, and I will come and tell you”.
So Lasker sent the card back, and a few minutes later a tall, striking moustachioed ex-Canadian Mountie called John E. Kennedy entered. He said to Lasker: “Advertising is salesmanship in print”. Remembering that media now encompass not just print, but radio, the cinema, TV and the internet, that definition still stands.
Lasker hired Kennedy, and Lord & Thomas set out to spread the gospel of salesmanship in print. Before the end of World War 1 they were the world’s largest advertising agency, which they remained until Lasker – who worked so hard he had regular nervous breakdowns – was away from the office for a while, and J. Walter Thompson overtook them.
Bad advertising is advertising which doesn’t sell (and an amazing amount doesn’t) or is aimed at satisfying the egos of those who create or run it – the clients – more than making sales.
In fact most creative people are more interested in awards than sales. That’s not my opinion – just plain fact from research. They are keener on building their names than your sales.
So if you ever wonder why your stuff doesn’t work, that’s a good place to start: you’re not reading from the same hymn sheet.
If it doesn’t sell it isn’t creative
Another early advertising titan, Claude Hopkins, succeeded Kennedy at Lord & Thomas. He put it this way: “Instead of sales, they seek applause”.
Hopkins may have been the most able copywriter ever. He launched such famous brands as Quaker Puffed Wheat, Pepsodent and Chevrolet and his copy took a previously little known brand of beer, Schlitz, and quickly made it America’s biggest seller.
He was so talented that Lasker hired him at the then un-heard of salary of…
| I correspond with a lot of US internet experts. They operate in the newest, fastest growing medium. Yet strangely enough they all know and have learned from a book first published in 1924. Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins is the shortest and, still, probably the best book on the subject ever written. The shortest Chapter is called Just Salesmanship. If you read it you will know more about this business than most of the people in it. If you act on its lessons, I guarantee you will get better results. In his introduction to the book, David Ogilvy says that nobody should have anything to do with this business until he has read the book 7 times. Would you like it? Just insert you name and email address in the box on top right to download it. |
$185,000 a year – when the dollar was worth 8 times more than now, and tax was almost nil.
Another legendary adman, Raymond Rubicam, noted, “The only purpose of advertising is to sell. It has no other justification worth mentioning”. If you assume “sell” means to persuade anyone to do or believe something, it’s hard to better that.
Bill Bernbach, named Adman of the 20th Century in Advertising Age, said, “All this talk of creativity has me worried. I fear lest in seeking the creativity we lose the sell”.
What about originality? Well, Mozart – pretty creative, I think you will agree – said, “I never tried to be original in my life.” And David Ogilvy said “Originality is the greatest sin in the advertiser’s lexicon.”
David practiced what he preached, too: he stole the line from his brother-in-law, Rosser Reeves, who invented the USP – Unique Selling Proposition.
At this point I bet you’re wondering what my second helpful idea is. I’ve implied it but not said it. It is this. If you want your messages to work, just ask this simple question: Do they do what a salesman would do?
After all, if you could afford to, you would send the best salesmen you have round to every prospect. All other media are just substitutes for the real, live thing.
When we get a new client, if they use salespeople we usually get one to give us a live sales pitch. Then we try and replicate this in other media. The person who delivers that pitch gets his or her bread and butter from it. Nothing could be more powerful.
In the first three months of this year one of our clients enjoyed a 30% increase in sales – at a time when their chief competitors are either in the doldrums or actually losing money.
I would love to say this is all because of us, but of course there are many other factors. However, most of their leads come from two pieces – direct mail and door-drops. They were based almost entirely on a 2 hour pitch one of their top salesmen gave us – of course, without knowing we were not genuine prospects.
By the way, I am just amazed at how few marketers read books. They are like the man I mentioned in my last piece – too busy fighting alligators to drain the swamp.
The swamp is in fact the swamp of ignorance.
Why spend years learning by trial and error when a weekend with one good book can put you miles ahead? If you’d like any suggestions, let me know.
Best,
Drayton
P.S. This is number 52 of Drayton Bird’s 101 free helpful marketing ideas. You can sign up on the link below for the rest.
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Website: www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com / www.eadim.com
Click here to get 101 free helpful marketing ideas. Marketers from all over the world think they’re a pot of gold.
To my mind, one of the most interesting aspects of
any form of direct marketing is this: How small
changes can make such a huge difference in
response. Especially in headlines and subheadlines.
For example, a client reports adding a single letter
to a headline tripled response to an offer.
The first headline read:
Put More Cash Into Your Pocket
The new headline is:
Puts More Cash Into Your Pocket
The addition of the letter “s” to the word “put”
made a 300% difference. This is not a misprint!
Notice the addition of a single letter changes the
meaning of the word and implies an easier solution.
If this is not enough to convince any skeptic that
small changes, even a single letter, can make a
huge difference, I don’t know what is.
Here are other examples whereby a single word or
phrase has made an enormous difference in
response.
First headline:
Learn the Secrets of Millionaire Copywriters
New headline:
Discover the Secrets of Millionaire Copywriters
This new headline more than doubled response.
This is undoubtedly because the word “learn”
suggests lots of hard work.
Another example.
First headline (on order form):
ORDER FORM
Second headline:
FREE TRIAL REQUEST
This is another 200 plus percent increase. Reason?
Consumers do not respond well to the word
“ORDER”. While it’s an extremely negative word,
the majority of marketers still overuse it.
The word “order” suggests spending money, which
no one likes.
Plus, no one likes to fill out forms. Not even
accountants!
Do you, dear reader, feel able to choose which of
two competing headlines is the winner and
produced the highest response based on actual sales
results?
** The Success Margin challenge **
I’ll present three headlines which were tested
against each other. The body copy was the same in
each instance. The results varied significantly. The
winner produced sales increases of 145% to 212%
and 254% respectively.
Here they are:
1. (a) The Ultimate Tax Shelter
(b) Tax Shelter for all Incomes
2. (a) How to be a Successful Consultant
(b) What Makes a Consultant Successful?
3. (a) Do You Suffer Joint Pain?
(b) Do Your Joints Feel Like They Are on Fire?
Success Margin subscribers who choose all three
correctly will receive a special gift.
Dedicated to helping you constantly improve
response.
Your correspondent,
Ted Nicholas
—————
“This article appears courtesy of THE SUCCESS
MARGIN, the Internet’s most valuable success and
marketing e-zine. For a complimentary
subscription, visit http://www.tednicholas.com/
Filed under copywriting, direct marketing, Free Trial Request, Headlines, Marketers, millionaire, Ted Nicholas by on Apr 18th, 2010. Comment.
Marketing. Everyone knows its really hard to do well and marketers have never been under so much pressure. More questions are being asked about value and effectiveness than ever before. We live in a world of turbulence and flux. This book gives you the tools and the motivation to deal with this change and to go out and be described as a brilliant marketer. Brilliant Marketing answers key questions such as: What is a brand? What is marketing and how is it changing? What is (more…)
Here’s today’s helpful idea – something for you to think about over the next day or so.
It relates to a promise I made yesterday about an offer which quite a few marketers have found extremely profitable over the last 11 months.
It’s based on a simple fact many people ignore, which is this:
Good creative costs no more to run than bad creative and you can run it again and again and again – in fact, almost forever.
For instance a client tried out a simple phrase we suggested for their website order page over two years ago. Overnight their enquiries tripled. It’s still there today.
Since that client is the second largest firm in their field turning over hundreds of millions, God alone knows how much that simple suggestion has made for them.
Does that sound like a good investment to you?
I imagine it does, unless you are one of those eccentrics who worry more about what something costs than what it makes.
(I don’t suppose you are, or you wouldn’t be reading these ideas, so here’s the offer).
- Pick any communication, in any medium, that you’d like improved.
- We’ll prepare something for half our usual rates.
- Do a split run.
- If we win …give us another…or pay the full price.
It worked for them (at full price)…
Everest
Liverpool Victoria
Hargreaves Lansdown
RIAS
PruHealth
DHL
Central Capital
Warner Holidays
Inside Track
Why not you at half price?
This is one of those rare occasions where the words ‘limited offer’ happen to be true.
Not because I wouldn’t like buckets of new business, but for a more important reason: it is that I value my reputation more than money.
I personally write or supervise everything that leaves our little office. On top of that, I only work with people who know what they are doing – an extremely small minority in this business, believe me.
We can only take on a maximum of 5 new clients who reply to email, maybe as I mentioned at the beginning, but last time I made this offer people replied almost instantly.
(Publisher’s note: This offer may be no longer available. Please leave a comment if you’re interested and Drayton will be notified. We can’t guarantee you a place.)
Best,
Drayton
P.S. This is number 17 of Drayton Bird’s 101 free helpful marketing ideas. You can sign up on the link below for the rest.
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Website: www.draytonbird.com / www.eadim.com
Click here to get 101 free helpful marketing ideas. Marketers from all over the world think they’re a pot of gold.
The Drayton Bird Blog – please do not visit if you are easily offended.
Filed under copywriting, Creative, Drayton Bird, Marketers by on Mar 21st, 2010. Comment.
Until a few years ago I owned a couple of houses set between two towns on Normandy, both about the same size.
One – St Pierre-sur-Dives – has great character, with splendid buildings including a twelfth century hall where they hold antique markets on the first Sunday of the month. The other, some fifteen miles away – Vimoutiers – is a very dull contrast.
The differences lie not in the people, who are just as friendly, or the settings, which are beautiful, but in the fact that in 1944 the U.S. Air Force accidentally unloaded a lot of bombs on Vimoutiers, flattening the centre. To make up for this little accident they paid to re-build much of the town during the late ’40′s in the awful style of architecture then in fashion.
You might say the difference between the two towns derives from what we call ‘bad targeting’. Even the most compelling message – and bombs are very compelling – is a waste (in this case a bloody disaster) if it reaches the wrong people.
This thought pre-occupied several correspondents in the letters page of the New York Times a while ago. They were discussing an odd but common practice: why do marketers spend so much on people who don’t have much money, rather than people who do?
To be precise, why are they so obsessed with targeting young people, when old people have most of the money? I recall that in Marketing, a U.K. magazine I used to write for, someone revealed that 86% of over 50′s do not relate to the messages advertisers produce.
One ingenious argument is that advertisers seek to catch people while they are forming their brand loyalties, rather than when they have become set in their ways. It suggests that old people don’t like trying new things, so why bother with them?
This is complete balderdash, as anyone who has studied the real world knows. Old codgers not only have more money; they have more time. Time to try new things. A surprisingly high number got onto the Internet fairly early. Maybe this is because (as I fondly hope) old people are not as old as they used to be – reasonable if you look at life expectancy, which has risen greatly in most countries.
When I reached forty I was delighted to learn there was some truth in the maxim that life begins then. With every decade that has passed I have discovered new pleasures. I certainly have not stopped buying, and I may be more willing to try new ideas than ever. As you age, you realise you have less time left – but happily, you have more money. I suspect a lot of other older people are in the same happy boat.
A chief benefit of direct marketing is that – as David Ogilvy remarked – ‘general advertisers can only guess: direct marketers know’. So the results of a mailing we conducted for a Scottish bank some years ago were particularly fascinating to me.
They had never written to their oldest customers, thinking they weren’t worth bothering with – why worry them if they are not worrying you? But we suspected these people might be more willing to buy than they imagined. We softened them up with a one-page letter, which in effect said ‘Thank you for being a customer’.
Research results exceeded my most optimistic expectations: 92% remembered that letter a month later. Recall is very well – agencies love talking about it – but what counts is, will people buy? Again, our most sanguine expectations were exceeded: when these people were subsequently offered various services, they bought in gratifyingly large numbers. That is what you call building measurable brand loyalty: don’t tell me you like me – show it.
A lot of bilge is talked about brand loyalty. The 100% brand loyal customer is about as rare as a vegetarian crocodile. As that wise man Professor Andrew Ehrenberg of the South Bank Business School pointed out for years, people choose from a portfolio of brands.
The truth is that ad agencies are full of young people, creating ideas to show off and win praise (and awards) from other young bloods. As David Ogilvy also noted, they squander their talents “skidding about helplessly on the slippery surface of irrelevant creative brilliance”.
Turn on your TV any night. You’ll see.
Best,
Drayton
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Website: www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com / www.eadim.com
Click here to get 101 free helpful marketing ideas. Marketers from all over the world think they’re a pot of gold.
The Drayton Bird Blog – please do not visit if you are easily offended.
Filed under Advertisers, Brand Loyalties, Drayton Bird, Fashion, Marketers, marketing, New York Times by on Mar 2nd, 2010. Comment.
