In october 2006 I decided I’d had enough.

I’d had enough of working for other people and making them the kind of money I could only dream about.

I’d had enough of people looking over my shoulders constantly to ensure they squeezed every drop of blood for the pittance they paid me… even though I worked my butt off.

In fact, in one job my manager actually told me if all the other guys together did half as much work as I did by myself, he’d be a happy bunny. There were eight other people in the team.

Did that satisfy the bosses of the company?

Does spiderman really exist? (Okay, I only used that because I’m a die-hard comic book fan. But you know what I mean).

Anyway, in October 2006 I decided I was going to be self-employed. I was going my own way.

So I called up the relevant government department and told them so.

And I’ve been self-employed ever since.

Although I think the term self ‘unemployed’ would be more suitable.

You see, I tried to learn how to make money on the internet. I bought one course after another.

Each time the promise was:

1. I had to spend money to make money
2. “Our course is the best one. And you’ll definitely make money with it”

Three years and about $50,000.00 later (no typo), all I had to show for myself was a huge debt, with no ability to pay it back.

I was desperate.

Then, in October 2008 Drayton Bird held his first course in Direct and Digital Marketing through EADIM (European Academy of Direct and Interactive Marketing).

The cost was 3,000 Euros. I couldn’t afford it.

So I ended up wasting more money trying to learn more stuff that was no good And getting even deeper in debt on my credit cards.

(funny how we can’t afford to pay for something sensible, but can afford to get even more in debt, huh?).

Then in August 2009 I decided enough really was enough.

I borrowed the money from my brother and enrolled on that year’s EADIM course.

Was it worth it?

It was the single best investment I’ve made in all these years of struggling.

In fact, I made back my investment at least 5 times since. And more.

I was so enthusiastic about this course that Drayton Bird himself sent me an email and offered me the chance to work with him.

The result?

Check out this site: www.directmarketingcourse.com

That’s my handiwork.

This is what Ross Bowring, a fellow copywriter on the Warrior Forum, said of the copy on this site…

“Rezbi… Bravo! And I’ve never said “Bravo” to anyone before (!) That’s a very nicely written letter. Skillfully communicates benefits with no hype whatsoever. Read the whole thing. Never usually do that. Mightily impressed.”

And this is what Drayton said of the same…

Enthusiasm without knowledge is useless. Rezbi is one of those rare and valuable people – a genuine enthusiast who studies. He was hugely valuable to me in working on the promotion for EADIM. The (very complex) landing page is a good example of his work, a great joint effort!

All I can say is this – I got the opportunity to work on this, and on others, as a direct result of going on that course last year. It is, in my opinion, the best course on direct and digital marketing that exists today.

And, if ANYONE is really serious about their career, online or offline – no matter which industry they are in – they would be jumping to get on this course.

Now my question is: How serious are you?

Don’t waste any more time or money. Get on this course and – finally – start making a success of your business and career.

If nothing else, at least go and check out the site to see how much I’ve accomplished as a result of doing this course. And how much you could, too: www.directmarketingcourse.com

Best,
Rezbi
www.directmarketingcourse.com
www.hotbuttoncopywriting.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com

I could come up with plenty of reasons why I haven’t been posting to my blog.

However, only one is of any significance – I’ve been working.

The thing is, I like blogging. I like researching and finding new things to write about.

Most of all, I like to write about things I have to dig up. Things no one else writes about – probably – because it takes ‘detective’ work. Hence the name ‘The Marketing Sleuth’.

I’ve been working on a project for a very high profile marketer and I’ve learned so much from him. He just happens to be one of the best marketers and copywriters of the last 50+ years.

But I’ve missed writing to my blog.

And so, I’ve decided I’m going to come back and give you more articles on a regular basis.

You may wonder why I decided to write a post explaining my reasons for not keeping my blog updated. Well, the reason is a post by Melinda Brennan on copyblogger called 6 Online Marketing Mistakes that Will Kill Your Business.

I really just wanted to clarify, to myself, that it’s not one of those reasons keeping me away.

Go and check out the post. It’s an eye-opener for anyone who makes excuses about why they don’t succeed.

Best,
Rezbi
www.directmarketingcourse.com
www.hotbuttoncopywriting.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com

Do your prospects and customers find your messages hard to take in? It sounds crazy – but it happens most of the time.

Have you ever asked yourself why you communicate? Let’s face it: unless, like a politician, you suffer from a constant need to bore other people, you must have a purpose.

Maybe it’s to sell something: your product or service, or firm. Perhaps it’s to make something happen, or prevent it happening. Possibly it’s to clarify a misunderstanding or put over your point of view.

You may have many objectives. But whatever your purpose, I imagine you would agree it is, above all, essential that your audience understands what you are saying – quickly, easily and correctly. Otherwise, how are you to achieve your purpose?

Yet you may be surprised to know that many, perhaps most, printed commercial messages are ill understood by readers. The chief reason is that those who prepare them – writers and designers – know astoundingly little about what makes things easy to read.

For the most part, they rely on their own taste and judgement, or what is fashionable in “creative” circles. I put quotes round the word creative because, although the word implies originality, most slavishly follow whatever the current fad may be.

Slavish followers of fashion

Thus, if the fashion is for sans-serif type, or emphasising words regardless of their importance, or using certain words or phrases – like “strategic” or “key issues”, you will find many writers and art directors use them regardless of their suitability or how well they get your message across.

We can all have opinions about what we like, or what we think is tasteful, clever or well-arranged or visually exciting, but what really matters is, how well is your message conveyed? And oddly enough, a simple look at any daily paper reveals most of the principles.

The fundamental thing to recognise about words, type and layout is simple. They are tools to convey your message as clearly and quickly as possible. As the great typographical authority, Stanley Morison, noted: “Any disposition of type which, whatever the intention, comes between the reader and the meaning, is wrong”.

As you will see shortly, if you rely on taste, opinion or fashion the result is often disastrous; but happily, two men devoted many years to discovering how better use of language, type and layout makes for better communication.

Decades of research

One was Rudolph Flesch, an American, who studied what kinds and arrangements of words, sentences and paragraphs are most easily read. The other, an academic at the University of New South Wales called Colin Wheildon, conceived the idea of learning not whether people liked or disliked certain layouts or type styles, but how well they communicated.

He did this by taking some 200 Australian consumers, getting them to read certain passages laid-out in various ways, then asking them to describe what they had just read. He also asked them how easy they had found a particular piece to read. In other words he wanted to know how well different layout styles and typographic styles worked from a practical, not an aesthetic point of view.

The original research took over two years. As far as I know it is the most extensive and thorough of its kind. It has been extended and repeated over the 20-odd years since, and came out three years ago in a full-length book with the title ‘Type and Layout’*. I recommend it if you want to make sure that whatever your message is, it gets through as well as possible.

In addition, since all messages aim to elicit a response – either, “yes, I understand” or “yes, I will do what you ask,” a lot of the results of direct response advertising can teach us lessons about what works and what doesn’t.

This piece distils some of the main things that have been learned from these three sources but the principal lesson is clear: people’s eyes and brains are lazy. If the eye has to adjust or make an effort, it will avoid doing so if possible. The same applies to the brain.

This should not surprise you: after all, how many business ideas – fast food, for example – succeed simply because people are lazy? First, let’s look at what has been learned about layout and typography.

A page of copy in serif type was comprehended well by 67% of readers. When the same copy was reset in sans serif, the figures nose-dived to 12%.

Why? Because the little “feet” on a line of serif type help keep people’s eyes on that line. So if you use sans serif type, make sure there’s plenty of leading – space – between the lines.

Perceived legibility of a series of headlines went down by over 20% when the setting was changed from capitals and lower case to capitals only. Imagine what happens to comprehension when someone sets a whole page in “caps” – which is quite the rage at the moment.

The eye recognises shapes, not individual letters, and a word set in caps has no shape, whereas the descenders and ascenders in caps and lower case give a word shape. What are descenders and ascenders? Well, in the word “shape”, h is an ascender and p is a descender.

Good comprehension slumped when type was set with ragged right setting (typically down from 67% to 38%) or, even more so with ragged left setting (67 down to 10 percent).

That’s because the eye has to adjust constantly. Often people set long passages “centred” – ragged on both sides. What do you suppose that does to comprehension?

For the same reason constant changes in typeface are not only ugly but confusing. This also applies to the needless changes in type size so fashionable amongst advertising agency art directors.

At least one person in ten has imperfect eyesight. So copy in very small type is usually unwise. And type set over tints or textures or colours so that it does not stand out clearly is fatal.

• Type set in narrow columns is easy to read – the eye doesn’t have to travel so far. Around 50 characters per line is about as long as it should go.

• Readers found headlines

laid out in a series

of “decks” or layers

like this were hard

to comprehend.

56% said they found headlines of more than four decks difficult.

Visual elements that point out of the layout – like people’s feet, or their sight lines – lead the readers out of the advertisement.

Illustrations that block off a column halfway down the page discourage the reader from travelling further.

Headlines marooned in the middle of the copy destroy the flow of that copy and halve good comprehension. So do headlines placed under the copy. The reader can’t be bothered to look up to the start of the copy.

Long, unbroken blocks of type are daunting. They should be broken up by crossheads, indents, and changes in type. Giving ‘shape’ to long letters also encourages readership.

• Huge headings take up expensive space you have paid for and only work if you have readers with arms 8 feet long.

When a lot of type is reversed out white on black, it kills response. In the case of one full-page magazine advertisement, response doubled when white on black was replaced with the normal black on white.

Captions are heavily read. If you run a picture without a caption, you lose the chance to communicate.

• Pictures of people’s faces gain enormous attention. Use them wherever you can.

Techniques that make for easier reading

If you buy The Wall Street Journal you will see how surprisingly easy the front page is to read. That is because it follows the rules laid down by Rudolph Flesch.

Best sellers and tabloid newspapers adhere to these techniques, as do direct response copywriters. They all have to make reading easy. Otherwise they go broke.

Sentences should be short. An average 16 words per sentence is ideal. The easiest sentence to read contains eight words. The average reader finds anything longer than 32 words hard to take in.

Paragraphs should be short, containing just one thought in each particularly the first paragraph.

• However, vary sentence and paragraph lengths to avoid dullness.

Words should be short and lively, not long and dull: eg, buy, not purchase; free. Not complimentary.

• Never use unnecessary words: eg, “for free” should be “free”; “miss out on” should be “miss”; “male personnel” should be “men”.

“You”, “yours” and “your” should appear 2-3 times more than “I”, “we”, “our”, “us” and “ours”. That’s because readers are interested in themselves – just as you are.

Use words and phrases at paragraph beginnings that encourage continued reading – like “And”, “Moreover”, “That is why” and “What’s more”. If you put questions at paragraph ends, this helps too. Why?

Because reader wants to know the answer – which is why you just read this sentence.

If you break sentences at the ends of pages and columns, this also encourages continued reading. Put ‘Please turn over’ or the like at the end of a letter page.

There are other points well worth knowing, but that’s all I have room for here. Thanks for reading through to the end; I hope you found it easy – and clear.

Best,
Drayton
www.directmarketingcourse.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com

I’m a lazy sod given half a chance, so I thought I’d let an old friend do a bit of work.

Christian Digby-Firth was one of my creative directors years ago at O & M and has a very neat turn of phrase.

Good writing is always a good thing to note if you want good people, since as Dr. Johnson observed, “Language is the dress of thought.”

Here’s something Christian sent me just now.

“What is it about airport ads? They’re breeding grounds for some of the most fatuous copy lines in the biz. “We know what it takes to be a Tiger”, “In business people are good together”, “Hello”, etc. etc and all the others too crushingly dull to recall. Which is of course your point.

International committee work, I suppose.

“Make the most of now” is Vodafone’s anxious strategic imperative writ large: i.e. “Please use your mobile phone to do all sorts of things that are pointless to you but profitable to us, and do them now because we don’t make anything on your boring old voice calls”.

Now, I have to confess that though I agree with almost everything in that hilarious little note, I don’t agree with that.

I think the Tiger campaign is very cleverly aimed at executives with very small p**cks and even smaller minds who want to feel like they’re big bold business marauders – and who are gullible enough to believe Accenture will help them do it without having to think, in exchange for absurdly large sums of money.

But there is an important point I want to make (besides one I made in an earlier piece, which is that emotion beats logic, even in business).

It’s: Playing on people’s inadequacies is a very smart thing to do.

Take a look at any successful self-help ad, and you’ll see what they do.

I mentioned Max Sackheim a week or so ago – the man who wrote “My First 50 years in Advertising”.

He wrote an ad entitled, “Do you make these mistakes in English?” aimed to sell English courses to immigrants who felt unsure about their English. It ran successfully for 40 years.

Here it is:

Lillian Eichler wrote an ad with the heading, “Again she orders – A Chicken Salad, Please.” – to sell a book of etiquette to people who felt socially inadequate.

It took three writers to produce an ad headed, “Here’s an extra $50, Grace – I’m making real money now” – aimed to sell correspondence courses. This is one of my favourite headlines ever..

Now, I hope you’re not going to give me that bleeding heart stuff about playing on people’s fears. If you do I will tell you one thing I know for sure, in fact I bet on it once..

Recently I was speaking at Manchester University, and the celebrity speaker was a famous chef. I was discussing what motivates successful people with a lady at my table..

I said, “It’s fear of failure – and I bet this man is no exception.”

The man’s speech began almost word for word with what I’d said. He revealed how he feared not living up to his father’s expectations..

People who achieve do so almost always because they fear to fail..

And people who fail usually do so because they’re cocksure -not worried about failing, and so don’t try hard enough.

Best,
Drayton
www.directmarketingcourse.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com

This is Steve Harrison…

“The greatest DM creative of this generation.”

A bold claim, you might say, but that’s not me saying it. It was a claim made by the UK’s leading advertising journal, Campaign magazine.

Steve was one of the presenters at the direct marketing course ran by Drayton Bird’s European Academy of Direct and Interactive Marketing, or EADIM for short.

Let me tell you, Steve alone was worth the fee for the course.

And that’s saying something when you consider some of the industry’s biggest hitters were also there presenting.

It’s happening again starting this October. I’ll give you more details soon.

Best,
Rezbi
www.eadim.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com

This video may sound a bit like it was recorded in a municipal swimming baths (actually it was my partner Al’S quaint West Country residence) but once you’ve got over that, you may find it useful.

That’s because it deals with something I must have been asked a thousand times: how often should I mail/email my clients?

This reminds me of another hoary old favourite: how long should the copy be?

And both remind me of the philosopher Bertrand Russell’s remark that “What men seek is not knowledge, but certainty.”

Some people think they should be talking more often, lest their customers think they are being ignored; others think they should talk less for fear of boring them.

The truth is, as so often, that it depends on a myriad things. In this 2 minute 6 second clip I get pretty excited about the subject – but don’t let that put you off.

By the way, I have just finished putting together the examples for the first How to Write Proper webinar.

Best,
Drayton
www.eadim.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com

Last week I sat beside Drayton and watched him go through copy written by one of his clients. Keep in mind this piece of copy wasn’t bad.

Drayton just sat there, in front of his screen, and edited it with such ease it was amazing.

By the time he finished, it was a masterpiece.

Best,
Rezbi
www.eadim.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com

In copy one of the worst things you can do is to drag on about irrelevant things.

This is a mistake I always made before Drayton kept drumming it into my head. I guess I still do make this mistake, but not as much as before.

As David Ogilvy used to say, “You can’t bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it.”

Best,
Rezbi
www.eadim.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com

Do you think the British are morphing in some weird way?

We were always known as a pretty dull, phlegmatic bunch, compared to the excitable French, the fiery Spanish and the sexy Italians.

Well, something strange seems to be happening in business.

Across the road from our offices a building firm says it’s passionate about whatever it does. Pret-a-Manger is passionate about food. The North East is full of passionate people – and passionate country, too, so their posters claim. And Churchill are passionate about insurance.

Do these people have no sex lives, I sometimes wonder. (Though it certainly proves that many agencies are pretty passionate about copying each other.)

More to the point, all this passion reminds me of a big mistake many who sell to businesses make. That is to assume that business decisions are made on rational grounds and emotion doesn’t come into it.

This is nonsense – and to prove it I often ask audiences whether they can think of anyone they work with that they hate. It never fails to raise a laugh of recognition.

Only human – with feelings

Don’t you agree that the way we love to label things often does more to confuse than help?

We talk of above the line and below, of b2c and b2b. “Consumers” and “Business people”. Is that how our customers see themselves? Do they have lines running through their brains?

They are all human beings. And we know perfectly well what things motivate people when we sell make-up, a car or even a hair-remover. People want to be looked at, admired – and definitely not shunned.

In business they want what? To be looked up to, admired – and definitely not shunned. To be successful, quoted as examples for other people to emulate – not seen as losers – in life or business.

Pretty similar, right?

So we repeatedly find when selling to business that if something isn’t doing well, a dash of passion makes all the difference.

• For an express delivery firm we suggested delivery managers could go from zero – never noticed till something went wrong – to hero by relying on them.
• For a credit collection firm we focused on the stress credit managers experience when trying to reconcile the conflicting demands of the finance and sales directors.
• For a telephony service we wrote about the rage touch-tone services inspire in most people and contrasted it with their solution.

The truth is that you don’t grow a second head on your way to the office; and you may spend more waking hours there than anywhere else. It’s not necessarily less interesting or emotional a life than the one you spend at home. It is often more so.

People lie, cheat and finagle their way to whatever business goal they may have. And they kill for money – which is what most business revolves around.

Man is not a rational animal at work any more than anywhere else. He (or she) makes decisions on emotional grounds then tries to find logical arguments to explain them away.

So, if you want better results when selling to business, look in your heart – then use your head to find a way of explaining why the emotional argument makes sense.

A few people have asked for comments on various things. Thanks. Keep ‘em coming.

Best,
Drayton

P.S.  This is number 9 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.

Master copywriter and copywriting instructor, Ray L. Edwards, talks about alternative, benefit-laden, ways of saying the same thing in copy.

What we mean by the “sizzle” is the BIGGEST selling
point in your proposition – the MAIN reasons why your
prospects will want to buy. The sizzling of the steak
starts the sale more than the cow ever did, though the cow is, of
course, very necessary!

Hidden in everything you sell, whether a tangible or an intangible,
are “sizzles.” Find them and use them to start the sale. Then, after
desire is established in the prospect’s thinking, you can bring in the
necessary technical points.

The good waiter realizes he must sell the bubbles – not the
champagne. The grocery clerk sells the pucker – not the pickles, the
whiff – not the coffee. It’s the tang in the cheese that sells it! The
insurance man sells PROTECTION, not cost per week. Only the
butcher sells the cow and not the sizzle, yet even he knows that the
promise of the sizzle brings him more sales of his better cuts.

- Elmer Wheeler, from chapter one of Tested Sentences That Sell.