• Six questions that may give you a breakthrough in the next week …

• The mastermind meeting unveiling of simple solutions …

• Uncovering the block that keeps you from moving forward …

• And Much More!

Fellow Business-Builder,

1,542 e-mails in the past seven days.

That doesn’t include any newsletters I subscribe to either.  That is strictly 95% spam, and the rest are legitimate business e-mails.

Recently, I was in a mastermind meeting for over 12 hours – and this e-mail problem kept popping up around the room. 

And it made the conversation turn to management of your various business functions.

As much as I love to talk about marketing and advertising strategies for small business, I also realize that there is more to business than just the growth side.

If you don’t have some serious management systems (and people) in place, all the marketing you are doing can just as easily go to waste.

One of the mastermind members runs a real estate investment type of company.

She has been doing this for many years, and one of her more recent projects has been her most trying.

But one thing became glaringly evident
while we grilled her about her business challenges …

… If you aren’t managing certain process along the way, you are spinning your wheels and unnecessarily duplicating the effort you really need to be putting in.

This lady had hired some writers in the past to put together her various pieces she had been using.  Some of the copy worked – some didn’t.

The problem?

Which was which?

She knew that she had generated a certain number of leads in two mailings to her database.  Some of those leads were converted into investors. Now she needs more investors – lots of them – in a short period of time.

So she came into this mastermind meeting thinking she was going to have to rewrite all of her materials, come up with new strategies, find new sources of leads, etc.

In essence, she was trying to reinvent the wheel while she had at her disposal a sports car ready to go full out without changing a thing (except adding a little fuel).

If you have ever felt completely frustrated
and wanted to move on, this is very important …

When we sat her down and made her think about all the steps that she went through …  the total number on her database, the total leads generated from the various mailings, and the conversion rate she got from those leads … we found a goldmine.

Rather than reinventing anything, we found her killer sales pieces in the funnel.  We found her greatest opportunity for immediate investment. 

We also found, by fluke, a person in the room with a 100% closing rate in face-to-face qualified meetings.  During our questioning, we found out the weak link in her sales cycle – and this closing machine was the answer.

So all we had to do was fine-tune her sales system, re-adjust which letters went out and when.  Reorganize the way leads were followed up on …

And we fully expect that she could do a minimum of $1 million dollars in investment dollars in 60 days.

If she sticks to the plan we gave her, she will succeed.

Which brings me to today’s BIG QUESTION for you.

With the feedback and format of The Total Package, it is incredibly easy for you to reply back with comments.

WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST PROBLEM OR CHALLENGE
IN MANAGING THE INTERNAL PROCESSES OF YOUR COMPANY?

If you help us out here and share some of your issues, we can address those problems in the comments section below.

What drives you absolutely NUTS when trying to get things done in your business?

What one thing keeps coming back to haunt you again and again?

What big opportunity do you seem to keep missing time after time?

What systems do you see lacking in your business?

If you could start over and erase everything you have done so far, what would you do differently next time?

What do you think is holding you back from going to the next level in your business (from $100,000 to $1 million, from $1 million to $5 million, or from $5 million to $20 million?)

I would really appreciate your feedback and comments here. 

Many of us face similar problems, and you sharing those helps others see – you aren’t alone! 

The more you share, the easier it is for everyone to help you out.

Thanks for your feedback.

To your success,

Troy White
Editor, Small Business Mastery
Supplement to THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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A Final Note:

If you have specific subjects you would like addressed, or have any comments on what you have seen here, please submit a comment below and I will see how I can help.

"Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.”

–Napoleon Hill

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Brand marketers have long understood that to be successful, they need to create a positive association for their product in the target market’s collective consciousness.

More often than not, this means using images, sounds, and ad copy that define the product user’s identity.

The ad’s tacit promise is that the product allows the buyer to express a particular aspect of their personality, belief system, or accomplishments to those around them.

Here’s how the legendary Eugene Schwartz defined it in Breakthrough Advertising:

“It is the desire of your prospect to define himself to the world around him — to express the qualities within himself that he values, and the positions he has attained.

“Every product you work on should offer your prospect two separate and distinct reasons for buying it.

“First, it should offer him the fulfillment of a physical want or need. This is the satisfaction your product gives him. And second, it should offer him a particular method of fulfilling that need that defines him to the outside world as a particular kind of human being.

“This is the role your product offers to your prospect. It is the non-functional, super-functional value of that product. And it is built into that product — not by engineering — but by merchandising alone.”

At a fundamental level, our purchasing decisions are not so much about the functional utility of a particular product or service as they are about what that product or service allows us to experience.

We’re all dyed-in-the-wool hedonists …

We purchase to seek pleasure and avoid pain. The features of your product or service are merely vehicles for the attainment of these benefits.

I find it useful to think of them in two classes: let’s call them primary and secondary for lack of a better term.

Primary benefits, are those that can be enjoyed with or without a spectator — such as the comfort you derive from settling back into the buttery-soft, contoured, leather seats of your luxury sports sedan … or the convenience of effortlessly gliding your way to the nearest five-star hotel with its built-in GPS navigation system.

Secondary benefits, on the other hand, require an observer …

They are the narcissistic feelings you get from being aware that other people are watching you enjoying the primary benefits of a product — such as the twisted thrill of imagining cousin Bob enviously trailing your luxury-sport sedan in his four-year-old mini-van, with the ripped cloth seats and dog-eared road map for navigation.

Primary benefits you can express directly in your sales copy with impunity. They are considered wholesome, valid reasons for making a purchase.

Secondary benefits on the other hand are taboo, forbidden, unspoken. They must be artfully implied in your sales copy and marketing — never stated too openly.

Narcissus, in Greek mythology, was a beautiful God-youth who spurned the love of the wood nymph, Echo, instead falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water.

Narcissism: The love of one’s own image
as it would be perceived by another.

Not a terribly flattering trait, is it?

Yet, hidden within the secret, narcissistic aspects of human personality lie the most powerful of buying motives. Indeed, there are strong primal, biological benefits to such behavior.

As we’ve known since Darwin, animals are basically machines for reproduction and survival. And animals achieve much of their success in these endeavors through self-advertisement.

They flaunt the fitness of their DNA through what evolutionary psychologists call “signaling” — the brilliance of their plumage … the thickness of their manes … the beauty of their birdsongs … the size of their genitals … and so on … in order to ensure their survival and reproductive success.

Narcissists make a lot of noise about themselves too, for largely the same reasons.

A child, calling out to his mother, “hey ma, look, no hands”, while balancing precariously on his bicycle, is in fact signaling his fitness for survival — and therefore his worthiness for nurturing.

As a preadolescent, the same child dresses in his Sunday best, proudly displays badges of achievement, and grooms himself fastidiously for the inspection of aunts, uncles, and grandparents at family gatherings.

If he does a good job of demonstrating his fitness to carry on the bloodline, he is rewarded — perhaps a job from Uncle Joe … or an extra helping of apple pie from Aunt June.

Signaling also plays a huge role in the boy’s social standing as he enters adolescence. His mode of transportation … the clothes he wears … his grooming and comportment … are all signals that tell others who he is and whether he should be supported or shunned.

His popularity at school directly impacts the quality of his survival and the quality of mating stock he will attract.

Popular apes live long and prosper.
Loners die young and childless …

The primal urge to show off our good genes … good health … and good intelligence finds its expression in all manner of daily living. It influences our minds and behavior every waking hour of every day, literally from cradle to grave.

And this primal biological need to signal our biological fitness and superiority to others is THE fastest road any marketer has past the careful, ponderous, thinking mind … straight to the impulsive, hair-trigger of the reptilian brain in man.

Producers of products and services with purely functional appeal — or who have failed to frame their products as superiority-signaling devices — continually see their profit margins eroding.

Goods and services that have been successfully associated with youth, wealth, power, intelligence, sexual desirability and so forth in the public consciousness continually rise in price and profit margin.

Take a Rolex watch for example. The man wearing a Rolex watch sends a signal to those around him.

The watch says, hey, look at me … powerful, influential, wealthy, sophisticated, and most importantly — a highly competent provider. The signals the watch sends out to potential mates and sexual rivals are worth infinitely more than the time-telling utility of the device.

The more rare and difficult to obtain — and therefore expensive — the more signaling value a product has …

Buyers of such products understand that price is not a cost. It is a benefit that adds value to the product — proof of one’s superiority.

And as Schwartz rightly pointed out, this value has little to do with engineering or materials or workmanship, and everything to do with the associations created by marketers.

The material and labor costs required to create a Rolex represent a much smaller portion of the retail price than that of a Timex, despite the Rolex being hand-made of gold and fine jewels.

Certainly you can understand the importance of signaling and status seeking to the development of brands, but what about direct response marketing?

Well first of all, let’s be careful with these distinctions …

Contrary to popular belief, branding is an important aspect of successful direct response marketing.

Yes, we are concerned with generating direct, immediate sales, and measure our success accordingly. But the brands we create over time — deliberately or willy-nilly — do have a profound impact on the response to future promotions.

Even beyond branding, the impact of demonstrating the signaling value of your product or service in your direct response marketing can have an immediate and dramatic impact on conversion.

Even if you sell intangibles like information, it is entirely possible to prime your prospect to view your product or service as a vehicle for signaling their superiority to those around them.

In fact, since so few other direct response marketers realize this or do very much to enhance the perceived signaling value of the products and services they sell, it gives you an even greater advantage when you do.

In future issues I ’ll be looking at some examples of how this can be done. Stay tuned.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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But my friend and fellow copywriter Nick Usborne says that this advice is not only wrong, but actually harmful.

“This is the worst possible advice you can give to anyone about optimizing their site for the search engines,” says Nick. 

“It’s an element of what is referred to as ‘keyword stuffing’ and is either ignored by the search engine algorithms or, in bad cases, your page and site will be penalized. Worse still, it results in pages that read very strangely to human visitors.

“Using keywords too often on a page and in the meta tags is worse than not using them at all. The frequency or overuse of keywords on a page has nothing to do with whether a spider will find the page. And if a spider finds the page, it doesn’t need a keyword repeated frequently in order to find it.”

Since I am not an SEO expert, I asked a number of consultants in this area – and others more knowledgeable than I — to comment on the topic of keyword usage on Web sites.

“I think stuffing keywords on a Web page is taking the focus off where it needs to be to be successful in any business,” says Sean Woodruff. “That focus should be trained squarely on the customer. Stuffing keywords is a gimmick that is focused on tricking the search engines.”

“Yes, search engines are important,” says Susan Getgood. “But it is far more important to have a good Web site that sells effectively. We should focus on writing good copy that effectively communicates the offer.

“I expect that keywords appear an appropriate amount in good selling copy vs. some artificial stuffing exercise which doesn’t fool the search engines and likely damages your overall communications effort.

“Remember, people do land on your Web site from other sources – advertising, direct mail, and so on — not just from search engines. It is silly to try to optimize for one source, if in doing so, you end up with a sub-optimal Web site for all the others.”

“I often furrowed my brow at suggestions of altering copy to optimize search engine results,” says Bruce DeBoer. “It wasn’t so much that I knew my way was better, but rather that I couldn’t imagine altering otherwise great copy to satisfy a search engine.”

Apryl Parcher advises, “When writing Web sites, it’s more important to put keywords in meta tags and descriptions that are only used by spiders, and not seen by the average person reading your page, and also to give your pages titles in HTML that truly reflect the page’s contents.

“While it is true that words are picked up on your home page for the search engine description — unless the text block is made into an image — it’s usually the first 20 words or so. So make sure that text is what you want people to see when they pick you up on Google. However, you can go all out in putting appropriate search keywords in your description tags without stuffing your actual copy with them.”

“Never stuff a Web page with keywords; it’s awful advice,” says Paul Woodhouse. “You make sure they’re in your title and your meta data. Place them carefully in the beginning, middle, and end of your spiel — and in the H1, H2 tags if necessary.

“Anymore than that and you risk being penalized by Google — although you can find many a site getting away with it. Also, it simply reads awfully. But, don’t take my word for it. Go to www.seochat.com for expert advice.”

“If you want to attract search engine spiders and repel your human visitors, then by all means, stuff away,” says Andrea Harris. “Good Web writing is a balance between satisfying the spiders and the humans. But it’s the humans who buy your products and services.”

“It’s not about ’stuffing’ copy with keywords,” says Richard Leader. “It’s about making sure the keywords are in there.

“Some years back, I ran an online training company. Our course outlines were quite clearly course outlines to a human reader — but not to a spider. We realized we didn’t once use the phrase ‘HTML training course,’ for example.

“So we added it in a few times — and yeah, it looked a bit clunky. But with just a couple of mentions (for example, ‘In this HTML training course, you will learn …’), we increased our search engine traffic — and our conversions. So, my advice is not to stuff but to ‘strategically place.’”

“Placing keywords within your site is certainly an important part of getting search engines to notice you,” says Joel Heffner. “However, my current favorite way to appeal to search engines is to ping entries that I make to my blogs.

“Search engines appear to love to run to see what’s been added to a blog. If you create a link to a specific page, the search engine will take note of that page as well.”

Robert W. Bly
Guest Contributor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE™

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Along the Carolina coast, in places where Blackbeard and other pirates once roamed, they sell tee shirts with a big Jolly Roger emblazoned on the back.  Underneath the skull and crossbones, there’s always a cute saying.  My favorite: 

“Surrender the booty!”

My second favorite:

“The daily beatings will continue
until morale improves.”

That second slogan reminds me a lot of online marketers, these days:  Folks who spend a not-so-small fortune to attract opt-ins for their e-zines – and then blindly go about bludgeoning their new prospects within an inch of their lives with high-energy e-mails or driving them to high-energy sales pages.

These marketers seem to believe that, by giving prospects a daily thrashing, response will eventually improve.  Sorry – but to me, that’s just dumb.  Nevertheless, I’m struck by how many clumsy, ham-handed online marketers do just that – and then wonder why their files are so unresponsive.

A much, MUCH better way …

Lately, I’ve been spending most of my time working on messaging to a client’s house file – the people who’ve accepted a free subscription to his daily e-letter plus those who, at one time or another in the last year or so,  have actually unlimbered their credit cards and bought something from him.

Now, I don’t mean to brag, but we’re doing quite well.  Our prospects are becoming customers at an almost unheard-of rate and our customers are spending more with us with every passing month.  Yes, even in this lousy economy.

The thing is, although we e-mail our names almost daily, we spend weeks on end NOT asking anyone to buy a single, blessed thing from us.  To the contrary:  We spend weeks at a time literally begging them to accept things of tremendous value from us for free.

Just recently, for instance, we spent two full weeks just asking the file to visit our blog and tell us what ONE THING would help them most, promising that we would move heaven and Earth to give it to them.  We got literally thousands of posts from grateful prospects and customers. 

Nearly every one of those posts thanked us for everything else we’re doing for them – praised our free information.  This, of course, quickly convinced every non-customer and newbie on the list who even glanced at them that this company is credible.  It delivers the goods.  It cares about them.  It can be trusted.

The majority of the posts also told us precisely what they needed to make more money in the stock market – and unsurprisingly, most of the answers were very similar.

So for the next two weeks, we dug deeper … asking them to tell us more … posing questions that would elicit more specific answers … and hinting that in a week or two, we would give them the answers they needed – all for free, all to help them make more money.

Then, it was time to take the next steps with them – again; patiently –  establishing my client’s concern for them and positioning him as their champion beyond the shadow of a doubt.

After about a week of engaging our prospects and customers on the subject of what they needed to succeed, we revealed that we would soon host a complimentary online video event in which we would deliver the goods – and then asked them to tell us precisely what they’d like us to cover in that event.

After another week, while continuing the conversation about how we could best help them, we announced that the event would take place two weeks hence … and began inviting them to grab a free registration to attend.

A week later – still continuing our engagement on the basis of their needs – we began counting down to the end of the free registration period with daily e-mails that progressively revealed more of what we would give them at the online briefing.

Each of these e-mails contained a healthy dose of “You asked, so we’re  delivering” – both to solidify our positioning as their advocate and also to remind them that we were pulling out all the stops to give them what they’d been asking for.

We also infused these e-mails with mystery:  Progressively, tantalizingly  lifting our skirts to reveal a bit more ankle or a provocative glimpse of calf each day.  And in each e-mail, we also used facts and quotations from third parties to establish the remarkable power of the investment secrets we were about to reveal. 

More than 60,000 people
watched that video event online. 

And we sold them absolutely NOTHING.

Instead, we asked them to visit our blog to tell us what they thought of the event … invited them to Part Two one week hence, telling them that because they participated in Part One they were already registered for it, again; for free.

And for the next week, we continued to engage those who viewed Part One with e-mails about all the wonderful things we’d reveal in Part Two … while using tons of glowing testimonials they left on our blog to convince the rest of our file that missing Part Two would be the dumbest mistake they’d ever make.

Finally, at Part Two of the online briefing … after five weeks of personal engagement with them … 35 days of listening intently to the file … of delivering tremendous value to them for free … it was finally time to offer them a product that was created to directly fulfill the very desires they had told us about.

The sales page, sent to viewers after the event via e-mail, was extremely low-key.  No copywriter lingo, unbelievable claims or screaming headlines – just credibility out the wazzoo, mouth-watering incentives for giving the product a fair try and of course a money-back guarantee.

That was last Tuesday, and response was off the charts:  Far as I can tell, it was the biggest day in the company’s history.  And if past experience is any indication, the response will continue at record-shattering levels for many weeks to come.

More importantly, when all is said and done, this cycle will be a huge win-win for everyone.  The company will have prospered.  It’s customers will have a product that directly addresses their most pressing needs now.  And most importantly, we will have bonded with our prospects and customers in powerful ways that will ensure that our next events and our next offering of financial solutions will do even better.

Hope this helps…

Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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It's not getting any easier – is it?

If you've spent any time in the trenches of Internet marketing over the past few years, you know precisely what I'm talking about: Those out-of-the-park grand slams are fewer and farther between these days.

Once upon a time, you could just blast an offer – almost any offer – to your customer file or even ice-cold prospect names, then sit back and watch an avalanche of orders come pouring in.

The money was amazing: When one of my clients e-mailed a single note to his 35,000 customers back in the mid-1990s, he raked in $12 million in less than a week.

Ah … the GOOD old days!

Today, that client would kill to get those kinds of results. Like most Internet marketers today, he's working harder and profiting less. Much less.

Why is Web marketing getting so much tougher?

It should be obvious: When Web-based marketing was new – and still relatively rare – just about every one of your prospects and customers read every word of every promotion you sent them.

But these days, even e-mailed sales messages I want to receive are lost among the scores of slimy junk messages that slither into my inbox (while I wrote the above sentence, e-mails from TWO different Viagra companies arrived. No kidding!).

And while all that junk is still finding its way through, overly aggressive spam filters are not only blocking promotional e-mails I've asked to receive – they're even trashing non-commercial e-mails to and from my family, friends and clients!

That's just the tip of the iceberg: The entire Internet is awash with ads. Try to get a report from Weather.Com, or check the stock market on Big Charts: Pop-ups and pop-unders galore!

"It's like déja vu – all over again!"
– Yogi Berra

It was bound to happen. Since the dawn of time, every new marketing innovation and medium to come down the pike has gone through the same response cycle:

Phase #1 – Advent: A small handful of innovative businesses and marketers discover a new advertising medium or technique that proves to be far superior to traditional methods – advertisers' return on investment (ROI) skyrockets …

Phase #2 – Proliferation: Hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of businesses and marketers discover the secret and begin using it – ROI begins to flag …

Phase #3 – Saturation: The novelty wears off … consumers, besieged by advertising messages begin tuning out – ROI begins to decline …

Phase #4 – Maturity: With its novelty spent and ROI falling, the once-vastly-superior new medium or technique eventually takes its place as an equal among many in the advertiser's arsenal.

Today, we are clearly in Phase Three of the Internet marketing explosion: The saturation phase. In just about every industry and product area you can name, open rates, click-through rates, response rates – and most importantly, ROIs – have peaked and are beginning to decline.

The days when you could sleepwalk through your Web-based promotions with lousy, hastily written sales copy, unbelievable product claims and beyond-the-pale pricing strategies are vanishing fast.

That doesn't mean Web-based marketing is dying. Not by a long shot. Well-conceived, well-crafted, well-executed Web marketing can still make you rich beyond dreams of avarice.

But Web-based marketing is maturing. And to generate maximum response and ROI in this environment, it's becoming increasingly important to make sure that your marketing strategy, your sales copy and your offer are razor sharp.

It also means that the Internet is quickly becoming recognized for what it really was all along – one of many media through which marketers attract new customers and make their sales.

Here's how thinking about the Internet in this new light
recently made a favorite client
$5 million richer in just 5 weeks …

Several months ago, one of my favorite clients asked me to create a Web-based promotion for a new investment advisory. The service would give daily mutual fund trading advice to investors for the princely sum of about $1,000 per year.

 … So instead of beginning with a series of e-mails or even a new Web page (as my client requested), I promptly sat down and wrote a 24-page DIRECT MAIL package.

It's not that I'm contrary by nature – I just had a better idea …

My client had been blasting several sales promotions for other products to his customers every weekday via e-mail, and had been doing it for years. And predictably, response to those promotions had crashed to less than one-tenth of what he had been getting years earlier.

My goal: To do everything possible to make this promotion the exception – to boost response rates and ROI by an order of magnitude.

My strategy: To establish the new $1,000 product in prospects' minds as being head and shoulders above every other product my client had ever offered them. To do that, I would demonstrate the uniqueness and superiority of this new product – and create emotional momentum for it – by making its introduction a gala event.

My tactic: Use every medium available to me over a 5-week period – beginning with the cheapest avenues and proceeding step-by-step to ever-costlier ones – to sell the maximum number of subscriptions possible with a positive ROI.

That would require much more copy than the client usually produced for an e-mail promotion – but it would be worth it.

And beginning by writing long copy – copy containing every benefit, every credibility element, every reason why the prospect should buy the service – would be the best way to make sure that the strongest sales copy available appeared in every contact with our prospects.

Once the long copy was finished, the rest would be easy: I would simply excerpt it over and over again to create my multi-step campaign …

STEP #1 – Pick the low-hanging fruit – cheap: A respectable chunk of my client's customers love him to death and will buy just about any product he recommends. For these wonderful customers, I created an extremely low-cost, multi-step e-mail campaign: A series of short, daily blasts announcing the new product and the reasons why the customer should jump on board right away … re-announcing the new product … asking them why we hadn't hear from them, etc.

Important point: The e-mail medium itself is, in a very real way, a big part of the message. By its very nature – the fact that it is an instant communication – the e-mail medium screams "urgency!"

And it also raises key questions in your prospect's mind:

"Why is this communication urgent?

"Is it because you urgently need to sell me something?

"Or is because I urgently need a piece of information in order to bring value to my life?"

If my prospects perceived that my e-mail messages were just crass attempts to sell them something, my e-mails might be instantly deleted. If on the other hand, my e-mails were perceived as a timely and sincere offering to help the recipient in some way, my sales message would be far more likely to be read and responded to.

And so, for urgency and readership, I began each e-mail with valuable information or advice relating to a fast-breaking piece of news from the investment world. The subject line and opening copy of each blast was new each day – as fresh as each day's headlines – and rewarded prospects for reading my sales message.

Next, I made the connection between the breaking news and the new investment service – and demonstrated how the service could use this new event to generate huge profits for the reader in the days ahead.

And finally, I inserted copy justifying my price and asking for the order.

RESULT: A constant stream of $1,000 orders poured in from these e-mails every day for five, full weeks.

STEP #2 – Get fence-sitters to a "tipping point" Website: While a significant group of loyal customers could be counted on to buy in response to a short e-mail, I reasoned that the short copy would leave at least 90% of my prospects sitting on the fence. To sell them, I'd need longer copy – more reasons to buy now – than could be presented in a five or six-paragraph e-mail.

To tip these prospects off of their perch, I used about half the long direct mail copy I had written about the product (12 pages, of 12pt. type, single spaced), to create an "Urgent Special Report" on-line: A small, cheap Website. And in week #2 of my campaign, I began sending e-mails to the client's customers urging them to click a link in order to read the free report immediately.

RESULT: Order volume increased dramatically as a significant number of my client's customers responded to the simple Website.

STEP #3 – Exploit other low-cost or free media: While my client's Web-based products were extremely successful, he also publishes and mails a monthly print newsletter to some 120,000 active subscribers every month.

Taking my client's urgent recommendation to his customers in print would position this new product in my prospects' minds as being something special – not just another run-of-the-mill product promoted exclusively on the Internet.

So, I simply took the 12-pages of copy from the little Website I'd created … wrote a new headline and opening copy … turned it into a printed special report … and had it inserted in the next issue of my client's print newsletter.

At the same time, I tasked the client's operators to include a pitch for the product on all in-bound phone calls from customers.

And I included an insert offering the free on-line report in my clients outbound welcome packages that new subscribers received.

RESULT: Once again, sales spiked nicely.

STEP #4 – Show up where they least expect you to: Two weeks after the newsletter insert hit my prospects' mail boxes, I hit them again – with the full 24-page direct mail package I had initially created to promote the product, formatted as a free special report or "thank-you" bonus for loyal customers.

After years of receiving ONLY e-mail promotions for these high-priced trading services, my prospect suddenly realized that this must really be different – and therefore better than – anything my client had recommended before.

Reasoning that anyone who hadn't bought probably hadn't read past the headline and lead-in copy, I made sure the first three pages were fresh. Beyond that, the copy was pretty much unchanged.

RESULT: Money was positively rolling in.

STEP #5 – I get tenacious: Two weeks after the 24-pager hit their mail boxes, we stuffed it into an envelope, added a one-page letter from my client asking, "Why haven't I heard from you?" and dropped it into the mail.

Again – the phone rang off the hook.

The final result: The combined effect of e-mail, the Website, the inserts in the print newsletter and two direct mailings had a multiplying effect on response.

When the dust had settled, our multi-channel marketing campaign had sold more than $5 million-worth of subscriptions to the new service in just five weeks – about five times more than we would have sold through an e-mail promotion alone!

Lessons learned …

1. E-mail marketing and mini-Websites are merely two of the marketing channels available to you. Challenge yourself to come up with other non-Web based, low cost ways to deliver your sales message … This will position your product as being head and shoulders above all the others your prospects have seen.
2. Picking the low-hanging fruit on a house file with ultra-cheap e-mail campaigns first is a smart way to get the ball rolling. But adding promotions in other media – the newsletter inserts, direct mail packages, welcome package inserts, inbound telemarketing scripts – can make hundreds of sales that are normally lost with Web-based marketing alone.
3. Compelling "reason-why" sales copy at every step of each campaign is absolutely essential for maximizing response, minimizing cost per sale and can send ROI soaring at every step of your on-line marketing process. Use anything less than the strongest sales copy that could possibly be written means you're leaving big bucks on the table.

Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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• When Walt Disney headed up a cowboy parade … and how it applies to your business

• How to get thousands of people working for FREE

• The $2,000 a day secret that would make even Pamela Anderson proud

• Challenging your customers to “step up to the plate”

• Finding out who ELSE stands to gain from your success (and the financial repercussions to your business)

• And Much More!

Fellow business builder,

I am fascinated with the strategies businesses are using to grow fast and consistently. Not the one-time magic pill solutions that are so prevalent on the Internet today – but long lasting, sustainable marketing practices that any and every business should be using.

You have heard me discuss the Wild West Wealth Summit before, but I have not dug in deep and shown you some of the reasoning behind this event and why the Wild West theme has worked so well for them.

It is an inspirational and educational story of a true showman who had a dream – and built that dream into a $300 million dollar empire.

Back in 1912, Guy Weadick had a dream … he wanted to out-do Buffalo Bill’s Traveling Wild West Road Show and make a new kind of event that could endure in the long run. He also wanted to showcase and celebrate the romance of the Old West.

At the time there was an annual event called the Calgary Exhibition that was starting to catch on and gain popularity among local city folk. But it wasn’t even close to the grand vision Guy Weadick had …

Today, the Calgary Stampede Lays Claim
to hosting the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth.

And the numbers prove their claims. Every single year, this 10-day event brings in over $300 million dollars into the local economy. It is a world-renowned outdoor midway (with 1.2 million people passing through the turnstiles), has the second largest parade in the world (second only to the Rose Bowl parade), and has the largest rodeo purse in the world ($1.6 million is handed out to the top rodeo stars).

Having been born and raised in Calgary, Canada (with a short one year stint in Dallas, Texas) – I have attended near 38 Calgary Stampede events already – and now my twin daughters are being brought up in the "Stampede City."

I have always been fascinated with the Stampede and how they manage to convert a city of a million people the way they do (more on that later). There is nothing like this anywhere that I have ever seen.

Some of the Big Lessons
the Calgary Stampede Has Taught Me …

Get the word out on a mass scale.

Laying claim to the Greatest and Largest Outdoor Show on Earth means they had better be serious about delivering on their promise. And making sure the world knows about you is critical.

Just a few of the ways they spread the word …

• They use ambassadors. The Stampede Princesses and Queen travel the world year round and do 400 events per year. Doing photo shoots, publicity promos, rodeo related events, etc. Each year a new group of them are chosen – and they are always chosen from exceptional backgrounds of those who support the city and those who are active in the rodeo scene.

• There are 2300 volunteers that travel the world spreading the word. VOLUNTEERS! People who work for FREE. They go on a vacation – and spread the word. They travel to a seminar – and spread the word. They are incredibly thoughtful people who take great pride in what they do and what it helps them build.

• Give it away! 28,000 people are fed for free every year. Not including what corporations give away for free (they caught the spirit). In Calgary, during the July event, you can eat for free every single day of the week – multiple times if you want. The free pancake breakfasts are the community’s way of giving back. These are held in parking lots, at the park, on the street, or pretty well anywhere else they can find a place to pull in the chuck wagons and fire-up the pancake griddles.

• Everyone loves a parade and party! As I mentioned earlier, the parade is huge! With over 400,000 people lining the streets of Downtown Calgary, combined with the millions of people watching live broadcasts in all corners of the world – the parade is a must-see event. Walt Disney headed up the parade back in 1965, and each and every year a new parade marshal is chosen. They are usually celebrities of some sort – either from television, the movies, or from charitable causes (this years parade marshals were a group of young men who skateboarded across Canada while raising funds for breast cancer).

• Build in annual traditions. The chuck wagon races are a big part of the Calgary Stampede. Not only do they stand to pocket $100,000 for being part of the winning chuck wagon team, the canvas on top of the chuck wagon is a VERY valuable piece of property. Each year they hold an auction and companies can bid to have their name place prominently on the chuck wagon. Some of these sell for six figure sums of money. But they get world-wide television coverage with their company name and logo front and center. Think about who else stands to gain from your success – have you asked them to sponsor you or help you grow faster?



• It’s a year-round effort that most people only see every 10 days – the 97-yr-old product launch formula. The anticipation builds up to a feverish pitch locally … and travel agents across the world highly encourage thrill seekers to visit Calgary during the Stampede (45 minutes from Calgary is the Rocky Mountains where you can find yourself pretty well any kind of adventure you seek). The Calgary Stampede is becoming the destination of choice for young partiers as well. Some of the local Western-themed bars have capitalized on this in a BIG way. One of them flies in a portable airplane hanger and uses it for its ‘beer tent’ – on the busy days up to 15,000 people pass through its gates.
  

  One of the more controversial parts of this side of the Stampede is the use of scantily clothed “beer girls” or, as some call them, “tub tarts.” These are usually beautiful young girls, wearing clothing that Pamela Anderson would be proud of. They are typically showing a lot of skin, and the mixture of alcohol in the picture makes it a very profitable time for these girls. Many of them average $1,000 - $2,000 a DAY in tips.

• Be edgy and/or challenge them – “Are you tough enough to wear pink?” This was the campaign they ran this year – everyone who bought a pink western shirt (yes – for the guys) was donating a percentage of the shirt price to breast cancer research. This was a HUGE success for them … in the parades – everything was pink … at the bars - half the guys were wearing pink … at the midway grounds – pink, pink, and more pink. Major success – and for a very good cause.

• Give away lots of free entertainment. Everyone loves a freebie … in your business it could and should be an annual customer appreciation event. At the Stampede – it is the music. Some of the biggest name Country and Western stars converge in Calgary and give it their all. The cost to consumers? Nothing. The big name corporate sponsors (Coca Cola is one of them) pay for the entertainment. Many music buffs travel from venue to venue, soaking up the experience every single day. Who could you bring in to your appreciation event that would keep your customers talking for years?

• When everyone is a part (from CEO’s to entry level clerks) – it is a very amazing experience for everyone involved. This is a strange phenomenon that you have to see to believe. Downtown Calgary is a major corporate center and the second largest city in Canada for corporate head offices. LOTS of suit and ties to be found. At least until the Friday morning of the parade!
  

  If you were new to this and were walking around downtown Calgary on the Thursday before the Stampede starts (it always starts on a Friday morning in July) … you would see suit and ties everywhere.

  Come back 12 hours later for the parade … you won’t see a tie ANYWHERE! From the corporate CEO’s of multi-billion dollar empires … to the mailroom clerks … EVERYONE is dressed Western. The entire city transforms into “Urban Cowboys” for the 10-day event. From boots to cowboy hats, everyone does their part to make this a special event.

These are just a sample of some of the lessons I’ve learned from the Stampede. And there are ample ways to MAKE these fit your business. The question is – will you shrug it off as “not applicable” to your business … or will you find a way to make it fit? Those serious about success can always find a way to make it fit.

To your success,

Troy White
Editor, Small Business Mastery
Supplement to THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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A Final Note:

If you have specific subjects you would like addressed, or have any comments on what you have seen here, please submit a comment below and I will see how I can help.

"Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.”

–Napoleon Hill

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Quick question before we get started: What’s the biggest surprise you ever got from a marketing test? Hold that thought because I’ll be asking again …

You’ve probably heard the saying, “if it ain’t broke — don’t fix it.” Heard that, right?

It’s one of the reasons major corporations today have become so fat, satisfied and bureaucratized that managers are afraid to fart without circulating a memo for fear of disturbing the status quo.

Just one problem … there is no status quo. The world is in a constant state of flux. It’s fluxing faster each day.

Business leaders envision goals and make grand plans based on the world as they know it.

They build rigid, monolithic companies that are too big and too rich to fail. And as we’ve seen … their enormity can no more protect them from the firestorm of change than enormity protected the dinosaurs.

Bloated, slow-moving corporate behemoths, however, do not hold a monopoly on rigidity and complacency …

As a small business owner, if you build your success by designing a company that can withstand change — without changing itself — it, too, will soon die.

Show me a business that doesn’t worship innovation for innovation’s sake, and I’ll show you a business that’s gradually withering and failing.

Your business may appear to be chugging along just fine, but if your systems and processes are not in a constant state of forced innovation, your business is stagnating. And if your business is stagnant, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll lose it.

Every day, markets morph. New competitors emerge. Consumer tastes change. Technology advances.  Time waits for no man. And damn few women.

The minute you deploy a successful marketing campaign, system, or process, the inexorable forces of change begin tearing it down and robbing you of your success.

You must learn to embrace disorder and uncertainty — even outright chaos — and use them to your advantage. And be more adaptable than your competitors. There’s no other way to succeed in today’s marketing maelstrom — but how?

Adaptability is a discipline.

It’s like a muscle you must flex regularly to keep strong.

Truly successful marketers don’t wait for negative feedback from the market. They go looking for it … continually experimenting with new ideas and testing them in real time in the marketplace. 

This is, of course, counter-intuitive … because most of these experiments fail to increase the velocity of the business. And they cost time and money.

That’s why so few businesses engage in such active innovation. Most prefer to react to change rather than initiate it. The unfortunate result is they soon become rigid and inflexible, unable to react quickly when the mud hits the fan.

This is exactly what happened to the big car makers in North America …

While the Japanese were proactively forcing themselves to innovate and create constant improvements in every area of their businesses … the American companies thought they could simply react to change when things got ugly.

The lesson is clear: By making a constant effort to break things before they go broken, you maintain a culture of innovation within your company.

And if you go about it intelligently, you reap the added benefit of continuously improving your results.

This goes way beyond simply testing a headline here and there. It needs to be applied to every aspect of your marketing.

Small scale tests conducted as scientifically as possible will keep you on your toes. And eventually point you to breakthroughs.

Here are just a few areas for you to consider … merely the tip of the iceberg to inspire your thinking:

The Look and Feel of Your Marketing: Sometimes something as simple as the type of website you use can have a dramatic impact on your results.

Recently I decided to test using a Wordpress blog as a squeeze page versus a traditional web page. This resulted in a very significant increase in the amount of traffic Google sends me. Who’d have thunk it?

Have you tried using videos instead of long scrolling sales pages? Adding audio to your squeeze pages? HTML e-mail versus text e-mail, or vice versa?

Your Offer Strategy: There are almost infinite ways to structure an offer. If you’re using a traditional hard offer to sell your product — where you collect all of the money upfront — have you tried using a soft offer with deferred payment?

Tried different price points? Added an up-sell for people that buy? And a down sell for people who don’t?

Experimented with adding a trailing continuity program to your main offer? Toyed with fixed term continuity programs versus “until forbid”?

Every different offer strategy has an impact on profitability and the amount of money you can afford to invest to bring on a new customer. How can you measure that impact if you don’t try a variety of different offer strategies to see how they work for your particular business?

Your Promotional Strategy: Every different lead source has a different lifetime customer value. You can’t simply look at the cost of acquisition. I do a lot of joint ventures and I see a huge disparity in the quality of leads that result. I see the same thing with paid traffic.

The keywords you bid on with PPC … the networks you use … the sites you buy banners on, etc. all impact your results.

Are you experimenting with different lead pools … watching to see which promotional strategies create the best leads … measuring the performance of those leads over time as they make their way through your marketing funnel?

Your Copy Strategy: We tend to think of headline tests when we think of copy experiments, but there’s so much more. Different themes and appeals can all have a big impact on your results. The structure and sequence of your campaigns are also key factors.

Sometimes breaking your sales process up into graduated steps helps, sometimes it hurts. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s not always best to collect e-mail addresses before going for the sale.

What other online marketing truisms that may not be true for you might be hurting your sales? You have to test.

Your Product Strategy: Ultimately you’re selling an outcome — a result. But sometimes the nature of the vehicle you use to get your prospect to that outcome can have a big impact on sales.

What can you do to make your info-products physically more enticing?

Will offering multiple modalities increase sales or allow you to raise your prices and profit margins? What about incorporating testing and accreditation? How about forcing people to prove they’ve mastered one module before allowing them to progress to the next?

Considered giving away part of your product to build trust and involvement? What about giving away a free mp3 player to listen to your material?

Just as importantly, what can you say about your physical product that makes all of its advantages immediately apparent?

Your Systems Strategy: Marketing is about automation — salesmanship multiplied through technology.

Do you find yourself doing rote, repetitive tasks that could be automated with software or outsourced to someone else at a tiny fraction of your hourly rate? Don’t forget that driving costs out of your marketing is yet another way to make your marketing more effective.

How much more productive and agile could you be if you did nothing but copywriting and marketing strategy?

The Bottom Line:

If you’re not already committing yourself to a program of proactive innovation for your business, isn’t it time you got started?

Personally I budget time and/or money to try at least one new small scale experiment every week, for no other reason than to learn something new.

From a purely monetary perspective, many of these experiments are failures. Others are mild successes that sometimes lead to further experiments which reveal true breakthroughs. I don’t see any of them as failures … simply a cost of doing business.

What about you? Test much? If so, what’s the biggest surprise you’re comfortable sharing?

Maybe you were convinced something couldn’t possibly improve your business, but someone you respected insisted you test it. And you were shocked at the results. Or maybe something you were convinced would be an improvement bombed. Tell us your story.

And if you’re new to testing and just have a few questions to ask, you’ve got a great resource here in the TTP community … so fire away! I’ll try to pop in a couple times myself over the next week and share in the discussion.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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This is one of the most quoted passages in marketing in trying to explain the difference between features and benefits. However, the quote is incomplete and leaving out something that, to me, is far more important.

And that is, what’s the purpose of this quarter-inch hole? What does the reader plan on doing with it? Even better, what’s the end-result the reader wants to achieve with it?

The answer to that question is, in my estimation, the real benefit. The ultimate benefit.

Not the hole. And certainly not the drill that created it.

Sure, it is a benefit to some degree. But “benefit,” defined in the dictionary, is “something that improves, enhances, or promotes well-being.” So let me ask you, how is one or one’s well-being enhanced by a quarter-inch hole?

To make offers truly irresistible, words should appeal to specific buyer motives. Common copywriting wisdom dictates that the first rule in doing so is to stress benefits over features. Think benefits, benefits, benefits. Sounds simple, right?

Not really. For if it were, a website would be successful simply if it listed a product’s features and its subsequent benefits. And we all know that is not true. Many benefit-laden copy have failed. So you need more than that.

In an attempt to provide you with some guidance on how to dig deeper to find better, more compelling benefits, here’s a tool I’ve used to help you.

The Product Analysis Worksheet

One of the classes I used to to teach in college was Professional Selling. In it, the curriculum’s textbook was Personal Selling: An Interactive Approach by Ronald Marks, Ph.D., a professor of marketing at the University of Missouri.

In this book, Dr. Marks discusses the ability to convey benefits over features using a tool he calls Product Analysis Worksheet. The way it works is quite simple.

Product benefits usually consist of four principal levels. They are features, advantages, motives, and benefits. Each layer has its own set of attributes and characteristics, which varies depending on the product type and the market to which the product caters.

To illustrate, here’s a description of each layer:

1. Features – what products have. For example, say you sell an accounting software. You can say, “This accounting software has a reporting feature.”
2. Advantages – what features do. To continue our example, “Reporting provides real-time, on-demand, updated mission-critical information to key personnel.”
3. Motives – what motives do features satisfy. For example, “Cost-savings, greater control, increased production, better decisions, etc.”
4. Benefits – what those features mean. This is where you attach the advantages you outlined to specific motives those features satisfy. To continue our example…

   “With this powerful reporting feature, managers are able to keep their finger on your company’s financial pulse at all times, thereby reducing costs by as much as 50%, maintaining greater control over expenditures, increasing their output by 10-20 times at any given time, and avoiding making decisions that could cost them thousands if not millions of dollars – all in just a few clicks.”

What does this do? By digging deeper and communicating what benefits really mean to your audience, it adds weight, purpose, meaning, relevancy, and power behind the benefits you initially come up with. It gives your benefits legs.

Obviously, coming up with a list of benefits may be easy if you know your product well enough. But describing them in a way that’s appropriate for, and directly related and targeted to, specific audiences is not an easy process.

Market research helps to solve that challenge. In fact, researching your market before you put pen to paper or electron to screen is the most important component of good copywriting. Not the headline, not the offer, and not the price.

The market.

The market is the single most important component of your sales copy. The more you learn about your market, the better and more effective your copy will be.

For example, a common problem among marketers is to develop content using a language their readers will understand. Sure, readers may understand what’s being said to some degree. But comprehension of a message doesn’t mean they will relate to it.

The problem is, marketers often use words that only they can relate to.

This is quite normal as we write in the way we think or talk.

However, the goal in writing good, compelling copy is to think like our readers, talk like our readers, and connect with our readers. This is where much of the copy I see fails.

Even yours truly is guilty of this from time to time. We’re too married to our product, or we’re too disconnected from how and what our readers think, feel, and communicate. This is where the “product analysis worksheet” can become very helpful.

Here’s how it works…

First, list all of the features of your product or service, including standard, technical, supportive, even abstract features. Then, with each feature, develop a subsequent list of relative advantages. Write down what each feature listed does.

Some people think that what a feature does is the benefit. But this is where most business owners and copywriters fail to relate those benefits to their readers.

They assume an advantage is a benefit and stop there, when those benefits are too broad or one-sided. Instead, the feature’s function or purpose, not how it actually serves, relates to, and benefits the reader, is merely an advantage.

While a feature is what a product has and an advantage is what that feature does…

… A Benefit is What That Feature Means.

A benefit is what a person intimately gains from a specific feature. It’s the ultimate end-result. When you describe a feature, say this: “What this means to you, Mr. Prospect, is this…” Followed by a more personal gain your reader gets from the feature.

Turn it around. don’t focus on a certain feature’s benefit. Rather, focus on how those features specifically benefit the individual and what those benefits truly mean.

Here’s an example using my private membership website, where members get access to videos of me tearing sales copy apart, and revealing copywriting tips, tricks, and actual, tested conversion strategies in the process.

• Feature: Watch a top copywriter in action as he writes killer copy, all recorded on video, using real salesletters and real websites from real clients.
• Advantage: You get to learn how to write copy faster by understanding the logic behind successful copy (not just how to write it), and also learn copywriting tips, mistakes, shortcuts, and proven split-test results in the process.
• Motive: What you want is to reduce the learning curve, risks, effort, and costs involved in trying to do it all yourself. Therefore, what this feature means is this…
• Benefit #1: This means you get real-world examples from real case studies and actually see the process done before you, instead of plain textbook theory or mere swipe files that leave you scratching your head.
• Benefit #2: Using real-world examples means you can understand what goes into world-class copy and appreciate how they’re being used, so you can easily repeat the process on your own, in the future.
• Benefit #3: Repeating the process on your own means you don’t have to pay an expensive copywriter to write it for you or fix it if it’s not performing well.
• Benefit #4: Not having to pay for a copywriter means you save money and get it done faster by learning proven strategies you can apply immediately, without waiting for someone to do it for you or explain it to you in some “how-to” course.
• Benefit #5: And learning proven, tested strategies means you eliminate the need to search for, find, test, and learn everything yourself, and avoid making costly mistakes by having to figure out what works and what doesn’t on your own.

… And on and on.

Can You See The Difference?

Now, once achieved, look at your worksheet.

Did you cover all the benefits that a specific feature has? Did you go deep and specific enough? Don’t just resort to apparent or obvious benefits. Dig deeper. Think of the end-results your readers get from enjoying your product or service.

Coming up with the first batch will be easy because they will be at the top of your mind. But forcing yourself to dig deeper and come up with stronger, more intimate benefits, although it will be more challenging, will provide you with some of the best ones.

To help you, here’s a simple exercise.

Once you’ve listed one benefit tied to a specific feature, just keep asking, “What this means to you is this…” And work it until you run out of reasons.

Or use what copywriter Peter Stone calls the “so that” technique. Same idea, but add the words “so that” at the end, like, “With this feature, you get [benefit], so that [deeper benefit], so that [even deeper benefit],” and so on until you can’t go any further.

Once you’re done, you then move onto the next feature.

Remember that features tell but benefits sell.

Above all, make sure you communicate those benefits in a way that truly reflects and caters to the situations, problems, needs, and desires of your target market. Express benefits in terms that relate directly to each individual in that market.

Some people shy away from describing benefits because they assume they generate hype or puffery. Not so. As illustrated above, they are effective tools to get your readers to fully understand and appreciate your product’s true purpose, meaning, and relevancy.

After all, different words mean different things to different people.

In other words, forget features and what they do, which is what most people think are benefits. Think of what a feature means to the customer and the words that communicate this meaning at an individual, intimate, and emotional level.

Because the more intimate your benefits are, the more real, vivid, significant, and meaningful they will be. And subsequently, the more sales you will generate, too.

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Dear Business-Builder,

My great - whatever - Ty Cobb: Hard as nails.

My mom’s cousin married Ty Cobb’s son, Herschel. Since I’m not good at math, I can’t really tell you what that makes me. Ty Cobb’s grand nephew once removed? I dunno.

But still, I’ve always been proud to be related — even distantly — to the man who invented modern baseball. So a few years ago, I read Cobb: A Biography by Al Stump and later, watched the movie starring Tommy Lee Jones.

Great book; good flick. Not because they heralded Cobb’s exploits on the field, but because they painted a crystal-clear picture of the man behind the legend.

Cobb was not an easy man to like. He was aggressive, abrasive and quick to use his fists (or even a knife) on those who provoked him. He once jumped into the stands and mercilessly beat a heckling fan who had no hands.

He was also, some say, a bigot of monumental proportions — despite the fact that he funded a hospital and a scholarship fund that both welcomed African-Americans.

Cobb also publicly supported the decision to integrate baseball, saying that black athletes" … are to be complimented for their gentle conduct both on the field, and, as far as I know, off the field."

But what I love most about Ty Cobb is not his legendary ball-playing skill. I love him for his cantankerous, independent personality. Cobb was intense. Driven. Uncompromising. Disciplined. Hard as nails.

And he had a work ethic that was unrivalled among his peers.

As a result, Cobb set 90 Major League Baseball records during his career — and 80 years after he retired in 1928, he still holds the all-time record batting average and the record for earning the greatest number of career batting titles.

That’s why, when the Baseball Hall of Fame was inaugurated in 1936, Ty Cobb received the greatest number of votes for admission — more than the great Honus Wagner and more, even than the legendary Babe Ruth. Cy Young, the winningest pitcher in history, came in a distant eighth.

You have no right to be successful

In America today, we have taken the idea of "rights" to a ridiculous level. We are now told that we have the "right" to food, education, employment, a certain wage, housing, health care and to a comfortable retirement.

We have, we are told, the right to be cared for from the cradle to the grave.

This is, of course, complete idiocy. Utter nonsense. No such rights are mentioned anywhere in the Constitution or anywhere else, for that matter. Except of course by wacko liberal activists and the media morons who give them exposure.

Meanwhile, ironically, many of the same people who campaign for these non-existent rights are guilty of attempting to deny us the rights that actually are guaranteed us by the Constitution: The right to life … liberty … the pursuit of happiness. The right to free speech, privacy and to keep and bear arms, to name a few.

So, since here at The Total Package, we believe that words actually have meaning, let’s call a spade a spade: When a person, a church or a government gives you anything that you cannot or will not provide for yourself, it is charity. People who accept charity are, by definition, charity cases: Burdens on society.

Once upon a time, having to accept charity was humiliating. Like having a sign hung around your neck identifying you as lazy, irresponsible or a person who made foolish decisions. A loser.

Anyone with a modicum of self-respect would move mountains to avoid being labeled in such an insulting way. And those who counted on charity as a life strategy — who acted as though they were entitled to it — were quickly disappointed. There was a limit to the community’s generosity.

Today, though charity has been institutionalized as a "right" at the federal level. Those who accept it no longer suffer any insults to their dignity. And since the limits to how much charity is offered no longer exist, many live their entire lives feeling that they are entitled.

What it really takes to become a success

The other day in an interview, I was asked, "What are the most crucial qualities for an entrepreneur, a marketer or a copywriter to have?"

I’m sure the interviewer expected me to say something like, "You need to be a great writer. You need to be creative."

My answer: "Courage. Independence. Intensity. Persistence. And a mind-blowing work ethic."

• It takes courage and fierce independence to decline the comfort and security of a dead-end job … go out on your own … invest your own money and your own time … risk losing it all … and to take sole responsibility for your success or failure.
• It takes monumental amounts of intensity to learn what must be learned and to apply it in ways that produce the optimum result.
• It takes remarkable persistence to stick with it when the going gets tough; to pick yourself up after a failure … when all around you are urging you to quit and settle for the mediocrity and pseudo-security of worker bee.
• It takes an untiring commitment to excellence in every aspect of your work — and attention even to seemingly unimportant details — to produce work that will lift you head and shoulders among your competitors.
• And of course, to do all this, you’ll need the work ethic of a champion.

Of a Ty Cobb.

This ain’t no "lazy man’s way to riches."

It’s enough that, if you do it right, becoming an entrepreneur, a marketer or a copywriter CAN make you rich.

A society that does not condemn you to live out your days in a particular caste; that gives you both the opportunity and ample incentive to better yourself, to become rich and to provide a better life and greater opportunity for your family is all that we are owed.

From that point on, the person of dignity — the person who refuses to become anybody’s charity case — is pretty much on his or her own.

I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who believe that this marketing and copywriting is easy.

Somehow, they’ve come to believe they can hang out their shingle, let work take a back seat to their new life of "freedom," exert the bare minimum of effort and still hit the big time.

Let me tell you from personal experience, my friend: It isn’t going to happen.

Because like baseball, this direct response marketing thing is a bottom-line business. It’s not about being good-looking or having a sparkling personality or being able to B.S. your way out of sticky situations.

In this gig, the results you produce are measured in dollars and cents. Do the work, take it seriously and hang great numbers on the line and you’re a winner. Try to skate by on charm … sleepwalk through it … and you’ll get your head handed to you.

Everything you do today is a brush stroke on a canvas; a portrait of you ten years, twenty years, forty years from now.

The measure of success, reputation, wealth and quality of life you’ll enjoy later in your career is being determined right now; today by the amount of effort you’ll expend plus the quality of decisions you make in the next few hours, this week, this month, this year.

Your life will be little more and little less than what naturally happens to people who do what you do, exert the amount of effort you exert and make the decision you make.

So wouldn’t this be a good time to renew your commitment? To resolve to expend every iota of thought, energy and every hour you can to ensuring that your work achieves the standard of excellence required for success?

Give it a good think: What is it about your knowledge base … your skill mastery … the effort and depth of thought you invest in each project … the attention to detail in your finished work … that could be; should be improved?

Just do that this week, and the vast sum of money you’ve paid for your subscription to this blog will be well justified. I guarantee it.

Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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I was born cocky.

When I was 17 years old, running a Baumfolder in a printing plant for $1.60 an hour ($64 a week; $3,328 a year – before taxes!) – I was absolutely convinced I could write more compelling copy than I saw in the direct mail packages they had me working on …

At 23, as I slaved over a hot IBM Selectric at an L.A. agency for $15,000 a year, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that my sales copy was by far the strongest stuff in the mail – probably the hottest copy anybody had ever written in the entire history of the direct response industry, period …

And when I was 30, earning $300,000 plus overrides each year creating promotions for a $250-million-a-year financial newsletter and rare coin retailer – I was just too cool for school.

Sure – I had heroes; the stuff I saw Gary Bencivenga, Jim Rutz and Bill Bonner cranking out never failed to blow my mind. But with those exceptions, I was always the smartest guy in every room.

According to me.

And so, when a client offered me a bit of constructive criticism, I’d just smile and politely ignore him. And when I received invitations to attend seminars or conferences on copywriting or direct marketing, I just smirked, rolled my eyes and tossed them into the nearest “round file.”

After all – I was THE guy. I knew it all. Nobody could tell me anything about how to create blockbuster products or premiums or world-beating promotions. Nobody’s ideas were as good as mine were.

I was, as they say, a legend in my own mind.

Pretty dumb, huh?

Of course when I think about it, that youthful cockiness got me a long way.

It gave me the nerve to call total strangers, tell them their promotions were stinking up the room and offer to save them from their dismal mediocrity for a reasonable fee.

And it gave me the backbone to survive failures and to keep pluggin’ when a sane person would have just quit.

But more recently – in the last decade or so – I’ve noticed a subtle but significant change in my attitude. And that change has led me to many of the biggest winners and the biggest money of my entire career …

I Mellowed.

Maybe it’s the combined effect of the lessons I’ve learned from getting my butt whupped in the mail a few times a year over 35 years. Maybe it’s being married to a redhead who’s always right.

Or maybe, it’s because after seeing 55-plus summers, I am now officially older than dirt, and this “mellow” thing just comes with age. Like inflatable prostates, insomnia and the rheumatiz.

 … But over the last decade or so, I’ve learned something astonishing: Other people have ideas, too!

In fact, LOTS of people have ideas. And believe it or not, some of them are actually good … a few are really great … and every once-in-a-while, one of them is truly spectacular.

Not only that: Other people are willing to share their ideas with me. All I have to do is maintain a modicum of humility … keep an open mind … listen carefully … think a while … write a while … and VOILA’! Some of those ideas turn into money.

Sometimes, huge money.

Did you know any of this? I mean – how long has this been going on?

I can afford a lot of things;
Arrogance is NOT one of them!

I only mention this because lately, I’ve noticed that some folks don’t seem to have learned this lesson.

You see them all over the ‘Net. Some are self-appointed gurus with huge egos, abrasive attitudes and an insulting way of addressing you.

Others are just poseurs who haunt the forums and blogs like so many vultures, yearning for the opportunity to inflate their own egos by talking down to you or ridiculing your ideas.

You know the guys I’m talking about: They’re arrogant, obnoxious, churlish, a real pain in the patootie. And the last thing they’ll ever do is admit that they don’t know it all, or that there’s anything they can learn from anybody.

Like dogs trying establish who’s leader of the pack, they go around humping everything that moves.

Problem is, some poor, naive folks mistake their arrogance for authority – or worse, for knowledge or actual experience.

And that’s a shame. Because the true experts in this industry are some of the sweetest, most unassuming guys and gals on the planet.

Spend a few minutes with Gary Bencivenga, Arthur Johnson, Parris Lampropoulos, Kent Komae, Carline Anglade-Cole, Kim Krausse, David Deutsch, John Carlton – or any other of the real-deal copywriting champs out there and you’ll see what I mean.

Every one of them is a prince or a princess – and for good reason: Month after month, they hang it all on the line to challenge a client’s control: Their reputations, their egos, their future income, the whole shebang.

The ones they win keep them going. The ones they lose keep them humble.

The phonies haven’t learned humility because they don’t, won’t or can’t compete at these levels. And so they just promote themselves – and in a transparent attempt to mask their own incompetence, they strut and cackle like so many banty roosters.

My advice? The next time you see a promotion, or an article, or a forum or blog posting from an arrogant or insulting fool, do yourself a favor: Shine him on. Maybe if we all ignore them, they’ll just go away.

Now, that advice alone is probably worth about a billion times what you paid to subscribe to The Total Package.

But that’s not why I’m writing this. My real point – and I do have one – is …

A good idea is still the most powerful
thing on Earth.

This direct response selling thing of ours – this “Cosa Vendere Nostra” – is fueled by ideas.

Product ideas. Premium ideas. Theme ideas. Headline ideas. Copy ideas. Offer ideas. Marketing strategy ideas. Media selection ideas.

In fact, the formula for direct response success can easily be boiled down to two, simple equations:

Good Ideas = Money.

Great Ideas = Beaucoup Money.

OK – so it’s not exactly “E=MC2” and I’m definitely no Einstein – but it’s true, nonetheless: The more good and great ideas you have, the more money you can make.

So how do you collect these ideas?

Well, staying humble, keeping an open mind and rejoicing in every opportunity to learn (e.g. the times when your promotion executes a flawless face-plant) is a great first step.

The second step is to get close to people like you who eat, sleep and breathe direct marketing, copywriting and design … who slug it out in the trenches day after day … and who have amassed an impressive record of amazing successes.

These are the guys and gals you need to get on a first-name basis with … to listen to … and to learn from.

Meet my Marketing Masterminds …

Over the years, I’ve surrounded myself with a handful of people I trust to bring me big response-boosting and money-making ideas: People I respect as being the very best at what they do.

These are the folks I call on when I need a fresh set of eyes on my copy … a breakthrough idea … or to solve a problem. And over the years, they’ve made me a bundle.

I’m talking about geniuses like Boardroom’s Brian Kurtz – the marketing brains behind the most successful soft-offer publisher in America and without a doubt, the best product developer I know.

And there’s on- and off-line marketing whiz MaryEllen Tribby – who created the most effective marketing division I’ve ever seen at Weiss and who’s now the boss lady at AgoraLearning’s superstar Web company Early to Rise …

Then, there’s best-selling author and copywriting superstar Bob Bly – who helps me create kick-butt winners in the health market and also helps me help you.

And there’s former copy cub and current copywriting superstar Kent Komae with whom I’ve created many a promotion for major clients – and whose interview in these pages drew rave reviews.

For graphics help, I lean heavily on my friend Rob Davis – hands-down, the most gifted, successful and sought–after direct mail designer in the business.

And although you may know Daniel Levis through The Total Package, what you don’t know is that he earned his place here only after earning his stripes in the direct marketing trenches.

And veteran “A” level copywriter David Deutsch, who may also be the single most creative guy I know.

And of course, Troy White – the international management and marketing coach whose knack for transforming small businesses into big ones impressed me so much, I invited him to join my team.

Each one of these experts is creating hugely profitable promotions on the Web and in print – and exploding clients’ sales – right now. Each is hard-wired into the strategies and tactics that are working best for our clients right now.

And if you get to know them, they can do the same for you.

Of all the questions I get asked by Total Package readers, one of the most popular ones goes something like this:

“They say you’re the highest-paid copywriter in America.

“How can I make the big bucks, too?”

My answer: “Surround yourself with experts who are best at doing the things you can’t do.”

I know – easier said than done.

Why not make it a point this week to begin building your marketing mastermind alliance? Make a list of the people you can call for advice … to brainstorm new product and promotion ideas … to critique your sales copy – whatever would accelerate your success.

Be available to help them if they’ll agree to help you.

Sure – to do that, you’ll first have to admit that you don’t know it all … that you’ll reach your goals more quickly with a little help from your friends.

But that’s a good thing.

Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

Looking for resources related to this article? Try some of these.

Looking for more of Clayton's articles? Check these out.

Looking for past issues of The Total Package? Click here for our archives.