Josh Kerbel

They being prospects and it being your PPC ad campaign (whoops, I used a buzzword). Once you understand how to build a campaign, you see exactly why this whole process needs to start by establishing a USP – UNIQUE SALES PROPOSITION.

Your USP focuses everything else that comes after it……….who you are going to target as prospects, how you are going to reach them, what you are going to say to them once you reach them……..I think you get the idea.

But rather than pulling apart someone else’s website and campaign, I am going to turn the gun mirror inwards and talk about me.

So, let’s start at the top, what exactly is my USP – I build online business lead generation systems.  I don’t do Internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, website design, Google PPC advertising, except that I do, as much as they are tools that I use to build lead generation systems….

……….Much like a heart surgeon doesn’t tell you that he uses a scalpel, lidocaine, clamps and various other surgical tools to fix a heart valve, you really don’t need to bother yourself with all the tools of my trade and I don’t have to care about yours.  I just need to provide a service of some benefit and so do you.  People who are often technically included make the mistake of thinking that people care about search engine optimization, SEM, PPC, white hat, black hat and anything else related to the nuance of my industry (or yours for that matter), unless some technology figures intimately in the solution to your clients problem, keep it simple……..Outside of the Internet marketing world, you would be surprised how many people can’t tell the difference between a PPC ad and an organic search result ………to them it is all the same……….its the INTERNET!

So let’s take a look at my website now, does my website reflect my USP?  I’d like to think it is getting closer and closer all the time.  It’s often a matter of iterations.   For example, I noticed that my white paper talked about search engine marketing, while my website and USE discussed lead generation.

While search engine marketing is a tool of lead generation, the two concepts are not the same.  When most people think of sales, they think of leads, not search engine marketing.  The head of sales at a company doesnt say to himself, damn, I wish I had more search engine marketing, no, he wishes he had more SALES LEADS……

So I changed it and made some various other tweeks to the site to better align concepts.  The site talks about sales lead generation and shows various examples of techniques that could be used, but the over arching goal is lead generation.

…Remember, customers (You and I are both customers, don’t forget it) are stupid – we need things simple.  In order to get through to stupid consumers we need to stay on message…….your USP keeps you on message

Wow, all that and I haven’t even gotten to the PPC thing I mean Internet ADVERTISING…..

Coming up next……..I build an advertising campaign (Is that buzzword free?)

And by “We”, I mean anyone who has ever tried to sell something over the Internet.   Despite spending billions and billions of dollars to reinvent the direct marketing wheel, what this has done has made direct marketing accessible to E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E…..

But you still think generating business online is challenging, well, let’s take a walk down memory lane and find out how much effort the business that sold your parents or grandparents as the case may be, that set of Encyclopedia Britannica (What’s an encyclopedia mommy…………..?) that one that costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars, but is now collecting dust in your basement.

Many of the techniques that people promote on the Internet as being the latest and greatest fad are actually sooooooooo old school that they built, burned down and rebuilt the school that you thought was the old school.  Ya, Dig.

Ever since the first letter carrier made his way through town, marketers have been trying to sell things to you via the mail.  In fact, I bet that first letter was probably some form of direct marketing.  So while you can get a half ass marketing campaign up and tracking in about a day and a half for close to zero upfront dollars, let’s see what industry pioneers needed to go through to even get the slightest idea as to whether or not there product was going meet with success or failure.

1. Find Something to Sell

Pretty basic, I know.  But think how hard it would be to source or develop a product without the Internet.  You’d be spending time (and money) visiting suppliers and trade shows looking for samples and new ideas.

Just remember to set up the manufacturing, fulfillment and customer service processes as well.

2. Find Someone to Sell that Something To

Two choices here, use a rented list or built your own.  If you rent, make sure you are hitting the right list.

Does your message match the medium?  Not sure, maybe you should rent another list just in case, be sure to throw that in the budget.  Remember not to abuse the list either, its owner may not like you much.

3. Craft the creative & offer

Still the same song and dance as today, but this was done manually.  Lots and lots of drafting, redrafting.  There was no Photoshop or Quark to be had.  We are talking ink, paint and drafting boards baby!  Ya, you still need to sit down and bang stuff out (or pay someone to do it for you) but it’s fast.

4. Mail it out

Make sure that you selected the right material for the mailer, those things get abused in the mail.  And don’t for get the cost, Oh ya……….postage.

Wait, hold on a second, does the name and address of the recipient show through the envelope window?

5. Sit and wait Mail Counting

Hopefully you have something else to occupy your time with for a bit while you wait for your results to come in……

6. More Sittin’

7. More Waitin’

8. Start crunching those numbers

Oh, wait, is this a first time mailing?  No one does just one mailing!  What can you learn from doing it just once.  You did budget for multiple mailings………..right?!!?  Most industry professionals considered the first mailing an “investment”!  Despite all your planning and estimating, you really have no clue how your first mailing will perform.  This mailing is really just buying names and testing your copy.

Have you figured out how you are going to count your returns?  Each individual letter? By weight?  How many days does it take to get 50% of the expected response.

Hey, how are you even judging if this undertaking was a success?

9. Wash, Rinse, Repeat

10. Crunch some more numbers

You are in this for the long haul, right?

Total time elapsed………months and months……….a year………

The Internet crunches this time frame down to days…………you can start building a mailing list/generating leads in no time with creative PPC advertising and neat giveaways, feedback and statistical analysis are instant, split testing a breeze…….OK fine, maybe you have a 24 hour lag.  Yes, this also means you can blow your brains out all that much faster, so use a little bit of caution here.

Find a mistake on your website, log in and fix it……….what’s that you did a 100,000 pcs print run and you found a spellign misatke, try fixing that!

Now compare the feasibility of applying direct marketing principles to your business 35 years ago to what you can do today.  You think the local real estate agent could afford all this back in the days of Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix, Hoola Hoops or pet rocks?  Well, they can now.

Remember, the concepts are exactly the same……it’s just cheaper, faster and easier now than ever before.

Ask anyone in business which task is easier (and cheaper for that matter) selling more product to existing customers or finding new customers to sell to.  Here are 6 quick tips so you can do more of the former to support you while focusing on the latter:

1. Discount,  but don’t discount. What’s the difference between promoting ” Buy 2 and Get 1 Free” and “Save 33% on your purchase?  Well, from a purely mathematical point of view nothing, but from a business and psychological view they are a world apart.  First off you can increase sales volumes by dangling a carrot in front of you customer to increase their units purchased.  Secondly, you haven’t really impacted your value proposition with the first phrase as people are not quick to do the math.  Start outright discounting your product and you start eroding the value of your product in people’s minds.
2. Figure out how much your customers are worth to you.  Segment your customers – spend time and money promoting yourself to big spenders.
3. Let customers customize their orders.  Sell in smaller lot sizes.
4. Increase your value proposition.  Rather than discounting a product, throw in an additional free product with purchase that costs you less than the discount you would have taken in the first place.
5. Tell your customer to buy more.  Yes, that’s right, You.  You need another one of my widgets.
6. Ask your customer to buy more. If step 5 doesn’t work, try this.

So the fact that there are two ways for an Internet user to find your website (HEAD vs. TAIL searches) lets you know that there are two different types of prospects out there searching for you and once you know that you can:

• Determine the best way to reach out to them; and,
• Once you reach them, you can devise a strategy to convert them to customers

Most of your visitors will find you using your BRAND keywords. They have a specific problem and know that you or your products can solve that problem for you. These people know what they are looking for, have probably done a good chunk of research already (which, if you know what you are doing, you have helped them with they were searching for CATEGORY keywords) and are now coming to buy. They are looking to find your site in the organic search results. This is the domain of search engine optimization. This is not where you should be sending your PPC search budget. Additionally, once you find these people, or rather they find your website, the focus should be on selling. Talk about prices, product options, payment methods, delivery, etc.

The focus of your PPC search budget should be spent on targeting the CATEGORY keywords that make up your TAIL. These people search using generic key phrases because although they have identified a problem, they don’t know enough about potential solutions. THEY ARE STILL EARLY IN THE PURCHASING CYCLE. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE YOU NEED TO TARGET. While you can optimize your site to show up for these keywords, it is often faster and more cost effective to use PPC ads for these keywords to attract the attention of people looking for a solution to a problem. These are your true PROSPECTS. Once they get to your website, your goal is two fold – educate them in a way that gently pushes them to buying from you and CAPTURE THEIR CONTACT INFORMATION

I’ll go out on a limb here and state the obvious. If you want to grow a business, you need new customer which means you need new prospects, so you obviously need a way of attracting new prospects who are still undecided in their purchase decision.

So what does this mean for you and your ad budget……more on this in PART III

Stay on the right side of that line and you bring in the customers………..cross it and you start to look like a snake oil salesman.  Want to see a perfect example?  Take a look at this blog headline.……..I’ll even copy it for you so you don’t need to go looking

Pay Per Deal advertising model. Public relations and PPD – hot mix. Infomercials & your TV presence – over a million dollars worth package for nothing

A million dollars?  For nothing?

Really?  It’s one thing to be creative with your copy, it’s another to take your reader for an absolute fool.  So now that I am finished reading this post, I am still wondering where this $1 million for nothing is?  Oh you mean the difference between the estimated value of the media airings?  That’s a bit of a stretch considering you don’t highlight the costs of your program up front.  Where is this FREE part?

If you are going to promote FREE, there has to be something that is actually FREE!!!

A few days ago, my son walked by a stack of newly delivered Yellow Pages sitting by our front door.

He asked “What are those?”

He’s 6.

Apparently, he’s not alone.

Hanging Up On The Phone Book – The Globe And Mail

The very first phone book was published so long ago that it had to tell readers how to use that newfangled gizmo, the telephone.

“Commence the conversation by saying ‘Hulloa!’” advised The Telephone Directory for residents of New Haven, Conn. in 1878. According to Christie’s, which auctioned the book in 2008 for $170,500 (U.S.), it was the first directory to appear in book form and was published just two years after the invention of the device. It went on: “When you are done talking, say ‘That is all!’” (Read More…)

When was the last time you used a phone book to find something that you needed?

We’ve all heard that the secret to success is about being persistent…..

But the problem most business development and salespeople have is not so much “how” to be persistent, but rather “when” to be persistent.

Do you have a method for determining when you should be persistent or when you should just walk away?

Here is how you should be putting your nose to the grindstone

• Develop a method for attracting prospects;
• Determine how you should be qualifying prospects so you are not talking to time sucks;
• Customize your service offering to fit the needs of your prospects; and
• Working on your presenting skills

Have you ever thought about the absolute insanity behind the logic of cold calling?

Seriously, think about it.  You are randomly calling someone out of the blue and hoping:

• They need what you sell;
• They are actually thinking about what you are selling at the exact time you call;
• That you and the other person will immediately establish a rapport that most sales require; and
• They will buy from you

Do you realize what the chances are of this happening on a regular basis?

What percentage of your monthly sales quota are you supposed to have in your sales funnel at any one time?

300%?

400%?

1000%?

2000%?

Now if you don’t think needing to have 3 to 20x your monthly sales quota in your funnel at anyone time is gambling.  I dont know what is.

It’s easy to say yes to that question, but the answer is that it all depends.

The mistake that people make when looking at their click costs is that they do so in isolation of their entire sales and marketing program.   They don’t consider how much a lead actually costs the company to generate in both time and money and how these cost variable change across marketing channels – say the internet, cold calling, print advertising, etc……

Every minute that a salesman spends generating leads is a minute that they are not closing deals and bringing in new revenue.  Even if your sales force is 100% commission, you don’t want them wasting their time on a task that can be completely automated.

What would you rather have?  A salesman that works 40 hours a week,  who you pay $52,000 a year or a $1,000 a week to  generate 4 qualified leads a day – so a cost of about $50/lead or an entirely automated process that runs 24/7 that generates qualified leads for $25 each that you can then deliver to your sales people to close.

This allows your sales people to focus on closing deals, which brings in the money, rather than generating leads, which burns through money.

Sales leads are never free………….even if you are a self employed real estate sales person just starting out in the business and you don’t have a single client yet,  you always have to remember that your time has a cost.

And this is really what it all comes down to is it cheaper to spend money or time generating leads……….I suspect for most people, its cheaper to spend the money.

Anyone who has ever tried to sell a product has always encountered the same challenge…………”Um, how do I sell my product.”

Working at least one or two of these 6 points into your marketing communications improves your chances of catching a share of someone’s wallet.

1. Be Biased.  All is fair in love, war and BUSINESS.  Tell people your product is the best.  Tear a page out of the car company’s strategy book.  Do car companies tell you that just about any car with gas and a motor will get you from point A to point B?  No, they don’t do they.  They do something like Subaru did in this ad.  They went after prospects who focus on a car’s engine performance.

2. Focus on needs – People don’t buy cars just for the hell of buying cars.  They buy them because they have needs.  It could be a social need – the midlife crisis sports car or a work need – I need a sports car to impress clients.

3. Sell the benefits – Associate the product with the great feelings a customer will get from the product.  Look at the Subaru ad again.  See the back ground.  Every car enthusiast dreams of racing their car across wide open spaces at break neck speeds.

4. Hit the emotional hot buttons.  Tear a page out the garish internet marketers that push get rich schemes.  Look how they build up their arguments from a slow simmer to a raging climax that ends with a call to order.

5. Tell readers what to do.  If you want a reader to buy your product, TELL THEM TO BUY YOUR PRODUCT.  Stir the emotions, then give them the logic to justify the purchace and then TELL THEM TO BUY YOUR PRODUCT.