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Thursday, December 29, 2005

Is Search Engine Marketing Important If You Have A Blog?

Search engine marketing generates the lifeblood for blogs - Traffic.

Important? Yes...

But a little wrinkle that blogs have is that blog readers can subscribe to blogs and get their latest posts via an RSS feed.

Now we all know that.

So does that mean that we don't need to consider search engine marketing when creating a blog?

It's like the person who built the best mousetrap in the world. No one beats a path to their door until they've heard about it. So an eye on what search engines are looking for is essential when marketing your blog.

Mine is no different. I used several high profile words in a previous post to demonstrate to myself that search engines rule when it comes to generating traffic.

Sure enough in 12 hours I doubled my number of visitors.

Any search engine optimiser will tell you there are lots of other wrinkles that help get you into the top of the search listings.

But the main one has to be good content oriented around appropriate use of your own niche markets keywords. How do you find a good selection of keywords that are being actively looked for in your market?

Well there are a number of free tools around.

One I like (because it's a web based keyword tool) is http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/). Another one that covers a variety of search engines is Good Keywords.

If you want to make any sort of quick impact through your blog you need to consider using keywords.

To be honest I've rarely used search engine marketing techniques in this blog purely because I enjoy writing. I hope you enjoy what you read but really it's writing content that I think is useful that I concentrate on. It helps me ... get straight how I introduce my clients to different online and offline marketing thoughts.

A last thought on search engines. I blogged about Google's search algorithm and its view of links. Blogs should cultivate links too. How you cultivate links I'll leave to another time - but links do bring in more traffic.



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Friday, December 23, 2005

Social Proof Is Testimonials Multipled

Everyone talks about "Social Proof" as though it's some sort of amazing secret that every marketeer needs to get in on.

It's not.

I've already blogged on this subject, see the previous link.

It's the power of testimonials multiplied.

So in my previous post I showed you that a lot of people read my blog.

But when it comes down to it social proof is truly simply mass testimonials.

But rather than having one or two testimonials in your marketing you clump them together and say things like:

"1,000 people a day are changing to Ritegard mouthwash"

So if the advertising says a thousand people are changing, every day... what do you think?

It makes you think you should at least look at why, or try it yourself - Bingo!

It wouldn't have the same impact if you said, "read these testimonials from 1,000 people".

This exact technique is being used in an advertising campaign by British Gas on UK TV.

So make sure you keep all your testimonials and occasionally go through them and see if you can draw any statistics like that from them.

As with all marketing make sure it's genuine statistics. Remember:

"There lies, damned lies and statistics"

After all you want to make profits the best way you can don't you?


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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Has The Blogosphere Shutdown For Christmas - Use PR To Wake It Up!

Has the blogsphere really closed from Christmas?

If you go to blog sites you'll see bloggers not adding posts like they usually do - I'm a good example here!

Now the interesting thing about this is that it just shows what I've been saying about PR.

Papers still need to have news and articles in them when they're sold.

So PR is more likely to be taken up - provided it's not self-serving rubbish - during this period.

Obviously any big news story, like last years Tsunami, blows any PR away.

But barring a big story your chance of getting some column inches, or maybe a mention is improved.

But you don't want to write press releases on Christmas day do you?

The answer is:

  1. get someone else to do it
  2. prepare some before the great day ( but do it soon!)
  3. Don't issue any PR (hint: not the right answer)

And whatever you do get something out there that's reasonable ... and interesting and who knows you may just get in the paper.

To Glyn who emailed me ... what I'm saying even counts for your sort of highly competent company. I know you work with a lot of the blue chips but believe me get some press and you get the kudos, the companies you're in think they're lucky to have you, your staff think you're hot and you may even get good people clamoring to work for you.

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Why Has Father Christmas Got His Own Blog?

As it's Christmas, or will be shortly, I gave myself a little project for fun, mainly for my 4 children so they could have a bit of a laught.

What I'm doing is writing a Santa Claus Blog.

Now you may be wondering whether this is anything to do with marketing, business growth or anything business related at all.

The answer is four-fold:

  1. I want to do something fun for the children - time will tell whether what I write is fun for them or not!
  2. I've put a press release through WWW.PRWEB.COM and I want to see whether it gets picked up as an unusual Christmas related item
  3. I've put press releases to a cable channel (Channel M), BBC Radio Manchester and The Manchester Evening News to see whether it gets picked up.

Finally I'm monitoring the visitors to see a) If I get any ... none so far b) how they find the blog

So let's call it a test -- I'll let you know what happens.

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Monday, December 19, 2005

How Much Do Advertising Agencies And Graphic Design Studios Know About Web site Design?

Advertising agencies and design studios often seem to create web sites for themselves that are very flashy and creative.

So what does a Flash-based web site do for helping customers understand what you can do for them?

Nothing!

I've lost count of the number of creative/graphic design/marketing or other media related site I've gone to only to be hit by Flash.

Come on you don't need Flash to make your web site interesting. What you need is good web content.

You're not sure what I'm talking about?

OK...

Good content means stuff your prospects and customers want:

  • graphics
  • copy
  • downloads
  • reports
  • video
  • audio


Maybe you're thinking "So does that mean I don't need Flash then?"

The answer to that question is to look at your prospects psychology, because:

  1. Patience and attention span are no longer virtues in the net-age. I mean even this length of blog is too much for some people. So waiting for a flash site to load is going to make people click off in droves.
  2. Self-interest - the old marketing acronym WIFM ("What's In it For Me?" ) wins hands down on web sites. So how does Flash help your prospects? Maybe it showcases your talents, perhaps it shows you're at the leading edge or it displays your web creation ability. But you're not telling your friendly prospect how you can help them.
  3. They're going to hit annoyance when they have to sit through an imposed animation, particularly if they're one of those unfortunates with a dial-up modem, shared broadband, or low speed broadband.

One site I visited had a home page where you could choose whether to have Flash or HTML. And already I've got one more click to get to a page with anything useful on it.

But it didn't end there.

When I hovered on the HTML choice it said "currently under construction".

You tell me. Shouldn't a design agency know that one of the worst things you can do is have an "under construction" label. What is the point in promising something with no end date.

And quite often what is "under construction" never actually gets built anyway.

I'd like to think that all advertising and design studios look first at what they can do for the customer before even designing their site. But I've yet to come across one that appears to have really trodden that difficult path.

If you know one please let me know as I am really trying to find some good ones.


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What Happens If You Copy Someone Else's Advert?



The Wizard Academy - Monday Morning Memo waxes lyrical about the 4 different ad types:

Franchise Ads

Category Ads

Product Specific Ads

Store Specific Ads

This story of a high-class jewlery shop "Store Specific" Christmas Ad teaches a very useful lesson about the vital profit inducing importance of using your own specific advertising to get your message across.

The point was that the ad that had been produced for shop had no directions, phone number or anything else.

It relied on it's audience knowing all about the store's Systine Chapel-like beauty and it's beautiful jewelery and knowing that it was the best.

The shop said their target audience was rich women in their forties. Like any good advertising consultant Roy H Williams disagreed and targeted the radio ad at the buyers - men.

The Jewellery Store Ad Campaign
The ad started off as follows:

Ladies, many of you will be fortunate enough this Christmas to find a small, but beautifully wrapped package under your tree bearing a simple gold seal that says 'Heisenberg's.' Now you and I both know there's jewelry in the box. But the man who put it there for you is trying desperately to tell you that you are more precious than diamonds, more valuable than gold, and very, very special.

What man on Earth who could remotely afford such a package could resist that message?

Needless to say the shop had an amzing Christmas. But ...

Should You Copy That Ad?

Well think about this...

A jewellers in another city used the Ad for themselves and had their worst ever Christmas.

The reason?

Everyone in that city knew that the jeweller didn't have the same very high class reputation that the audience of the first ad knew the shop in their city had. So although they'd got a free advert (they didn't pay for it's creation) they lost money by running it for themselves.

What Should You Do With A Good Ad?

How does that help you?

Good question. My answer is this ...

When you find an Ad that works for another company. By all means look at it or listen to it and don't copy it.

Instead analyse it. Or better, get a direct response copywriter to analyse it. Then produce a new ad that incorporates some of the aspects of the original ad - and only if you know those aspects speak to your market.

Does That Work For Internet Advertising?

Do you think it will apply to Internet Advertising or pay per click advertising?

You know my answer to that conudrum:

"Direct response methods work in any medium because the audience they target have the same psychological make-up they've always had"

So go and analyse and create your own.

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Sunday, December 18, 2005

The Top 20 Most Blogged About Books

The New York Times has compiled a hit list of the "most blogged about books".

5,000 Top Blogs

The list was selected by using an automated survey of the 5,000 most popular blogs. Each reference to each blog is shown with a blog URL so you can go check out what they say about it.

This is a great way for working out which books have impacted people the most. Although the survey doesn't note whether the references are negative or positive.

But from a marketeer's point of view you've just been handed access to the top 5,000 blogs with the most traffic. Do you think you can find some that match with your own market?

I bet you can.

"Getting Things Done"

One of the books 'Getting Things Done,' by David Allen has already been mentioned by this blog. And no apparently I haven't reached the top 5,000 blogs with most traffic - but we're working on it! So it's quite likely that the blogs that referenced it will have a similar audience to this one.

Create An Audience-related Offer

When you have collected the blogs that relate to your own audience you can think about what you could offer that blogs audience that will really help them, and help the blog site. Once you've done that email the blogger and outline your offer to their audience.

Creating offers is a whole new ball game and has to be done very carefully and aimed exactly at the audience you're trying to attract.

So for example. Checking the entry for "Getting Things Done" one of the blogs that references the book is 43 Folders. The blog audience for 43 Folders is interested in improving their personal productivity. They probably run their own personal and business projects. What could I offer them that would help them improve their productivity?

What do you think ...

How To Create A Relevant Offer

One thing would be my own RAM spreadsheet (Risk Assessment & Management spreadsheet, written in Excel) or I could offer them a booklet I've written called "Cut The Elephant Into Bite Size Chunks Before You Eat It" - it's about how to create manageable tasks for any project.

But whatever it is, it has to be focused on how it would help them, otherwise why would they "listen" to you? Let alone think long enough about whether they want your offer.

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Friday, December 16, 2005

New Research Shows the 4 Major Internet Search Engines Have grown Their Volumes

Just when you thought the Internet was at saturation Neilsen/NetRatings comes out with research showing that the number of Internet searches made was 5.1 billion, a leap of 15% over just 5 months ago.

Ask Jeeves has just over 2% volume share of this search market but has grown by 77%.

Google is the major player with about 48% of the search volume and it's nearest rival was Yahoo with 22% of the search volume.

You can see exactly why Google is so important to everyone.

So what does that mean to your average marketeer?

"Lets go concentrate on Google. Now!"

Well hold on there a minute ...

Ask Jeeves may only have just over 2% of the volume but that's still 133,932,000 searches. And it may be that the people using it are a particular group of people.

Remember you don't produce the product until you know you have a ravenous crowd of people who desperately want something.

So you could go onto AskJeeves (USA) or AskJeeves (UK) to find the most popular search terms. At the moment the most popular are respectively, "Christmas decorations" and "Lottery." But there are other terms showing there too.

So don't dismiss a niche search engine so quickly because you could have people searching for exactly the item or service you can, or could, provide.

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Thursday, December 15, 2005

Is This The Secret Of A Useful Business Networking Group?

One of Manchester's media group pulled the plug on a good business networking group this month. Everyone I met who used to attend "The Board" thought it was a great shame. The Manchester Evening News who'd run "The Board" for about two years had tried their best to provide a great networking experience.

Yesterday I attended another networking group (Simply Networking). This group is going from strength to strength and the numbers attending increases almost every time. They usually have over 100 people attending.

Was their any difference that could explain the collapse of the first and the rise of the second group?

I believe so ...

The Board usually provided a speaker at each event together with a light breakfast or light lunch depending on the time of day of the event. The first few events were very well attended. They also had sponsorship from several local companies so could afford to entertain in this way. But the quality of speakers varied so that as a result people stopped making the effort to attend. Plus you didn't really want to sit through a sales pitch to meet people you could meet at another networking group. The numbers attending dwindled. But I would say they still had between 70 and 100 people every time.

In the final analysis were they helping local business, their sponsors or getting more advertising in their papers?

Knowing some of the sponsors and seen the advertising in the papers I think the answer is no.

Simply Networking on the other hand is purely about going to talk to a large number of business people.

For several hours.

Which is what networking is all about.

You get to spread yourself around. But not so much that you make no impact or don't hear what the other person is saying to you.

Also you pay whenever you attend unlike a lot of networking groups where you apy every time you attend and have an annual fee. So if you don't feel like it or are rushed off your feet it doesn't feel like you're pouring money down the drain by not going.

Again are they helping local business. The short answer is they are. They're giving them the ability to have exposure to a lot of other businesses over a decent amount of time.

So the death of The Board is mourned but perhaps the writing was already on the wall?




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Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Government Report Says IT projects almost always fail to deliver?

In my other blog I talk about how a Government Report Says IT projects almost always fail to deliver? Yet why should IT projects be any different to normal projects?

In reality they are but the principles of project success can be snatched from the jaws of such project defeat.

The government has compiled a list of excuses for project failure. It's a white paper called "Common Causes of Project Failure". These eight causes may be summarized as follows:

  1. Lack of links to an organisation's strategy
  2. Lack of management ownership and leadership
  3. Lack of involvement of stakeholders
  4. Lack of skills
  5. Lack of proper project plans
  6. Supplier chosen on price, not ability
  7. Lack of senior supplier contact
  8. Lack of effective project team integration

These causes have repeated themselves through many government and commercial projects. In fact you see them in failed or failing projects that don't have an IT element in them.

Note that 7 of the eight items starts with a lack of something.

You should only start a project when all the lacks you've identified have been resolved. These lacks are often called risks.

That is the usual downfall of a project: a risk that was thought to be resolved reappears, or a low level risk suddenly changes character and becomes a high level risk or an unforeseen risk occurs.

What should you do about it?

Keep monitoring your risk register.

If you want to have my own risk register/monitor send an email to web (AT) acornservice.com with the word "risk" in the subject and I'll be pleased to send you a copy.

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Gary Halbert Spills Some Of Those Copywriting Secrets


You never stop learning and applying each little marketing and business wrinkle you come across. Gary Halbert has attended Copywriting 101 seminars despite being one of the copywriting gurus.


So I learn too and read up on other copywriters, such as Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero who blogs at Red Hot Copywriting and I'm also a subscriber to her ezine.


Her ezine is more up to date than either her web site or her blog and I've taken a snippet from her current ezine as I think it makes some great copywriting points.


As an aside I note that Lorrie and I share the same high opinion of Gary Halbert's copywriting ability.


The snippet relates to some of the points she notes after talking to Gary during his "Root Canal Seminar":

3) The STRONGEST 0ffer You Can Make is "Send no money now!"

4) How to Increase Response and Decrease Refunds. A "double your money back" guarantee will not only double your response rate but reduce refunds by the same.

5) Gary's Deceptively Simple Secret to Writing Copy: Have something to say. Use storytelling and statistics to deeply involve the reader.

7) To Improve Internet Response, Gary recommends removing cl!ck here links and only 0ffer a phone option. He claims you have to get them out of the fast-surfing, expect-it-for-free environment. Likens it to how a man or woman behaves in a bar versus church. Same person; different mentality

The last point about using phone only I'm currently using. But purely because my client hasn't got round to creating an ecommerce page for his products.

That said I do think the Internet does have a culture of get it cheap, or better free. So we'll see how the phone only works.



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Sunday, December 11, 2005

The Rich Jerk: A Scam or A Great Product?

I just wanted to let you know that I've been watching someone called The Rich Jerk on the internet for a little while.

I've created a Rich Jerk Blog to see what lessons we can draw from his marketing.

One thing I've noted is that his sales letter style is very like those of Gary Halbert's, so he could be one of his original apprentices.

Anyway there are lessons to draw from his marketing and I'll be making ad-hoc comments about it over the next few weeks.


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Saturday, December 10, 2005

Press Releases Can Be Bad For Your Image

PR can be bad for your image, what do you think?

I think it depends who bothers with your image.

Because when it comes down to it people couldn't care less about your brand.

When Microsoft started they didn't have a brand - it evolved. Rather like Windows!

What your prospects are looking for is a service or product they believe they can rely on.

Just think about this...

If image and branding is so important why do the corner shops still do business? Their image is not the best, the branding ... well it's non-existent.

Some weeks ago I was discussing the importance of PR with a client. They use a different PR agency to me - which in my book is great, they get two views of what PR can do for you.

They're being given a show award at an award ceremony in Warwick.

As the Publicity Hound has mentioned before, and as I agree, standard publicity would have a photo of two big cheeses shaking hands with a

  • certificate
  • cup
  • medal
  • other object

being handed from one to the other.


Boring!

So as the award ceremony was near Christmas I suggested they should have a bit of a wackier ceremony. Get Santa Claus involved.

My client sells very nice Far Infra Red Saunas so I suggested that the award being given by Father Christmas in the sauna.


Ok the image presented may not look as professional as two people in suits...

But it will show a company who're willing to have a laugh and the press are going to look more favourably on it than the standard boring award ceremony.

But the award is going to be done the 'safe' way because it's felt that it need to look professional.

That's a shame but the client has to feel comfortable with any PR suggestion otherwise it just wont work anyway.


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Friday, December 09, 2005

Do you want to know the secret of how to severely damage customer confidence and willingness to do business with you?

This is a Cautionary Tale For Customer Service.

For many years my wife ordered books through a company called "The Book People". The people she dealt with were friendly and helpful. The books were great value and delivery was always on time, despite the fact that our house is a bit difficult to find.

One day the company started to use another courier.

The next order was not delivered until I'd been on the phone several times with "The Book People" customer services. The people were still very friendly and helpful but seemed unable to get their new courier to actually deliver the books.

I used The Book People web site to get the consignment number and checked the package at the courier. It had been loaded and off-loaded from their transport quite a few times over the days the order had been at the courier's depot. By this time it was well outside the 3 to 5 business days promised for delivery.

Anyway, after yet more days of delay we eventually got our books.

Damaged. And they were meant to be presents too.

"The Book People" kindly sent out a replacement parcel which arrived exactly when they'd promised.

What Are The Marketing Lessons Here?

1) Had "The Book People" displayed reasonable customer service by sending out a replacement package?
2) Was there more they could have done? For example

a) Ring me before I rang them
b) Find out the books condition and send a replacement before I even got the delivery
c) Send a compensation gift as a thankyou for putting up with inferior service

3) Did the courier show reasonable service? After all The Book People's 'promise' for standard delivery is 3 to 5 business days.


Another Order, Another Non-Delivery

The action now moves to the end of 2005.

On the 21st November my wife put in two more orders (worth about £80). The two parcels were received at the couriers depot in Farnworth, near Bolton, a few miles from where we live on 23rd November. From then until today the parcels were loaded and unloaded 6 times, then suddenly the tracking stops on the 2nd December.

Marketing Is All About Communication

I still ring up every day to find out what's going on and I'm assured that the courier is being talked to. Eventually I find out that the only communication The Book People have with the couriers is by email. With an apparent promise that the couriers return email within 24 hours.

Needless to say when I ring back 25 hours later the Book People have still not received the answer.

By this time I'm feeling a little impatient. I go the Book People's web site to find someone in authority to ring . But can't find anyone. I do find a feedback form which I fill in explaining exactly what I think of the current issues.

Again these books were for presents for Christmas and it's now only two weeks away.

So what is our business and marketing lesson here?

1) The Book People should have allocated someone to look after my query and have a system in place that would direct me to that person
2) The Book People need a phone escalation procedure with the courier company
3) The Book People need to ensure that feedback forms are acted on and replied to, or better still have the MD take the complaints calls
4) The Book People should email me with the current state rather than have me ring them up (on a National Rate number).
5) Any delayed delivery outside the promised time should entail a reasonable book as compensation.
6) Analyse the non-deliveries, in particular where they're not delivered to a certain address several times

Is There Any Excuse For All This?

Let's face it the book business entails a lot of volume. The couriers are rushed off their feet at Christmas and people are often not home which entails redelivery.

But there's no reason why the systems for dealing with the issues can't be properly constructed to help the customer.

And the danger is to The Book People if they ignore this marketing/business lesson. Lack of customer confidence leaves us unwilling to trust our orders to them and drives us to The Book People's competitors. We already order some books through Amazon. Amazon have the ability to take The Book People's market.

I wish The Book People well they're served us reliably until this year. They need to take these marketing lessons and apply them. Better yet they should employ Acorn Service and we'll get them singing again!

How about your customer service? Is it like a well-oiled machine and really delivering service for your customer?

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Thursday, December 08, 2005

Free Advertising Blog Surfaces

This is an offer I felt I couldn't refuse.

Carl Galletti who is a good marketeer sent me an email about this free ads blog site: Free Advertising Blog: (yes he's an affiliate of this offer but hey...) .

To be brutually honest I can't imagine that it's going to make me a millionaire because my revenue depends on copywriting and coaching. I'm going to see if it improves my blog traffic much.

By the way do remember my post about not using 'A' list celeb names to attract traffic?

Well, I checked out my stats for the post Why You Mustn't Cheat At Getting More Traffic and I actually got 3 times the number of unique vistors I usually get.

Anyway let's see if it works when I use a free blog ad service. Try it yourself too.



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Tuesday, December 06, 2005

The 12 Red Hot Marketing Days of Christmas

My lovely 4 year old little girl has a 3cm hole in her head that shouldn't be there.

She was playing with her eight year old sister yesterday who accidentally pushed her onto the metal edge of her bed. Her blood streamed down her face into her nose and mouth. We cleaned her up and saw her skull through the hole. So I rushed her to A&E at our local children's hospital (luckily 5 minutes drive from us, unluckily scheduled for closure in 2 years).

The triage nurse and senior house officer looked at the wound and were suprised she was so calm about it. Surgery was scheduled for today and I've been waiting all day for news (her mum is now with her at the hospital). So it's been difficult to think of anything but her.

Anyway, after some thought I've decided to do The 12 Red Hot Marketing Days of Christmas, so without further ado:

On the First day of Christmas my true love gave to me

a Referral to a Parent Company

On the Second day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Two Bonus Books

On the Third day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Three Press Releases

On the Fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Four Flashing Signs

On the Fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Five Call Centres

On the Sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Six Business Cards

On the Seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Seven Web Sites Selling

On the Eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Eight Ads A Pulling

On the Ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Nine Ladies Buying

On the Tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Ten Blogs A Writing

On the Eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Eleven Offers Testing

On the Twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Twelve Contract Signings

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Monday, December 05, 2005

How To Get The Greatest Impact For A Driving School (A Free Christmas Gift Answer)

As promised I've selected another Christmas Gift question from the ones I've been asked (see How You Can Get Some Free Copywriting Help as a Christmas Gift).

One of my ex-coachees, Kev, is involved in two businesses. His question was:

"What is the one most powerful tool We can use to make the greatest impact for our Driving School making us stand out above all others (the No1) in a very competative market place Where everyone knows a Driving Instructor?"

Again this is a question many businesses ask. The pat answer is to say, "use referrals". Normally I'd say that too But this is more of a slow burn gathering of prospects. A more impactful way is to use publicity as I outline for Kev in the answer.

I should also say that I'd already told Kev the best way to produce and distribute a press release and media pack and have covered how to respond so journalists can get a good story. So that isn't covered in the answer.

So Kev's Christmas Gift Answer was as follows:

Hi Kev

Good to hear from you.

I'm feeling great and looking forward to Christmas too!


The first thing that you must have before any tools are applied is a Unique Selling Point:


Think of things like:

  • are you cheaper
  • have better cars
  • have more experienced instructors
  • get a better pass rate
  • provide guaranteed passes

Then once you believe you have a unique advantage get some major publicity.
There are so many things that a driving school can do to get great publicity

1) Challenge the worst driving school failure in Yorkshire to take lessons with you (publicity when you take them on, publicity when they pass -- which they will wont they?)


2) Write a booklet on tips to help people pass their test - get to the press


3) Write a booklet about motorway driving tips for new drivers - get to the press


4) Have an open day at Hull Kingston Rovers as we spoke about before


5) Have a procession of driving instructors going somewhere to celebrate your 3/4/5th birthday


6) Who's your oldest passing driver/ youngest/weirdest


7) Dress up all your instructors up as Father Christmas and have a toy collection then drive to different children's homes to deliver them


But above all get publicity - and the best time for publicity (apart from the holidays)?
Normally it's between Christmas and New Year - usually little or no news (although that didn't work this year!)

So my answer is publicity is a powerful tool and doesn 't need to be only papers, use magazines, the local TV and radio stations.

That is going to raise your profile, but make sure you do it in the way we discussed.

Enjoy

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Friday, December 02, 2005

Why You Mustn't Cheat At Getting More Traffic


Business World discusses the artifical nature of attracting massive amounts of traffic by mentioning famous, or infamous people:

"Is there any value to cheaply acquired visits from the search engines like Google, MSN Search, Yahoo, AOL Search, Ask Jeeves, and others? I don't think so. First of all, visitors to your blog who are searching for Britney Spears photos, Paris Hilton video movies, or the latest news about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, are not likely to read your blog about knitting, health, or business. Simply placing keywords in a blog post, suggesting naughty photos and stories, won't develop a blog's readership base. The search engines may list your blog post as a fresh article, and so might the blog searches, but the result is fleeting. At the same time, the visit might even work against you."

Direct response marketeers have known this for years and it's exactly the same as screaming "SEX" in a headline which has nothing to do with the rest of the copy.

There are two problems with this:

1) Your target market may be put off by a stupid headline/ blog content
2) The traffic you get may be massive but are not very likely to be looking for anything you're actually selling. So they'll be put off and their comments could reach your real target market - and you could put off more of them!

So .. don't do it..

EVER! (Unless it's an example in a blog)


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How You Can Get Some Free Copywriting Help as a Christmas Gift

Ok This is Christmas Time, Mistletoe and Wine (yes I am a Cliff Richard fan!).

I've already offered a Christmas gift to all my current and past coachees.

But I thought it would be nice to offer a gift to my regular blog readers too - I know you're out there.

Why am I doing this?

  • Firstly I'm a coach because I love helping people
  • Secondly if the answer I give you really hits the spot for you you're going to be more likely to think of me for your next copywriting project.
  • Finally giving stuff away is fun and I may learn from questions you ask me.

I'll probably answer some of the interesting ones in this blog over the next few days (name and identifying information changed of course) - if you're OK with that tell me in your email. Otherwise I wont put it into the blog.

Anyway, as my gift to you I thought I'd give you, if you're one of the first 20 to email me (web at acornservice.com), the opportunity to ask me absolutely any copywriting question you like. That question can be about any of:

  • Direct mail letter, brochure, postcard or leaflet critique
  • Powerpoint presentation critique
  • Website critique
  • Help on headlines
  • brochure format
  • letter format
  • letter content
  • importance of the PS
  • creating powerful offers
  • writing your own book, or blog or web site
  • why articles are so powerful business promoters
  • emails and autoresponders.
  • anything else writing related

    Whatever the question.

Like I say in the last bullet if it involves writing in any shape ask me and I'll answer it and if I can't I'll point you at some good resources to give you a hand.

So have a Happy Christmas and get that email to me now. Don't forget, given the time available I'm answering the first 20 copy-related questions I get.

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