Gain Control of Your Marketing Efforts and Assure a Steady Flow of Clients

When it comes to marketing, do you ever feel like you are at the mercy of the tides – following up on a referral here, chasing a lead there and more often than not ending up battered and bruised by the rocks along the shoreline? There is a simple solution. It is a solution that will put you in control of your marketing efforts and help assure a steady flow of prospective clients: develop and use a contact management database.
Now what could be simpler? And if you invest in developing your database, like an investment in a great stock or mutual fund, your return will be many times the initial investment. As with most things knowing what needs to be done is simple. Actually doing them or doing them successfully is a little bit more complicated. That is why so many of us have contact management databases like ACT! or Goldmine installed on our computers with nary a name entered in while we continue to be tossed about helplessly like a seashell in the marketing tide.

Gain control of your marketing efforts now!
Set-up a contact management database – Pick a program – ACT! and Goldmine are popular contact management databases. Outlook may even work if you’re just getting started. And coaches should definitely explore Client Compass, a customized business management software including a client and prospect database, developed for coaches by coaches. Talk to other people in your line of business to see what they are using and what they like and dislike about the program. Give some thought to how you might use the database and what types of information you want to collect.

Here are some general things to consider as you start this process:

• Have one list. 
  Setting up multiple lists for example one with everyone you met at one networking event, another with names from a second networking event and a third from a mailing list you purchased leads to duplicates that at best needlessly increases costs and at worst irritates your prospective clients with duplicate mailings. Be especially careful of this when doing mass e-mailing.


• Set-up fields so contacts can be sorted in multiple ways. 
  For example, you would want to include fields for the source of the name; the type of business the individual is in; which of your products/services they are most likely to be interested in; and whether they are a suspect, prospect, potential referral source, current client, past client, etc.


• Determine other purposes for which you may want to use the database. 
  Client Compass for example has a multitude of functions helpful to managing a coaching practice including client and prospect information tracking, coaching call summaries, administration, marketing and invoicing. There's even a credit card billing option. Goldmine can be used to track both opportunities (proposals that you might have out and the status of the proposals) as well as active projects – especially helpful for consulting projects where multiple people may be involved.


• Be sure you can easily use the names for direct mail and e-mail purposes. 
  The database program should have the capability to do merge mailings and e-mails to selected groups or the ability to export to other programs such as Excel so mail merges can be accomplished.

Invest in the technology and the assistance necessary to set-up a functional database system because this is one of the most valuable tools in constructing an effective marketing program.

Feed the database on a regular basis. The best designed database with all the latest technological bells and whistles is useless if it doesn’t have any names in it. The primary objective of much of your promotional efforts should be obtaining contact information for individuals who fit the profile of your target customer. You can then enter this information into your database and begin the relationship development process with these individuals.

So how can you feed your database?

• Networking.
  When you are networking be sure to ask for the cards of the people you meet who could be prospective customers. In fact, it is much more important to obtain their card than it is to give them your card.


• Speaking. 
  When you speak or do presentations be sure you have a mechanism for obtaining the names of the people in attendance. A door prize is one good way to do this.


• Writing. 
  If you write articles be sure to invite readers to your website to sign-up for your regular newsletter or a free guide.


• Direct mail and advertising. 
  With a few exceptions, the goal of direct mail or advertising should not be to make a sale. It should be to obtain contact information so you can continue to market to those individuals who have shown an interest in your services. Therefore your promotional pieces should be designed to get a maximum number of people with even a slight interest in your services to provide you their contact information. Giving away a free guide is one excellent way to accomplish this.

Obviously once you have contact information it must be entered into the database. The 500 cards you collected through networking activities last year aren’t doing much good wrapped in a rubber band lying in desk drawer. If you get even a few business cards a week that need to be entered into the database it is well worth an investment in a card scanning program such as CardScan. Be sure the program you select allows export of the contact information to the contact database program you will be using. In fact, a program like CardScan could serve as the primary contact management system if you are just getting started. If adding names to your database is something you just never seem to get done the investment in some administrative support to accomplish this task can pay off handsomely.

Consistently nurture the names in the database. A great database with hundreds or even thousands of names in it is useless unless you actually have contact with the names in the database. This is a topic for another article or even a whole book. At a minimum there should be follow-up with every contact shortly after you receive their contact information (i.e. a note or e-mail to someone you met at a networking event within a few days of meeting them) and regular, planned contact with them at least monthly going forward. With today’s technology much of this can be automated.

Protect this valuable asset. Your contact database is one of your most valuable assets. Be sure you protect it. Do regular back-ups and store these back-ups off site. For about the cost of a week’s worth of Starbuck ’s coffee you can have all of your files backed up automatically each night and stored on a remote server. What would be the cost of replacing your contact database?

Get your feet planted solidly in the sand. Invest in developing, maintaining and using a contact management database to harness the power of the marketing tides and generate the leads you need to grow the business of your dreams.
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The 3 Things All Affiliate Marketers Need To Survive Online

Now every affiliate marketer is always looking for the successful market that gives the biggest paycheck. Sometimes they think it is a magic formula that is readily available for them. Actually, it is more complicated than that. It is just good marketing practices that have been proven over years of hard work and dedication. There are tactics that have worked before with online marketing and is continuing to work in the online affiliate marketing world of today. With these top three marketing tips, you will be able to able to increase your sales and survive in the affiliate marketing online. 

What are these three tactics?

1. Using unique web pages to promote each separate product you are marketing.

Do not lump all of it together just to save some money on web hosting. It is best to have a site focusing on each and every product and nothing more. Always include product reviews on the website so visitors will have an initial understanding on what the product can do to those who buys them. Also include testimonials from users who have already tried the product. Be sure that these customers are more than willing to allow you to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are marketing.

You can also write articles highlighting the uses of the product and include them on the website as an additional page. Make the pages attractive compelling and include calls to act on the information. Each headline should attract the readers to try and read more, even contact you. Highlight your special points. This will help your readers to learn what the page is about and will want to find out more.

2. Offer free reports to your readers.

If possible position them at the very top side of your page so it they simply cannotbe missed. Try to create autoresponder messages that will be mailed to those who input their personal information into your sign up box. According to research, a sale is closed usually on the seventh contact with a prospect. Only two things can possibly happen with the web page alone: closed sale or the

prospect leaving the page and never return again. By placing useful information into their inboxes at certain specified period, you will remind them of the product they thought they want later and will find out that the sale is closed. Be sure that the content is directed toward specific reasons to buy the product. Do not make it sound like a sales pitch.

Focus on important points like how your product can make life and things easier and more enjoyable. Include compelling subject lines in the email. As much as possible, avoid using the word “free” because there are still older spam filters that dumps those kind of contents into the junk before even anyone reading them first. Convince those who signed up for your free reports that they will be missing something big if they do not avail of your products and services.

3.Get the kind of traffic that is targeted to your product.

Just think, if the person who visited your website has no interest whatsoever in what you are offering, they will be among those who move on and never come back. Write articles for publication in e-zines and e-reports. This way you can locate publications that is focusing on your target customers and what you have put up might just grab their interest. Try to write a minimum of 2 articles per week, with at least 300-600 words inlength. By continuously writing and maintaining these articles you can generate as many as 100 targeted readers to your site in a day.

Always remember that only 1 out of 100 people are likely to buy your product or get your services. If you can generate as much as 1,000 targeted hits for your website in a day, that means you can made 10 sales based on the average statistic. The tactics given above does not really sound very difficult to do, if you think about it. It just requires a little time and an action plan on your part. Try to use these tips for several affiliate marketing programs. You can end maintaining a good source of income and surviving in this business that not all marketers can do. Besides, think of the huge paychecks you will be receiving!

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What it Means To Be a Search Engine Marketing Professional

There's a lot of stuff posted on search engine forums and newsletters around the world about how companies who spam the search engines are unethical, and that it's important to hire only "ethical SEO consultants" or "ethical search engine marketers."

But, if you think about it, ethics is not something that's quantifiable. What makes any given SEO technique ethical or unethical? Isn't ethics more of a way of life than a method for doing something? Is trying to trick the search engines really unethical? Sure, it's stupid, in my opinion, but is it really unethical? I don't believe that those who practice what I sometimes refer to as "shady SEO techniques" can necessarily be classified as unethical. Just as everyone who follows every search engine rule can't automatically be assumed to be ethical.

What we should instead be discussing is which companies are SEO professionals and which are just out for a buck. This is true in every industry, not just SEO. If the people in our industry can remember this when trying to create a professional SEO organization (and there are many factions trying to do this), it will go a lot smoother. It's really quite simple. My friend Alan Perkins, who is a champion of "professional SEO," pointed out a definition of professional to me recently. It says in part:

"What defines a professional?"

"A professional is a person who, by education, training, and experience, performs work, analyzes and solves problems, makes decisions, and promotes ethics associated with a particular field of study." - A. Carol Rusaw, Learning by Association, HRD Quarterly, Summer 1995."

They go on to list some criteria for defining a professional. The one that really jumped out at me was this:

"[The] Professional assumed to know what is good for the client better than the client."

That really hits the nail on the head. It would be easy for any of us to say, "Sure, why not, I'll take your money and just tweak your Meta tags" when asked to do so by a client. Of course it would be easy money. But would it be right if you knew that doing so probably wouldn't really help their site be found in the search engines? Not in my opinion; nor would it be professional SEO.

So what about when a potential client comes to you saying "we know exactly what we need" because they read somewhere how SEO should be done. They ask you for a proposal to create 10 zebra (doorway) pages for their site. They don't want you to touch the actual pages of their site, they just want pages that live on the "fringes" of the site. You know, the kind that only the search engines will find (because you added a link way down low on the home page to a sitemap of all the zebra pages). Once the user arrives at one of the pages from the search engines, they're basically forced to click an extra time to finally arrive at the real site that they wanted to begin with.

Should you give the client a quote for this even though you know in your heart that it's not necessarily the best way to optimize their site? Certainly, creating those pages that way couldn't really be considered unethical or anything. But what if you see that their current site already has tons of great content pages? They really don't need to add zebra pages, they just need to tweak their current content a bit to make sure they're using words that real people use when searching.

Or perhaps they just need to make sure the search engines can easily spider through the site and find all that great content, e.g., turn dynamic URLs into static URLs.

What do you do if when you explain this to the client, they're still set on using those zebra pages? They refuse to make changes to their actual pages (cuz someone told them they shouldn't have to!), and even though the site will be much improved by making these changes, no amount of cajoling will convince them of this. So what do you do then? Do you do things the way they want you to? Do they really know better than you, the SEO professional?

If I were in this situation, and I couldn't persuade them how wrong, unnecessary and shortsighted their preferred technique was, I'd have to turn down the job altogether. Yeah, it's hard to turn down some decent money that a job like that could bring. I mean, you could probably even create those zebra pages using WPG's Page Generator, and give them some fancy new name. They're really not zebra pages...these ones would be giraffe pages! It could be good money for little work. And after all...it IS what the client wants, right?

There are plenty of ways you can justify it to yourself. But the bottom line is that it's your job as a professional SEO to do what you know in your heart is right. If it means you don't get that particular job, then so be it. There will be other jobs. And there will be other clients that appreciate your looking out for their site's long-term well-being. Seriously. The money you lose from declining that type of work will be made up in so many different ways. You can bank on it!

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25 Common Social Media and Web Marketing Mistakes

 

Who wouldn’t want the kind of web presence that drives hundreds or thousands of targeted visitors to his or her web site or blog and converts them into customers or followers?

I’ve created that type web presence for myself. However, most businesses that try to build such a web presence fall short of achieving that objective. How about yours?

This a long article that covers a lot of ground. My hope is that this article and those articles and resources it links to will enable you to take a fresh look at your social media and web marketing program.

Over the past few years I’ve identified dozens of factors that contribute to lack of web marketing success, and in this article I discuss 25 of the most important ones:

1. Failing to Plan - Strategy must precede tactics. Taking action is easy, but will that action help you achieve your objectives? Do you know precisely what those objectives are? It’s imperative that you define your objectives and devise marketing strategies to help you reach them effectively.


2. A Flawed Plan - Including thinking too big or too small, e.g., with your keywords, quantity of social networking sites you employ or frequency of your blog posting. Be ambitious but realistic. Your time is limited. Make a plan that’s simple but not simplistic. Shama Hyder Kabani’s The Zen of Social Media Marketing provides an excellent overview of the planning process.


3. Ignoring Your Competition - Developing your plan in a vacuum without any competitive intelligence prevents you from learning from your competitors and identifying optimal marketing strategies and tactics.


4. Having Unrealistic Expectations - View social media and web marketing as a marathon, not a sprint. It takes a substantial amount of time to build credibility with your potential customers and with search engines too.


5. Not Focusing on Your Niche - The more focused your message, the more it will influence your target audience. Trying to be everything to everybody will make your website look like a patch quilt. I’m sure  you’ve been to websites that look like menus at diners or aerial views of battle zones. You hit the back arrow and breathe a sigh of relief. Successful offline marketers know that a highly targeted ad gets the best results, even with those people who aren’t targeted by the ad.


6. Following the Pack - Don’t do anything solely because it’s trendy. Check new options at your disposal for consistency with your plan and expected return on time invested. You’ll need to rely mostly on intuition, but the more extensive your knowledge, the more reliable your intuition will be.


7. Not Optimizing Your Web Site - What good is a website that looks great yet is dysfunctional? It doesn’t attract any traffic. Search engines are confused by it. Or it attracts traffic, but that traffic doesn’t convert. The lack of web site results is so wide spread that business owners tend to be very skeptical about the web’s marketing potential.


8. Optimizing for Search Engines Only - Some marketers optimize their web sites for search engines but fail to optimize for humans. The result: traffic that doesn’t convert. Optimizing “user experience” is more important than search engine optimization. SEO is only one of numerous ways to attract visitors to your site. On the other hand, all methods drive traffic to your website, and if that site is weak, your work is in vain.


9. Your Logo or Flash Dominates Your Website - A constant battle! A client said he wants his website to have an upscale image similar to that of the fluffy Tiffany site. Will that work for him? He’s trying to build his brand online. The Tiffany brand was powerful before the web even existed. All they really need is a pretty site with product illustrations and a shopping card to help you spend your extra funds on beautiful high-end jewelry. However, let’s be real. If you’re not a Tiffany or an Apple, nobody cares as much about your logo or flash as you do. They want content to digest. They want to know what you can do for them and whether or not they can trust you.


10. Too Little or Lame Content - They say that content is king. I believe that is true. People are searching online for content. To succeed, feed people great content, such as text, video, pictures, podcasts, etc., and you’ll gain positive recognition for your brand.


11. Trying to Spam the Search Engines - Search engines are smarter than you might think. Game them, and you’ll come to regret it. But, feed them lots of solid content, and over time they’ll send your web site thousands and thousands of targeted visitors.


12. Leaving Everything to Your Web Developers - Web developers are neither experienced marketers nor skilled copywriters.


13. Making Bad Money Decisions - How about the following example? You spent tens of thousands to engage top notch social media and web consultants, but you don’t want to spend a couple of thousand on the new website design they recommend. Why not? Because that would imply that the money you spent on the original design was wasted. Am I missing something here? Tell me.


14. Not Hosting Your Website or Blog Yourself - Your website or blog is the core of your web presence.  Should Blogger or Wordpress.com determine its disposition? Invest in a web hosting account — it’s not pricey. Learn how to use the Wordpress.org content management system to create and maintain your website or blog.


15. Not Building Yourself an Online Community - If you have doubts about social media or the power of your own community, Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk will make you a believer. Gary has built a community of wine lovers around his Wine Library TV brand, and his social media efforts have greatly added to the bottom line of his business, the Wine Library.


16. Not Engaging Your Community - To cultivate and nurture your community of customers and fans is a golden opportunity to connect with the people who matter to your brand.


17. Not Being Authentic - We live in an age of trust and transparency. Being who you’re not will set you apart from your competitors in a counterproductive way.


18. Not Integrating Online Marketing with Offline - Relying only on Internet marketing when you can achieve results offline as well, including driving visitors from offline to your website. Marketing offline is not dead.


19. Never Meeting People Face-to-Face - Nothing builds trust like an in-person meeting. If you’re in the New York area, let’s have coffee or do lunch.


20. Not Diversifying - Don’t put All Your Social Media Eggs in One Basket — nor all your other eggs.


21. Not Using an Autoresponder to Build an Email List - Most potential customers need to get to know your brand better before they buy. Keep in touch with them by letting them add themselves to your autoresponder newsletter or blog subscription list — even if you use RSS.


22. Not Touching Base Frequently with Your Email List - If you don’t stay on people’s minds, they’ll forget you. Then when you do email them, they’ll flag your message as spam. That in turn will hurt your ability to get your email through the filters of the Internet service providers.


23. Relying on Trial and Error - Keep reading. Keep learning. Trial and error is a luxury you may not be able to afford.


24. Never Seeking Help - A little help can save you from much trial and error and many hours of spinning your wheels but remaining where you are.


25. Taking Your Web Marketing Too Seriously - Lighten up. Make friends. Have fun.

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Five things social media can't do

From the largest of brands to the mom-and-pop store down the street, it seems like every business is setting up a social media presence of some type.

 

And for good reason: everywhere you look, somebody is extolling the virtues of social media and what it can do for businesses.

But social media, like most channels, has its limitations.

When looking at making an investment in social media, here are the five things social media can't do that businesses should keep in mind.

Make you cool

Long gone are the days when being on Facebook or Twitter meant you were ahead of the curve. Today, 'everybody' is on social media, meaning your social media presence is only as cool as you are.

Create great products & services

The feedback you receive from social media can in some cases help you improve your product and service offerings, but social media in and of itself won't turn crud into quality. That, at the end of the day, is always going to be your job.

Quash criticism

Having a presence on Facebook or Twitter can enable you to respond more quickly and effectively to criticism, but being active in social media will not enable you to eliminate all criticism.

In some cases, the responses you give to criticism leveled at you via social media can only make things worse. 

Provide free marketing

Signing up for popular social networks may not cost you a cent, but that doesn't mean that social media is 'free'. Building, growing and maintaining a social media presence always requires an investment in time, and for every business, time is money.

Improve your customer service

For many companies, social media has become an important customer service tool. But don't be confused: great customer service is provided by people, not tools.

If your customer service staff isn't capable of helping customers with their problems regardless of the channel, a Twitter account won't change that.

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Brand Yourself and Market on Twitter

What is Twitter?

Twitter may very well be the hottest online social media venue today. It’s a social network, micro-blog, instant messenger, mobile communications tool and giant party — all rolled into one site.

Twitter is a great branding and marketing resource with the potential to reach thousands of people. I myself am a very enthusiastic Twitter user.

Originally Twitter entries were status updates that answered the simple question, “What are you doing?”

Twitter has evolved over time, and members now post all sorts of short messages which we affectionately refer to as “tweets”.

How short is short?

There is a strict 140 character limit so members can tweet via text messaging wherever they happen to be at the time.

If you’re on Twitter and want people to “follow you”, write a comment below explaining briefly why you like Twitter and including your Twitter link.

Twitter Training

I found a three-hour course that fully answers the question, “What is Twitter?” and goes step-by-step through complete Twitter setup and usage.

There are also extensive interviews with Warren Whitlock and Deborah Micek, authors of Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online, who provide many useful Twitter tips.

Affiliate University

The Twitter course is being offered by Affiliate University as a free sample of their social and search engine marketing training which was designed primarily for novice Internet marketers and more seasoned marketers who want to increase their skill set.

Affiliate marketing, referring customers to others’ websites in order to earn commissions, is a great way to develop multiple income streams, create passive residual income, and generate leads for nearly any type of business from mortgages and real estate to network marketing.

It isn’t very difficult to get started in affiliate marketing. Having your own website isn’t required, but if you have a website or blog, that’s a big plus.

Affiliate University teaches the necessary concepts and techniques in a structured and easy to follow format.

Founder Bill Hibbler is a successful Internet marketer and an excellent instructor. Bill along with Joe Vitale is co-author of Meet and Grow Rich: How to Easily Create and Operate Your Own “Mastermind” Group for Health, Wealth, and More.

If you have experience with affiliate marketing, feel free to write a comment below and share your experiences.

In any case, enjoy the Twitter Course. It’s excellent, and there aren’t any strings attached.

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Reasons Why You Might NOT Be Promoting Yourself Enough

These are eight reasons why self-promotion and injecting yourself into your content are very important:

1. You transcend your interests. 
   No interest or group of interests, no matter how passionate you are about them, can fully define you as a person. Admittedly, this point is too existential, so…


2. Your subject matter might lose relevance. 
   For example, your product can be discontinued or your company can go out of business. Your content will become irrelevant with no residual benefit from the effort you put into creating and promoting it. However…


3. You’re always relevant as a person.
   You have inherent value, and you’re completely portable from one venue to another.


4. You and I are unique. 
   People aren’t interchangeable, but products, services and organizations tend to be.


5. You and I are memorable.
   People will come to remember us and our faces once they see us a few times.


6. People prefer to do business with people they know, like and trust. 
   It has always been that way, even before Al Gore allegedly invented the Internet. You and I can relate to people and build solid social capital.


7. Synergy. 
   Our diverse interests and content work to build a bigger and more insightful picture of us.


8. Social media is uhh, social.
   You and I are social. Our jewelry and weight loss products merely facilitate social interaction. People relate to people, and their relationships are ongoing.

At this time, you can probably suggest additional reasons for keeping it social, and I expect that you will.

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Tips that Add Excitement to Marketing Copy

People are always looking for snazzy new ideas. However, old ideas are usually the most effective.

This is especially true when you’re writing marketing copy. Why? Because selling is about persuading people, and people are pretty much the same today as they ever were.

Okay. I know that’s not the most exhilarating thing you’ve read today. I’d love to reveal some spectacular new copywriting discovery. But for the most part, the stuff that worked a hundred years ago still works today. And a hundred years from now, it will be working just as well.

Buzzwords come and go. Writing styles change. But if you look at an advertisement from decades ago, you’ll see the same principles at work as you would in any of today’s efforts.

Here are a dozen of the most important.

1. Make your copy SELL.
   Commercial copywriting is not about clever words and poetic phrases. It’s about selling. The way to sell is to combine your communication skills with knowledge of psychology. As the copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis once wrote, “Psychology + Communication = Salesmanship.”


2. Sell as much or as little as needed.
   Ask yourself, “How much selling do I need for my audience? How familiar are people with this type of product or with this particular product?” If you are selling a familiar product with a common offer, you don’t need to push as hard as you might when selling a less familiar product with a less common offer.


3. Use a proven copy formula.
   There are as many formulas as there are copywriters, but they all boil down to the same ideas. You need to 1) establish your objective, 2) clarify the benefits to your prospects, 3) show how the benefits will be delivered, 4) prove your statements, 5) sweeten the offer and make response easy, and 6) tell your prospects how to respond.


4. Use the imperative mode. 
   That’s a fancy way of saying, “Tell people what to do.” Tell them to “order now,” “click here,” “subscribe today,” or “ask for your free report.” This is not a style choice. Experience shows that telling people what to do results in more people doing it.


5. Focus on one clear, big benefit. 
   This will simplify your message, select your audience, and differentiate your product from others. If you’re selling a computer design program, your big benefit might be that it can automatically translate print designs into SEO friendly Web pages. There may be other benefits, such as low cost and speed of operation, but these would be secondary. Usually, your big benefit is the subject of your primary headline.


6. Make clarity your #1 goal.
   People do not interact with advertising the same way they do with game shows and sitcoms. They’re not looking for entertainment. They’re looking for relevance. “What’s in it for me? Why should I do this?” This is why you should strive to avoid clever concepts and make your message clear and direct.


7. Make a strong offer.
   An offer should be more than the standard price. An offer is a deal you make, a special low price, an exclusive premium, or the opportunity to try the item free for 30 days. Your offer is the heart of every promotion, so you should make it as strong and appealing as possible.


8. Provide enough information for a decision.
   This includes product information, the offer, ordering instructions, guarantee, etc. If a decision will prove difficult for products that are expensive, complex, new, hard to explain, or that require a considerable commitment, you may need to use a softer offer (such as a free trial) or break the sales process into multiple steps.


9. Guarantee satisfaction.
   Because people cannot see or handle your product ahead of time, there is always the perceived risk of being disappointed or ripped off. A guarantee helps assure people that your product is good and that you stand behind it. It’s a powerful benefit you should highlight.


10. Provide a reason for immediate response.
    Studies show that people are more likely to respond to requests when there is a good reason. Is there a limited supply? A seasonal rush? Can you sell only a limited number to each customer? Do you have to plan your production by a certain date?


11. Make it easy to order.
    Exclusivity and convenience are the two primary reasons people make transactions via the Internet, direct mail, or ads. So if you’re selling products that way, it is imperative that you make ordering as quick and effortless as possible. Make your offer easy to understand and complete. Give short, simple ordering instructions. Provide easy order forms.


12. Use the word FREE.
    This may be the only word in the language that stands no chance of ever becoming a cliché. Always look for features, benefits, and accessories that can be offered for free. “Free” almost always generates  more interest and response.

So ask yourself, are you really making it easy to order or are you making people jump hurdles? Have you provided enough information for a decision or are your potential customers left wondering about some detail? Are you selling too much or too little?

Compared to the latest gee-whiz innovations you read about every day, this may sound boring. But I promise it can make your copy quite interesting to customers, and the sales results downright fascinating for you.

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