Even though he died when I was just 17, my Grandpa Irwin filled my head with plenty of what I call his Grandpa-isms that serve me well to this day.

For example, one of his favorites was “always watch where you’re looking“.

Now, just like my Grandpa himself, those 5 words are simple and profound in the same breath.

They mean you should always be focused on where you are going, but they also mean you need to be cautious of where you plan to go and careful not to try going where you don’t belong.

For example, they are great advice for someone who isn’t focused enough on their business–but equally great advice for a guy checking out another man’s wife.

5 little words that are sound advice which can be applied in a wide variety of situations. Simple and profound.

Another of Grandpa’s favorites, and this one has helped me more than anything else with my Internet marketing over the years, was “always mean what you say, and only say what you mean“.

In other words, speak the truth and refrain from the B.S. of hype and sensationalism.

I apply this rule in my sales copy and advertising all the time, and I believe it to be the main reason I’ve enjoyed success with online marketing.

First, it protects me from myself at times. More than once I’ve wanted to promote a product only because the commissions for it were high. It’s human nature, and regardless of how well intentioned we are, we all want to make more money.

But when I apply this rule to my promotional copy it forces the product to show its full value to me because once you strip away the hype what you’re left with is the true value of the product.

If it can’t stand on its own at this point, or doesn’t agree with the price tag you’re asking customers to pay, then it is not something you should be promoting.

The rule also helps me to deliver an honest marketing message every time. Without any hype or fluff what you have left to tell customers are the bottom line benefits they should expect from the product.

This leads to more satisfied customers, and more important, to less unsatisfied customers.

I’ve spoken before about under promising and over delivering in sales copy, and that’s what this rule helps to achieve.

Here’s how I break it down when writing sales copy or other advertising content for a product:

Always mean what you say

Only speak truth on the benefits of the product. Leave out unnecessary hype and superfluous fluff. I also call this the Dragnet rule, “Just the facts, Mam”.

If you can’t prove a claim, don’t include the claim in your promotional material. Always mean what you say.

And only say what you mean

Pick your words carefully. Think of your local news broadcast, how many times have you heard the anchor say something like “Passangers were startled when the plane accidentally rolled off the runway during the landing”?

Think about that statement, it implies that there are times when pilots will intentionally steer the plane off of the runway during a landing.

Sure, most of us understand that’s not what the broadcaster meant to imply, and we won’t give it much thought because we’ve become accustomed to such careless grammar… but words have meaning, and when you’re asking people to trust you and give you their money the least you can do is respect them enough to ask politely and correctly.

Another prime example which I’ve mentioned on this blog before is from when I worked for the U.S. Postal Service many years ago. A co-worker was fund raising in the office and handed me a brochure with this headline:

Support Breast Cancer

I nearly fell over. Several friends and family memebrs of mine have suffered through breast cancer, so I often support breast cancer research, awareness and survivors–but I will not support breast cancer itself.

Obviously the title was just poorly written and the funds were actually for research and awareness efforts, and since it was a charitable cause rather than a commercial sales pitch it probably had little negative impact (I hope), but I’m sure the title could have had a more positive impact on their fund raising efforts if it had simply said “Fight Breast Cancer” instead.

That would still be 3 words and would have fit on the brochure layout, but it would also have created an instant “call to action” with every person they handed the brochures to, instead of creating subconscious confusion with the phrase: Support Breast Cancer

So always think about what exactly you are trying to say in your sales copy, pick your words carefully and only say what you mean.

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Technorati Tags: meanings, words, writing

I usually try not to post (or work) on Sundays because that’s my day for family and friends, but I have a few minutes to myself this morning and had an experience with a reader of the blog this week that I thought would make a great share for everyone involved in Internet Marketing.

James contacted me last week asking that I take a look at his web site and some of the various entry points to it that he had created (articles, a Squidoo Lens and etc.) because he wasn’t converting any sales, yet had high organic traffic coming in for his keywords.

Normally I decline requests like this simply because if I started reviewing the methods and copy of everyone who asked I’d never have time to do my own work, let alone write on the blog here.

But, the letter from James was compelling and I had a few minutes to spare when it arrived, so I had a look.

On first glance everything looked good. He has a solid “buying” related keyword that gets lots of daily search traffic and has a low competition level. His main site is in the top 10 SERPs and 3 of his entry points are also on the first page of results-meaning he has 4 of the top 10 results for his keyword right now and he’s getting the expected traffic from that.

Also, it appears that his copy and articles are well written. They pin-point a problem you would expect people in his niche to be having and guide readers to the solution–his sales links.

Nothing seemed out of place or wrong to me, except the fact that he hadn’t converted any sales in 2 weeks.

Then I realized something crucial, all of his copy on his main site as well as all of his entry point sites and articles were focused on the same problem. Which made me wonder, are people actually looking for help with that specific problem?

I asked James why he picked that problem to focus on since there are a number of related problems people in his niche might be facing and he said it was what he thought he would want help with if he were searching for the keyword term he picked.

That sounds good on the surface, but if you aren’t actually dealing with an issue that you’re marketing to then you can’t really walk in the same shoes that your target market are wearing, so there’s a chance that you’re viewing it from the wrong perspective.

So, I went out to a couple of forums related to the niche James is working and browsed around for a few minutes to see what kind of questions people were asking. Then I checked out Yahoo! Answers to see what was getting asked there.

What I found was that nobody was asking questions on the specific problem James had focused on with his content. There are several reasons why that might be, but they don’t matter. What matters is that James is targeting the right keyword, a good hungry market, but addressing the wrong needs with his copy.

I gave him some pointers on other problems he might want to focus on with his content, based on what I saw people were seeking help with in the forums and on Yahoo!

All of this took place between James and I on Thursday and Friday, and today (Sunday) I had an email from James telling me he had spent all day Saturday editing his main site copy and within a few hours had a sale.

I expect he will have many more sales to come now, especially if he revisits the content on his entry point sites and articles too.

The moral of this is simple, finding good keywords and a hungry market are just the first steps. The equally important next steps are to understand your market and target their specific needs.

The good news is that’s not hard to do at all. Between Q&A sites like Yahoo! Answers and niche related forums you can usually find exactly what people are the most desperate for help with in very little time. Use that knowledge to determine what product you promote and as a focus point for your content creation and you’ll get much better results from your efforts.

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Technorati Tags: internet marketing, market research, marketing

At the request of a friend I met today with a small group of young, aspiring webpreneurs. These are exactly the kind of people I hope to be connecting with here on the Leap blog, so I was excited about getting a more personal interaction and some instant feedback.

The meeting was very productive, the people were great and I learned a little about how the things I was talking about (the same things I write about here) were being received. Not all of it as I expected or intended, so that will help me do better here going forward.

Here are 2 things I took from it that I wanted to share right away here.

Where’s The Beef?

The big question all of them had for me was did I think now was a bad time to start a web business of any kind?

That’s a fair question and I had anticipated it might come up. Attempting a very poor Senator Ted Stevens impression, I coldly yelled “NO!” to the room. They laughed, but I’m not sure they really knew why.

Here is my reasoning as I explained it to them. Right now lots of small operations are going down. Heck, lots of big companies are dropping to. It’s a terrible time to be an established business with operational costs that were budgeted long before this current down turn hit.

It’s a fact of business that the bigger and more established you become, the more intricate and detailed everything gets, the more you have to operate on a projected budget and the harder it becomes to react to real time conditions.

So when things get tight they have to trim costs in areas other than where they really want to. So people lose jobs, service and support levels decrease, the company image takes hits… it just snowballs. And ultimately, some go completely under.

And while all of that is sad, remember that we’re talking about real people losing their jobs, but the flip side to that is these companies which go under leave a void in their marketplaces, and for the nimble startup who isn’t working on projections from numbers of last year yet that’s an opportunity to launch from.

This applies to companies and startups of all sizes, even the lone-ranger home based startup.

Right now, I assure you, there are a lot of people who have been struggling to make a go at Internet Marketing–maybe you’re one of them–and they are debating with themselves over giving up or plowing forward.

Some will quit. It’s sad to see someone give up their dreams but completely understandable. There are bills to pay, hungry mouths to feed. A steady paycheck from anywhere becomes very attractive when everything seems to be going against you.

But some will stay with it. Those who do will find new elbow room in their niches as others leave. Suddenly they go from being Guppies to Sharks in the same tank.

My point is that if you can afford to do it, then I believe this is a opportunistic time to start up.

It isn’t an easy time. Just because someone else left a void in the marketplace doesn’t mean customers who weren’t spending money with them will buy your products, they may still not spend money for a while and you’ll have to be ready for that.

But, with less crowded waters it is an opportunity for the noobie to really learn how to swim them. To become intimate with your market and get to know your customer’s needs and expectations, so you’ll be fully prepared for the inevitable economic upswing when it comes and they start spending again.

AdSense is great for site publishers! Except for most of the time when it’s the wrong choice…

I talked with the group today a little bit about adsense. And after a few minutes I realized that I was giving them the wrong impression (in my opinion) that adsense is always a reliable and safe revenue stream.

In-fact, I think it is when used on the right kind of web site. But I also think it’s a waste and counter-productive for a majority of web sites.

Here’s what I really think about it in-case I’ve given the wrong impression here on the blog in the past.

If you run a web site where visitors might be looking for a service oriented solution to some problem, then adsense is a fantastic way to monetize your pages.

Put yourself into the mind of the common visitor to your site. What problems are they going to be facing and seeking solutions for? Are the solutions to those problems typically process or product based?

If the answer is process based then you have a good site for running adsense on. Especially if the process is usually performed by some type of professional.

However, if the solution is typically product based, meaning any sort of tool or even a learning aid that would help your visitor eventually perform the process for themselves with no professional help required, then you would be foolish to put adsense on your pages and earn pennies for clicks where you could have earned dollars by putting an affiliate ad for the product in that same place.

I know adsense is easy to setup and start seeing fast money with, but it’s small potatoes compared to what you could earn with the same page real estate through an affiliate product.

So, when appropriate I love adsense, but most of the time I just don’t think it’s appropriate.

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Technorati Tags: AdSense, internet marketing

Just a quick posting here with some random thoughts floating in my head after deleting no less than 3 dozen emails today about another “BIG PRODUCT LAUNCH”…

Now, most of the folks involved (in the product and in clogging my Inbox today) are actually really decent people (some I know personally) and I get that they’re all just trying to make a living–but they do it all wrong in my opinion!

Seriously, I know some of them are making a killing in this business, but I still think they’re fubaring on products and launches most of the time.

Here’s why, I never liked the Dodge Neon when they came out. It’s not that it was a bad car, it was okay for a compact and the pricing was great. But, within weeks of hitting the market I’d seen a million of them on the road (my own mother had one) and had to sit through twice as many commercials telling me how great they were for the price. I formed a negative opinion from all of the inundation overload before ever even sitting in one.

And guess what, I never once considered buying one of those affordable Dodge Neons.

On the other hand, I’ve only seen a handful of Dodge Vipers on the road over the years, I’ve never seen a single commercial for them (though I know they made at least 1, but I’ve never seen it so it may have been just for car shows or something) and I’m near willing to trade my left arm for one I’ve wanted it so badly for so long.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Same company, same basic core product (a car that could really only go as fast as the speed limit allows on the highway)… yet one makes me feel ill to think of while the other gives me happy dreams at night.

What’s the difference? It’s obvious to me, when you create a Viper you don’t have to beat people over the head with how good it is, they know–and you can charge an arm and a leg for it.

Build a Neon and you have to beg people to buy it.

Same deal with any sort of product. The better you’ve made it, the less you have to convince others to try it.

So, whenever I get buried in product launch emails that are all telling me how great this newest, latest, what-cha-ma-call-it is the first thought in my mind becomes “yeah, well if it was so great you wouldn’t have to tell me about it”.

Now, this doesn’t mean they’re being dishonest with me, it may be that this latest what-cha-ma-call-it really is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I’ll probably never know because you lost me at hello…

My point here isn’t to bash on anyone, and this type of marketing blitz does work to a degree when your hitting email lists of tens of thousands of people. It’s kind of like a blind person playing darts, after enough throws they’re bound to hit the bulls-eye with a couple.

But my actual point is that the constant flood of cheaper “greatest thing ever” products and launches sort of seems like a huge time waster for everyone.

If we were all smarter about our products and launches we wouldn’t be building Neon-like affordable products to sell to the masses, we’d spend our time building high ticket Vipers and quietly, covertly, create a waiting list of “lucky” buyers who would be privileged enough to own them on our time tables and terms.

A few are doing that already, and my bet is they make comparable earnings as the hard working hustlers among us; but with a lot more free time through the year.

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Technorati Tags: product launch

A reader emailed me to ask if I would check out his blog recently, and I found something that I see happening a lot out there and thought would make a great post topic here. I won’t name the actual person who emailed me or reveal his site info here, there’s no need to and my point certainly isn’t to embarrass anyone.

The first thing I found when I looked at the blog was a wonderful, spiffy design. Lots of graphics that looked great and weren’t too bloated so they didn’t cause slow page loads.

Next I saw that he had all of the latest widgets and social media badges installed. Normally I might give a big high-5 on that, I’ve written a lot about how I love social networking after all.

But the problem is his blog topic is pretty much focused towards middle-aged and senior readers. People who, for the most part (there are exceptions to every rule) aren’t going to be “up” on the latest technologies and online trends. So all of this stuff on his blog is really just noise to those visitors that distracts them from his actual content.

In addition, he was offering “special secrets & deals” for people who subscribed to his RSS feed.

That’s great, except that I suspect the majority of visitors who find his blog through a search engine aren’t going to know how to do that, and there’s no “how to subscribe” information available on the blog.

A good “how to” for RSS is the least that should be up there, but given the nature of his target audience I’d suggest making the RSS feed available by email too because RSS can be too confusing or intimidating for some, but email is far less so.

The last point I had was with the blog navigation setup. He had it displaying older posts by dated archives (by months) rather than by category. Personally, I’m a fan of showing both (and using robots.txt to tell search engines which to ignore), but again when your demographic is going to be folks who aren’t on top of online technologies the standard should be to display your archives by category.

There’s a good chance they won’t even think to look in “August 2007″ for more information on “red widgets”, but a greater chance they will click on a link that says “Widgets Information” for it.

The bottom line for him, and for you to take away from this, is to know who your target visitor is going to be and plan your design–from graphics to navigation, bells and whistles–accordingly. Don’t confuse people with anything that isn’t important to them or your bottom line.

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Technorati Tags: marketing, target market