Ad Analogies and Acronyms

ZMOT is the Zero Moment Of Truth a free e-book published by Google earlier this month where their surveys reveal a new modern marketing strategy.

If you’ve ever been involved in selling houses, cars, white goods, computers, entertainment systems – anything tested in the Which? magazines – you’ll know what Google are talking about.

The say 1) people stimulated by a promotion no longer 2) go down to the shop to buy and 3) experience ownership. Buyers now do online research after being stimulated but before visiting suppliers. They accept this is nothing new to estate agents and car dealers etc.

What’s new is this is now happening for all types of goods and services. The magnitude of buyers researching has skyrocketed. And it takes zero effort for the buyer to do.

It’s called pre-buying

• 70% look at product reviews before making a purchase
• Even more comparison shop online
• They get their questions answered before they visit a supplier
• They go armed for battle when they visit suppliers
• 97% are influenced by ZMOT when buying a car
• 83% do online research before visiting a car dealer
• They visit over 18 online sources of information before buying a car

It’s not just car buyers. This is happening for all products and services. It’s so quick and easy for a buyer to research with their smart-phones. Google suggest sellers be at ZMOT where the buyers spend most of their time.

I first published an e-mail newsletter back in the 90s, started blogging in 2003 and have been producing a comparison site since 2006 simply because like the industries above I’ve been aware of ZMOT for over four decades.

So I got carried away and wrote a series of posts on the ZMOT subject addressed to car dealers. You may not be a car dealer but if you’ve owned a car you’ll have bought one and sold your old one so my posts should be understandable and you can make your analogies. Here are my topics with a link or three:

• Is ZMOT useful?
• How to be at ZMOT
• Is ZMOT worth it?
• The Moments Of Truth
• Keyword research for ZMOT
• Being ‘best’ at ZMOT
• Do buyers want ZMOT information?
• The value of ZMOT to customers
• Creating copy for ZMOT
• Write your own reviews
•  How ZMOT leads to conversions

Search [zmot] to download your free pdf copy of WINNING THE ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH.

Regards
Ralph

Following on from the previous post – you’re writing a business plan; your history and position to date, introducing your business and the second question is, what makes you believe your idea will succeed?

The obvious answer is success breeds success. If you look at my little story in the previous post, from salesperson to AdWords it goes, salesperson > writing ad copy > writing sales letters > word processing and mail merging > email marketing > blogging > SEO > AdSense > AdWords Tutorials > blogging about AdWords.

There was very interesting research into successful salespeople. One, they were empathetic. Two, they built on each success. Their ego grew. Salespeople in reality fail more than they succeed. They seem to ignore failures and build on successes.

This is very odd. Once bitten, twice shy. Normal people do not accept failure. If they fail they normally don’t make following attempts.

Have you ever tried to manage a failing sports team? I managed a successful team of footballing lads from infants to teens. We had a great time all the time we were winning. But when they discovered the sins of life and started to lose, the team fell apart.

Have you ever been on skiing holiday with somebody who couldn’t get it? They never return.

Successful salespeople are interesting because they fail more than they succeed but remain motivated.

Whilst on the subject, I’d like to make a big moan. When I learnt salesmanship it so changed my life, I said I’d end my days as a trainer. When the time came I entered a degree course studying adult education and then systems thinking. It all seemed psychological so I finished with a 2.1 Honours in psychology.

When I ventured into the trainers market it seemed the aim was to fail salespeople to remain in consultation.

I’ve observed this over many years. What happens is the trainer pontificates their method will improve sales. They normally work with the company’s list of prospects. If they succeed, they claim success and to be kept on. If they fail, they claim it’s the salespeople’s fault and they need to be kept on. It’s so obvious they now introduce themselves to a sales team as, ‘I’m not one of those trainers who …’

The gripe is this all kills the salesperson’s ego which is the foundation of their success. Even when a sales event succeeds, the trainer claims the success.

The actual truth of the matter is if the company gives the trainer a good list of prospects and they succeed then the trainer will do good. If the company gives the trainer a bad list and they fail then the trainer will say the saleseople are bad. We’ve looked at the importance of lists in previous posts.

There’s even more to my story of ending my days as a trainer because failing, like a true salesperson I persisted. I went and got myself a couple of diplomas in coaching. During my education I was experimenting with friends and colleagues. During the Investigation stage people were making massive Interventions before I even got there. They were making Improvement and Implementing them before me. I was going at the pace of my education. They took off. It scared me. I couldn’t imagine bearing the responsibility and bottled. What this taught me is people grow.

Which is probably why you find me here today – a frustrated, would be trainer, blogging away despite everything.

If I were younger I could arrive at the idea of being a trainer and believe I could succeed out of frustration and anger. So maybe you don’t need previous successes to believe you can succeed.

Which brings me to another tale. I once owned a business leasing to Mrs Thatcher’s new enterprising businesses. We carried out research proving business start ups didn’t grow from great business ideas or a belief in success. They sprung from dismissal from work, redundancy, falling out with their boss.

I’ll leave you on that negative note and the idea there’s a chance for everybody, especially all the time there are damaging dick-head trainers in this world killing the ego of your competitors.

Regards
Ralph

In my last post I was saying you need a plan. The first thing any business or project needs is a plan.

• Planning allows you to make mistakes on paper and not in the market place.
• It can compensate for a lack of capital and experience.
• Planning shows you how much money is needed.
• It also increases your knowledge and understanding.

The are 6-parts to a plan:

1. History and Position to Date.
2. Market Research.
3. Competitive Business Strategy.
4. Operations.
5. Forecasting Results.
6. Business Controls.

For part 1) History and Position to Date you need:

1. An Introduction to the Business.
2. A Description of the Business.
3. A Description of the Product or Service.

To introduce you business, project or idea you answer the following questions:

1. How did you arrive at this business idea?
2. What makes you believe you will succeed?
3. What is your mission statement?
4. What specific competence do you have to link the product to the customer need?
5. What are your objectives, short and long term?
6. List tasks and actions as seen at present.
7. How much money is needed?
8. Write a shopping list.

Let’s start with how did you arrive at this business idea?

Answering this question helps you and your audience understand your idea as something more concrete. Ideas are fluid but as you move forward with your project or plan they become more solid. Where you might be able to drop an idea, when you move forward ideas become solid to the point there’s no turning back.

The history of how you arrived at your idea will make the idea feel more solid.

For example, I obviously have an interest in Google AdWords. My interest comes from studying Google AdWords tutorials to improve my understanding of SEO and AdSense. I became interested in SEO as a blogger which I took up because it was another way of sequencing messages I’d previously published in emails. I was invited into email marketing because of my word processing sales letters and mail merging them for snail-mail. I was shown how to do this when the technology first became available because of my known experience in sales, advertising and direct mail.

Google AdWords models direct marketing which promotes with direct mail. So you can see when you have an idea it may seem fluid to your audience but it becomes far more solid to them – and you – when you describe how you arrived at your idea.

What all this means is your idea is more likely to be taken seriously.

Regards
Ralph

a business plan. Really. I’ve been an Internet marketing junkie since 98-99. I love these guys telling me I can make six figures in a day, week, month, year etc. They’ve started to stretch it to be more believable.

Here’s reality. If you’re making 6-figures you tell nobody because your kids could get kidnapped, they’ll come round and burgle your house, the taxman or VAT man will hound you for years, even lock you up. Everybody wants to take your money away from you. You keep it secret.

I’ve suffered all this bar kidnapping – I didn’t do that well.

So forget it. Reality is you open a business go down to the bank and they ask you for your business plan.

My first experience was I’d been a salesperson for 11-years, been moonlighting for 4 of those, had a shed load of cash to deposit and numb-nuts asks me what my plan was.  I explained to the chin-less wonder I bought at one price and sold for a higher price. I got an account. We were off.

Trouble was we got off to such a start we were turning over our seed money in days. Back to the bank for a loan – where’s your plan? It went on like that for 9-years and then we started to grow 50% per annum. Need more money.

I remember our bank manager at the time was unattractive, unfriendly and she asked a lot of questions. She was never helpful. The worst insult was she said our business wasn’t ‘sexy.’ I was going to compare my having a part in the birth of three children in the past four years with her spinster status but that would have been incorrect.

Like macho fools we presented our plans to grow, be bigger, larger. I’d just as well open my email spam box and buy similar promises.

But seriously, you need a proper formal business plan. It will provide everything – even the money. You don’t need an online course, software, secret code. You just need a proper formal plan.

A plan has a handful of parts and in total all you need to do is answer about 60 questions in writing to present a professional plan. Those questions will follow in this thread of posts.

Regards
Ralph

Fantastic. It’s the future. Way to go. Social media is where it’s at and where you’ve got to be.

Honestly?

Are you like me? Everyone in the family is on Twitter, FacieB. Have they or anyone you know, they know, actually clicked a link on these sites and clicked a BUY button on the subsequent landing page? Have you?

We know they buy on Amazon and eBay. But Twitter, FaceBook?

I can accept marketers tap traffic from these sites to their own blogs, email lists and memberships sites to build relationships.

On YouTube is quite obvious. You view one video, then the next, the next, then you’re on a site with more video and if you want even more you can sign in with your email address for free access. Google do it with AdWords video tutorials. Do you? Yeah, me neither.

Time, isn’t it?

It would actually take me less time to video what I’m saying here than it’s taking me time to type it. Not only would it take me less time to transmit this message, it would take you less time to receive it.

But it’s what I do, like I always advertised in newspapers.

Video has one huge advantage for sellers. It’s a demonstration. Demonstration rivets the attention, make features and benefits easier to understand. Your sales-talk has become a discussion about the experience of working with the product.

Car sales people may sell to every 12th person they speak to, every 4th proper prospect, but they know they will sell to 50% of those who take a demonstration. And they get you in that car at the first opportunity.

Social Media? How about video ads and smart-phones? Think about it.

Regards
Ralph

Many moan they can only break even at say £1.oo per click whilst their competitors are willing to pay two, three times this amount.

Of course it’s about cost per conversion.

Given costs, price and profits are similar in the same industry it can be assumed advertisers are profiting from higher bids.

Not necessarily, because some bid higher because they’re:

• Promoting a lost leader and then up-sell.
• Building turnover to profit from at a later date.
• In trouble and will do anything to try and get out of it – they’ve nothing to lose.
• Chasing a higher volume bonus than you.

The two big reasons are:

• The bidder is building a business to sell.
• Directors’ defence.

Many directors will just spend because when questioned about sales performance than can claim to have blown the budget, hired the most expensive – best – agency and outbid all comers.

Others are simply looking to build a business and sell it on to be rationalised. That’s something most Mom and Pop businesses don’t understand. Business is not about making an operating  profit over and above what you might be paid as an employee because you could just as easily lose money. Business is about building and selling or floating a business for its potential profit.

However none of this need matter. Crazy!

The issue is Cost Per Conversion and competitors can have landing pages which simply blow their competition out of the water.

OK, keywords get impressions, ads get click, but it’s the landing page that converts.

It would be half right if ads sent visitors to the relevant conversion page and not the home page.

The importance of your sales page is …

Here are some of my experiences:

• A change in copy inviting people to an event made a 2,700% improvement to responses.
• A competition yielding a response 1,000% over and above what was expected.
• Less than 100 words of copy growing a business by 50% 3-years in succession.
• A simple page of text out-performing a hugely expensive campaign by 1,600%.

When you look at those percentages and competition in CPC it makes you realise the importance of your landing page and conversions. Google AdWords will give you all the reports to monitors inputs and outputs.

You have to test, chase,change or chuck it. It’s not all figures though.

The improvement in the event case was the result of the actors’ pure fantasy, imagination and let’s do it.

The competition started as a joke, wouldn’t it be fun.

In both these situations they were overwhelmed by the response and had to really dodge about to deliver the promise.

The growth in business left them being vulnerable.

As for simple text out performing expensive flashy campaigns – it happens all the time.

If you can improve your cost per conversion you needn’t worry about CPC.

Having said that always remember improvements in the sales process is subjective. Improving the numbers works better.

Regards
Ralph

The first tip is to pay no attention to third-parties and gurus. Google have their own Google AdWords Learning Center which is best Internet marketing education you’ll find. If you need help they have qualified Google advertising professionals call Google AdWords Certified Partners.

Everyone and his dog, including me, has something to say about keywords, writing ads, tracking and optimizing. The truth is many keywords don’t come with both volume and commercial intent and 9 out of 10 ads flop. You need to test. The quickest and cheapest way to test is with Google AdWords.

Work on the idea that other people in other places, at different times, will have different results to you, in your place, at this time.

The best approach is to get started and pick the bones out of it later.

You can easily open a Google AdWords account. Google provide all the tools you need. It goes something like this

You’ll be asked to open a Campaign and target your audience by location and language. There are other setting to consider later. You then need to set a daily budget.

Next you open an Ad Group and create an Ad. Google will automatically provide a list of keywords for you and at this stage you can leave your bidding on automatic.

You then pay Google and your account is activated.

Within an hour you find further keywords suggested in the Opportunities tab. If you select most of these and those suggested earlier you could be found in all the networks for something like 100 keywords.

You may find some ads are pending review in the Ads tab and you can click to read Google policies. At this time check your keywords are eligible and your Quality Scores.

Let’s say you targeted the UK and are willing to pay £25 per day for 3-days. Most gurus will strike fear into you saying Google will rinse your money in minutes and you’ll lose your shirt. This isn’t true. Google gets off to a steady start.

You can see how to build an effective keyword list using the Google Keyword Tool, matching options and your search term report. But let’s say you decide to see what happens first. In the meantime you could download several Google Guides and I strongly recommend using Google Analytics.

You can let Google get on with your ad whilst you navigate the Home, Campaigns, Opportunities, Report, Billing and My Account tabs.

The Home tab is a snap-shot of your account with Alerts, Status, Announcements, Watch List, Active Campaigns, Campaign Performance and Best Performing Keywords on this one page.

The Campaign tab at this stage details settings for your one ad, budget, targeting and bids with tabs for Settings, Ads, Keywords, Networks. In these you’ll find reports, controls and help.

The Opportunities tab contains, ideas, tools and help to optimize performance.

At this very early stage consider if you’ve selected the right keywords, think about adding, editing and deleting the next day depending on results. You can see what searches triggered your ad and think about building your own list of effective keywords.

Also think about your budget, bidding and targeting.

Try and get all your thoughts into the idea of optimizing and Google Best Practices regarding:

1. Organisation
2. Keywords
3. Ad text
4. Display URL
5. Tracking

On the second day, if you allowed your ads to run on the default setting of All Networks you should find you’ve had an amazing number of impressions and a huge variation in your CTR.

You will have learnt a tremendous amount just in 24 hours. It’s now time to optimize which is a fancy way of saying chase it, chuck it or change it. All you need do is pause none performing keywords for impressions, CTR and position, so you can later consider changes or chucking them.

You might try writing a second ad in a new Ad Group, but not change your budget, so halving your bidding and see what happens.

This may not be the professional way to get started but for £75 you’ll have learnt a lot over 3-days. You can pause and consider:

1. How to get off to a good start next time with properly organised campaigns.
2. More precise targeting and scheduling.
3. Costs and bidding.
4. Tracking and reports.
5. Optimizing your keywords and ads.
6. Using Google Analytics and Conversion Tools.
7. Profit.

You probably won’t have had a profitable experience with £75 in 3-days. The thing is not to leave it there but to go on and optimize. It’s like sending out a direct mailing. If your sales letter doesn’t work you chuck it and start again. If it nearly works you look at changing the letter and the costs and prices your working with. If it works you chase it, use it as a control and split-test another letter against it.

You can test headlines, copy, offers, etc, etc, in your ads and landing pages.

The direct mail model is a good approach to AdWords. All the framework, reports and tools are in your account.

Regards
Raph

Having planned your newsletter to build a list of email subscribers and produced a few articles, it’s time to push the button and publish.

At this stage you should already have:

• a domain name
• hosting account
• an auto-responder
• maybe a credit card merchant account, and later
• you may need a shopping cart.

You only need do this one time and most services can be provided by your host. Aweber can provide an auto-responder.

Then it’s simply a case of creating a sequence for your auto-responder. Services like a Aweber provide all the information, tutorials and videos you might require. Everything is done using wizards.

You’ll need a simple monthly routine:

• write at least one article
• publish it in your sequence
• announce it’s publication
• design a process to sell your service
• maybe comment on forums and blogs

The next step is to promote your newsletter with:

• offline activity at the point of enquiry, sales, order, delivery.
• post announcements in discussion groups and announcement sites as well as your blogs, Twitter and FaceBook.

You could first publish your article in a blog to then be automatically picked up and published by your autoresponder and announced on Twitter and Yahoo.

How-To Build and Grow Your List

Our main objective is to entice prospects to leave their email address with you in return for an incentive.

Visitors who come and go from your site are of little value. To be an asset – of some future benefit – they must leave you permission to contact the. Rather than attempt a sale, you’re looking to establish a long-term, one-to-one relationship.

To manage a list properly you must observe netiquette, you must:

• have permission
• target your audience
• keep the list safe and confidential
• use only for the reasons signed up for
• remove from your list on request

You must check:

• the right message is going to the right list
• the content is valuable and relevant
• your signature file
• links working
• formatting

Always be pleasant, anticipated and relevant. Never be self-promoting. Your links are enough.

If and when you get this working you may find it’s your preferred goal over going for a one-stage sale.

Regards
Ralph

How To Find, Create Valuable Articles As Content For Your Newsletter

It sounds daunting, doesn’t it? At this stage most would give up. Most people don’t like to write. However it’s not as bad as it seems.

If you had 60 articles you could email prospects monthly for 5-years. You’d have 5-years to collect them.

The articles only need be 300 to 500 words long, 800 max’.

Here are a few ideas.

You could write an article as a tip relating to each month of the year. In January you could review the past year and look forward to the new one. You could relate to holidays in the summer, the dark nights and snow in the winter, Xmas gift ideas, etc.

You could write about a product feature, explaining how it works, how to use it, what you can do with it, how to use it economically and safely, and how to take care of it so it lasts and is reliable.

A list of tips is popular.

Write about a problem, your approach and the result.

Read forums and answer the questions in your articles.

Ask, how? What caused this? What’s going to happen next? Why?

Here are a few more tips, borrow an old idea, brainstorm, mind map, use the six faithful servants.

Don’t Like Writing – Here Are 4 Choices

1. Delegate.
2. Get permission to use other writing.
3. Pay a writer.
4. Read my series of posts describing a 6-step process under the category ‘online writer’ or find the link in Conversions tab at the top of this page.

Remember articles act as subtle sales messages. They just need to be clear and accurate.

70% of the work is coming up with ideas, researching and planning an outline.

Only 20% of the work involves sitting down and writing. You could even download Dragon software onto an iPhone and dictate whilst you watch your words appear in type. It’s about 3 times faster than typing.

10% of your time will be spent publishing which we’ll talk about later.

You can’t go wrong if you write about what you know. Don’t indulge yourself or find fault. And remember people are not interested in you.

Remember you’re publishing a newsletter to build a valuable asset, a list of prospects.

Regards
Ralph

This post rounds off the planning of a newsletter to build an email list of subscribers. Following posts will be about producing, publishing and promoting your newsletter.

Email marketing can be a smooth operation.

Selling and Sales Management

With email marketing there’s no phoning or cold calling – interruption marketing. The aim is to be in front of customer awareness with frequent and recent messages so when they need your services you will be the first to spring to mind.

Enquiries, follow-ups, monitoring and controls can all be managed by an auto-responder service.

The salesmanship is in the sales copy inviting visitors to subscribe to your newsletter and in the sales pages for your products.

Your subscriber decides to click links in your newsletter if and when they’re interested in what you have to offer.

Sources of Supply

Most businesses already have all the hardware and software needed to market online. To build an email list you need an email management system. Although this can be done through ISP or self-hosting most marketers use a remotely hosted list management system, for example, Aweber with the following features:

• ability to subscribe and unsubscribe
• remove undeliverable addresses
• send sequential messages
• broadcast messages to any or all lists
• split test mailings
• personalise mailings
• unlimited messages can be added to any auto-responder series
• flexible in when and how messages are sent
• create unlimited email lists and messages
• use plain text and HTML
• double opt-in
• can block certain subscribers
• send automatically on certain days of the week

Sales Forecasts

Don’t worry about targets, concentrate on building durable relationships.

Finance Requirements

Immaterial.

Finance Controls

There’s nothing to control.

Sales and Marketing Controls

Activity monitoring and customer records are managed by your auto-responder.

That’s the end of the planning considerations. Next we need to produce articles for your newsletter messages.

Regards
Ralph