What to do when a love-affair is over?

People will do anything to save a marriage except love each other. To save a romance there is a clear solution – do the things you did that sparked the romance. Just ask Clyde if he wants to take Shirley to the dance. “Naw, she already married me.” For many men the last dance they ever dance is at their wedding. The conquest has been made.

Such is the case with business. In romance we called the overt acts of patronage, dating. In business we call it marketing.

So when a business – any business of any type – finds clients are no longer responding the business has a couple of choices:

1. Be satisfied with where you are and trim your budget accordingly, awaiting a better day. It’s kind of a bunker mentality. Hunkering down and weathering the storm. That presupposes your competitors are doing the same. But, if they’re busy inventing and getting creative in how they attract new clients, when you finally awaken from your stupor, they’re so far ahead of you in creating business that you are now the dinosaur.

2. Close the business. Maybe you’re in the wrong profession, wrong business or have lost your desire or edge. Then time to close it down and try something else. Nothing wrong with that if you’ve lost the fire in your belly for this adventure. And if you’re a buggy whip maker and Henry Ford just drove by in his Model T then you can either find a sucker to buy your company or figure out a new market for buggy whips or sell off the assets and close it down.

3. Redeploy your assets. Do things better. Be smarter in how you attract customers and keep them. If you still have the passion, get going, but get going different from what you’re doing. If your advertising hasn’t been working, don’t do more of the same non-productive ads, try a new approach. It is a common sin in business for businesses under siege to hunker down and cut, and the first thing they cut is the sales and marketing force. Does that make any sense? Yes, if you are working in the “1. Be Satisfied” category. When business slows down NOW is the time to ramp up the marketing and advertising. Now is the time to get smart about it. Now is the time to try cost effective ads that attract customers.

One might ask, “Maybe it’s not my ad, maybe it is the magazine or other medium that I’ve been advertising.” Maybe. Examine the magazine for how they’ve been doing. For one magazine I consult with, Classical Singer, advertisers sometimes stop advertising because they’re not getting results. 

On many occasions I’ve had a chance to discuss the person’s advertising with them and it is very clear why they’re getting few results. Their advertising fails to address the needs of their customers or presents it in such a way as to make the reading of their ad not worth the time.

Here is one tell-tale sign of an ad that has little chance of working:

The ad is all about the advertiser and not the customer. Remember, your business must be about “them”, not “you.” Check out your headline. Does it say something like:

Manhattan School of Art complete with the neat logo and picture of the director

We have the best school of art in the world. Our teachers are prestigious and wonderful.

That ad is all about Manhattan and nothing about the customer. It says nothing about what is in it for the customer; nothing about how the product will make the life of the customer any better.

Change that one element and you’ll begin to notice a difference. 80% of the ads in Classical Singer make this mistake. Many are beautiful to look: a vision for the eyes but a famine for the soul.

People are inwardly begging to be led but they care about themselves, not you. No one cares who you are or what your product is, only what it will do for them. If you don’t OVERTLY and immediately address that, you have little chance of getting business.

To put some spark into your love affair with your customer, start talking about what they need and want. Your logo means nothing. Branding is not your problem. Bury the logo at the bottom. Put dramatic ways that will help your customer at the top. Once they get excited about how their life can be enhanced, they’ll dig deep to find out who can help them.

Don’t stop advertising in a magazine where other people are getting great results. Instead, follow some expert advice and start creating advertisements that speak to your customer, not to the art department.

More on this in the next blog. 

Repetition can build reputation

Here’s a quick piece of advice that can make your advertisements really make you money. Repetition builds reputation.

We’d all like one advertisement to do all of our work for us… and sometimes it will. I once created an advertisement for my tour company where I was trying to get over decades of fear for our arch enemy the USSR – the Soviet Union, AKA evil empire.

I took a head on approach, one I often find best. My headline was “Are you afraid to travel to Russia?” To the right is a similar advertisement I just created for another firm now wanting to take people to Russia. The body copy plays positively on that fear and shows how others have fear and if you don’t you’ll get a great adventure, great deals and no crowds to bother you.


We got a huge response. But, we kept running that ad and running and running. It always worked. In fact, while there was a drop off from the first time we ran it, after a few more times of running it in a newspaper the response began to grow.

Why? Some people responded from the shock value. After a while others responded because if we kept advertising we must be someone worthy of taking them on a tour. Our repetition built our reputation. That first year we sold more than $6 million in tours. We did more later.

The lesson is two fold:
1. Work toward the best headline with the most attention grabbing words addressed to the audience as possible. Don’t do a tombstone headline that’s all about you. Make it about them.

and

2. Run the dang advertisement again and again. If you ad doesn’t work the first time, change it. Change it until you get it right. If you have a good product, make the ad about them and not you, grab attention, build them up with benefits, get their emotions going and make it easy to respond (that’s all part of the AIDA code that I’ve taught here), you will make sales.

For heaven sake don’t blame the media you’re using. Somehow others are using it successfully. Why not you? It is because your ad sucks. So, make it unsucky.

If you need me to create an ad for you, I will, but I’m not cheap unless you consider the money you'll make from my ads. My wife Elizabeth does all the graphics because she is an excellent artist with superb taste in colors, spacing and attention grabbing graphics. And, she knows that NO ad is worth its salt that begins the creation process with graphics. I first write the copy and then she makes it come alive.

Too many art directors get it backwards – they create a graphic and let you fit the words around their pictures. Pure foolishness and ego. Words sell. Pictures attract. You can email Elizabeth at our company, Marketing Artists, for a discussion of your advertising needs. Here's her email: lizstoddard@gmail.com

Do the right job in creating the ad and then start building your reputation through repetition.

What's in a Name?

Much Ado is made of choosing a name for a commercial purpose, be that a stage name, a product or service name or the name of a company. This is part and parcel in the discussion many have over "Branding."

Everyone knows of successful brands that have been established and love to tell about Kleenex, Jell-o, RCA and Ford. Household names. So people seek to follow their example.

Bad idea. Branding and selecting the perfect name are Much Ado About Nothing.

Shocking words in the popular work of Branding and Finding the Best Name contest.

Let's make short work of this discussion.

First, Branding. In everything you do, you brand yourself. Over the course of your career or business you'll brand and rebrand and rebrand again. Life changes. Circumstances change. You grow. As you grow, your uniqueness may grow in unanticipated ways, and so your brand grows and changes.

Unless you have $10 million in your "branding budget" and two years or more to create a brand, branding as a singular strategy is a waste of your time. You'll brand gradually but not doing anything more than watching your image to make sure it fits your general essence.

Finding the right name is even easier. There might be a wrong name, but there certainly is no such thing as the right name. Oh, some will wax poetic how wonderful the name for their company, website, or product is, but don't listen. It's propaganda on steroid finding any imaginary facts to justify their decision.

Don't believe it? Just ask yourself what your first reaction was to names like Google, Yahoo, Vonami, Orange Soda, Novell and Omniture. How about WalMart? Some are goofy. Others rather pedestrian and dull. None are descriptive of the product or service. Orange Soda has nothing to do with Fanta or any soft drink.

Yet these are names for billion dollar companies or products. Didn't you yawn, laugh or shrug when you heard them? Imagine the board room where they first came up and some desperate promoter had study group data to prove their name, GoDaddy, was a perfect name for... a website to buy website names. Laughter permeated where boredom didn't trip over deaf ears. Yet, GoDaddy and the rest have now become names sycophants trot out to "prove" there is a right name for you.

Those same folks will say, "But they are so memorable -- you can't forget them!" Sure, now that the companies have spent millions pounding their monikers into our brains we can't drive their names out of our minds.

In Salt Lake City they had the good fortune of DELTA Airlines stepping up to buy the naming rights to their new basketball arena. Easy words in "the Delta Center." But after Delta didn't renew their rights, the rights were purchased by "Energy Solutions." At first the name was universally disliked -- naming an arena after a nuclear waste dump with a name that didn't exactly roll off the tongue. But millions of dollars later everyone blithely calls it Energy Solutions Arena.

So what's the right name for you? Forget this discussion unless you have millions to spend and years to make a name stick. Fretting over a name like Hamlet is a waste of time. Pick a name you like and can live with and tell everyone else it's a great name and get on with your business. Become a self-fulfilling prophet. If you believe it, they'll believe it.

In summary: Brand yourself without spending money and wasting time. Be mindful of the look and language in everything you do so it is consistent and purposeful. Pick a name you like and get on with making sales and yourself famous -- your lustrous name will follow.

Improving your advertisements chances of success

A very bright and energetic psychologist asked me to look at the flyer she was making that advertised a seminar she was creating. Here is the flyer she sent me.



It is clear, accurate, concise and direct; four qualities that must be in good writing. But, its chances of attracting or compelling people to come are diminished because of the following:
1. The first words are about her. Your ad must be about them. Never about you.
2. It lacks emotion. People buy with emotions, not intellect.
3. To get people emotionally involved with your advertisement, you’ve got to tell them what benefits they’ll get from your product or service.
4. It is tombstoning.

Solve for these four things and you’ve greatly increased your chances of success. Notice I didn't say "guaranteed to make sales." With all advertisements we use correct principles to improve our chances, try the ad, see if people respond, and then tweak some more. But always using principles that have been proven best over the centuries. (Read in my book, Marketing Singers, the section where I show that Chaucer taught them 800 years ago as did Tsun Tsu.)

To help the ad, I asked her to respond to these questions:
1. What is the single greatest benefit I will get by attending?
2. Tell me two or three more ways I'll be helped by attending.

It is good to write as many benefits down and then organize them from the most to least important.

She wrote back:
“Good question-- Single greatest benefit?

“Attendees will receive information that has potential to create renewed enthusiasm and hope for dealing with life challenges.

“How would someone be helped by attending?

1. Identify patterns in thought and behavior processes that are holding them back from a happier life
2. Learn new and healthier ways to respond to those challenges”


I then wrote back:

“Then the headline should be something like:

“Renew your enthusiasm and hope for life
* Discover your patterns and thoughts keeping you from a happier life
* Learn ways to respond to challenges for a Happier and healthier life

Notice a couple of things:
1. I got the word “your” in immediately. It’s best if it is the first word, but fine as the 2nd.
2. Shorten the first benefit into a concise headline that was all benefit for them.
3. Took the other benefits and turned them into sub-heads.

She was concerned that I’d used “happier” twice. A good concern. I did it on purpose. It focuses on what we all want. You can never get enough happiness. It is a risk to do this, but, it evokes such strong feelings that it is worth it. Just make sure you have a reason for using a word twice.

Once we had the words down, then we gave the words to my wife Elizabeth to create the graphic layout and images that fit the words. Do NOT do this in reverse as so many do. They create a neat graphic image and then make up words to fit. Not very effective. Do your writing and thinking first.

Here’s the final flyer.



Notice that the sunrise evokes “a new day” and is next to the word “hope”. Liz also included Debbie's picture. She’s a very attractive lady and the photo makes her very “approachable” or friendly, yet she’s still professional. Remember that people like buying from people far more than from businesses. General Foods knew that when they created “Betty Crocker”. There never was a Betty Crocker but they needed a face for their company. It makes the company more approachable.

Notice as well that the final words in the ad are tweaked from the first words I sent to her as possible headlines. Keep reworking the headline until the last possible second of the deadline.

In summary, don’t use a tombstone approach to any advertisement. If you don’t understand tombstoning, get my book and read all about it. It is the most common way people advertise and the greatest reason they don’t succeed.

If you’re put off by the fact the book is seemingly written for singers, then see the last post about the cat and refrigerator about how to find similarities in different universes. Ironically, you’ll find, while the book is written to singers, I use mostly non-singer illustrations to force singers to understand that they have a product and the same rules that apply to non-singers apply to singers and vice versa.

Coupons -- tackey or tantalizing

When Dante had Tantalus reach up for some fruit of the tree or stoop down to drink from the pool of water, both nutrients receded and he was out of luck.

You get to tantalize people with an ethical bribe that brings them more value than they expected when you use a coupon or something like it.

Coupons are great for any product because they are one of the least expensive ways of advertising. Yes, you're giving away some of the price of the product, but it just costs you so much less.

Advertising can be the most expensive part of a company's budget. For a singer or artist, it can far exceed all of the artisit's income just to get someone to notice them.

A coupon lets someone sample your wares. If your product, service, talent is good, they'll likely want more.

Advertising can only get someone to try you once -- only product quality can get them to use you a second time.

Examine my Credibility Matrix. It's the key.



Advertising in box 1 and 2 is fairly cheap. People know you or your product. You have credibility. Advertising 3 and 4 is extremely expensive. You have nearly zero credibility.

Your job is to move people from boxes 3 and 4 up to boxes 1 and 2 as cheaply as possible. Once they arrive in 1 or 2, then you can spend money attracting more sales.

Coupons allow you to move quickly and cheaply.

For the cost of printing, you can reach people with a great deal. They hate to throw great deals away. The longer your coupon sits in front of them, the more they keep seeing you. Your photo may need to be on the coupon or a picture of the product. You've just bought, for the cost of printing, advertising space.

Coupons can be for:
1. Free samples, lessons, special report, free information, etc.
2. Buy one get one free
3. Percentage off -- the higher the %, the better the response
4. A trade-in
5. To feature the person in one of your events
6. Entering a drawing, raffle, etc.
7. Someone else's product that you've made arrangements to give away free for them.

You can also:
1. Email coupons or mail them.
2. Ask friends to distribute them.
3. Pass them out at other events where the audience demographics is similar.
4. Give them to a radio or TV station to give out in their promotions as a gift.
5. Include them with other coupons that are mailed.
6. Give them out at an event you sponsor or where you've featured.
7. Include them with a different product you sell.

You'll think of a dozen more. Just go to work and the ideas will flow.

An Experiment for You with a Prize!

Here’s an experiment for you.



Anyone can find differences in similar universes. Racism is all about that. She’s a human, but the skin color is different therefore the whole person is different. Nonsense. An intelligent person can see similarities in different universes. Tell me the similarities between a cat and a refrigerator. You’ll think of one or two but with some thought you’ll think of a score or more. It’s easier to find how things are different.

In the spirit of this principle, I’m going to tell you of my latest adventures and let you pull the similarities and lessons from this real-life situation and let you apply it to your circumstances. At the very least you might conclude that the guy teaching you marketing actually does what he preaches.

Before I published this blog, I asked my editor to look over this blog entry to see if I was making sense to singers (she's a talented musician). Here is her response:
“From the point of view of a singer that has read your book, your example has all sorts of applications to singers. However, I'm not sure if a singer who is not familiar with your book would see the natural connections. (Your book provides all sorts of non-singer examples, thus the reader becomes accustomed to gleaning singer-specific applications).”

That’s good enough for me. Thanks, Lisa.

No theory here, but execution based upon sound principles.

Principle-based marketing works. I’m not equating principle and morality, although both are good. By principles I mean general standards.

Everyone who deals with other human beings knows that if you treat people a certain way, they’ll usually react immediately in a predicted way. Smile at someone and they’ll immediately smile back. Yes, some people take a bit longer to smile back, but keep up the smile and sunny disposition and even Oscar the Grouch will crack.
So let me tell you my story the past few months and let you figure out the principles.

About three months ago our company faced two problems:

1) Our Universal Transmission (a vehicle transmission without a clutch or torque converter that is constantly engaged while shifting with metal gears between infinite ratios for a 30% or better fuel economy) was having major work done on it to finish our final design and a metal proof model by the end of August. We hired seven excellent and rather brilliant mechanical engineers which cost us a great deal. But we had to have them because major car and transmission makers had seen our preliminary designs and wanted some metal embodiments. Yet, where would we get the money to pay for all of this stuff we had to have done?


(A photo of our invention that will make all automatic, manual and CVT transmissions obsolete. Kind of ambitious.)

2) We had to raise more money by selling some of our units (shares) in our LLC, yet we had no metal model for investors to see and we didn’t have a contract from any of the 12 or more companies to whom we had already shown the Computer Aided Design models (CAD models). They loved the concept but needed more proof.

My job in the partnership is to do the marketing, PR and fund raising or professional business development.

My team went to work by doing the following:

1. We found a process that allows you to create a double image (like a hologram) on a single piece of material. The first image was a $100 bill with Franklin. Beneath that image was a picture of our transmission. When you tilted the bill just so, the transmission would show where Franklin’s picture had been. Our company slogan, “Race car performance with Hybrid efficiency” showed through as well. On the back of this bill-size paper were our key benefits and our contact information. We knew we were on to something when we showed it to our engineers and they loved fooling around with it.




2. We identified the trade shows where the leaders of the industry would likely be, and made arrangements to be there with them. I sent our most personable salesman and he managed to secure appointments with the heads of Ford, Chrysler, Magna, ZF and other huge companies. He had no qualms about sidling up to the grandest poobah and giving him our elevator pitch (that’s a summary of your product that will get someone’s attention in the time it takes for the elevator door to close, go up a floor and the door to open – if it’s good they’ll stay on the elevator and ask you more – sounds a bit like dating, and it is). He had worn a nice dress shirt and tie and had the $100 bills sticking out of his chest pocket. He asked them (VP of Ford, etal) if they’d like one of our $100 bills. All said yes and when they saw the dual images they’d laugh and say, “If your transmission is as clever as your marketing, it must be something.”


(My guy Mike Agrelius after he gave the Exec. VP of Ford our $100 bill.)

3. In the meantime, we asked all of the companies who had met with us to send us a Letter of Intent to do business with us. Keep in mind, this letter buys you nothing of hard goods; but because it simply says, on their letterhead, that they are intrigued by our product and would like to explore doing business with us, it buys us a huge amount of credibility. How do I know this? Read on …

4. We invited a professional business evaluator that I knew to come in and examine our books, our drawings, reviews and business plan, and to help establish our pre-sale business value. I showed him our detailed financial spread sheets. We’d created an interactive spreadsheet that was 155 pages long giving great deals on our estimations and projections. And, I showed him all of the Letters of Intent, comments from the 12 companies (including Hyundai and Kia and GM Daewoo) and our future marketing plans. His conclusion was that our business plan (which showed a 3rd-year profit of $288 million) was conservative, had logical assumptions, and the value of $106 million was grossly understated.


(Here's a photo of me meeting with a team of marketers to solve the problems. That's what marketers do -- solve problems so they can get what they want!)

5. We took the pictures we’d taken with the original 12 companies with whom we’d already shown our transmission CADs, added the Letters of Intent with real signatures and the latest drawings and animations of our transmission working, and put them into a Power Point presentation that told our story, showed why we wiped out the competition and made all other transmissions obsolete, and included the Letter of Valuation. This Power Point concluded by showing our assumptions, plans and conclusions for what an investor might expect to get as a return.

6. We then checked with our existing supporters, friends, family, employees and investors and asked them if they knew anyone who might be a good candidate as an investor. When someone said they did – and they were anxious to help an enterprise they believed in and supported – we asked that person to email or call their friend and tell them about us. They did and called us with the results. We then called and set up appointments for them to come in and see the CAD work being done and to meet us. We gave them the full demonstration and taught them what we were about.

7. We didn’t pester people or try sales tactics so commonly used to trick, bug or trap people into buying. In fact, we were very up front about the risks of our company, about how the technology might not work or no one might ever buy it. One investor laughed as he told another potential investor, “See, I told you that they’d try to talk you out of it.” As we finished the presentation I always said, “Decide if you feel comfortable in investing, and the amount you could lose without losing sleep, and then let us know. We won’t call you.”

By the end of July and during August we raised most of the money we needed (in total that is now in the millions), and had solid commitments for more funds. By the end of August we had finished the metal bench model of Proof-1 that proved absolutely our revolutionary transmission worked. We demonstrated it to many potential investors as well as those who invested. They loved it. So did we.

Now we are arranging to go back to all of the original 12 companies and the 18 more we’ve added to our “friends of VMT” list.

Will it all work? Yes. I’m sure of it. These are exciting times. But, notice how many marketing principles we used to arrive at this point. The process wasn’t easy, and it took hard work, risk and determination. And it took a great product. Please examine the story and tell me how this story could apply to you – and make no mistake, what we’ve done can be replicated in every business, every trade and with talented people as diverse as singers, story tellers, musicians, engineers or entrepreneurs.

Put your thoughts in the Comments box below. The person who finds the most principles with a minimum of five, will get a special prize. And I’ll brag about in the next post.

Best wishes in your endeavors. I want you to succeed.