Amazing new resource for copywriters

Hi everyone,

I just came across an amazing blog that is a dream come true for copywriters. Check it out at http://www.infomarketingblog.com/

Enjoy!

Peter Geisheker, CEO
The Geisheker Group Marketing Company

Do you make these common marketing mistakes?

As the CEO of a marketing firm and a marketing copywriter, I see horrible marketing every day. Here are the 3 most common mistakes I see businesses make with their marketing which causes their marketing to fail.

Marketing mistake 1: Not focusing on a niche market that really needs and wants what you are selling. To be successful in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, you absolutely must focus your marketing on serving a specialized niche market. This is especially true and a matter of survival if you have a small marketing budget. If you ignore this advice and try to market to a large general market before first becoming the market leader in at least one or two small niche markets, I can guarantee that you will go broke and then go out of business. However, if you do decide to focus on serving a small niche market, you greatly increase your odds for business success with far less financial risk.

Marketing mistake 2: Focusing on features instead of benefits. A feature explains a fact about what a product does such as a specification. For example, the new ZZ car has anti-lock brakes. That is a fact about the car - it has anti-lock brakes. The problem with only listing a feature is that a feature does not explain how it benefits a person. Why would you want a car with anti-lock brakes? The answer to that question is the benefit. Anti-lock brakes are much safer because they keep your tires from locking up and skidding so you do not lose control of your car. Therefore, if you drive a car that has anti-lock brakes, you are less likely to be in a car accident and killed. The benefit is the positive end result. People buy benefits, not features. Therefore, in your marketing, you absolutely must focus on benefits instead of features. The more powerful you can make your benefits, the more successful your marketing will be.

Marketing mistake 3: Not marketing on a consistent basis. At any given time, a market will only have about 1-3% of its population interested in buying your product or service. For example, let’s say you are a home remodeling contractor and you meet with 100 home owners. On any given day only about 1-3 people may be interested in buying your home remodeling services. That means up to 99% will not be interested in buying your product or service right now. However, in a week, a month, or a year, they may be ready to buy because their needs have changed. If you are only doing your marketing on a one-time basis, you are missing out on 99% of the market that may buy from you in the future. That is why you must consistently market to your target market month after month forever. If you are going to market with sales letters, send out sales letters to your contact list every single month. Many of your prospects may have to receive your sales letter 6-12 times or more before they will be ready to buy from you. If you advertise in a trade publication, advertise every single month. Many people will need to see your advertisement over the course of several months (or years) before they will be in the market to buy from you. If you advertise on the radio, don’t run your ads for a month and stop. Keep running them month after month. Think of marketing as out of sight, out of mind. If you are not constantly marketing to your marketplace so your name and the benefits of your product or service is in fresh in their minds, they will forget about you very quickly and buy from the company that is consistently marketing to them.

If you follow the advice given in this article I guarantee you will quickly see an increase in the success of your marketing program and your business will grow and prosper.

To Your Business Success!

Peter Geisheker, CEO
The Geisheker Group Advertising Agency
"We don't help you compete, we help you dominate"
http://www.geisheker.com
(920) 471-1638

Case study of a successful viral marketing campaign

Viral Marketing Campaign Case Study: The Geisheker Group, Inc.

Cost/Budget:

The cost of a viral campaign is as varied as businesses using viral campaigns. Some companies spend very little money (a few thousand dollars) and some spend hundreds of thousands. The budget that you determine needs to be based on what you can afford and your specific goals. I recommend starting your budget low – under $2000. Understand that viral marketing is not guaranteed to work and only about 15% of all viral marketing campaigns are actually successful in that they go viral and attract buzz among a large audience.

When determining your budget, you need to determine what you want to accomplish as a result of your viral campaign. What is your goal? Do you want to build brand name (the most common use of viral marketing among businesses), or do you want to build a database of prospects, or do you want to generate sales? I vote for building a database of prospects and generating sales. I believe all marketing, including viral marketing, should be focused on generating income for your business.

As an example of a small and inexpensive yet effective viral marketing campaign, I will discuss the viral campaign I built for my marketing firm. I created a free ebook that contains an outline of how to write a marketing plan and includes over 100 marketing strategies businesses can use to market themselves. In my ebook, I encourage people to forward my ebook to other business owners and entrepreneurs. Doing that was the viral aspect as I was giving away information of value to my target market (small business owners) for free and asking them to forward it to other people.

Here is how I launched my viral campaign and keep it alive:

1. As my goal was to use my viral ebook to build a database of prospects and generate sales, the first thing I did was create a webpage with an email subscription form so people had to give me their name and email address to get my free ebook. Upon entering their name and email address, my ebook would automatically be emailed to them. The service I use for my marketing newsletter and auto-responders is www.aweber.com.

2. Then, I wrote and distributed a press release announcing that I was giving away a free marketing plan outline and marketing strategy ebook. My cost for this was around $200.00 on www.prweb.com. This got my press releases posted on over 20 blogs and websites where their visitors could see they could download my ebook for free. I soon will be sending out another press release as doing this worked so well the first time.

3. I setup a Google AdWords account and bid on search terms such as “marketing plan”, “marketing plan outline”, and several other terms. My cost per click was around 25 cents. This immediately got people to my website where they could download my ebook for free if they gave me their name and email address. Over the course of 2-years I have spent a couple thousand dollars doing this and it has worked incredibly well.

4. I advertised my free ebook on my website www.geisheker.com, which I have number one search engine rankings for the terms marketing firm and marketing firms. This brings me a lot of targeted web traffic and people downloading my ebook.

5. I advertised in a couple of small business ezines (electronic newsletters) that had tens of thousands of subscribers. Total cost for this was around $500.

Doing the above 5 items is what got my ebook into the hands of my target market. By telling them they can freely give away my ebook on their website and forward it to friends, family, colleagues, etc., viral marketing was launched as other people were doing my marketing for me.


Results:

1. My ebook has been downloaded countless times.

2. Many websites offer my ebook as a free gift/resource to their visitors. This is viral marketing at its best – other people talking about and giving away my “viral offering” to others.

3. I have built a database of prospects that I market to each month with my automated marketing newsletter.

4. I get many of my clients from my marketing newsletter. My investment of about $4000 to date to market my free ebook has generated over $100,000 in sales in the past two years. So, although my example of viral marketing is a very small scale example, it is a very profitable example. Most viral campaigns are NOT profitable because the business is focusing on building brand instead of building a database of prospects and generating sales. In my opinion, spending money on branding alone and not on building a database of targeted prospects to sell to is throwing your money away.

People can get my free marketing plan outline and 100+ marketing strategies ebook by going to http://geisheker.com/newsletter.htm


Peter Geisheker, CEO
The Geisheker Group Marketing Firm
"We don't help you compete, we help you dominate"
http://www.geisheker.com
(920) 471-1638

How to create better marketing than the world's largest companies

“I wish I could afford marketing like that!”

Ever find yourself thinking that? When you watch something big on television, such as the Super Bowl, you see companies pulling out all the stops to air what they feel are the best commercials for their products. The commercials wind up being more talked about than the game much of the time, because businesses pack millions of dollars into these 30-second spots designed to be funny, or edgy, or whatever will get them noticed. As a business owner, you may be a little envious of the marketing abilities of these companies.

But should you be?

I'm not going to bash every commercial on television, because there's certainly some that are brilliant, and effective. But the point of advertising and marketing is to bring in more sales. That's it. There is no other reason to advertise or market your product or service. While people are talking about the commercials after the Super Bowl, how many of them are buying?

Do you buy a particular brand of beer because a bunch of frogs keep saying it on TV in a funny way?

Does a guy in a goofy costume get you out the door to go get a burger?

When a talking dog tells you to go get a taco, are you going to do it because he says so?

Some commercials are wildly entertaining, I'll admit that. But how many of them are doing what commercials are designed to do, which is increase sales? As a marketer, it drives me nuts to sit through millions of dollars worth of wasted money while watching the big game.

It can be disheartening to think that you'll never be able to compete with the “big boys”. Well maybe you can't in terms of production value, but you can certainly put together effective marketing campaigns that can rival what they do in terms of return on investment.

The key is doing the basics of marketing:

1. Know your audience. Understand what they want, what they need, what they're thinking, and how they talk. Speak to them on their level, and you will see how effective you can be.

2. Solve their problems. The reason somebody purchases something is because it is useful to them. Your marketing campaigns need to show how your product or service solves a problem that they are currently suffering from. It creates worth.

3. Make it urgent. Get them to buy now! It does you no good to show them there's a problem and then not motivate them to solve it now with a good call to action. Demonstrate to them that this can't wait any longer – they need to buy from you now before the problem gets worse!

4. Make it user-friendly. It makes no sense to drive people to a website, and then they have no clue how to buy from you. Make everything you do clear, concise, and to the point. Don't cram in more information than what is necessary. If it's too difficult, they will lose interest, and you will lose a sale.

The next time you watch television, pay attention to the commercials. See how many of them actually motivate you to buy their product. You'll be surprised how many do not make you want to buy. It will also comfort you and give you the confidence to go out there and put together a marketing campaign that will blow the big companies out of the water at a fraction of what they are paying – just by sticking to the basics of marketing!

To Your Business Success!

Peter Geisheker, CEO
The Geisheker Group Marketing Company
"We don't help you compete, we help you dominate"
http://www.geisheker.com
(920) 471-1638

Build a website – should you do it yourself of hire a programmer?

My advice for building a business website is to use a professional website programmer. The days of making simple HTML websites is long gone and it takes a fairly technical person (i.e., a web programmer) to correctly code a website so it functions correctly on different browsers and so it is optimized for loading the website correctly and without error messages. This is especially true if the website will be used for e-commerce.

There is also the factor of time management. Unless you want to become a web programmer as your career, it makes much more sense for you to focus your time on building your business (marketing, sales, operations...) instead of studying web programming books so you can try to save a few bucks building your own website. Just as you would use an attorney for your legal issues, and an accountant for your taxes, you should use a professional web programmer to program your website so it is done correctly and looks professional.

To Your Business Success!

Peter Geisheker, CEO
The Geisheker Group Advertising Agency
"We don't help you compete, we help you dominate"
http://www.geisheker.com
(920) 471-1638

Formula for Writing a Winning Sales Letter

1. Write a powerful headline that offers a solution to a major problem – “How to make your car instantly get 18% better gas mileage with the revolutionary googliedoozer recommended by top auto mechanics”

2. Personalize the letter – Dear Mr. Smith… NEVER say “Dear Friend” or you tell the reader you are sending them junk mail.

3. Opening 1-2 paragraphs – discuss the problem. Exaggerate the problem if needed. Make the person reading the letter really feel the problem and how the problem is hurting their life. Create an emotional response to the pain caused by this problem.

4. Body. Introduce the solution – the product or service the sales letter is marketing. Should be 2-3 paragraphs long and describe why the product/service is the best solution to this problem.

5. Include 3-5 bullet points of the benefits the product/service provides.

6. Add 1-3 customer testimonials stating how well the product/service works for solving the problem being discussed. This is offering social proof of the quality of the product.

7. Make the offer and then make it better and tell people to order by a specific date – “Start getting better gas mileage today by ordering the Googliedoozer for only $79.95. However, if you order by December 15, 2008, we’ll knock $20 off the price so you can get if for only $59.95! Order today so you don’t miss out as our supply is limited. To order, do this (call 800-123-4567, go to our website, other…).

8. Offer a guarantee. “We are so confident that the googliedoozer will make your car get 18% better gas mileage that we offer a 100% money back guarantee. Try it for 30 days and if you do not get 18% better gas mileage, send it back to us for a full refund minus shipping.”

9. Repeat the offer. Don’t miss out, order today….

10. Close (Sincerely, John Scott, CEO, Googliedoozer Inc., phone, email, fax, etc.).

11. P.S. Reminder of the value of the offer and to order today. Should be in bold type.

12. If room, add more testimonials.

To Your Business Success!

Peter Geisheker, CEO
The Geisheker Group marketing companies
"We don't help you compete, we help you dominate"
http://www.geisheker.com
(920) 471-1638

The Do's and Don'ts of Customer Service

When you own a business, whether it is an Internet business or a retail outlet, customer service is the most important part of your business. In fact, it is the lifeline of your business. Having the wrong personnel handling your customer service can destroy your reputation, credibility, and your business very quickly.

Your customers will have interaction with your customer service people more than any one else in your business. If you provide your customers with excellent customer service, you will find that they will return time and time again.

There are several customer service guidelines that need to be followed in order to meet your customer’s needs.

Here are the Do’s:

* Provide excelling training for your customer service personnel. This is the single most important aspect to running a successful customer service department. Providing training sessions will assists your customer service personnel in dealing with any type of situation in a calm and confident manner.

* Monitor your customer service personnel to ensure that quality service is given to every customer. If you see problems, fix them immediately with talking to the customer service rep and by providing them with more training.

* Use customer service satisfaction surveys. Surveys will give you a better perspective on areas your customer service department needs improvement.

Make sure that your customer’s needs are met. When your customers leave satisfied, not only are they more likely to return, but they will tell other people about their positive experience with your company. Word of mouth advertising is the best form of advertising.

Here are the Don’ts:

* Never argue with a customer. An unhappy customer will often use the customer service representative as a sounding board. It is important that your customer service personnel handle this type of situation very carefully. Arguing with a customer will not only infuriate the customer more, it can lead to negative word of mouth advertising where the unhappy customer tells other people not to do business with your company.

* Customer Service Reps need to know not to bring their personal life to work. Everyone has bad days, and your customer service personnel are no different. It is important that they are trained to leave their problems at the door and greet your customers with a smile and a helpful manner.

* Never justify poor service. There will always be a customer that cannot be satisfied. Poor customer service will just add to their frustration. It is important that you have the right type of personnel for customer service. Most often, the customer will ask for a manager to complain about the service they have received. It is important that your customer service representative does not try to justify him or herself, only that he or she can assist the customer to the best of their ability.

* Never leave the customer hanging. Dealing with an angry customer is not an easy thing to do. Situations arise and you can see that it will take time to sort out. Even though there are other customers waiting for service, it is important that your customer service representative focuses on the customer in front of them or is on the telephone. Never ask a customer to wait or put them on hold while you assist others. This will aggravate them even more and most likely they will express their negative experience to anyone who will listen.

It takes a special kind of person to work in a customer service department. Constant monitoring of your personnel will allow you to weed out the people who are not suited for customer service.

To Your Business Success!

Peter Geisheker, CEO
The Geisheker Group Advertising Agency
"We don't help you compete, we help you dominate"
http://www.geisheker.com
(920) 471-1638

How to make 2009 your best year in business ever

Here are my top tips to help small businesses owners make 2009 their best year ever:

1. Write down the goals you want to accomplish. The number one way to make your business grow and thrive is to write down measurable goals (i.e., I WILL generate $7.5 million in sales by December 31, 2010). Don't keep your goals in your head. Write your goals down in a place where you will see them every day such as your office white board. You want your goals to eat at you like a scratch you want to itch. Achieving your goals should be your company's primary focus.

2. Create better marketing materials. Understand that marketing is a war of words, and the company with the best words wins. If you are not working with a professional marketing copywriter to create all of your marketing and advertising materials, you are most likely losing the marketing battle with your competitors. Rarely does the best product win in business. It is almost always the product with the best marketing that wins. Therefore, for you to win in business, your focus must always be on having more powerful marketing words than your competition. Win the marketing game and success is yours.

3. Do not give up and lose hope! You are going to have ups and downs and you need to weather the storm. A big part of business success comes from how well you handle the bad days. Keep focused and stay positive that you WILL achieve your businesses goals no matter what.

4. Educate yourself. One of the keys to success in business and in life is reading “how to” books on business. Talk to any millionaire business person and you will find that he or she owns dozens if not hundreds of business books.

I owe all of my success in life to reading business books. Anybody who knows me knows that I am constantly reading business books on topics such as management, sales, and marketing.

If you want to greatly improve the success of your business and your life, it is as easy as reading 10 pages a day, every day. If you commit yourself to reading 10 pages a day from business books, in a year you will have read 3,650 pages! As an average business book is about 300 pages long, if you read 10 pages a day in 1-year you will have read 12+ complete business books. Think of the amazing business education you will give yourself by forcing yourself to read 10 pages a day.

Another very important thing to consider is that if you commit yourself to reading 10 pages a day, in 2-years you will have given yourself the equivalent to a Master’s degree in business.

Here's to a great 2009!

Peter Geisheker, CEO
The Geisheker Group Marketing Company
"We don't help you compete, we help you dominate"
http://www.geisheker.com
(920) 471-1638