Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

"Nearly all rich and powerful people are not notably talented, educated, charming, or good-looking. They become rich and powerful by wanting to be rich and powerful."
-- Paul Arden

How’s that for a goal? Imagine this:

“Billy, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Billy: “Rich and powerful!”

Isn’t that great? What is wrong with that answer?

Nothing, NOTHING, NOTHING! Or as my mother says, “There’s nothing wrong with making a lot of money, you know.” (Thanks, Mom.)

Paul Arden gets it. On the cover of his book It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be, he has the subtitle “The world’s best-selling book by Paul Arden.”

That’s what we’re talking about!

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David Newman is a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professionals who want to do a better job of marketing so they get more leads, better prospects, and bigger sales.

Guest column by Nick Usborne

The Rule of One falls into two areas...what you write about, and who you write to.

Here’s the first part of the rule...

Confine each communication to a single topic

This is a battle that has been raging between copywriters and their clients for a very long time.

Twenty years ago I remember trying to discourage clients from wanting to say too much in a single ad or direct mail letter.

I think they felt that if they were going to pay the media costs, they would get “more for their money” if they used every opportunity to say as much as possible about their products, services and company.

My counter-argument was that they would communicate much more clearly, and with better results, if they stuck to a single topic and a single message. The same problem persists today on the web.

Too many web pages try to cover too much ground.

Think of it this way. Very few people arrive at your site wanting to hear about all of your different products or services. Most will have used a search engine to find information on a single, clearly defined topic.

Whether you bring them to a specific landing page or some other interior page, build your pages so that they focus on just one topic at a time.

Do that and you will stay focused and please your visitors.

As a side benefit, you will also please the major search engines, which consistently reward pages that are confined to a single topic. The more clearly defined the page topic, the higher the listing.

And now for the second part of the Rule of One.

Write to one person at a time

You have probably heard this advice before. But as I read web pages across a variety of industries, I see little evidence of writers following this simple rule.

Basically, you will write more clearly, more personally and with better results if you picture an individual prospect or reader as you write.

Don’t write to some amorphous demographic group. Write to one person within that group.

Don’t create a mental picture of “that kind of person”. Picture a real person with a real life. Think about that person’s life. Think about what they want out of life.

Now think about how your product or service fits that person.

If you do this well, if you can truly see an individual prospect in your mind, it will have a profound impact on what and how you write.

Your text will read and feel as if it is being written to a real person. The corporate-speak jargon and biz-speak nonsense will disappear, and you will suddenly begin writing more clearly, with a true empathy for the person who will be reading your text.

Keep one thing in mind. This is not a “copywriting trick”. This is writing pages in a way that corresponds to how they will be read. It may sound obvious, but so many people lose touch with the fact that every page you write WILL be read by individuals with unique lives and needs.

No “group” will ever read your page. No “industry” will ever read your page.

The web pages you write will always be read by individuals, one at a time.

Concluding thoughts

Stick to one topic and write to one person.

It sounds easy, but very few people do it. Sometimes copywriters fail to write in this way because they haven’t thought about it. Sometimes it happens due to unrelenting pressure from above.

Either way, sticking to the Rule of One will always help you. Discipline yourself and fight your clients and managers if you need to.

In the end, the results will speak for themselves.

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Note: Nick Usborne is the leading advocate of good writing on the Web. He is an 
author, copywriter, consultant, speaker, and the publisher of the Excess Voice 
newsletter for online writers. Read his articles at http://www.excessvoice.com  

A colleague recently said to me, “No one has found the top secret formula for successful online marketing yet.”

I disagree. A number of companies know exactly what works and are making small fortunes with it.

The primary concept is that online marketing works best when you e‐mail to people who ALREADY know you. Therefore, successful online marketers build their “house file” or “e‐list” (lists of prospects and their e‐mail addresses) using the process outlined below, and then sell to those people via e‐mail marketing:

1. Build a Website that positions you or your organization as an expert, guru, or leader in your field or industry. This is the “base of operations” for your online marketing campaign.

2. Your Website should include a home page, an “About the Company” page and a page with brief descriptions of your products and services (each product or service description can link to a longer document on the individual item).

3. You should also have an “Articles Page” where you post articles your company has published on your industry or area of specialty, and where visitors can read and download these articles for free (e.g., a home improvement contractor would have tips for small do‐it‐yourself home improvement projects).

4. Write a short special report or white paper relating to the problem your product or service addresses, and make this available to people who visit your site. They can download it for free, but in exchange, they have to register and give you their e‐mail address (and any other information you want to capture).

5. Consider also offering a monthly online newsletter, or “e‐zine.” People who visit your site can subscribe free if they register and give you their e‐mail address. You may want to give the visitor the option of checking a box that reads: “I give you and other companies you select permission to send me e‐mail about products, services, news, and offers that may be of interest to me.”

6. The more “content” (useful information) on your site, the better. More people will be attracted to your site, and they will spend more time on it. They will also tell others about your site.

7. The model is to drive traffic to your site where you get them to sign up for either your free report or free e‐zine. Once they register, you have their e‐ mail address and can now market to them via e‐mail as often as you like at no extra cost.

8. The bulk of your online leads, sales, and profits will come from repeat e‐ mail marketing to this “house” e‐list of prospects. Therefore, your goal is to build a large e‐list of qualified prospects as quickly and inexpensively as you can.

9. There are a number of online marketing options, which can drive traffic to your site, that I can help you with. These include free publicity; e‐mail marketing; social media advertising; search engine optimization; direct mail; and e‐zine advertising.

10. The key to success is to try many different tactics in small and inexpensive tests, throw out the ones that do not work, and do more of the ones that are effective.

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Need a great marketing speaker for your next association conference, company meeting, or franchisee/dealer event? Marketing speaker David Newman delivers the goods - over 600 presentations since 1992. David's clients include 44 of the Fortune 500 and countless small and mid-size organizations, associations, and non-profits.
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In my work with small business owners and professional services firms, I'm often asked about how to truly stand out in the marketplace.

Questions include:

• How do you brand yourself?
• How can you stand out from the crowd?
• What are your differentiators?
• Why should they hire you/buy from you?
• What's your value prop?
• How is working with you different, better, smarter?
• How can you prove your "Return on Investment"?

The answer is NOT about your products, your services, your branding, your logo, or anything else about what you SAY or how you SAY it. 

Bottom line is that people pay a LOT more attention to what you DO and how you DO it.

So I hereby proclaim myself to be an "All You Can Eat Speaker" - let's see how many of my speaker colleagues dare to try this:

For $30,000 I will speak at as many events you want for a whole year. Use me twice - I'm a $15,000 speaker. Use me 10 times, I'm a $3,000 speaker. Use me 20 times I'm a $1,500 speaker. (plus travel expenses, of course).

Details on topics you can choose from are here:
Marketing Speaker David Newman

Point/Lesson for YOU (no matter what your business happens to be - mine is speaking and marketing) = Business Model Innovation.

Forget what you're selling and help your prospects buy what they're buying.

I can't stand when other speakers have fee structures like this (and no, I'm not making this up.) A professional speaker client came to me with this fee schedule - no names to protect the guilty:

• 45-60 min: $7500
• 60-90 min: $8500
• Half day (up to 2.5 hrs): $9500
• Three quarters day (up to 4.5 hrs): $10,500
• Full day (up to 6 hrs): $11,500

Are you kidding me? Are you a thought-leading professional running an expert business or are you a cab driver charging by the minute or the mile?

Corporate executives, line managers, and association meeting planners are NOT buying minutes!

They're buying results, outcomes, headaches and heartaches that disappear; they're buying more time, more money, more freedom, more answers, less hassles, fewer goofballs, reduced waste, more signal and less noise.

Can YOU deliver that?

• I can.
• $30k.
• All you can eat.
• Meeting planners, conference producers, business owners, chamber executives, marketing VPs, franchisors, convention chairs, state association programmers - I welcome your inquiries.

Email or call me (610) 716-5984 between October 18 and November 19 and I'll tell you where to send the check. On Nov. 20, this offer goes away.

Fellow professional speakers - I welcome you to compete with me. In fact, I dare you!

Think I'm nuts? GOOD!! Leave a COMMENT below and let's mix it up right here, right now... I'm ready!

Simon Sinek wrote a great book called Start with Why. One of the key lines in it is...

"People buy WHY you do something before they buy your WHAT or HOW."

Meaning - People first buy your purpose, your intent, your WHY.

I'll make that even more specific - they buy WHAT YOU BELIEVE. And, perhaps most important of all, they buy what you BELIEVE IN.

Face it, beliefs are easy to spot. You either believe or you don't - you either believe IN or you don't. The proof of your beliefs is in your actions.

Which of these things do YOU and YOUR TEAM and your COMPANY believe IN?

• Being nice (Zappo's)
• Overdelivering (Nordstrom's)
• Helping others (Tom's Shoes)
• Joy (BMW)
• Design (Apple)
• Simplicity (In 'n' Out Burger)
• Gifts (Seth Godin keeps sending me books!!)

Want to make this abundantly clear to your prospects, customers, clients, partners, and the world?

Great! Post it - share it - let the world see your beliefs not only in what you SAY (like my marketing pal, Steve Miller has done so brilliantly here) but in your ACTIONS.

When it comes to small business marketing, only action creates results and only action proves your beliefs.

Just finished presenting for Steelcase to a group of really smart, entrepreneurial architecture and design firm principals and executives in Philadelphia.

When I asked them the overall purpose of marketing their firms, someone volunteered the notion that they want to become the "go-to guys" and "go-to gals" for their prospects and clients and the community of folks whom they serve.

As a marketing speaker and marketing coach to professional services firms, I pointed out exactly how important that was - especially in light of the fact that a survey of over 700 clients showed that between 52-72% of them would be willing to change professional services providers across a wide variety of industries. (Architecture and design was in the middle of the pack at around 60%)

For YOU, I'd like to raise the bar even further. Once you've successfully established yourself and your organization as the go-to resource... the key question becomes:

What do people GET when they GO TO you?

Do they get help, information, tips, actionable advice and a genuine thank-you for getting in touch?

OR... Do they get a sales pitch, a come-on, an invoice, a brush-off or worst of all - silence?

There's nothing worse than doing all the hard work to establish yourself, your team and your organization as the "go-to" resource only to blow it when prospects and clients ACT on your invitation to help them.

• For free...
• Because you care...
• And because you put their needs ahead of yours.  

When it comes to becoming the "go-to" resource, be careful what you wish for... Do it right and they WILL go to you.

Question is, what will they GET?

And will they come back for more or leave disappointed?

What do you think? Share your "go-to" guy stories, tips, and strategies in the COMMENTS section below...

I was going through my old files and came across some truly excellent thinking and writing about one of the most misunderstood and overhyped areas of my beloved marketing profession: branding.

Here, then, for your enjoyment is the real deal according to people that know a thing or two about the matter:

With 35 varieties of bagels, 66 subbrands of GM cars, and more than 13,000 mutual funds, American consumers are suffering a severe case of brand overload. Marketing speaker and marketing coach Peter Sealey has a tough-love cure: "simplicity marketing."
Read more here.

Take the Brand Challenge - "Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are trying to get ideas." -- Paula Poundstone
Read more here.

Be the Brand: Creating a meaningful brand goes beyond mere product presentation. It requires vision, leadership, and communication.
Read more here.

(Re) Brand You: This marketing expert and author will help you reboot yourself after a layoff.
Read more here.

What Great Brands Do: Marketing speaker Scott Bedbury knows brands. The man who gave the world 'Just Do It' and Frappuccino shares his eight-point program to turn anything -- from sneakers to coffee to You -- into a great brand.
Read more here.

Nine Ways to Fix a Broken Brand: The marketing excesses of the past few years left broken pieces scattered across the branding landscape. As a result, many companies are left with bogged-down, boring -- even dying and dead -- brands. Now take a look at your brand: Do you know what's broken? Do you know how to fix it?
Read more here.

What do you think? Leave your thoughts, comments, and rants in the comments section below...

Too many thought leaders, speakers, consultants, experts, coaches, authors, and entrepreneurial business owners say "David, I've got a million ideas - I'm sooo creative."

Sad truth is these folks are also the ones struggling to grow their business and establish any traction in their revenue generating activities.

Why?

Because they have a million ideas. You can't ACT on a million ideas and only action creates results!

New game plan - You need 100 ideas.

Yep, that's it. 100 rock solid, valuable, actionable, spreadable, talkable, magnetize-able ideas.

100 ideas will give you the foundation for:

• 100 blog entries
• 10 speeches, keynotes, seminars or presentations
• 3-4 books
• 100 2-minute videos
• 2-3 solid long-term development programs, coaching packages, service offerings lasting between 10-52 weeks
• 30 webinars or teleseminars
• 100 team training topics for your employees, salespeople, franchisees, or dealers
• 5-10 white papers, implementation guides, or downloadable toolkits
• 10 different in-person seminars for your clients, customers, prospects, and partners

True thought leaders don't have a wildly different message each time you hear from them. They always present variations on a theme built on a solid foundation.

What's their foundation? Their 100 ideas!

What are YOUR 100 ideas?

How can you dial DOWN the 1,000,000 in your head - and dial UP the 5-10 you probably talk about right now - to create a lasting "Thought Leadership Platform" that you can become KNOWN for?

My 100 are always evolving (subtly) but they never go away and themes and patterns recur consistently.

As a small business marketing speaker who works with professional speakers, consultants, and professional services firms, here are a handful of mine that might spark some ideas for YOU:

• Experts win on value, generalists die on price
• Effective marketing should be easy, effortless, and enjoyable
• 4 steps to marketing are Define - Organize - Implement - Track (D-O-I-T!)
• Only action creates results (headline on my home page - Marketing Speaker David Newman)
• Passion is not enough
• Plan for failure - think through failure, think ahead of failure, think around failure
• Forget about plan B - you also need plans C, D, E, F, and G!
• Smart marketers Move in, Move ahead, Move aside, and Move alone
• Your marketing materials need to be "un-chuckable"
• Who do you want to be a rock star to?
• Don't make buyers feel they're the first person to trust you

You get the point... these and about 89 more are the sum total of what I get paid to do via keynotes, seminars, strategic work sessions, coaching programs, corporate meetings, association meetings, franchise conferences, 1-on-1 mentoring, webinars, products, videos, audios, podcasts, white papers, special reports, blog entries... all that I do comes from my 100 ideas.

You can't make money if you have a million ideas.

You can - and you will - make money from your 100 ideas.

So get going... not someday, but right now!

How to Design a Client-Magnet Presentation

As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, I see too many speakers, consultants, and thought-leading executives who commit to a speaking strategy built around their professional passions, interests, or favorite topics within their expertise.

Sounds like common sense, right? Well, that would be a huge mistake. DON’T do it!

For your speaking efforts to pay off in terms of marketing results, you need to design the presentation content NOT around what YOU are passionate about, but what your buyers and prospects are passionate about!

Imagine a pair of X-ray vision goggles that you are now using to zoom in on your target clients. Ask yourself the following:

• What do they want?
• What are they missing in their lives?
• What hurts?
• Where is the pain?
• What are they yearning for?
• What do they worry about most?
• What are their biggest headaches, heartaches, and hassles?
• What are their urgent, pervasive, and expensive problems?

Gather Live Ammo Data

What’s the first step? Research. Preparation. Homework.

Industry, regional, business, and company news is now at everyone’s fingertips on the Internet. Look for verbatim quotes, video clips, blog entries, trade journal profiles, and audio interviews to capture as much as you can from representative members of your buyer persona.

Then go directly to the source – YOUR real live customers and prospects. If you’re not intelligently researching your prospects’ issues, challenges, and pressures, how can you possibly come in with credible high-perceived-value solutions? One of the best ways to approach prospects is with:

• Interviews
• Surveys
• Research
• Data gathering

It positions you and your firm as an expert resource and it gives you valuable data you should be getting anyway!

Bottom line: for thought-leadership marketing to work for YOU, you have to be a dealer, collector, curator, and dispenser of thoughts... and one of the best ways to LEAD is to LISTEN.

As a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professional speakers, consultants, and professional services firms, one of THE most frequent questions I get is "How do I find the best places for me to speak so I generate business?"

I always come back with the following key question: What Audiences Are Your Clients In?

What groups do your ideal clients belong to? This will obviously determine which audiences you want to be in front of.

Not sure? Don’t guess – ask!

Here is the script to ask your current clients, prospects, and centers of influence who know your target market well…

“I’m looking to speak more in front of groups of [BUYER PERSONA]. I’d love to get your Advice, Insights, and Recommendations.”

(Thanks to my pal, networking and referral marketing speaker Michael Goldberg for the A-I-R approach!)

Another way to ask might be…

“Of all the industry groups and associations you belong to, which ones provide the most value in terms of the speakers and programs they present?”

With both of these scripts, the natural follow-up discussion would center around your desire to serve this industry/community more and to share information with them that would help them become even more successful.

Likely outcomes from this discussion would include:

• Names of specific groups, associations, and conferences
• Names of specific people serving in board or programming positions
• Names of other executives or decision-makers in the field
• Names of other companies or firms in need of similar information/services
• Specific networking introductions
• Offers of referrals to the individuals they already know
• An opportunity to reciprocate and ask how YOU might be of service to THEM

Resources for Targeting Best-Fit Venues

Finding venues to speak profitably could be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Here are some resources to help you laser-target your speaking to your best-fit audiences:

• The Directory of Associations online (http://www.marketingsource.com) 
• National Trade and Professional Associations of the United States – hardcopy from http://www.columbiabooks.com
• http://www.LeadershipDirectories.com for access to 500,000 corporate and association decision-makers (this comes at a hefty $5,000 annual fee)
• Your Public Library – free access to high-priced proprietary business databases (Hoovers, D&B Million Dollar Database, InfoUSA)

Have fun, speak well, and go generate some business.

Got questions? Comments? A resource or tip of your own? Please use the COMMENTS sections below and let's hear from YOU...