Entries from September 2010 ↓

The other day a friend told me a story about his daughter’s summer job experience. Little did he know the story packed a powerful marketing lesson.

Tina (okay, I made the name up) got a summer job at an ice cream store where she manned (girled?) a walk-up window. Like everyone else working there, she displayed a big jar with the word “TIPS” written on it.  No matter how hard she worked, how much she smiled or how great her service was, her tip jar was usually more empty than full. Then one day, she had an idea…

She removed the “TIPS” label from the jar and replaced it with one saying “College Savings Fund”. The response was immediate. Not only did her jar explode with cash – customers started talking to her more. They asked about her plans, taking a real interest in her. They came back more often too. Why should a different label create such profound sudden change? (no pun intended)Here’s some ideas:

Tina differentiated herself. People are used to seeing tip jars, but a “College Savings Fund” was a twist that made Tina stand out.

People prefer to give for a specific purpose.  Non-profits know this.  More often than not, an appeal for a special project will generate a better response than general appeals for donations.

Tina suddenly became more of a real person in the eyes of her customers. Instead of just the girl with a job at the ice cream store – Tina was someone working towards a goal.

Customers now had a reason to give.  “Reason Why Copywriting” is based on this same principle. People respond better when given a reason. Robert Cialdini in his book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”, cites a study by Ellen Langer.

They started out by saying “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copy machine  because I’m in a rush?”  Later on, researchers left of the reason entirely saying “”Excuse me, I have five pages.  May I use the copy machine because I need to use the copy machine?”.  A surprising number of people let the researcher through even then.  When she simply asked “”Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copy machine?” Far fewer people stepped aside.

It seems we are programmed to act when given a reason even when that reason doesn’t make sense. Note: Cialdini goes on to say this didn’t always work in every situation but the example does demonstrate a valid principle.

So how can you apply “The Exploding Tip Jar” principle to your marketing?

Dare to be different.  Sure, controversy sells, but if you’re not the controversial type, you can still find a way to stand out from the crowd.

Get real. We all tend to hide behind masks and labels. If you have to label yourself – at least make your label reflect who you are instead of just doing what everyone else does.

Give people a reason. “Reason Why” copy works. Ask yourself why people buy your product and/or service. Use those reasons in your copy.

God bless,

Andy

P.S. Last time I looked there were still a few free slots available for my split tesing course – Power Testing Profits.  There is no “catch” no upsell (okay – at the end of the course I do add a plug for an advanced course but I haven’t even completed it yet.) Sign up today because its free.

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Maybe it IS a silly question and then again… maybe not. Of all the things we do to grow our businesses, it seems many otherwise savvy marketers stumble when it comes to converting visitors into sales. So what’s the big deal? Consider this:

Let’s say you’ve got a website where you sell a product. You make $10 on each sale. Whoop dee do. You make one sale for every 100 visitors (Since 1/100 = 1% your conversion rate (cr) is 1%) and your site gets 100 visitors every day. So this site pays you $10 X $30 or $300 a month. (If you still don’t care, sell the site to me please Let’s face $300 is $300 but what if you got to thinking… “Gee, how hard would it be to double my traffic”?

Doubling 100 visitors a day probably wouldn’t be all that hard. For tickles and grins, let’s say you do just that. Now this lousy $10 a day site is a $20 a day site that pays you $600. That is at least a car payment for many of us. But wait a minute… what if you tried to double the conversion rate instead? Well, let’s see…

Take that 100 visitors, $10 per sale but now you sell 2 visitors out of every 100 and your cr is now 2%. So now your lousy $10 a day site is a $20 a day site paying you… $600. So what? So what if you doubled your traffic NOW?

You would quadruple your income!

And that lousy $10 site now pays a good chunk of your mortgage – if not all of it. But that’s not the end of it.

Web Analytics expert Avinash Kaushik once stated the average US website converts between 1-2%. That is average. If you haven’t guessed by now, I won’t beat around the bush – most people ignore conversion. Those that don’t are seeing conversion rates of 5-10… even 30% and more!

Imagine 30 sales per 100 visitors. Now you’re talking $300 a day for that same, lousy $10 profit.

Now, coming back to earth, let’s be realistic… it’s not always going to happen like that. I’ve seen sites where it’s like pulling teeth just to get a few adsense nickels. The traffic was plentiful, just not cooperative. Microsoft offers a tool to analyze keywords according to commercial intention. Some say it’s useful. I’m not so sure BUT it’s not a bad idea to keep in mind the intent of those coming to your website. And that includes those who show up via the search engines.

In any case, no one, certainly not I, can make any promises. That said, marketers have been proving testing works for over 100 years now. Yes, some do fail, but never before in history have tools with this kind of power been available to anyone walking in off the street.

My new course Power Testing Profits shows you how to harness the power of split testing – with these new bone-crushing monster tools. But for 20 of my loyal readers, it gets even better…

Try My "Power Testing Profits" split testing course!

I’m giving away 20 slots in my Power Testing Profits course. You do NOT have to sign up for anything. You don’t even have to tell me who you are. Okay, there is just one catch – I do ask you to answer 5 simple questions first and tell me what you think of the course afterwards, but that’s it.

If you’d like to see if there’s a slot open for you at no charge, you can visit the special page I set up for you here.

You’ll get the complete course with all the bonus materials provided for my paid  students.  I’d love to hear how you’ve used it to boost your sales. Don’t wait. The free slots are limited.

God bless,

Andy

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If you’ve read this blog for any time now you probably aren’t believing your eyes. You KNOW I’m an idiot when it comes to graphics. It’s Haaaarrrrrrrd! (In my best whiny valley-girl voice – and yes, I AM dating myself) But no more. Nope. From now on you may bow when you are graced with my presence. From here on out I’m a…

Graphics Guru!

You may kiss my pen.

You don’t believe me do you? Well get a load of this!

See that header baby? check out that course cover. Those are MY doings Pilgrim. Yep. Yep. Yep. Mine. Mine. Mine. All Mine.

So what transformed me?

A program called Ecover Pro

Ecover Pro Demo

I saw this a few weeks ago as I was struggling to get something together for a report I wrote. Yes, the bait piece report to the right which will soon be gone – so if you are not a subscriber yet…

In any case I finally broke down to try it. (First I emailed the seller to see if it would work on my ancient Windows 2000 machine. He assured me it would and it works very well thank you.)

I’m telling you it is just as easy as it was on the demo! I was up and running in minutes. Ron does offer an “upsell” if you want to call it that – it’s lifetime access to his graphics designer. That’s what I used to make my banner and cover. It was very easy to use too. It did take me a while to play with some of the effects but over all it was a snap.

Let’s face it. For ME to put something out that good…

I’ve used some other programs that have better text effects but overall this program is a great value. If you’re a true “graphics guy” you might want to pass this one up, but I don’t think I would even then. Why?

Because once you have the basic flat graphic down it’s very easy to slap that on a nice looking ebook, cd, box… even a membership card.

If nothing else, you should see the demo on the sales page.

Oh, by the way, if you didn’t notice, the sales page for my new Power Testing Profits course which I haven’t even “officially” announced yet – is a special deal – use the coupon code “Save $20″ (between the quotes bloke) to well, save $20. What else? I have limited the number of coupons available so you might want to mosey over there now.

God bless,

Andy

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