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How do you charge high prices for your products and services while having your customers thank you for it?

In short by being remarkable.

When given this answer, the first thing many business owners do is mutter under their breath something like, “easier said than done.”

Perhaps it’s because being remarkable evokes visions of being unattainably unique or creative. Something that others far more talented do.

The cafe owner says, “Dude I just sell coffee, how am I supposed to be remarkable?”

That raises a common question, how can you be remarkable when you sell a commodity?

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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How To Be Remarkable When You're Selling A Commodity

When I talk about being remarkable, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the product or service you sell is unique. Far from it.

In fact being unique is a dangerous, difficult and expensive place to be. However, you must be different.

How can our cafe owner be different? Check this out:

How much extra did it cost the cafe to serve art with its coffee? Pretty close to zero I would expect. Maybe some extra training for the barista and a few extra seconds of time per cup.

But how many people will each customer tell or better still bring in to show? Could this cafe owner charge 50c more per cup than the cafe down the road? For sure. That’s 50c of pure profit multiplied by hundreds of thousands of cups per year straight to the bottom line.

Yet is the product unique? Not by a long shot – just slightly different. Different enough to be remarkable.

Here’s another example. Most e-commerce sites send the same boring confirmation email when you buy from them. Something along the lines of, “Your order has been shipped. Please let us know if it doesn’t arrive. Thank you for your business.”

Instead, have a look at how CD Baby creates a remarkable experience for the customer and a viral marketing opportunity for themselves instead of a normal boring confirmation email:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year”. We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

This order confirmation email has been forwarded thousands of times and posted on countless blogs and websites. Derek Sivers, the founder of CD Baby credits this remarkable order confirmation message for creating thousands of new customers.

Again nothing unique about the product, but the transformation of something ordinary and boring gives the customer a smile and creates free viral marketing for the business.

One more example from another highly competitive, commodity industry – consumer electronics:

Yes the iPad is an amazing product but let’s face it – it has a lot of competition and from a hardware perspective most of the competing products are almost identical.

Yet look at this commercial – it’s an ad about the remarkable cover that you can get for your iPad. Not one word or mention about the device’s features, benefits or specifications.

Notice in all three of the examples the actual product being sold is a commodity and what makes it remarkable is something totally peripheral to what you are buying.

Yet the seller can and does, command premium pricing because they are selling a remarkable experience. Not only is the customer happy to pay the premium but in fact rewards the seller by spreading the message about their product or service. Why? Because we all want to share things and experiences that are remarkable.

What can you do in your business that’s remarkable?

Mama raised me to be helpful and obliging. As a kid that served me well. The pat on the head and warm praise of the words, “good boy” was its own reward.

However in adult relationships this is known as being a doormat. In business, it’s naivety and the road to failure and misery.

Learning to say no is a liberating experience. More than that it’s a vital time management practice the helps you master the art of focus.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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Having A Not-To-Do List

Much of the various systems for productivity focus on new and ever more efficient ways to handle tasks and to-do lists.

To-do lists are indeed valuable time management tools (I personally use and recommend GTD). However before prioritizing you need to start with elimination. Decide on the things that you will not do, projects you will not take on and the type of people you won’t work with.

Having the same few items lingering at the bottom of your list forever is demoralizing and stressful.

However, guilt or a false sense of responsibility can cause us to fool ourselves into believing we’ll one day get around to it.

Have an honest think – what would be the worst case scenario if I eliminate this task or project from my list? If there is no or little real consequence, chances are it can be safely deleted.

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” Peter F. Drucker

It may well be that it is an important but perhaps not urgent task. These can often be sources of procrastination.

One of the best ways to handle these is to delegate or outsource these if possible. Yes, it may not be done as well as you would do it, but a good rule of thumb is 80% as good by someone else is better than 100% done by me.

The Customer Is Not Always Right

You need to be vigilant with time thieves. In fact, given the choice I’d much prefer to be robbed by a garden variety thief than a time thief. For one I can prosecute the ordinary thief, secondly, money is a renewable resource – time is not.

One of the most common types of time thieves are problem customers. In a previous article we’ve discussed why you should fire problem customers.

Let’s correct an old adage – the customer is NOT always right. Being a good doormat and putting on a plastic smile despite the unreasonableness and rudeness of a small population of customers is not my cup of tea.

These types of customers are a very small percentage of the population but they can rob you of all the joy of running your own business, especially if you subscribe to the philosophy that “the customer is always right”.

This old saying while cute, was likely devised by someone with an inferiority complex and has since been parroted by “experts” of some description or another ad nauseum.

My response to this type of time thief is usually to refund their money, politely show them the door and direct them towards one of my competitors.

Like many business owners, the kind of business I’m interested in is about lifestyle design. Our businesses are vehicles to enable us to live an extraordinary life. Selfish? Too transparent? I don’t think so – just honest and open.

Business should be and has always been about an exchange of value.

So of course we do take exceptional care of the customer and we understand to earn a million dollars we have to deliver at least a million dollars or more in value. Everyone loves a bargain so if we deliver more value than we charge for, we’ll always be in demand.

Zig said it well:

You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.

It turns out that choosing what you won’t do is just as, or even more, important than managing the things that you will do.

Be ok with the things on your not-to-do list. It will relieve stress, help you focus and increase the quality of your output.

So many times when I meet business owners in person I find their personality is completely different from the personality displayed in their marketing.

Truth be told most display no personality in their marketing at all. The reason behind this is a perceived need to look “professional.” Their marketing is often bland and generic, and if you swapped out their logo and name from their marketing material, it could be anyone else in their industry.

It’s such a shame because if only they communicated in their marketing the way they do in person, they’d have much more success.

When you meet them in person, these people are often highly intelligent, interesting to listen to and passionate about what they do, yet when it comes to their marketing material and sales copy it’s like they freeze up.

All of a sudden, they try to sound “professional” and start using weasel words and phrases they would never normally use in conversation. You know the sort of words and phrases I mean, “best of breed products,” “synergistic,” “strategic alignment,” etc.‍‍

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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People buy From People

The fact is people buy from people, not from corporations.

Building relationships and rapport is well understood in the world of one-to-one sales, however for some reason when it comes to the one-to-many position of being a marketer, many business owners think they need to put their personality aside and behave like a faceless corporation.

Copywriting is salesmanship in print. You need to write your sales copy as though you were talking directly to a single person.

Using monotone, boring, “professional” sales copy is the fastest way of losing the interest of your customers and prospects.

Meaningless clichés and claims of being the leading provider in your category make you look like a “me-too” business.

“Me-too” businesses attract lowest common denominator clients who by necessity shop based on price as they have nothing else to differentiate you by.

Broadcast Your Personality

People love authenticity, personality and opinion. Even if they don’t agree with you, they’ll respect you for being real and open.

Being yourself and bringing out your personality will help you stand out in a sea of sameness and monotony.

Just have a look at one of the most consistently enduring TV formats – the news talking head.

Why waste such a large percentage of airtime on showing the face of the presenter? Using just their voice-over would mean that a lot more content and visual footage of the news story could be broadcast.

However, the reason so much time is allocated to just the video of a talking head is that it adds personality to often bland topics. It also adds authority and feels like a one-on-one conversation with a trusted source.

People respond to pictures and videos of other people. It’s no accident that YouTube and Facebook are two of the biggest online properties in the world. We’re extremely interested in what other people are doing and saying.

You can easily take advantage of this in your business. One example is by adding a video to your website. Use Loom to create it.

It can be as simple as a talking head video of you describing your products and services, which you can shoot and upload in the space of 5 minutes using a hand-held camera or even a smartphone.

Another example is using social media as a two-way communication medium for engaging with customers and prospects.

Doing just these two things will create deeper connections because you’re adding personality to your business.

Don’t use your marketing material as a screen to hide behind. Use it to give opinion, insight, advice and commentary and above all be yourself and be authentic.

This will instantly create rapport and will differentiate you from all the other boring and bland marketing material around you.

Many small businesses don’t have a reason to exist.

Take away their name and logo from their website or other marketing material and you’d never know who they were. They could be any of the other businesses in their category.

Their reason for existence is to survive and pay the bills of the owner who is usually only just getting by or possibly not even.

From a customer’s perspective, there is no compelling reason to buy from them and any sales they do make is just because they happen to be there.

You see a lot of these businesses in retail. The only sales they get is through random walk-in traffic.

No one is seeking them out. No one is actively desiring what they have to offer and if they weren’t there no one would miss them.

Harsh but true.

The problem is that these businesses are just another “me too” business.

How did they decide on price? How did they decide on product? How did they decide on marketing? Usually the answer is they just had a look at what their nearest competitor was doing and did the same thing or slightly changed something.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong in modeling something that’s already working. In fact, that’s a very smart thing to do.

However likely the competitors they are modeling are in the same boat they are in – struggling to win business with no compelling reason why you should buy from them.

They based their most important business decisions on guesses and on what their mediocre competitors are doing.

It’s the blind leading the blind.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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Marketing Is Not The Savior

After some time of torturing themselves to death – making just enough money to survive but not enough money to do well, many of these businesses finally decide to “try marketing.”

So they start marketing their “me too” business with an equally boring “me too” message. As expected it doesn’t work and any extra sales it does bring in often doesn’t even cover the marketing costs.

Here’s the thing – the chance of you getting your marketing perfectly right – message to market and media match on the first go is impossibly small. Even the most experienced marketer will tell you they hardly ever hit a home run on their first go. It takes several iterations. It takes testing and measuring to finally get your message to market and media match right.

Yet these guys can’t afford the time, money and effort needed to get it right. Worse still with a “me too” style of offer they don’t have a hope.

Think of marketing as an amplifier.

Here’s an example. You tell one person about what you do and they don’t get excited. You then try telling 10 people about what you do and they don’t get excited either.

If you amplify this message through marketing and tell 10,000 people, what makes you think that the result will be any different?

Hey, I’m not trying to be a downer or discourage you. I’m trying to make you think.

Marketing is an uphill battle if you haven’t clearly clarified first in your mind why your business exists and why people should buy from you rather than your nearest competitor.

Start With Why

What is your cause? What is the reason your business exists? Why should a customer buy from you rather than your nearest competitor?

Clarifying these questions is the first step towards effective marketing and will put you far ahead of all your competitors.

The following video from Simon Sinek illustrates this well in the video below:

Only after clarifying these questions should you even think of amplifying your message by adding marketing.

Causes and beliefs are powerful. They draw a passionate crowd – the early adopters, the ones who will spread your message because it aligns with what they believe in.

Rather than saying, “this is what I sell and this is how much it is,” you have a much more powerful and unique message – “this is what I believe in and why I do what I do, this is the unique way I do it and this is the product that will deliver this result for you.” Much more powerful.

Now the correct prospect will be excited by this message, so now when you amplify this through marketing you’ll experience a very high return on investment.

Starting with why is the beginning of re-inventing your business and hence setting yourself up for marketing success.

We've covered the essential elements of crafting a good offer. Now you need to find out exactly what your market wants. But I want you to go deeper. When it comes to delivery of your product or service we need to sell our customers what they want, and give them what they need.

There’s often a big difference between what people want and what people need.

Let me give you an example.

Exercise Sales Example:

Let’s say you’re a fitness instructor. You improve people’s lives through better health, fitness and nutrition.

The concept of better health is too vague, far off, and long-term for most people.

Instead, you’ve got to appeal to vanity, performance or some other specific want that the prospect has. For example, this could be ripped abs, a toned body, or great figure.

So you need to give them what they need in terms of health improvement. But do it via what they want. And that’s what you sell them - the improvements in appearance and performance.

You need to understand both wants and needs. They are sometimes overlapping and sometimes completely non-overlapping.

So, sell your customers what they want. Give them what they need.

Most importantly, don't confuse them.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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Treadmill Sales Example:

I’ve owned a treadmill for over a year but I haven’t lost any weight. So this proves that treadmills don’t work and are most likely a scam.

This is obviously a ridiculous statement. For my treadmill to “work” I’ve obviously got to turn it on. Run on it for a while. Sweat and repeat the process on a regular basis.

Buying it is just the first step. Putting it to its intended use is another.

This may seem like an obvious statement. But a big part of the battle you’ll fight is getting people to do what they should to achieve results with your product or service.

Some business owners feel like following through to implementation is not their responsibility. That their customer should be responsible for getting results with the product or service they have bought.

However, this is short-sighted. We live in a world that’s fast-paced with a lot of things competing for the time and attention of our customers.

You're In The Results Getting Business

A customer who buys a product or service and doesn’t use it or implement it correctly is highly likely to write it off as something that doesn’t work.

That’s the last thing we want. At best it ends up being a one-off sale and at worst it ends up being labeled a scam.

As ridiculous as me calling treadmills a scam because I failed to actually use the one I bought, a consumer can do the same with your product or service.

Except now the consumer has access to online forums and social media. Either, they will spread positive feedback if they got results or negative feedback if they didn’t.

Unfair? Maybe. But the mark of winning businesses is going to be turnkey solutions that help customers through implementation to the desired result.

In many cases, it’s going to mean you need to spoon feed them through the process of getting results.

Otherwise you’re in a low margin, commodity, transaction style business competing solely on price.

That’s a dangerous place to be with price comparisons being only a click away.

Sell Them What They Want. Give Them What They Need. Get Them To Do It.

So your job is now to find a way to sell what your prospects want but also give them what they need.

To get them to take action and do what they need to do to get results may mean that you have to package things in a certain way.

You may need to cut the process up into manageable bite-sized pieces so that it doesn’t seem so daunting.

1. Figure out who your ideal target market is and what really drives them.
2. Map out your 1-Page Marketing Plan Canvas.
3. Then hire a copywriter to help you create a stellar campaign message because you need to get your customer's attention first.
4. Market to them until they buy or die.

You may have the best vitamin in the world, but you need to make it taste sweet so the kids will eat it. That’s giving them what they want but also what they need.

Focus On Getting Your Customers Results

Leadership is an attractive quality and people want to be led.

Take the initiative of packaging up the implementation of your product or service. Anticipating roadblocks that will be encountered along the way. And having solutions to overcoming these roadblocks. This shows leadership.

Helping your customers all the way through to achieving results will have a big payoff for both yourself and them. Don't just give your customers what they want. Give them what they need.

Not doing so will shortchange the both of you.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article on Building Business Systems. It will help you to skyrocket your sales and attract investors.

One of the main reasons marketing campaigns fail is because the offer is lazy and poorly thought out.

It’s something crappy and unexciting like 10% or 20% off.

The offer is one of the most important parts of your marketing campaign and you need to spend much of your time and energy on structuring this correctly.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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‍‍What Irresistible Offer Do My People Want?

Putting the right stuff in front of the wrong people or the wrong stuff in front of the right people is one of the first marketing mistakes made by business owners.

That’s why a few articles back we talked about the importance of identifying a specific target market for our marketing efforts.

Now we want to structure an offer that will excite this target market. One that will have them ready to whip out their wallet and one that will stand out from all the boring, lazy offers from our competitors.

One of the easiest and most common methods of finding out what your prospects want is by asking them via a survey or similar market research technique.

Unfortunately this is also one of the most unreliable ways. Most people don’t know what they want until they’ve actually been presented with it. Also when people are doing survey’s or responding to market research, they do so with logic, however when it comes to actual purchasing, this is done with emotions and justified with logic after the fact. So you will typically get very inaccurate results.

Henry Ford put it well:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

One of the ways I’ve done and recommend doing market research is analyzing search engine queries.

Some tools you can use for this are Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool or Market Samurai. You can also see what topics are trending on social media and on search engines.

Analyzing search queries and volumes is almost like tapping into the global consciousness and seeing what is currently in demand and being talked or thought about.

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Eight Essential Elements Of An Irresistible Offer

Now that you know what your market wants, you need to package it up and present it as an irresistible offer. So you want to craft it.

There are eight essential elements of an irresistible offer. Let's check them out now.

Step 1: Deliver Value

Firstly you need to think, what is the most valuable thing you could do for your customer? That’s question #1.

What is the result which takes them from point A to point B that you can take them through while making a good profit?

This really is the crux of your offer.

Step 2: Talk Their Language

If you’re not a member of your target market, you need to learn the language and jargon used within your target market.

Take this BMX video as an example. If you’re selling BMX bike’s you need talk about Endos, Sick Wheelies and Bunny Hops not features, benefits and specifications. See for yourself:

Step 3: Give A Reason Why

Believe it or not when you have a really good offer, you need to justify why. People are so used to being shortchanged that when someone makes a strong, valued-filled offer, they become skeptical and look for the catch.

I personally experienced this in one of my businesses where we were offering a much better service at a price that was about half the price of our competitors. People kept ringing into the sales line to recap the offer that was on the website and to ask what the catch was.

I don’t suggest you fabricate reasons for your offer but be ready to have a solid reason why you are offering a great deal e. g. clearing old stock, damaged inventory, overstock, moving your office or warehouse, etc.

Step 4: Add A Bonus

Packing bonuses into your offer to make it more appealing is a very smart move. In fact, I advocate making the bonus more valuable than the main offer. Infomercials do this well with phrases like, “We’ll double your offer,” and “That’s not all..."

Step 5: Upsell

When your prospect is hot and in the buying frame of mind, this is the perfect time to offer them a complimentary product or service.

This is where you have the perfect opportunity to tack on a high margin item even if the primary product you are selling is low margin. It’s the fries with the burger, the extended warranty. It gives the customer added value and gives you more profit per transaction.

Step 6: Offer A Payment Plan

This one is absolutely critical for high ticket items and can mean the difference between the customer balking and walking away or making the sale.

If something is $5,000, presenting it as 12 easy payments of $497 makes it a much easier pill to swallow. People generally think of their expenses on a monthly basis and $497 per month feels much easier than $5,000 in one lump sum.

Also notice that 12 x $497 adds up to more than $5,000. In fact, it makes it almost $6,000. The reason you want to do this is firstly to cover your finance costs if you are financing the sale.

Secondly, you want to incentivize the people who can pay in a lump sum to receive a “discount” by paying upfront.

Step 7: Choose An Outrageous Guarantee

As discussed in this article you need an outrageous guarantee. One that totally reverses the risk of doing business with you.

People have been disappointed so many times that they don’t trust any of the claims you make. It’s nothing personal, just the way it is. You need to make dealing with you a risk-free transaction. In fact, one where the risk is on you should you fail to deliver on your promises. “Satisfaction guaranteed” is weak and ineffective.

Step 8: Play On Scarcity

Your offer needs to have an element of scarcity. A reason why people need to respond immediately. People respond much more to a fear of loss than the prospect of gain.

However again you need a good “reason why” the scarcity exists as you don’t want to be disingenuous with your scarcity claims.

You have a limited supply, limited time, limited resources. Use this to your advantage in your marketing. If you can have a running countdown of time or available stock this can further turn up the heat on the fear of loss emotion.

‍

No More Lazy Offers. Make It Irresistible.

As you’ve seen there are many components to crafting a compelling offer. Taking the lazy, ill-thought-out road of “10% off” or similar crappy offers is akin to throwing your marketing dollars in the trash.

Take the time to craft a compelling, well-thought-out offer. Your conversion rate will skyrocket, and so will your bottom line.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also find great value in this piece How To Create A Sophisticated Marketing Plan in 9 Steps. As a small business owner, it’s the first step to effectively marketing your business.

There are hidden profits in your business. And failing to recognize them is costing you serious cash.

As business owners, we sometimes don’t see ourselves within the bigger picture of our customer’s buying behavior.

We just see their interaction with us and market ourselves to acquire more and more customer interactions.

There’s nothing wrong with that of course. But when we start to look at the bigger picture, we can start to uncover profits that were previously hidden.

It’s like finding a $50 bill in a jacket you haven’t worn in a while but on a much bigger and more profitable scale! So here's three ways to uncover the hidden dollars.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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Step 1 - Find Those Hidden Profits: Who Has Your Clients Before You?

If you want to find your hidden profits you need to think about who your customer does business with.

Your's is one of many transactions they'll make that day.

Before shopping with you they did business with someone else. And after you they’ll do business with someone else.

The transactions may or may not be related. But one thing is for certain – someone had your customers before you did. In all likelihood, they spent a good deal of money on sales and marketing to acquire that customer.

Finding other complimentary businesses that your customer deals with before they deal with you can help you uncover untapped profits in your business.

You don't just have to rely on word-of-mouth marketing. Setting up a joint venture (JV) arrangement with one or more of these businesses that is not in direct competition with you can be a cheap or free source of leads.

If you’re a lawyer, an accountant might make a great source of new leads. If you’re a car detailer, a mechanic could be your source of leads. If you’re a pet food retailer, a vet might be your ideal source of new customers.

While this may seem obvious, it’s rarely done and it is even more rarely done well.

Read on and I’ll share with you some strategies you can use immediately.

Step 2 - Hidden Profits: Give Away Some of the Profit From A Sale You Never Had

Another great way to uncover hidden profits is to set up a JV arrangement. And this can be tricky.

The most obvious and direct route is to pay either a finders fee or a commission for incoming leads or sales.

Some business owners don't feel comfortable taking cash for leads they send you. And in some industries this may not even be legal.

While it’s smart to pay for leads of known buyers who are “hot,” there are other less direct ways that work just as well or better.

An Excellent Joint Venture Example

One awesome strategy involves creating a gift card or voucher for your products or services. Let’s say for example you’re business is “Mike’s Pet World” – a pet food retailer.

You could create an arrangement with a local vet. Find out what pet food this vet recommends to his clients. Then create a voucher or gift card that he can give away to new clients.

The beauty of this is that it's good will all round. No sales pressure. No conflicts of interest.

The vet could say something like, “I recommend XYZ dog food. You can buy it at most pet food retailers. Because you’re a good customer, here’s a $50 voucher for you to redeem at Mike’s Pet World who are down the road. They always carry plenty of stock of XYZ dog food.”

It’s a win-win for every party involved.

3 Ways JVs Are Win-Win Situations

Carrying on with our above example, here are three ways joint ventures are win-wins.

1. The vet creates massive goodwill with the customer because he is essentially handing them $50.
2. The customer receives an unexpected discount.
3. You, as the owner of Mike’s Pet World, acquire a new customer who’s lifetime value is potentially huge in exchange for a voucher with a face value of $50 (and a wholesale cost which is much less). You also get transferred much of the goodwill the customer already has with their vet.

Now it’s true not all customers will redeem a gift card or voucher.

But the vast majority will. It feels too much like throwing out money to throw out a voucher or gift card that you know has a monetary value associated with it.

Let’s say that you conservatively calculate that the average lifetime value of a new customer at your pet store is $5,000.

You’ve given away a part of the profit from a sale you would have never have had. Genius!

Step 3 - Uncovering Hidden Profits: Determine Who Has Your Clients After You?

Flipping it back the other way, to figure out where your hidden profits lie, you should analyze who has your clients after you.

You’re sitting on a gold mine. The by-products of your business are valuable to someone else. Don’t let them go to waste.

After you’re done servicing your customer, there's likely someone in a complementary line of business that would be willing to pay handsomely for hot, qualified leads.

This can be a great secondary source of revenue while increasing the value of your offering to the end customer.

Find New Sources of Revenue for Your business

Stop leaving money on the table. Start accessing those hidden profits.

Offering or referring complimentary products and services can enable you to offer a more complete solution. Your customers will thank you and so will your banker!

But before you start approaching complimentary businesses make sure you have your marketing plan mapped out. Does your target market really shop at these businesses? Have you got a offer that's going to convert?

Once you've got this all figured out, you can start looking at which businesses to approach about setting up a JV.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article, What is Direct Response Marketing? As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to market your business.

Every decision you make in your life and in your business is governed by your values. As business owners we sometimes forget that people buy from people – not from businesses.

Customers and prospects are attracted to businesses and people within those businesses that have clear values that they identify with. Even more importantly, or at lease as importantly, your values make up the foundation for your goals.

Sometimes our goals, or what we think our goals are, may not be congruent with our values. When you go against your values, the incongruence causes you stress, anxiety, and unhappiness. However, often our values are hidden deep beneath the surface.

The goal of this article is to help you clarify your values. Once you clarify them, you can recalibrate your goals and the way you run your life and your business. I recommend doing this on a regular basis, as the sheer pace at which we run our lives means it’s very easy to get off track. Before you know it a lot of time has passed with you heading in the wrong direction.

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‍‍An exercise To Clarify Your Core Values

To help you clarify your values, complete the following exercise. Make sure you set time aside to do this properly – it will help you build your own compass and help you find your way.

Take yourself a long way forward in time; a very long way forward – to your own funeral. Imagine a coffin with your body in it and a group of people who have assembled to pay their last respects. There’s quite a large crowd. Four people who have known you move to the front of the audience and speak about you.

Firstly, a family member stands up and talks about having known you on an intimate basis.

What would you like this person to say? Not what you think they feel about you – what would you truly like them to say?

Take a few moments now to write down the key elements of their speech. Don’t worry about sentences – just catch the important words.

Next, a person who has known you through a club or organization such as the local church or sports team moves to the front of the gathering and speaks of their experience with you. What would you like them to say? Once again, not what you think they would say – what would you like to hear?

Write down the essence of their words.

Thirdly, a friend describes the nature of their friendship with you and how you have affected their life. What would you like to hear said by this person? Catch the key words or phrases on paper now.

Lastly, someone who has worked with you speaks, recollecting working with you under pressure and during less urgent times. What would you like to hear come from this person’s mouth? Get the keywords on paper now.

Take a look at what you have just written down about the way you would like to be remembered. You will have in front of you a description of your highest values, the things you treasure most as a human being. Whether they are kindness, compassion, strength or intelligence, these qualities and attributes will form the basis of your goals (and your time management strategy) – after all, they are the things you cherish most about who you are.

Houses and holidays, cars and careers all lose their importance when compared with these values. After all, did anyone at your imagined funeral say people “he had a nice car”?

Don't Sell Out

One of the greatest causes of unhappiness in a person’s life is when they sell out – when they trade in their values for something they thought would give them happiness. To quote Jim Rohn:

“Judas got the money – a small fortune at the time – was this a success story? No it wasn’t. Why? because he wasn’t happy with himself. He had got his hot little hands on the money but he wasn’t happy with himself because he had sold out. He tried to take the money back but they just through him out and he hanged his worthless self because of the betrayer he had become.”

Consider the words of eighteenth-century writer and philosopher, Joseph Addison:

“When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me…when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.”

If you consider carefully your definition of success and design your own compass and roadmap for the future, you will avoid much of the misery. Joseph Addison describes fame, achievement, or money may not even be on the horizon anymore. As one man asked another on the death of a mutual friend, “How much did he leave?” His friend replied, “He left it all.”

When it comes to marketing and advertising, copywriting is such an invaluable and essential skill. Unlike other forms of writing, copywriting is all about persuading the reader to take action and buy your offer.

While there are many types of sales content, the most profitable remains to be direct response copywriting.

If you're interested in this craft, then here's everything you need to know about being an effective direct response copywriter.

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What is Direct Response Copywriting?

This type of content is specifically made to elicit an immediate positive response from the client. Because copy makes on-the-spot sales possible, copywriting is considered to be a very lucrative niche.

Anything that makes the customer purchase on the spot is called direct response copy.

Here are some of the most common examples:

• Product descriptions
• Brochures
• Fliers
• Magazine ads
• Pay-per-click (PPC)
• Ads
• Advertorials
• Email newsletters
• Sales pages
• Landing pages

Direct response copy often takes long form. That's because it's important to provide in-depth information to help the reader decide. If you only have a few words for the product for a buyer who isn't familiar with it, then you're less likely to convince him or her to purchase it.

The benefit of long-form copy is no mere claim as it has proven itself time and time again.

Neil Patel, one of the top digital marketing entrepreneurs of this generation, once ran a split test of two forms of content (1,292 words vs. 488 words). Unsurprisingly, his long-form content generated 7.6% better conversions than the shorter one.

The same result was seen in a Crazy Egg study—the long-form copy was a whopping 30% more successful than the short form page.

This goes to prove what the legendary ad maker David Ogilvy had once said: "The more you tell, the more you sell."

With the help of much (but not excessive) information, the buyer feels that he is making an informed decision. More often than not, this leads to an immediate positive response and the customer buys the product or service, which is the usual endpoint of direct response copywriting.

What Does It Have to Do with Direct Marketing?

Think of the big billboards in Times Square or the ads you've already memorized because you see them all the time. These all belong to powerful brands, the businesses that dominate their respective industries.

And while it can be tempting to dream about advertising in Hyde Park, spending a boatload of money on a billboard or a 15-second commercial isn't going to deliver the kind of success you're after.

If anything, as a faceless startup or small business you'll just lose money. A better way to market your business is using direct marketing.

Direct marketing works for small and mid-size businesses because:

• It's written for or focuses on a specific audience so marketers. to reach customers faster.
• It promotes personalized messaging and delivers value upfront.
• It's compelling so leads are more likely to take action.
• It's a cost-efficient marketing strategy.
• It has a high success rate than any other marketing strategy.

Unlike the previous example that appeals to a wide range of people, direct marketing aims to promote a product or service directly to your target audience—who will likely buy or build a relationship with your business.

Direct Response Copywriting: How it Came to Be

This lucrative field is made possible by David Ogilvy, who is largely considered the father of advertising. He is the brains behind timeless ad pieces, including Hathaway, Rolls Royce, Dove, and Shell, to name a few.

For Ogilvy, a direct response copy is more than just talking to the customers. It's all about appealing to them on a personal level.

As the late ad master once said: "Tell the truth but make the truth fascinating. You know you can't bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it."

The 7 Essential Things a Direct Response Copywriter Must Do

If you want to be successful in the field of direct response copywriting, then you need to do the following:

1. Master the Market

The first thing a direct response copywriter should do is master the target market.

You can do this by researching everything you need to know about your target audience, product or service, and even your competitors.

It would be best if you also studied the company's value proposition—the reason customers should do business with them. While talking to marketing directors and product designers is not mandatory, it can help you with your research.

Although the client has given you a wealth of information, you should not settle for this as a copywriter. You need to do as much in-depth research as you can.

That means scouring the web for white papers (authoritative report or guide), case studies, and market reports, among many other documents. That way, you get to know more about other things: consumer behaviors, industry trends, and the company's competitors.

2. Study the Buyer Persona and the Product

As a copywriter, studying the buyer persona is incredibly important.

You need to analyze the demographics, as well as their questions, pain points, and objections. You can do this easily by sending surveys or participating in forums (learn how to infiltrate your industry now). You can also navigate the company's social media pages and read through most of their product reviews.

By knowing the buyers on an almost personal level, you can create a customer avatar and come up with more relatable content for them. Understanding their problems will help you write copy that stirs emotions—the very element you need to make sales.

Apart from studying the buyer persona, you must do an in-depth study of the product as well. You should scrutinize the item's features, benefits, and price points to address the clients' pain points.

3. Craft the Best Headline Possible

Ogilvy once said that headline creation comprises 80% of the copywriter's work. This is 100% true, as most people don't read beyond the headline.  

And, if you don't manage to captivate their attention from the get-go, there's a possibility that they won't spend time looking into the smaller details.

While writing such is a trial-and-error process, several pointers can help you nail the perfect direct response copywriting headline:

• Keep it simple. There's no need for fluff or flowery words. As Ogilvy puts it: "Good ad: all facts. No adjectives. All specifics."
• Be unique. Avoid going for overused headlines. You'd want to write something intriguing—so much so that the client decides to read about the product even more.
• Be specific. Nobody likes vague information. You need to be precise. Include numbers and other pertinent information in the text.
• Ask a question. For your headline, try to make use of the questions you have collected during the buyer persona analysis. Doing so will pique your clients' interests. You're addressing their concern, after all.
• Create a sense of urgency. If you want to convince the person to do the action you want in your copy, you need to exploit the fear of missing out. Lines such as “Limited quantities available!” or “Only 2 left in stock!” are sure to get an immediate positive response.

4. Write Captivating Copy

In the world of direct response copywriting, you should address the reader directly. It's all about the client, and you could make this so by using the word "you."

Apart from using a second-person voice, it's also essential to make your content easily understandable. Keep it simple, but also find the right balance. You don't want to end up writing copy for a grade-schooler if you’re addressing a group of executives.

Here are some tips that can help you create well-balanced copy:

• Be direct and to the point. Tell how the product resolves the user's pain points and what other people think about it. Don't languish on fancy features. Avoid over-explaining.
• Everything should be clear and logical. While it's essential to tell a story, it should progress well. Your copy should be logical—meaning it should move from point A to point B with ease. People don't like reading something that's all over the place.
• Use legit facts. Use statistics that are supported by the case studies and white papers you’ve read. Embellishments and false info will eventually be detrimental to your product and sales.

Check out these Top tips for writing with influence.

5. Make an Irresistible Call to Action

A CTA is what its name suggests – it calls the reader to act upon your ad. It tells your customer what they should do next.

If you want a client to act right away, then your copy should end with a bang. That means you should have a CTA that’s persuasive, actionable, and concrete.

For example, while writing “Submit” is fine, it's not as convincing as it should be. In this case, it's a must to use more powerful text. For example, CTAs with phrases like, "Give me a discount" or "Get me free access," are more likely to elicit an immediate, positive response from the reader.

6. Edit, Revise, Repeat

A good direct response copywriter knows that each copy entails hours of editing and revising until it's almost perfect.

While capturing the gist with the first draft is the ultimate goal, it's not always the case. It requires hours and hours of writing, editing, and revising until you come up with a direct response masterpiece!

If you wish to ease the pain of editing, know that a readability checker tool is your friend. This can help you check the grade level and readability of your direct response copy. The higher the score, the better.

Remember, you want something that consumers will find easy to understand, even if the product you are presenting is fairly complicated.

Editing and revising are just the tip of the iceberg, though, as you need to submit your draft to the client for further scrutiny. This brings you to another round of edits and revisions until it's flawless.

7. Take it to the Test

Before you publish the copy you've worked so hard for, there's another thing you need to do: testing.

Claude Hopkins, another renowned personality in the world of direct response copy, is a firm believer in testing. He said, "Tests are important and help us to understand our customers. Good selling is based on good testing."

Testing is an opportunity to iron out the smallest wrinkles of your copy. With this, you can publish the best direct response ad that works for your readers.

How to Become a Direct Response Copywriter

Think you can do the seven vital things stated above? It's a good start! However, it takes more than just the basics to succeed in direct response copywriting.

If you want to prevail and make the big bucks, you need to do the following:

1. Study, Study, Study

In copywriting, as with all other things, practice makes perfect. You can't be a David Ogilvy overnight without burning the midnight oil and polishing your craft.

That said, you need to read as many direct response copywriting books as possible. These include books such as Confessions of an Advertising Man, The Adweek Copywriting Handbook, Breakthrough Advertising, Scientific Advertising, and The Boron Letters.

With these, you can learn more than just writing strategies. These books can give you a good understanding of the psychology behind marketing as well.

You should also read and study as many copy samples as possible. The most diligent copywriters usually keep a swipe file of the best copy pieces they've encountered and explore their techniques.

In fact, many copywriters even recommend hand-copying these pieces to really immerse themselves into the text and get into the mindset of being a direct response copywriter. Then, they create their own versions of these pieces of copy.

2. Put Up a Portfolio

Do you feel like you've already improved your direct response copywriting skills by reading books and copy? Then it's time for you to create your personal compendium.

Collate all the content you have written during your free time in your Google Drive or Cloud account. If you have a website, you can post sales copy samples there too.

If you don't have much to show for, then it's time for you to do as much as you can, as often as you can. For starters, you can create a landing page, write a blog, or sales letter for a fictional company.

Think of it as on-the-job training for when you do the real thing.

3. Sell Your Skill

Now that you have a portfolio, you can finally put your direct response copywriting skills to the test.

You can try and pitch your services to freelance job boards. If you want to join the big leagues, you could directly promote your copywriting prowess to publishers.

So how do you find these big-shot publishers? You can try searching Google for industry advertisers. Once you have a list, send an email of your personalized pitch.

When doing so, you don't need to create a complicated letter. In most cases, the simpler, the better.

Just tell the advertiser that you like their promotions and that you can assist them with your skills. Of course, remember to include a link to the direct response copywriting portfolio you have just completed.

Tying it Up

Direct response copywriting is a must for every company. Its ability to evoke an immediate positive response can help convince readers to take a specific action—it could be to opt into your mailing list, visit your website or call your landline and request a consultation.

Whether you're a seasoned copywriter or an aspiring scribe, following the tips above can help you excel in the field of direct response marketing.