I told you recently about our trip to Orlando for Bill Glazer's Outrageous Advertising Workshop. Four of us from our Marketing Mastermind group drove down for three days of great speakers and their ideas. What an experience. What great tactics and strategies we drove home with. If we had before and after brain scans, I'm sure we could see synapses reconfigured.
Today I want to share with you 9.5 Outrageous Advertising B-O-O-S-T-E-R-S. These will give your advertising extra leverage in your clients' and prospects' minds. And I'll share some truly cool thoughts from Bill's partner, the legendary Dan Kennedy.
1. Personalization.—Use their names in all mailed and emailed sales pieces. Always write "Dear Don"—not "Dear Don Roy."
2. Testimonials—They overcome objections, build emotion and suggest outcomes (what's the ROI?) These need to go in all print ads as well as sales pieces.
3. Copy cosmetics—Bullets, numbering, underlining, bold facing, boxes, yellow highlighting. Also light screens, subheads, photos, cartoons and CopyDoodles. Don't know what Copy Doodles are? I'll send you info if you wish.
4. Premiums—These increase response as much as 30%.
5. Make it timely—Enter the conversation in their heads. What are they thinking about? Maybe the approaching April 15 tax filing deadline?
6. Tie into what's hot—Holidays, politics, what's hot in the news. Tiger Woods, Cash for Clunkers.
7. Lumpy and dimensional mail—This could be something as simple as a silver dollar inside an envelope. It could be as complex as a sales letter mailed in a Chinese food takeout box or a small garbage can. If you're interested, I can send you information on where to get such mailing materials.
8. Swipe and deploy—These are ads and sales pieces swiped from others to use as templates for your own. The best ad ideas are often swiped and deployed with your customized sales message. Write me for 74 examples of this in action.
9. Use outrageous photos—I can send you 15 examples.
9.5. Use outrageous videos.—Watch what others are doing with this on the internet. Dan Kennedy opened with two stories about what illiterate workers go through:
 A short order cook had to commit to memory the waitresses' orders because he could not read. This had to be highly stressful at busy lunch and dinner times.
A UPS driver brought his route sheet home with him each evening. His wife, who could read, plotted his stops for the next day on a map for him.
This really hit home with me because curing illiteracy is my latest great passion.
As a business leader, literacy should be close to your heart, too. People who can't read aren't going to become good customers for any of us. Imagine 42 million American illiterates we have to write off as prospects.
Chilling thought, isn't it?
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Kennedy recommends outrageous strategies:
1. Use the power of guarantees. These remove buyers' fears of making a poor buying decision.Here are some examples you might consider:
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Double your money back with minimum guarantee.
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Free replacement no matter what happens.
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Guarantee in opening of letter: "This letter is guaranteed to be worth your time to read it."
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30 days to try it out. If not satisfied, we'll refund your money.
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2. Make outrageous value assertions. Some examples:
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The world's first $250,000 seminar guaranteed to bring you that much business.
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A $57,000 book guaranteed to bring you that much in revenue.
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$19,997 discount on a $21,9997 product or service.
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3. Use Q&A format in advertising and sales letters—Each question answers a potential buyer's objections. If you don't know what these are, ask your sales people. They hear them every day.
4. Use handwritten letters—These can be printed on legal pads, paper bags, place mats, etc. If your printer can't do this, let me know. I know one who can.
5. Use lumpy mail—One example is a sales piece printed on a paper oven mitt with "This offer's HOT!"
6. Use "stick" letters to make the sale stick—These deal with potential buyer remorse and sell them something in addition.
7. Reposition your product or services—Two examples:
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Subway turned a loaf of bread into a weight loss program (the "Jarad" campaign)
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Shed Shop did a sales campaign with 83 practical uses for a backyard shed. Could you come up with 83 uses for your products and services?
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8. Turn trade show booths into an experience—One barber shop owner gives shaves. My masseuse is giving massages in our trade show booth.
9. Invent your own mascot—These add character to your message, your ads, your products.Captain Silver—a stuffed toy chimp—is the mascot for my "How to Peel a Green Banana" sales book.
A little guy in leder hosen named Wolfie is the mascot for our Oktoberfest. How about "Oscar the Obnoxious Elephant" or "Roger the Cowardly Lion?
10. Outrageous postcards—These look like checks, a message mailed on a board. Use your imagination to challenge your printer's resourcefulness.
12. Instead of "testimonials"—write "Our clients say" or "What they say about us".
Next week we'll discuss whether you should use direct mail and offer it as a service to your own clients.
I conducted a workshop yesterday for one of our chambers of commerce on accelerating sales and revenues and widening profit margins in a sluggish economy.
Seven of the strategies were from my "Accelerate Your Profit Builders" workbook with more than 79 field-tested, guaranteed-to-work strategies to sell more at higher prices.
The workshop attendees came up with a half dozen easy-to-use strategies to accomplish that, too.
If you want the business news article I wrote for our readers about all the strategies, email me.
Just put "Profit Builders" in the subject line so I won't think it's spam.
If you would like to explore the possibility of having me do "cost cutting" and "profit building" workshops for your chamber of commerce or business group, let me know.
I encourage you to use this copyright-protected material from my weekly Advertising & Marketing Letter as a training tool for your colleagues and partners. To sign up for more, click here. If you would like permission to use it to attract business from your clients and prospects, let me know.
