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So What’s Included in the Monthly Marketing Mentoring Program?

By Charlie Cook   |   October 27, 2008

I’ve been getting a lot of email from people wanting to know what’s included in the new Monthly Marketing Mentoring program that will launch tomorrow, Monday, at 11am.

Like you, they all want to know, “How will it benefit me and my business?”

The benefit to you is FOCUS.
Anyone who has been in business for a year or two knows that they need a marketing strategy to attract new clients and earn more. You know that you need have a way to attract clients, a way to clarify the value of your products and services and a way to close the sale.
And you may even know that with an effective follow strategy you can increase your profits by 300%.

Between print and e-media and using simple tools like the telephone, there are an almost infinite number of ways to market your business and an equal infinite number of ways to do it wrong and waste your time and hard earned cash.

Have you ever sent out a mailing, placed an ad or put up a web site and gotten no response, or not enough to break even? Despite all your hard work, your efforts missed the target. No one told you where or how to focus your marketing to get the results you wanted.

Knowing where to focus your marketing efforts is the key to the future of your company. While this has always been important, it’s even more so in this economy.

Have you ever asked;

What’s the quickest way to grow my business?

What’s the most cost-effective way to attract buyers?

What’s the best way to overcome the trust barrier and close the sale?

How can I write marketing copy that sells?

How can I use email to generate interest and close the sale?

The biggest challenge for any business owner — and even more so for small business owners — is knowing where to focus your efforts to maximize your return.

Your future, your success and how much you make depend on it.

What do you get when you join the Monthly Marketing Mentoring Program?

You’ll get access to the best ideas from the top marketing and sales experts in the country, people like Jay Conrad Levinson, Mike Bosworth, Al Ries, and many others including myself. With their expertise you’ll be able to focus the time and money you spend on marketing. You’ll discover the latest and most practical ways to pull in more profits.

How else will you benefit from being one of the first 250 people to sign up for this monthly marketing membership program?

You’ll receive my ultimate profit-generating gift worth $1,024.85

…as a BONUS when you test-drive this membership program including CDS and reports revealing:

– How to Make This Your Best Year Ever

– How to Close the Sale and Make $20,000 Next Month

– How to Think Like a Winner

– Which Mistakes 95% of Small Business Owners Make and How to Avoid Them

– 4 Easy Ways to Sell More

– How to Fix Your Web Site in One Week or Less

– The Essential Marketing Checklist

– The Ultimate Copywriting Checklist

And if that’s not enough, I’ll send the first 250 new-member gifts out with no shipping charges.

How much will membership cost?

With a value of thousands of dollars a month, what will this actually cost you? $297 a month? $197? Or will it be as low as only $97 a month?

You’ll find out the answer tomorrow when we open the doors.

Don’t miss it. With only 250 new member gifts, this is sure to sell out within days.

To your success,

Charlie

MarketingForSuccess

P.S. In sum, what’s the benefit of membership? Knowing where to focus your marketing so you maximize your profits in less time and with less effort.

It’s no secret; you can easily double and triple your business when you know what how to market it. I look forward to working with you. Remember to sign up tomorrow.

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How To Sell Without A Single Pitch

By Charlie Cook   |   October 14, 2008

The best sales presentation I’ve ever seen wasn’t a sales pitch, but when it was over I was sold for life.

Wouldn’t you like to be able to do the same with your marketing, sell clients for life without a single sales pitch?

I was in high school, attending a mandatory assembly about safe driving. We students were polite, but mostly inattentive until we saw the speaker toss an egg to a volunteer on the stage. By the time we heard “splat!” and saw the egg dripping from his hand, the speaker had our attention.

“That egg is you in a car crash, without a seat belt,” the speaker said. “Its simple physics: when a fragile object in motion stops suddenly, the energy has to go somewhere.”

“Now, let’s see what happens when we protect the egg,” he said, placing another in an empty dozen-size carton. The speaker flung the carton half way back into the auditorium, where a student caught it. On instruction from the speaker he opened the carton, removed the unbroken egg and held it aloft.

We were sold. The benefits of wearing a seat belt were etched permanently on our brains, as my recollection of the moment many years later attests.

Want to sell more of your prospects? Get started here >>

Everybody’s selling something…

The speaker may have been throwing, but he wasn’t pitching. As the egg story shows, there’s more than one-way to sell.

Think you don’t have to sell? Think again.

Everybody sells something – products, services or ideas. The speaker was selling an idea, and we bought it because of the power of his demonstration.

Good selling isn’t about high pressure and fast talk. It’s about providing information that enables buyers to make informed decisions. It’s about presenting  ideas in a way that grab their attention, eliminate their objections and demonstrate value. A canned sales pitch is seldom the best way to do that. In other words, you can win without pitching.

Interested? Want to know the secrets to winning without pitching? Start by using this link >>

That being the case, you need to know how to go about communicating with your prospects and clients. First, it helps to start thinking like your clients.  Here are four basic guidelines to help you market from your client’s perspective:

*No one likes to be sold, but nearly everyone loves to buy.

*People do things for their own reasons, not yours.

*People buy from you because they know you, like you and trust you.

*People make buying decisions based on emotions, not facts.

With those thoughts as a frame of reference, let’s consider what you should do to help people buy. These suggestions apply to on-line and off-line businesses equally.

*Be a problem solver. Establish your expert credentials by providing high-quality information that helps people solve their problems.

*Use stories and testimonials. People love stories. They help us understand context and let us relate better to a product or service.  Testimonials are short stories told about you by your clients. Prospective clients often find  it easier to relate to you through the positive experiences of others.

*Be patient. Selling is a lot like dating (yes, we’re all selling something). You wouldn’t think of planting a passionate kiss on someone at the beginning of a first date. It makes no more sense to try to close a product sale too soon. Provide information, build trust.

*Tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Keep in mind a quick search of the Internet probably will provide more than enough factual information to debunk any false claims.

*Use a variety of tools. We’ve already discussed the power of a good demonstration. It doesn’t have to be live – you can do a video demo on YouTube or your own Website. No matter what kind of business you have, a good Website should be a big part of your marketing mix.

Providing useful information helps customers gain confidence in you, which is essential to establishing trust. But at some point you have to close the sale. If you’ve provided good information that leads the customer logically from information consumer to eager buyer, closing the sale should be the natural end result.

If you’d like to attract more clients and generate more sales, discover how much more you could be making by winning without pitching. Take action today >>

To your success,

Charlie

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Where’s Your Small Business Bailout!?

By Charlie Cook   |   September 30, 2008

Every time I hear about the bailout I can’t help but wondering, “Where’s my $700 billion dollar bailout? Hey, I’d even be happy with just a couple billion.”

Unless you work for one of the Wall Street firms or banks that created this crisis, you know that you’ll never see a dime of the proposed bailout. And in fact you and your children and their grandchildren will be paying for it.

What can you do to bailout your business in these tough times?

I’ve owned boats all my life, small motorboats and sailboats, and periodically passing rain storms fill the bottom of the boat with water. This makes the boat sit low in the water and go slow. The obvious solution is to bail the boat!

Let me ask you one question?

Who do you think ends up bailing my boats?

I do. Over the years, I’ve been responsible for bailing my boats. If I didn’t they’d sink.

While Wall Street may be looking for and getting a bailout, the only one who is going to bailout your small business is you. But I bet you knew that already.

If you want to bailout your business, and put in on the track to success, the simple answer is find out what works. Find out the fastest way to attract clients, keep them coming back and maximize your profits.

Interested? Get started >>

When you do, you’ll discover yourself making more than ever and laughing at the failures of Wall Street all the way to the bank.

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing That’s Proven and Practical

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Which Pricing Strategy Maximizes Profits?

By Charlie Cook   |   September 23, 2008

Are your prices so high that they scare away customers and  reduce your sales?
– or –
Are your prices so low that they’re killing your profits?

You know the problem all too well. The less you charge for a product or service the easier it is to sell. More sales are a good thing — but every time you reduce your prices you shrink your profit margin.

I bet you’ve heard the line, “If you sell for less, you’ll make more by selling higher quantities.” And that’s true– if you’re Walmart and sell massive quantities. For we small to mid-sized businesses with limited ability to cut our overhead, it just means lower profits.

What’s the alternative to reducing your prices?
Find the answer here >>

You could focus your marketing on moving your high-priced and high-profit items. But here’s the rub. It’s harder to get people to buy expensive products and services, so you sell fewer of them.

If low prices kill your profits and high prices reduce your sales, where’s the sweet spot?

What’s the product and pricing strategy that works to maximize your profits? Get the details here >>

The successful strategy is simple but powerfully effective. Don’t think about pricing each product or service individually, but think of you product or service offerings as a team.

Every professional team has its high priced players. They’re the superstars who make the touchdowns, make the goals or pitch the no-hitters. They’re the ones that attract fans and bring in the profits. But put them on the field or court by themselves and they’d lose in a New York minute.

Every superstar needs a supporting team. He or she needs a teammate to feed him the ball so he can sink the shot, a receiver to catch his winning pass, or someone to pass the soccer ball to her at the critical moment so she can kick it in and score.

Ready to discover how to eliminate objections to price and make more? Find out here >>

To maximize your profits and win with your business, your products and pricing need to work as a team too.

How can you win with your business?

Get Your Primary Objective Right
Let’s get it straight. The objective for most small to mid-sized business owners is not to maximize sales of the low-profit items. The goal is to maximize sales of those products and services that make you the biggest profits. How do you do this?

First, prove to your clients that your products and services have high value. Lead with a free offer or a low-priced product to get more new clients in the door and then up-sell them on the higher priced products and services.

The corner gas station in our one stoplight town understands this. People pull in to buy gas (which used to be a low-priced item) and then when they need a new muffler, tires or tune-up they already know and trust the station and are willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for the expensive repair.

Pick The Players (Products and Prices)

Every business needs low-priced items to get new clients in the door. Depending which business you’re in, you can provide the ultimate low-priced item, something for free, to get people to contact you.

Obviously giveaways, or low-priced items won’t make you the money you want to send your kids to college or buy your retirement home, but they will grow your list of qualified buyers. The more qualified buyers who know and trust you, the easier it is to sell your high-end products and services.

The key in selecting your products and determining pricing is to offer a range from low to high so that you can appeal to a wider range of buyers and lead customers into the sales process. The range of prices and choices satisfies the need many customers have to trust you before they purchase at your higher end.

Want to appeal to more buyers and make more money? Use this strategy >>

Have a Game Plan

I have one client whose lowest priced service is $8,500. And that’s a killer for many potential clients. It’s just too much to charge before you’ve built a good relationship.

Provide a Range of Options

One of the things that’s 100% clear about a new client or customer is that their buying behavior is unpredictable. You don’t know whether a buyer is likely to only want your lowest priced item or your highest priced one. That’s why you offer options. Most will start out at the bottom but others will buy at the top. Give them a range of options and choices to help them get to know you and trust you.

Don’t let your product lineup and your prices kill your profits or your sales. Get in the game by focusing on the right objectives, picking the right players and using a game plan to maximize your income.

To your success,

Charlie

P.S. Get your products and pricing working together as a team, from your supporting products to your superstar profit generating ones. They won’t do it by themselves, so you’ll need to know how. Here’s how >>

P.P.S. One of the first things I do with my mentoring clients is to review the range of products and services they provide and their pricing. Typically, with a few simple changes, this is where they can pick up an additional $10,000 or more in revenue in the first month. Do you want to add that kind of revenue this month? Start here >>

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What Makes An Effective Ad

By Charlie Cook   |   September 18, 2008

What makes an ad get your attention and then keep you interested and help generate more sales? It’s when it clearly identifies a common problem and then shows you an obvious solution that you can’t live without.

Here’s an example that does exactly this >>

Just use the above link and click on play to see what I’m talking about.

– Charlie
MarketingForSuccess
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Attract Clients and Increase Your Profits

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The #1 Web Marketing Mistake to Avoid

By Charlie Cook   |   September 18, 2008

“First let’s get traffic to the site to get sales going and then we can worry about our image.”

Is this approach successful? Should you try to ramp up traffic to your web site first, and then worry about the image your copy and design project to prospects?

That’s what the business partner of a friend of mine thought. Rather than designing the site and writing copy to give it a unique identity, keep visitors’ interest and convert them to buyers, she
was solely focused on improving the search engine ranking of the site to get more traffic.

Her logic was that the higher their site ranked on the results page of search engines like Google, the more traffic they’d get and the more money they’d make. This is logically correct, but almost
always wrong.

A top ten ranking in Google can bring more visitors to your site, but in most cases, that doesn’t mean more sales or a dramatic increase in sales. Why not?

Most web sites are like out-of-tune car engines with clogged fuel pumps and dirty spark plugs. They’re barely turning over. With an engine like that, no matter how much gas you pour into the tank, you won’t get far.

Ready to tune up your site so it brings in massive profits? Start here >>

A top search engine ranking and more traffic won’t help you make more money if your site isn’t a lead-generating, selling machine. I regularly hear from people who’ve spent tens of thousands of
dollars on pay-per-click advertising and SEO whose sites still aren’t even breaking even, much less increasing profits.

Don’t waste your time and money driving traffic to a site that doesn’t sell. If you do, I can guarantee you’ll still be struggling 12 months from now.

How do you make your site sell?

Stand Out to Your Target Market!

Discover the fastest way to ramp up your online sales and profits >>

How many sites have you seen that look like cookie cutter versions of other sites? Can you even tell what the company does, or which services they provide? Is it immediately clear what makes them better than the competition or what’s in it for you and why you should bother sticking around?

If your web site looks like everyone else’s, makes the same promises, or is vague or unclear about the benefits you offer your prospects, you’ll lose them in a nano second.

A first-time visitor to your site scans the page they land on and makes a snap judgment about your company. They scan the copy and photos and decide in a matter of seconds whether you are likely to have what they are looking for and whether to leave or stay (at least for a couple of minutes). And obviously they’ve got to stay for you to make a sale or convince them to give you their email so you can market to them.

Discover the fastest way to ramp up your online sales and profits >>

How do you build a site that encourages prospects to stay? You’ve got just four tools to use to make your site jump out and grab your prospects’ attention. Use them or lose them.

1. Your Headlines
The first words that your prospects see when they hit your site, keep them reading or send them away. Make them about your prospects, what they want, not about you. And offer them something
for free that generates a lead.

Recently I added 4 words of text to the homepage of MarketingForSuccess that increased my opt-in rate by 32%. Take a look and see if you know which words made the difference.

2. Your Images
The pictures, or better yet, videos, you use should either directly support your headline or create the image that you think will attract your target market. For most sites, fewer images are
better, they just distract from the words.

One exception to this is sites that sell anything related to lifestyle, whether it’s clothing, jewelry or outdoors gear. For these sites it’s all about image, and that’s what attracts your prospects. Take a look at the sites of Patagonia, Horny Toad or the Sundance Catalogue.

Ready to discover how to use your site to both attract traffic and convert it into profits? Use this proven system >>

3. Use Audio
You can use audio testimonials to build credibility, audio clips to entertain to educate and to tell visitors what you want them to do. And these can increase your conversion rates of visitors to leads and sales by 10-20%.

4. Your Page Design
Your web site houses your online business. When you design it, find the most talented web designer you can. Find someone who knows how to do more than make your site look pretty. Find someone who can create a unique site for you that sells!

The look and feel of your site is all your prospects have to evaluate whether they should do business with you. The design of your site is what brings together your words and images and creates the impression prospects have when they visit it. Make it the right one!

Ready to make your site come to life and start selling? >>

Put these 4 elements together to create a site that makes a strong positive impression, generates leads and sales. Then once your site converts visitors into buyers, it’s time to ramp up traffic with
SEO and pay-per-click advertising.

To your success,
Charlie

P.S. Most websites don’t convert enough leads or make enough sales… and most websites could be making a lot more money.

What’s the secret to making massive online profits with your website?

It’s simply a matter of putting the horse in front of the cart to get your web site working so you can maximize your online profits. Discover how >>

Click here to listen to a podcast of this article online >>

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For Copywriters Only

By Charlie Cook   |   September 18, 2008

MarketingForSuccess is growing fast. We never got the message that the recession was supposed to hurt our sales, so we’ve been busy growing instead.

Our sales are up a lot and I’m looking for one or two copywriters to handle the increased workload.

Are you a freelance copywriter?
Are you a student of marketing?
Do you love reading about and discovering new marketing ideas?

If you yes to all three, please keep reading.

I’m looking for a couple of copywriters. Use this link to apply >>

Thanks for your interest,

Charlie
MarketingForSuccess

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Have You Ever Put Lipstick on a Pig?

By Charlie Cook   |   September 10, 2008

What is it with putting lipstick on a pig?

Obama and McCain both seem to love this phrase. According to Meghan McCain her Dad uses it frequently and at last count McCain used it plenty publicly referring to Hilary’s health care plan and to Mitt Romney.

What’s it mean?

It refers to dressing something up and trying to sell it as something it isn’t.

Obviously you can take this idea too far and the first thing I’d recommend is that to anyone who uses this phrase drop but don’t dump the concept.

What am I saying? Should you put lipstick on a pig?

No! But regularly businesses rename products and bring them back to life. For example book publishers look at poorly selling titles and if the book looks like it could have life they come up with a better title, one that catches attention and sells.

So don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, use this idea, just not to literally.

Does this work? Does renaming and repacking existing products or services work to bring life to a poor sales?

Yes! It’s one of the easiest ways to ramp up profits. Just don’t call it putting lipstick on a pig. And of course I’m assuming none of your products or services are pigs anyways.

– Charlie
MarketingForSuccess

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Harvest Low-hanging Profit and Triple Your Small Business Income

By Charlie Cook   |   August 27, 2008

Many small business owners, entrepreneurs and marketers struggle to be more profitable and overlook simple, effective strategies that could increase their sales by as much as 200%.

Are you one of them? Have you overlooked these marketing opportunities, too?

• Do you have a list of satisfied clients but you’re having trouble increasing your sales?
• Do you send out mailings and get a miniscule rate of return?
• Do you run ads and expect a landslide of new business?
• Do you have a web site that barely pays for itself?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re burning up time and money stretching and straining to increase sales and missing the low-hanging profits you could be taking in.

Have you been to one of those Pick-Your-Own orchards? It’s an annual fall excursion in my family. Each year we drive to our favorite orchard in Monkton, Vermont and pick a few pecks of apples for eating and baking.

If you’ve picked your own apples, you know that it’s a lot easier to grab the ones hanging on the lower branches. The wooden ladders that reach to the top of the trees are heavy, awkward, and never nearby when you need them. Once you’ve located a ladder and wrestled it into position, you’ve got to scramble up without damaging yourself or the brittle branches of the tree.

You can pick five times as many apples in the same amount of time by moving from tree to tree and grabbing the ones within reach. Likewise, there is profit potential within reach if you know how to take advantage of it.

Discover the easiest way to pick up more profits with your business. >>

Small Changes Add Up to Big Profits
Recently my VW dealer sent me an email detailing 4 ways to improve my mileage by 20%; replace filters, change the oil, tune the engine and keep the tires properly inflated. Each is a small, low cost change but making them could add up to significant savings. You can improve sales with similar low cost changes in your marketing and have a big impact on profits.

Here are seven small changes that can yield big results:

1. Replace your marketing message; Increase sales by 20% to 3,000%.
2. Use an automated lead generation system to target your best prospects; Increase sales by 100% to 1,000%.
3. Change your pricing strategy; Increase profits by 20% to 65%.
4. Replace your sales script; Increase closing rates and sales by 50% to 80%
5. Change your sales page headline; Increase your income by 50% to 150%.
6. Include related up-sell offers; Increase profits by 12% to 25%.
7. Use every page on your website to generate leads, instead of just one or two pages; Increase your sales by 15% to 40%.

Ready to discover how and where to increase your profits? Find the easy answers >>

The solution to making more with your business isn’t to look for a magic marketing pill that will solve all your problems instantly. It doesn’t exist. The solution is to pick the low hanging fruit to get 10% and 20% and bigger improvements.

How to Increase Sales by 300%
If you could find a way to increase your profits by 10% every month, you would have more than tripled your income by the end of the year. Harvesting low-hanging profits can do that for your business. Like plucking the apples at arm’s length in an orchard, it’s less work and a whole lot more fruitful.

Interested in harvesting low-hanging profits to grow your sales and your business? Discover how >>

– Charlie

Marketing Ideas that Make YOU Money

P.S. Add a few thousand dollars here and a few there each month and within a few months you’ll be on your way to making an additional $100,000 to $300,000 or more this year.

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Is My Marketing Too Subtle?

By Charlie Cook   |   August 26, 2008

Recently I mailed my subscribers an offer of a free report in exchange for answering one question. The response was terrific. I got thousands of people to download the report and got tons of data about what people are looking for. But then I got one person who wrote in and asked,

“How do you use your marketing to get people to contact you?”

Didn’t he see how I got him to contact me? Was I being too subtle?

If you haven’t done so already, sign up to get the 7 steps to build your business and increase your profits. It’s written for small business owners and marketers and it’s free, at least for now. Use this link to claim your copy >>

Am I being too subtle? Sign up before I start charging for this exclusive report.

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing Based On Results Not Opinion

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