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What Do I Do If I Don’t Have Time to Rewrite My Marketing Copy?

By Charlie Cook   |   April 27, 2005

You’ve got a web site, an ad or a brochure and you know it could be doing a better job of attracting prospects and converting them to leads but you’re too busy to fix it. What do you do? You could do nothing and you’d be leaving money lying on the floor. Or you could do something about it and get someone to rewrite your marketing copy so it follows the marketing strategy mapped out in 7 Steps to Attract More Clients.

Recently for a couple of clients I’ve been reworking their marketing copy so it does what they want it to, attract attention and prompt people to contact them. If you’re serious about improving your marketing but don’t have the time to do anything about it give me a call or send me an email describing your goals and the project you have in mind. – Charlie Cook

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Marketing Strategies to Put Yourself Out of Business

By Charlie Cook   |   April 20, 2005

Want to learn how to lose a billion dollars?

Just follow the marketing strategies used by GM , Ford and Daimler Chrysler. Yes some of the largest corporations in the world are missing some basic tenants of marketing and its worth taking a look at what they’re doing wrong so you don’t make the same mistakes. You don’t want the following headline written about your company.

“GM Hits Billion Dollar pot hole” – Miami Herald
“GM shares fell to a 12 year low.” – New York Times

What are some of the most glaring mistakes a handful of car companies are making?

1. Discount Pricing
GM and Ford offer free loans and rebates worth thousands of dollars to prompt people to buy their vehicles. Good idea?

When you need to resort to bribing people to buy your products or services, its a sign that something is terribly wrong. The idea is to provide value, help your prospects understand the perceived value and charge enough to make a reasonable profit. When you start discounting your product as a means to get people to buy it you’ve entered an endless downward cycle.

The next time a prospect buys, they’ll want an even bigger discount and there will always be somebody who will undercut you on price. Eventually you’ll end up like GM, losing lots, maybe not billions, but enough to threaten the life of your business.

2. Making Products People Don’t Want
According to the New York Times, “General Motors and Ford have swerved off course for a far more basic reason: not enough people like their cars.” Whoops!

The objective is to market a product or sevice people want.

3. Not Paying Attention to What People Want
If you want to make money you’d pay attention to what your prospects want? Right?

In the case of Daimler Chrysler you’d be wrong. At the Detroit Auto Show crowds loved the two-seat 8 foot long “Smart Car”. So logically Daimler Chrysler decided not to sell it in the United States despite booming sales in Europe for years. Zap, a Santa Rosa CA firm saw an opportunity especially with rising gas prices and went direct to the European Daimler dealers to buy the cars. Surprise! Ten thousand U.S. buyers put themselves on a list to order over $55 million worth of cars in just a few months.

Avoid discount pricing, provide products and services your prospects want and you can avoid losing a billion or instead make 55 million. I don’t know about you but if I lose ten thousand dollars I get upset and when I make a million in a year I’m pretty happy. – Charlie Cook

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Am I On The Right Path with my Online Marketing Plan?

By Charlie Cook   |   April 15, 2005

“I would like to set up an email direct marketing campaign to generate mortgage leads. I want something that will allow the prospect to respond by giving some personal info such as name, phone number, mtg payment, etc. Where do I start? There’s a bulk email company that will blast 2.7 million email a day, but I don’t believe the prospects can respond. I would need a link to my website I think. Am I on the right path or would a $29.95 lifetime membership or is it be a waste of time?” – Dante

If you want to annoy and alienate potential clients, you can easily do so by blasting emails out to people who didn’t request them. Its the best way to kill your business and shut the door to ever building a positive relationship with your prospects. This course of action is unethical and will immediately get you labeled as a spammer. Once you’ve started blasting people they will quickly catch on and add your email address to their spam lists blocking any future contact.

Don’t do it! It is a waste of time and money, bad idea, to be avoided at all costs, etc. You catch my drift.

If you want to generate leads and grow your business, build a web site, provide content that helps your prospects solve a problem and month by month you’ll attract more and more people interested in your services. Learn how to improve your web site marketing with “Creating Web Sites That Sell“. – Charlie Cook

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Why Isn’t My Web Site Marketing Working?

By Charlie Cook   |   April 13, 2005

“I’ve had a web site up for years but I’m not getting any leads or sales from it. What am I missing? Can I really expect to earn a living from business generated by my site?” – Chris, Sales Consultant

Marketing online can be frustrating especially if you don’t know know what you need to do to make it work. The first step for most people is to redo their marketing message and the content on their site so it focuses on helping instead of selling. Your prospects want help, not to be sold.

The second essential part of making your site work is structuring it to prompt prospects to contact you. One you know how to do these two things than you’ll need to drive traffic to your site. With enough visitors, you’ll begin to see a flow of inquiries and business. I’ve detailed how to write and structure your site to attract all the clients you can handle in “Creating Web Sites that Sell“.

If you do the above will you instantly be generating millions of dollars from your site? That depends. One company I helped was attracting 6,000 visitors each day to their site. With a few changes to their site they increased lead generation by a huge amount and started closing many more high dollar sales within the first week.

If you’re a small business without a steady stream of traffic to your site it can take months or even a year to build up a steady stream of prospects and buisiness from your site. Of course the sooner you put your site in order, fix your marketing copy and the site structure the sooner you’ll be generating profits from your site. – Charlie Cook

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Where Should I Spend My Marketing Dollars?

By Charlie Cook   |   April 5, 2005

“Where should I invest my marketing dollars to get the best return?” – Bill Nelson, Chicago

Most people worry about how much to spend on advertising, their web site, or mailings. If you really want to get the most from the money you spend on marketing, start with yourself. Invest in yourself and become a better marketer. Once you know how to market your business, how to get your prospects’ attention, position your firm as the experts and know how to convert prospects to clients you’ll be able to generate far more sales with less effort.

Invest in obtaining the knowledge you need to put your marketing in order so it does what you want it to do which is lead people to make a purchase and become loyal clients. To help you I’ve mapped out what you need to know in a series of marketing manuals, written for people responsible for marketing and attracting more clients. Learn more about the marketing tools you can use to attract all the business you can handle. – Charlie Cook

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How Do I Create A Budget For Building My Site and My Web Site Marketing?

By Charlie Cook   |   April 4, 2005

“How do I create a budget for creating, marketing and operating a web site?” – Arthur Doglione

Here’s a brief overview of what to do to get your web site marketing in gear.

1. Identify the objectives for your site, what you want people to do when they visit it. Map out the steps you want them to take based on how people make purchasing decisions.

2. Identify the problems you solve for prospects.

3. Write your marketing copy, focusing on your prospects concerns.

4. Create a list of the tasks involved in building, marketing and maintaining your site, such as:
– url purchase and annual fees
– paying someone to build “design” your site
– purchase of sit graphics
– maintenace costs (who is going to regularly update the site?)
– site hosting fees
– if you plan to sell services or products include merchant card fees, online transaction fees and shopping card fees.
– if you plan on using a service to help you manage your list building and email broadcasts, include these fees too.
– identify how you plan on attracting people to your site, and the associated advertising costs.

5. Determine which of the above you will be doing yourself and which you plan to pay someone else to do.

Learn how to structure and write your web site to attract prospects, position your products and services and sell more with the manual I wrote for you detaiing how to build or fix your web site so it helps you grow your business. Use this link to order Creating Web Sites that Sell and use your web site marketing to be more successful.- Charlie Cook

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Finding the Best Small Business Marketing Opportunities

By Charlie Cook   |   March 31, 2005

Finding marketing opportunities is like finding the best places to ski for me. Let me explain.

Five years ago we had the good fortune to buy a ski condo at Sugarbush in VT, a mountain we had only occasionally visited. The first couple of years I headed for the trails, skiing where everybody else was. I found lots of great terrain, but also lots of others competing with me for the same runs and the same snow. With lots of people covering the same ground, the condition of the trails often became less than ideal fairly quickly.

Once I knew the mountain and had found the ski trails I liked best, I started exploring the spaces between the trails, in the woods. With the help of friends and family and my increasing abliity I found hidden paths through the trees where fresh snow lingered untouched just waiting to be skiied.

With new confidence in my ability to navigate the unmarked and unexplored parts of the mountain, I spent much of this year skiing the outback. Starting from the top of the lift, with friends I explored headed out beyound the area limits to enjoy the fresh snow and the solitude of skiing the backside of the mountain. So how does this relate to marketing your small business?

The most obvious place to look for marketing opportunities is where everybody else goes. The problem is you’ll find yourself competing with lots of other people for the same space, just as I was on the ski trails.

Instead of focusing all your time on marketing in the same places as all your competitors, look for marketing opportunities in between the common areas others sell their products and services and you’ll be pleasantly suprised to find many untapped sources of revenue, often untouched by your competitors. Learn how to discover all the small business marketing opportunities you’ve been missing.- Charlie Cook

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Do Postcards Work for Small Business Marketing?

By Charlie Cook   |   March 28, 2005

“Do you suggest post-cards being sent out to other business? We have started to brainstorm various selling tactics but aren’t 100% sure.” – Lisa Welch

Postcards are a great way to generate leads but by themselves are unlikely to generate a sale. If you have the right marketing message you can use postcards to prompt prospects to call you or visit your web site. When they do you can follow up with the essential marketing information to build credibility, define value and move them towards a sale. – Charlie Cook

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What’s the Most Common Search Engine Marketing Mistake?

By Charlie Cook   |   March 28, 2005

“How can I help the search engines find my site and avoid common search engine marketing mistakes? – Adam Brock

1. Start by creating a list of keyword phrases and the variations you think people will use in searching for your products and services.

2. Use the Overture keyword suggestion tool to organize these according to the frequency people actually search for them.

3. Use the keywords in this list when you write your web page copy and articles you distribute online.

Learn exactly how to write and code your web site to help the search engines give it a top ranking. – Charlie Cook

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Are Postcards A Good Way to Market Our Small Business?

By Charlie Cook   |   March 28, 2005

“Do you suggest post-cards being sent out to other businesses?” – Lisa Welch

Postcards can be used successfully for lead generation and to attract qualified prospects or they can be a big waste of money. To make sure your postcard campaign is successful make sure to include a marketing message that gets the attention of your prospects and prompts them to contact you. – Charlie Cook

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