3. Who Am?
• Keith Commins
• “Direct Response” marketer
and copywriter
• Just a marketer!
• As are you. We are all
marketers. If you want to
leave your house in the
morning, you need to know
some level of marketing
• Your level of success in
business and in life is
directly proportional to your
success as a marketer and
influencer
Keith Commins,
www.pearldesign.ie
4. What You Can Expect Today
• It will not be a 5-6 hour lecture! Your participation is
vital. Ask questions, get involved.
• Get out of your comfort zone. Today will not be easy.
But if you wish to know success in business, you must
become good at marketing. There are very few
exceptions.
• If you do not have some kind of reliable means of
regularly attracting qualified leads and customers, it is
only a matter of time before you are in trouble.
• We will examine different ways of attracting leads into
your business, which ones are suited to your business,
which ones less so.
• Finish with creating a real life lead generation plan for
your business to put into practice what you’ve learned.
5. What Today Isn’t
• Intended as a general overview of how to successfully
generate leads for SME’s/startups/solo entrepreneurs
• NOT a copywriting workshop
• NOT a workshop for specific methods of traffic
generation. We won’t discuss Google Adwords, Social
Media in any great depth, however we will touch upon
them
6. Contents
• Introduction
• Direct response advertising V Brand Advertising
• The Three M’s
– Message
– Market
– Media
• Setting up your website to convert. Your lead
generation hub
• Lead generation follow-up, nurturing and relationship
building using email marketing
• Exercise, put into practice what you’ve learned. You will
create a lead generation plan for your business
7. Round the Room: Introduction
• Introduce you and your business
• What marketing have you done and what success have
you seen?
• What do you hope to achieve today?
8. The Two Styles of Marketing
• Brand/image advertising (Madison Avenue “Mad Men”
style advertising) V direct response marketing
• Brand advertising is predicated upon creating
awareness of a company’s brand via repeated exposure
of the product’s or company’s brand imagery
• Unless your company is well established, nobody cares
about your brand. They care about receiving great
value, a fantastic product and amazing service, which is
best described via copy
• Direct response marketing is about getting an
immediate response from your prospect via a crisp,
clear unambiguous message which spells out exactly
what is it for them, should they use your product or
service
9.
10. Direct Response Advertising
• AIDA – Attention, Interest, Decision and Action
• Attention: get your prospect’s attention with a
headline that appeals to his self interest or piques his
curiosity
• Interest: describe the problem back to your prospect,
enter the “conversation happening inside your
prospect’s head”
• Desire: heighten the desire for your product by
describing the benefits your product or service offers
• Action: lead your customer by the hand to action
(email opt-in, purchase, phone call, send an email).
Whatever your “most wanted” response may be
11.
12.
13.
14.
15. Selling Off The Page V Lead Gen
• Instead of selling your product outright, we merely wish
to get our prospects to raise their hand and say “I’m
interested, tell me more…”
• We attract them into our sales funnel by giving away
something of real value, e.g. a free report which solves a
problem or addresses a need
• In order to get the free report, they must provide us
with their email address or some means for us to keep
in touch
• From there we use regular follow-up to demonstrate we
have the expertise to solve their problem, and that we
are somebody they can trust
• Best way to do this is via email, although direct mail
and telemarketing can potentially be also used if needed
16.
17. Why NOT Go For The Sale?
• Few people are in a position to buy right away
• Most will need more convincing, more information,
more time to think about it. Some may not be
interested at all but could be with the right persuasion
• By merely getting our prospects to express their
interest, and then follow up on that interest we can
increase our conversion rate by as much x20
• Getting the lead gives us the chance to create lifetime
customers, not one off sales
• By nurturing this lead it gives us a chance to develop
trust , demonstrate expertise and generate authority
• Even with low ticket items (€10 - €100) it is still
essential to get the lead
18. Lets Get The Bad News Out of The Way First…
• Get used to failure: most of what you will do WON’T
work
• Successful marketing systems take A LOT of work to
run and maintain
• Be prepared to work HARD. There is no magic bullet
to successful marketing. It is just a case of application
of the tried and tested fundamentals and hard, honest
graft
• It’s quite possible a pure “direct response” marketing
style will raise eyebrows. People will question your
approach. You must be ready for this.
21. But It’s Not All Bad News..
• Due to laziness, stupidity, ignorance or possibly all
three, your competitors will usually have no clue
whatsoever as to how to properly market themselves
• If you are prepared to do the work, you can make your
competition meaningless
• And you don’t even have to be a marketing genius to
succeed. You just have to “outrun the bear”
22. The 80-20 Rule (Pareto Principle)
• Discovered by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1906
• 80% of Italy’s wealth was in the hands of 20% of the
population
• 80% of crimes are committed by 20% of criminals
• 80% of your time is taken up with 20% of your friends
• This ratio applies to your business too
• 80% of your returns will be down to 20% of your efforts
• With leads generation, 80% of your leads will come
from 20% of your efforts
• NOTE: This will be important later
23. The Three “M’s” of Successful Marketing
• Market, Message and Medium
• Most business owners start with the medium first, and
ignore their market and message. This in a nutshell is
why most marketing doesn’t work.
• Start by identifying your ideal customer (market), why
should they buy from you and nobody else (message)
and then (and only then) do you worry about what
medium to use.
24. Know Your Market Better Than Their Mother’s Do
• Who is your customer?
• What gender(s), age, demographic, social class,
employment status, hobbies?
• Right down to what they eat for breakfast
• You can never have too much information about your
market
• What are their interests?
• Create an ideal customer avatar
• Your customer ISN’T everybody. If you try to be all
things to all men and women, you will be nothing to
nobody
25.
26. Russian Brides and Long Distance Truckers
• Site providing a match-making service for men looking
for a Russian wife
• Commoditized
• Noticed the 20% of his market providing 80% of his
return (truckers)
• Rebranded as an exclusive site devoted to finding
Russian wives for truckers ONLY
• Because he knew his market, he was able to tailor his
message exclusively towards truckers. This meant a
much improved affinity towards his message
• Was able to raise his fees 200 times from what he
originally charged
27. Exercise I - Generate Your Ideal Customer “Avatar”
• Identify your ideal customer
• What is the deep, emotional need your product or
service satisfies?
• You need to empathize with your prospect and
understand their pain
• What age is he?
• What is his day like?
• Weight loss product. Typical age profile? Gender.
• Get inside their head.
• What is their reality like?
28. Message
• USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
• Coined by TV adman Rosser Reeves in the 1940’s
• What makes your business unique? Why would I do
business with you and not your competitors?
• Unless you can answer this you will be left to compete
on price
• Poor USP’s: price, length of time in business, great
service, quality of product, your amazing “brand
identity”, your mission statement, how great you think
you are.. “we’re the number 1 in Ireland”
• Unfortunately, none of these are in any compelling
29.
30. Exercise II - Define Your USP and “Hook”
• Why would anybody do business with you?
• Unless you relish the pain, price is never a good USP
• Think of the things your industry is notorious for, and
promise not to do them. Easy, you would think?
• Lawyers overcharge, tradesmen show up late if at all,
banks being, well..banks, estate agents lie or exaggerate
etc..
• Unconditional lifetime money back guarantee, eg
Dominos USP, “Fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30
minutes or less, or it’s FREE”
• USP doesn’t even have to be unique. But you can
present it as unique.
31. Media
• Online
– SEO
– Social Media Marketing (Linkedin Groups, Facebook, Twitter)
– Social Media Advertising (Linkedin & Facebook PPC)
– PPC (Adwords, Bing/Yahoo adcentre)
– Article Marketing
– Youtube Marketing
– Banner ads / media buys / remarketing
– Amazon Kindle books
• Offline
– Direct Mail (postcards, sales letters, flyers)
– Newspaper advertising
– PR (Radio interviews, newspaper articles, public speaking)
– Referrals
32. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
• Process of affecting the visibility of a website in a search
engine’s organic search results
• There is no such thing as “free” traffic. You either
pay with your time, or pay for someone else’s
• Unpredictable. Panda and Pengiun updates cost many
sites their rankings
• Cannot be scaled. Often poor quality.
• Little control over what traffic arrives. Random
• Difficult to measure ROI accurately
• In my opinion, SEO falls into category of 80% of effort
that brings 20% of your return
• However for local search results (eg Plumbers Dublin
15) it can be relatively easy to get results
33. Social Media Marketing
• Difficult to measure ROI
• Again, falls into the 80% of effort for 20% return category
• Poor place to catch attention, people come to SM to waste
time usually, not to fix their problems
• Lacks intimacy. Broadcast medium, one to many. NOT one
to one
• Likes, friends, shares and re-tweets: aka “vanity” marketing
• Unless they translate into cold, hard sales they’re
meaningless
• If you must use SMM, focus on getting your prospect OFF
Facebook, Twitter etc and onto your list or website, or
somewhere where YOU control the interaction
34. Social Media Advertising
• Different to Social Media Marketing
• Pay to see ads appear on the right hand side of users
feed
• Option of paying cost per click or cost per mille (CPM)
• Cost is dependent on whom you are targeting
• Ultra precise targeting options
• Can be very effective for certain niches, usually business
to consumer
• Great for products/services with a high passion index
• Again, the focus is getting your prospect off Facebook
as soon as possible, and onto your website/list where
you control the dialogue
35.
36. Pay Per Click Advertising
• Pay website owner to show an ad
• You only pay when ad is clicked (pay per click)
• Amount paid depends on keyword popularity, your quality
score and your website relevance
• Cost per click varies from a few cent to sometimes 10’s of
Euros
• Buying temperature is very high with PPC traffic, your
prospect knows exactly what she wants
• Trick is to send your traffic to a specified landing page
designed to convert as many prospects as possible
• Be wary of Google’s T&C’s. Unfortunately, they aren’t always
clear and it can be very easy to get the banhammer
• Privacy policy, disclaimer, copyright
• Be upfront about the nature of your business and what your
page’s aim is
37.
38.
39. Article Marketing
• Not as effective as it used to be due to Penguin and Panda
updates, but can still work
• Write an article on a subject related to your niche. Eg a
plumber might write different articles relating to DIY
plumbing
• Include CTA in your article
• Traffic trickles from article site to yours. Traffic is usually
highly qualified and with a high buying temperature
• Not for every business. If your product or service is low on
the passion index it won’t be a good fit
• Not used for any SEO benefit
• Content must NOT be a blatant sales pitch or else it will be
rejected
• Ezinearticles.com is the main article marketing site
40. Banner Ads / Remarketing
• Banner ads. Purchase ad space on websites.
• Remarketing. Cool new Google Adcentre feature. Once
a prospect visits your website your ads “stalk” them
around the internet
41.
42. Kindle Books
• Little known method of receiving highly qualified
traffic. Write a mini book that solves a particular
problem or fulfils a need (eg 10 DIY Tricks Every Irish
Homeowner Should Know)
• Make it specific to your demographic
• Priced cheaply, 99c or €1.99
• Purpose of the book is straight ahead lead generation
• Includes call to action at the end of the book to optin to
your email/mailing list
43. Youtube Marketing
• Make video solving a particular problem or need
• Plumber makes a video about how to unblock a drain or
sink
• Call to action at the end of the video, “if you’d like to
know more, click on the link below”
• Keep it simple. Get straight to the point
• It is about your solution (eg DIY bathroom plumbing
tips) NOT your product (your widget or plumbing
services)
44. Direct Mail (Flyers, Sales Letters etc)
• In the digital era, direct mail has been largely forgotten.
Represents a golden opportunity for the savvy marketer
• Direct mail often converts better than online media
• Long form sales letters, lead generation postcards
• Shock and awe direct mail (Kindle fire, iPads and
laptops, iPhones, dustbins, canoe paddles)
• David Ogilvy and his live doves campaign
45.
46. Newspaper Advertising
• Again, purpose of your advertising is to direct your
traffic online or to a place where you control the
interaction
• Offer a free report or something else free of value
• Must give details to claim free offer
47. PR (Radio Interviews, Newspaper Articles)
• Radio stations are crying out for
content
• As our newspapers
• Direct traffic to your list if they want
to know more
49. Testing and Analytics – Is It Working?
• Google Analytics, statcounter, Get Clicky
• How many conversions are you getting?
• A/B Testing – test different combinations of headlines,
body copy, offer until you get a decent conversion rate
• Answer is (frustratingly..) ALWAYS to test if you
unsure. The market will give you your answer
• Know your numbers. How many clicks does it take to
get a conversion? How many leads convert into sales?
Understand how much
50. Is Your Website Made To Convert?
• Website is your most valuable marketing weapon you
have in your arsenal, it should be treated as such.
• Aim is to convert as much traffic as possible. It is not an
online brochure or mindless brand building exercise
• Be careful about your copy. It should be focused on
solving your prospects problems, not boasting about
great you are. Nobody likes a braggart!
• Look for all instances of we, us. Replace with “you” and
“your” as much as possible
• Remember: it’s about the solution to your prospects
problem, not your product. It’s a subtle distinction
which makes the world of difference
51. Why Email Marketing?
• If you meet someone for the first time, you won’t
propose marriage straight away
• Takes time to build trust and to demonstrate expertise
• Best done via repeated dates (follow-up)
• Only 1-5% of prospects are ever in a position to buy
your product at that time.
• The rest need more information, more time to think it
over or perhaps they need to trust you more
• Regular follow-up builds trust and demonstrates
expertise within your niche
• If you’ve done your job, when the time comes for your
prospect to buy, you and you alone will be top of her
mind, nobody else
52.
53. What NOT to do
• Embrace BDC (aka “Big Dumb Company”) email marketing and pretty
but pointless HTML “newsletter” style emails (good rule of thumb, the
bigger the company, the worse their email marketing)
• Make your prospect do any more work than they need to, hence the
problem with HTML/image emails. HTML emails scream marketing
• Constantly push the hypey, hard sell, be all mouth and trousers, e.g,
“Buy Our Stuff Now! Save 25% If You Buy Before Friday!”
• St. Patrick’s Day Sales.
• Selling is fine, but you must give value first and foremost, whether it’s
via entertainment or education. If you are 100% pitch, you’ll burn your
list
• Show no empathy or understanding, make it all about you, your
company and your product. Remember: nobody cares about you,
they care about themselves first and foremost, remember “WIIFM” –
what’s in it for them
• Be boring, or be just another crappy email people receive in their
inboxes telling your prospect about how great your company is
• Worry about open rates. They’re irrelevant, and a distraction
54. Email Myths and Misconceptions
• “I will be labeled a spammer!”
• “Nobody wants to read daily emails from me”
• “Writing daily emails is a lot of work”
• “What will I write about?”
• “My customers are a sophisticated bunch. They won’t
appreciate conversationally driven emails”
• “And I certainly can’t sell to them!”
• “If it’s so great, why don’t more companies do it this
way?”
55. “I Will Be Labeled A Spammer!”
• Be upfront from the get-go about what someone can expect
when they sign-up to your list. Collect email addresses in a
legal and ethical way. If you are going to be controversial or
embrace touchy subject matter, tell your sign-ups from the
very start.
• Actively discourage prospects from entering your funnel if
they are a bad fit – your market is NOT “everyone”
• This ensures that the only people on your list are quality
prospects who want to hear what you’ve got to say, which
also has the side benefit of ensuring quality customers
• Reduces risk of whiners, freebie seekers and tyre-kickers
• If you are upfront and transparent about what to expect and
apply sound “permission marketing” principles, you won’t
have a problem with spam
56. “Nobody Wants To Receive 5 Emails a Week!”
• Its all about relevance. People will read the Koran backwards
if it interests them (Koran memorising niche)
• If you’re emails are boring, corporate sounding and you
write like a self-obsessed stuffed shirt, then you’ll be ignored
• “Most people live lives of quite desperation” –
Henry Thoreau. Be the highpoint of their day by bringing
some humour, education and entertainment into their
otherwise dreary, drab and unexciting lives
• If you give value and entertain –it changes the game
• People will become addicted to your emails
• Tell stories, weave tails, make people laugh. BOOM!
Suddenly you’ll have a following..
• We ALL can do this. ALL of us…….
57. “Writing Emails is A lot of Work..”
• It will take a lot of your time at first
• But really, you DO have the time. How much time do
you waste watching TV or messing around Facebook?
• When you start writing emails, expect to find it tough
• Like exercising, or anything which is difficult at first it
gets easier the more you do of it
• Unfortunately you just have to have faith you’ll get
better
58. “But My Business is Different..”
• No it isn’t.
• Whether you’re selling sophisticated financial products
or low-rent sex toys, people are people, and are
motivated by the same motivational drivers regardless.
59. “My prospects don’t like to be sold..”
• True. But nobody likes to be “sold” anyways.
• We’re not in the business of selling outright.
• We’re instead in the business of developing a solid
relationship with our prospects via educational and
entertaining conversationally driven emails, so that
when the time comes to buy, your prospects will not
look anywhere else..
60. “What Will I Write About?”
• Anything you like so long as it’s relevant. There are endless
possibilities
• Your family, your thoughts on the price of tea in China, missing
Malaysian airplane, crisis in Ukraine. Look for the hidden lesson or
moral, tie it into your product or service
• DO NOT be afraid to ruffle some feathers and to annoy people, but
don’t do it just for the sake of it. Be authentic
• If you have an opinion on something, say it. DO NOT fear
polarization. You want to arouse emotions.
• People will complain, but equally there will be those who love you for
it
• Its better to be hated and loved than to be outright ignored. But the
people who don’t like what you say, were they going to be your
customer anyways? Even if they were, would they be good ones? A rule
of thumb: if you’re not getting complaints, then you’re NOT pushing
hard enough..
• Your aim is to develop a relationship with your prospect. Some won’t
like you, some will. But those you do like you, will be loyal to the last.
61. Anatomy of a High Converting Email
• Reawaken your creativity and imagination
• Get hip to direct response copywriting , resources at the end of
seminar. Study the masters…
• Keep your eyes and ears peeled for the bizarre, the weird, the
unusual and the interesting. Build your “fodder” database. Be
constantly taking notes, and be on the look for things that will
make intriguing subject matter. A-list direct response copywriter
John Carlton gets you to think of your prospect as a “giant slug
glued to the couch”. You need to pull out all the stops to get him to
act.
• Ask yourself, how can I link my product to one of my interesting
topics?
62. Email Writing 101 – Warming Up
• Regain your long lost creativity
• Time to re-awaken your “inner child of creativity” – NOT new age
nonsense
• The adult world KILLS creativity!
• The Artists Way – Julia Cameron
• Write for one full hour every day if possible
• Stream of consciousness, gibberish, nonsense..doesn’t matter
• Aim of this is to get “outside your head” and to kill your “inner
critic” stone dead
• Practice this exercise often enough and you’ll find your creativity
will cast off the shackles imposed by your adult existence and
begin to see creative angles in places you didn’t know existed, it’ll
work with joyous abandon..
• Imagination work..
63.
64. Imagination “Gym Work”
• Ever felt completely “in the zone” where great stuff just came
naturally? Want to know a hack to “replicate” this?
• First warm up your creativity by using stream of consciousness
• Take a random simple object in your field of vision, could be a
pillow, a wall, a tree, anything simple..
• Taking a pillow for example, what could the pillow be?
• Eye-patches for a giant?
• Elephant slippers? Hemorrhoid pads for a REALLY big person?
• Frisbees for the “athletically challenged?”
• Mind mapping for ideas
• The purpose of this exercise is to throw off the constraints that
have imposed on us by adulthood, and regain the unrestrained
child-like imagination we all had at one stage in our lives, but has
since atrophied.
• You need to look at things in an entirely different way. Lose your
conditioning! This is how you begin to find new ways to talk about
your product or service..
65. What To Write About?
• Your product or service is irrelevant. The important thing is
determining the hook, and how
• Politics: “How to stand out like an honest man in Dáil Éireann”
• Marketing: “Rarer than a sober Irishman”
• Breaking Bad: “From mild-mannered cancer victim to meth-
slinging badass”
• Web Design: “The beauty in butt ugly”
• Copywriting: “The Copywriting Gun Under Your Pillow”
• Business: “Beware buzzword-Bingo Loving Consultants”
• Me: “A corporate stooge rotting in a cubicle”
• Humans are hard-wired for stories ever since the days we crawled
out of the cave and clubbed our first wholly mammoth for dinner
• Write a captivating story and you’ll have people’s attention, link
them into the product or service you are selling
• Lets take a look at how a high converting email might work..
66.
67. Start With The Subject - HTML5
• Lets think about HTML first. Describe it in detail. Get as much down
as possible, even if we don’t use it in our email
• Been around a while, invented in 1990 by Tim Bernars-Lee
• Originally a simple markup language used for web authoring, has
evolved into something far more powerful, capable of graphic
intensive 3D and high-quality audio
• Historically not seen as a proper language by many developers
• Something which has since changed. Its now taken far more seriously
by developers right across the spectrum
• And therein lies our hook
• Its underwent a “transformation” from not being taken seriously by
many developers to being treated with “a lot more respect”
• Now is there something or someone that has a story that mirrors
HTML’s transformation?
• This is where you need to dip into your ideas database, and make
notes of ideas and what you see around you. With practice, you’ll start
seeing ideas for emails everywhere.
68. So How Do We Tie in Breaking Bad?
• Takes practice to recognize how to tie a vanilla subject into
something more interesting.
• Always be building your email fodder database
• TV shows and films, news, books, public figure or famous person, a
phenomenon, an event. Challenge existing dogma. Anything which
a large number of people can relate to.
• Hone your storytelling chops.
• Watch standup comedians like George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Bill Burr,
Patrice O’Neal, Jim Norton, Seinfeld
• Write out classic sales letters by hand to hardwire your brain for
story writing. The style of writing must become part of your muscle
memory.
• Unfortunately, HTML in and of itself won’t be interesting to many
people bar hardcore nerds. However making HTML into a story
that our brains can absorb will.
69. I’m Interested, tell Me More…
• Embrace anti-professionalism and rogue entrepreneurship!
• Professional but without the wimpy ass-kissing
• Get hip to direct response marketing and copywriting first
• John Carlton (john-carlton.com)
• Gary Halbert (www.thegaryhalbertletter.com)
• Anything by Dan Kennedy (www.nobsbooks.com , gkic.com)
• Claude Hopkins – Scientific Advertising
• Victor Schwab – How To Write a Good Advertisement
• Robert Collier – The Robert Collier Letter
• John Caples – Tested Advertising Methods
• Drayton Bird – Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing
• Robert Cialdini – Influence
• Breakthrough Advertising – Gene Schwartz ($500 on Amazon)
70. How To Write Emails That Sell
• Develop your ability to spot interesting subject matter. Create an
email fodder “database” of material you can dip into
• Learn to hone your ability to notice things that people would be
interested in hearing about. Keep a sharp eye out for the weird,
unusual, the bizarre or anything that make a great email.
• Anything is fair game. You make the rules.
• Iconic characters in TV shows
• Classic rock
• Public figures , “Charles Haughey’s X-Rated Persuasion Secrets”
• Quotes by famous people
• Develop your imagination.
• What annoys you, things that excite you
• There is no end of material you can use in your emails
71. Email Marketing Specific Resources
• Ben Settle (bensettle.com )
• Jon McCulloch (jonmcculloch.com)
• Andre Chaperon (autorespondermadness.com )
• John McIntyre (themcmethod.com)
74. Your Lead Generation Strategy
• Who is your market?
• Message? How do you intend to communicate with them? What is
your USP?
• What enticement are you going to offer to get them to join your
list?
• What media will you use?
• How will you follow-up with your leads?
• How will you know it’s all working?
