I heard a business owner earlier, saying his customers were too stupid to understand how great his offers are.

He was wrong

Here’s the thing: When a prospective customer does not understand a marketing message, the focus should be on building a better message. Writing people off as stupid is where the real stupidity comes in. It also shifts the focus away from the business owner (who can fix the issue) to the prospective customer (who can’t).

A more useful alternative

• Try being clearer. Cut the fluff from your message. Get to the point. Embrace brevity.
• Try testing a new message on a selection of prospective customers, before you go live with it. Get feedback on what they believe you are trying to say. If they get it, others are more likely too also.
• Try explaining things using more forms of media. For example, if it was originally a written message, add video, images, graphs or audio.

Giving up and accusing people of being stupid, when it’s a message we created that’s causing the problem, fails the customer and fails us.

Today’s post will show you a way to massively improve the effectiveness of any important content you write. It will also show you how to avoid one of the most common and damaging copy writing errors.

Stop limiting your options

Most people will write their initial piece of content, call it their draft copy, then tweak it until it’s as good as they think they can make it.

The challenge with that approach is that you are working from the mindset that the initial draft is the best foundation for the content. This is almost never the case! You need to write from the best foundation possible, not simply the first draft you write down.

The most effective content comes from experimenting with ideas and one of the best ways to get new ideas, is to refuse to restrict yourself to working from one perspective.

In other words, instead of writing an initial draft and then building on it, you commit to writing your message in 5 or more different ways. By writing the content in a number of different ways you open up new possibilities, which often lead to breakthrough ideas that make your content massively more compelling.

Yes, it takes longer than writing from one perspective and hoping it will work, but the goal of your content writing is not to write as fast as you can – it’s to write the most commercially valuable content you can.

It works like this

1. Write down exactly what you want to achieve from your content, so you know what your outcome is.
2. Next, write down what kind of action you want the reader of your content to take. For example; email you, call you, visit your premises, fill in your survey, etc.
3. Then, write 5 pieces of content, which address the previous 2 points as clearly as you can.
4. Remember, you are not looking for 4 revisions of your initial piece of content, but 5 fresh perspectives to help you achieve the outcomes you listed in points 1 and 2.
5. Finally, look for the most compelling of your 5 pieces of content, then build upon it.

If you do that, you give yourself a greater chance of writing your content from your best foundation – not just the one you thought of first.

Yes, sometimes that initial version will be the best, but every time it isn’t, you will have improved the quality and effectiveness of your writing.

Einstein famously said: ‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’

Of course, even when we fully understand something, we need to be able to explain it with clarity in order to avoid confusion. That’s what this brief post is all about.

As a business owner, it pays to embrace clarity

Many small business owners use buzz words, industry slang and management speak – creating unnecessary confusion. This is the exact opposite of what we need, if we want people to buy from us, hire us or recommend us.

In marketing, one of the golden rules is, a confused mind always says ‘no!’ When a prospective client or customer is confused and you ask them to make a decision, they will typically say no or avoid the decision.

Here’s the thing: Everything you do, which clarifies your message, will simultaneously increase it’s marketing effectiveness.

Communicate without confusion

Simplify your message.

Aim for clarity.

Embrace brevity.

Remove doubt.

There could be a fortune in hidden, windfall profits in your existing business, just waiting for you. In today’s post, I want to help you find it!

I need to begin with one of the fundamentals of marketing…

You never get marketing right, the first time

No one gets their marketing right, the first time. The best marketing comes from testing each element and then measuring the feedback. You then make the required adjustments and test and measure again. You repeat that test and measure process until you can’t wring another 1% of improvement from it. Then, when you have maximized that, you move on to the next element of that piece of marketing.

For example, if I were helping you massively improve the success of your marketing emails, I’d start by testing and measuring each of the following areas, one at a time:

• The headline or subject line.
• The call to action.
• The number of links within the email.
• The language used. (Phrases like ‘click here’ or ‘amazing results’ within the text of your emails can result in them being filtered as junk mail)
• The same is true of using characters in your subject lines, which are not letters, such as exclamation marks (!) and percentage signs (%) etc.
• The length of the email. Most are at least 300% too long.
• The font style and size.
• The size of your paragraphs.
• The day you send your emails out.
• The time of day you send your emails out.
• The form of distribution you use. Do you send them yourself or use a 3rd party? If you use a 3rd party, do they have a solid reputation for getting emails through filters?
• There are many, many more elements we’d need to work on in addition to these obvious ones.

Small changes can lead to massive improvements

Even seemingly small changes to your marketing can lead to massive improvements in your results.

Let’s take the example of the first item on that list above. Something as simple as using a better headline in your marketing emails, can see your open rates increase by hundreds of percent or more. Most small business owners find a headline they like, then just use it because they like it. By testing open rates with different headlines (or subject lines) and then measuring the results, it’s possible to uncover headlines, which your prospective clients find irresistible and have to open.

By testing and measuring just that one element of your email marketing, you can see amazing results. Now imagine the potential, when you leverage all the elements!

One word of warning here: Only test and measure one element at a time. Otherwise, you will not know what change created what result.

Other areas to maximize

Every area of your marketing can and should be fully maximized, not just your email marketing. Here are just a tiny number of examples:

• Test and measure the call to action message on the sales pages of your website, blog, mail shots and advertisements, etc.
• Test and measure different locations for the email capture box on your website.
• Test and measure different voice mail messages. Subtle changes can increase the number of people who leave you their number.
• Test and measure different advertising vehicles.
• Test and measure different window displays.
• Test and measure different guarantees within your marketing.
• Test and measure sending out your mail shots, marketing emails, catalogues, newsletters, etc., with different frequency. If your newsletter is sent once a month, try sending it out every week or every 10 days. If you offer a catalogue and it’s sent twice a year, consider sending it 3 or 4 times a year. I’ve seen this double a company’s turnover and profits.
• Test and measure different order amounts. If people currently buy from you one item at a time, test selling your product in batches of 3 or 6 or 100. If you sell individual blocks of your time, test offering your time in batches of 3 sessions or 5 sessions.
• Test and measure different prices or fees. Start by testing increases as these tend to have the best results.
• Test and measure offering an elite version of your service or product. There is a highly profitable section of your marketplace, who will happily pay more for a more exclusive service or product.

Uncovering your windfall revenues and profits

No small business owner can afford to leave a fortune in windfall revenues and profits on the table. However, that’s exactly what most of them do, by failing to maximize their existing marketing assets. Test, measure, maximize and start enjoying massively better sales results.

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