Sell Like Crazy

Home > Other > Sell Like Crazy > Page 8
Sell Like Crazy Page 8

by Sabri Suby


  time’. Last week when she was shopping at her local farmers market and

  browsing Instagram, an ad popped up with an invitation to download a new

  app for environmentally-friendly cleaning products’.

  The end result is a much deeper, more intimate understanding of where and

  how to reach your dream buyers, and how to speak to them. The

  compounding result will cause massive breakthroughs that geometrically

  grow your business and allow you to dominate your market.

  Defining your target market is one of the hardest parts of starting a business.

  The good news is that once you do it, everything else will quickly start falling

  into place. You just have to figure out which medium to use to effectively

  reach them, and which marketing strategies they respond to.

  Action Points

  Identify the 20% of customers who account for 80% of your sales

  volume and profits, and your Power 4% of customers.

  Using The Halo Strategy, identify what they struggle with.

  Organise your findings.

  Create your dream buyer customer.

  PHASE 2:

  Create The Perfect Bait For Your

  Dream Buyer

  I’m about to describe the most unsuspecting way to outsell the most

  ferocious competition in your marketplace, even when their marketing is

  brilliant, their budget is huge, and their products and services are half the

  price of yours.

  I’m going to show you how to create a High-Value Content Offer that sucks

  in leads like a vacuum cleaner on steroids!

  With the insights gained in Phase 1, your next move is to create the most

  irresistible bait for your dream buyer. In this chapter, I will help you identify

  the prospects who are interested in what you’re selling but who want more

  information, which you’re going to give to them. This way, they’ll have more

  of what they need to make an informed decision and move up the pyramid

  from the research phase to the buying phase.

  This allows you to generate hundreds of leads while positioning yourself as a

  trusted authority almost instantly – even if nobody’s heard of you!

  As an example, we’ll take a homebuilding company because it’s easy to see

  how a small shift has huge benefits.

  The typical full-page new home ad has the company name at the top and

  some sort of ‘SALE’ or ‘DISPLAY HOMES NOW OPEN’ headline

  predominantly placed.

  It’s exactly the same as all the other homebuilders taking up all the other

  advertisement pages. They’re practically leaving it to random chance to

  compete for their share of that 3% of people who are buying now. Now

  imagine the ad began with this headline:

  WARNING: Do Not Buy A New House Before Reading This Shocking Free

  Report…

  What You Don’t Know About Building A New House That Could

  Cost You Tens-Of-Thousands Of Dollars And Threaten The Financial

  Livelihood Of Your Family

  11 Things No Homebuilder Would Dare Tell You Before Taking A

  Deposit (Number 5 Could Cost You $100,000S)

  6 Fatal Traps Of Buying A New Home Exposed! The Dirty Little Lies

  No Real Estate Agent, Builder, Or Even A Buyers Advocate Would

  Dare Tell You!

  So many more people would be compelled to read your ad and get in touch

  with you for your free report, right?

  If you present information that reads like a public service announcement,

  you’re guaranteed to stand out from the crowd in a huge way. Ads like this

  incentivise prospects, drawing them towards you with the promise of value

  and, importantly, no sales pitch.

  The valuable information you’re offering here is called a High-Value

  Content Offer (HVCO), and it draws leads to you like moths to a flame.

  HVCOs come in multiple forms – free reports, ebooks, videos, cheat sheets –

  but the goal is always the same: to offer your prospects incredible value,

  typically in the form of the solution to a problem they’re struggling with,

  without asking them to purchase anything in return. In return for all the value

  you’re providing, all you ask for is their name and email address.

  Now you have their attention, you can include information in your report that

  will move them up the pyramid more quickly. For example, you could get

  prospects who are still saving money and in research mode to consider

  buying a new house right away by showing them finance packages that don’t

  require a huge deposit.

  IMPORTANT: It’s called a High-Value Content Offer for a reason! There

  not only needs to be perceived high value, but it must deliver on that promise.

  When you offer information as an incentive, make sure it’s substantive rather

  than the cheap gibberish that clogs the Internet.

  This is the very first exchange of value your prospect makes with your

  business. They receive the information you have on offer in exchange for

  providing their contact details.

  You can’t simply trick people into giving you their contact details and then

  send them a crappy two-page free ‘report’ that is simply a promotional piece

  about your company.

  The goal is to wow them with this experience. If done right, this will prompt

  a conversation to take place in their mind: ‘If this is what they’re giving away

  for free, imagine what their paid products/services are like!’

  You want to lead with your best foot forward and deliver incredible value.

  But first, to stop you from lighting your money on fire, this is what you

  absolutely must do immediately before creating a HVCO, setting up a

  website, landing page or running ads of any kind.

  Value-Based Marketing

  Built on the simple premise of ‘giving before asking’, value-based marketing

  is about offering value to your customers without asking for a sale in return.

  In my business, we use this in everything we do to create goodwill in the

  marketplace. Because when you deliver massive value to your prospects, you

  score a double whammy:

  First, your prospects thank you for the materials.

  Second, you position yourself as the trusted expert.

  So while everyone else is just screaming, ‘Buy, buy, buy!’ you’re building

  goodwill by showing people you could help them… by actually helping

  them!

  What’s more, with this kind of marketing you’re speaking to people who

  aren’t yet ready to buy but who are curious about what you sell. Remember –

  that’s a whopping 97% of prospects!

  Most people get this wrong and immediately try to sell to the 97%, but the

  fact is, fast selling doesn’t work with cold traffic. These people have no idea

  who you are – it’s like asking someone to marry you on a first date! We will

  look at this again later, but for now, remember this rule:

  The temperature of your marketing message must match the temperature of

  your traffic.

  Now don’t be sceptical. Value-based marketing isn’t some new-fangled

  strategy or shiny new object. It’s just one that’s been grossly forgotten. And

  it’s how you’ll outsell your competitors – even if you’re up against an

  industry giant and only have a small budget.

  Let me tell you a little s
tory...

  It’s a forgotten case study on how one ad pulled in three million leads – and

  how you can model this strategy to create a stampede of new customers to

  your own business.

  Imagine you do a promotion, you run an ad, and you generate some leads and

  then some sales... and it’s pretty good. But then you go to your mailbox and

  you open it and find handwritten letters... like, a lot of them! And they say

  things like, ‘God bless you!’ and ‘I’ve been searching for this information my

  entire life!’

  And then imagine, you say, gosh... I’m going to run that ad again! And you

  do, and over time it generates three million leads for you and millions of

  customers.

  Guess what? This actually happened! This sales and marketing methodology

  was conceived in 1948 by a man named Louis Engel.

  Engel was a frustrated editor from Jacksonville, Florida. He graduated with a

  degree in philosophy, had a few jobs, and bounced around a bit as an editor

  for several organisations. He got fed up with journalism and ended up in a

  position as an advertising and sales promotion manager for the prestigious

  Wall Street investment firm of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane.

  He wasn’t a seasoned marketing guy, but he had a crazy idea and suggested

  to his bosses, ‘Instead of running ads telling everybody how great we are,

  why don’t we run an ad and give away some useful information, something

  that educates our prospects, and then offer to give away some more useful

  information?’

  His bosses replied, ‘No, that’s a ridiculous idea, and it’s not going to work.

  This is advertising, and we’re going to run an ordinary ad’.

  They went back and forth, and eventually Engel said, ‘Let’s just test it, and if

  it works it works, and if it doesn’t I’ll go away’.

  They said, ‘Ok, fine’.

  He wrote an ad and they were scared to death of it – it was 6,540 words long

  and filled an entire full page with tiny six or eight point type!

  They said, ‘There’s no way this thing is going to work’. But they agreed to

  test it in a small regional newspaper, and in its first week it pulled in 5,000

  leads. And this was in 1948, so in order to respond, readers had to clip out

  some stuff, write their name and details on it, and actually physically post

  back their information. 5,000 people did this! Engel’s bosses said, ‘Ok,

  maybe this guy is onto something’. On October 19, 1948, they published his

  ad in The New York Times.

  The good news is that this approach may have been forgotten over the years,

  but it still works better than probably anything you’ve seen before. You

  might be thinking, I don’t want to run newspaper ads. Well, the first thing I

  want you to know is that you can use this strategy for all types of media – on

  a website or landing page, blog posts, email, Facebook ads, or Google ads.

  It begins with a brilliantly-written headline that you could model for your

  own business, beginning with ‘What everybody ought to know about’. This is

  a great headline because it presupposes that everybody wants to know about

  the stock and bond business and also assumes there are things you don’t

  know. (Personally, I’d like to split test with the use of numbers – ‘The 11

  things that everybody ought to know about…’)

  But this is where it gets really powerful. Because while your competitors are

  pretending they don’t want to sell anything or they’re just screaming ‘Buy!

  Buy! Buy!’, this ad straight out of the gate addresses reader scepticism by

  having a box that reads, ‘Why are we publishing this information?’ The ‘This

  is why’ strategy is brilliant and you should model it for your business to

  increase trust in your marketplace and ultimately your sales.

  Naturally, anyone reading anything these days is sceptical, especially online.

  That box first addresses the deafening scepticism in the reader’s mind that

  asks why they are publishing this information. If they didn’t do this, the

  reader wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the content being delivered because

  they’d be thinking in the back of their mind, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ and they

  wouldn’t focus on the ad or absorb the message.

  It also addresses the pre-established stigma of the stock and bond business

  being confusing by saying, ‘Some plain talk about…’

  It then goes onto address well-organised questions the reader already has.

  Louis Engel likely spoke with analysts at Merrill Lynch to find out their

  prospects’ most common questions, then created subheadlines and bolded

  each one of them through the ad, which is simply brilliant. Not only did it

  address reader scepticism but also educated the reader by providing value

  well in advance of ever asking for the sale or anything in return.

  All in all, this isn’t great direct response copy – there are no hooks or crazy

  guarantees or hype, or even a whole bunch of intrigue other than the great

  headline – just straight up education and value. However, it’s still a lead

  generation ad. We want the reader to take action and do something – and look

  how masterfully they did exactly that!

  By today’s standards, the copy isn’t spectacular; it’s more the overall

  approach that’s so brilliant – the way they phrase the call to action, which of

  course is, ‘Let us know if you want more information’. The call to action

  (CTA) goes on to say, ‘We can’t cover everything here as it would take

  several volumes and naturally you probably have further questions, we’d be

  glad to send you a copy of this ad in pamphlet form, at no charge, no

  obligation… just write or phone us’.

  This whole approach worked incredibly well and helped make Merrill Lynch

  a household name far beyond Wall Street.

  Now at this stage you might be thinking, yeah this all sounds great Sabri…

  But no one reads all that copy these days. People have short attention spans.

  Really? Let me tell you this….

  Only Marketing Morons Believe That

  No One Reads Long-Form Copy

  You might think that no one in today’s day and age reads long-form copy.

  But the truth is, when it comes to making sales, long-form copy will beat

  short-form copy every single time. I’ve spent $30 million dollars on

  generating traffic and running thousands of scientific split tests, and I can tell

  you without a shadow of doubt that long-form copy works.

  With one caveat: The copy must be entertaining and engaging. You can’t

  simply write long copy and think that it’s going to make your prospect buy.

  With that said, when your copy is entertaining, people won’t care how long it

  is.

  You might still be saying, ‘But who reads all that text?’

  The buyers are the ones who read it. They are the ones who have all the

  burning questions, the ones who are looking for answers. The people who

  aren’t going to read your copy aren’t going to buy in any case. So would you

  rather gear your copy towards those who are never going to buy, or would

  you rather convert more of the people who are deep in research mode,

  genuinely interested in buying, and lookin
g to be pushed over the edge? The

  answer should be very, very simple.

  The approach used by Merrill Lynch was brilliantly effective for several

  reasons: it created goodwill in their marketplace by giving something of

  value away for free before ever asking for anything. Over the years, this

  approach has been reskinned and renamed many times, from permission-

  based marketing to content marketing. However, it’s not the name or the

  specific tactics that you should be concerned with, rather the overarching

  strategy that makes it so effective.

  You see, it appeals to the exact segment of the market you want because your

  message rises above the noise that’s created by loudness, hype, and the

  general lameness of your competition. If all your marketing consists of you

  screaming, ‘Buy my stuff!’ then you’re only appealing to a fraction of your

  potential buyers and you’re missing out on a huge percentage of the total

  number of potential buyers in your market.

  This is a great reminder that the job of an ad is not to sell but to create

  intrigue and get the prospect to raise their hand and say, ‘I’m interested’.

  Why this approach is so much more effective than what everyone else is

  doing

  There are three ways we can influence people:

  Talk about how good we are.

  Have others talk about how good we are.

  Demonstrate how good we are.

  In sales and marketing, #3 is the most effective.

  Demonstrating how good you are doesn’t only help with influencing them,

  but it creates heaps of goodwill and helps you reach a much larger segment of

  your market, like it did with Merrill Lynch. And let’s not forget, people are

  10 times more likely to come to you to learn something than they are to be

  sold to.

  So, using the approach gleaned from Merrill Lynch’s ad that generated over

  three million leads, we can take the information and answers we know our

  prospect is craving for, and package it as a High-Value Content Offer

  (HVCO).

  You can see in the graphic below, a scenario that doesn’t involve anything

  more complicated than some simple third grade math….

  The above graph represents two different scenarios:

  Scenario 1: You send 100 people to a website or landing page that is

 

‹ Prev