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From the desk of Roy Furr, April 29th, 2009
You’re not going to like me for this.
Sure, Joe Karbo made a mint off his book sold through direct response, “The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches.”
Of course, he was selling a dream. Not reality.
When you look at reality, overnight successes come after years of nose-to-the-grindstone work. Lazy people just sit on the couch every night and about all they do is throw their own pity-party, wondering why they’re not getting ahead.
And even if you’re chasing the latest opportunity… You’re still lazy. That’s still lazy behavior. You’re wanting someone else to do the work for you.
To truly get ahead you have to blaze your own trail. You don’t play the game, you create it. And you make it happen — no matter how much sweat and pain and tears and joy and happiness and passion and drive and determination it takes.
There’s no resting on your laurels until you have them my friend. And even then, that’s a good way to lose them.
Do you want to get ahead?
Try this on for size (courtesy of the late, great Gary Halbert):
The best way to get started is to get started.
Movement always produces more results than meditation.
Attack life. Wait for nothing.
He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.
The future starts today (right now)… not tomorrow.
There’s no choice if you’re serious about success. You have to hustle. You have to move. You have to make things happen.
And then, it’s funny how the results often begin to add up to be more than the sum of your effort.
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From the desk of Roy Furr, April 5th, 2009
I’ve been an insider on quite a few website designs, and it never ceases to amaze me that the first thing everyone seems to ask is, “What do we want this to look like?”
If that’s the first question you’re asking when you’re designing a new website — or even a new page on an existing website — then you’re asking the wrong question.
Instead, let’s think about it this way…
“What’s the single most important action my visitors can take when they hit my website?”
- Do you want them to sign up to download a piece of software, or a special report?
- Do you want them to subscribe for blog updates?
- Do you want them to watch an informative video?
- Do you want visitors to share your content with a friend?
- Do you want them to purchase your product?
What do you want them to do?
Once you have the answer to that question for every page on your website then designing the pages and the site as a whole is a simple two step process:
- How can we design this to make it as natural and easy as possible for our website visitors to complete our desired action?
- What should it look like?
And step 1 is more important than step 2.
Most web designers will disagree. However if you’re looking to grow your business this is how you ensure high ROI from your website.
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From the desk of Roy Furr, March 24th, 2009
In the article below I reveal a surefire (and remarkably simple) technique for finding out if people search for your type of business on Google. Use this technique before you spend a penny to determine if building a website for your business will be a profitable investment.
Internet marketing firms and website builders will usually tell you every business needs a website… especially when they’re trying to sell you something.
Well… Contrary to popular belief…
There are still a solid cases for some businesses not to be online… yet.
In fact today I’d like to show you a simple method for determining if people search for your type of business online. This can be the key determining factor in deciding whether or not to invest in a website for your business.
We’re going to use a tool called the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. It’s free to use, and located at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.
This tool exists to tell you a few things. One, how many people search for specific terms, or keywords, that you’re interested in. Two, what keywords are similar to the ones you’re interested in. And three, what sort of advertising competition exists on the keywords you’re researching.
I’m going to show you how to use it to find something else.
I’ll show you how to discover how many people search for your type of business on Google. Because if nobody’s going to Google to search for your type of business, it’s probably NOT worth putting a website online for it. However, if there ARE a lot of searches on Google for your type of business, then you absolutely SHOULD have a website so you can be found over your competitors.
So let’s jump in and check out this tool…
When you first hit the website you see something like this:
We’re going to do our work on the right-hand side of that box.
Start in the box where it says “Enter one keyword or phrase per line:” and enter a general word that describes your type of business.
Start very general here.
If you have a Chinese Dim Sum Restaurant, type in just “restaurant.”
Below that you could type “Chinese restaurant” and “Dim sum restaurant” too, if you’d like. But be sure to include the general overarching category for your type of business.
Also leave the “Use synonyms” check box checked and the tool will give you a more general picture of your market online.
Then follow the instructions and type in the characters you see in the picture — this is Google’s way of making sure you’re a human using their tool and not just a computer program designed to yank out data and abuse the system.
You do not have to use the “Filter my results” link.
Then click “Get Keyword Ideas.”
Next, you should see something like this:
Now we’re going to do a very minor but important step, and that’s sort the results. Click on the words “Approx Avg Search Volume” at the top of the second column from the right to sort by that stat (it’s my preferred stat to sort by because it represents search trends over time).
So that should give you something that looks like this:
Now we’re getting somewhere!
Like I just said, I like to look at the “Approx Avg Search Volume” column because I think that represents the most reliable data over time. The number you see is an approximation of how many searches are done on Google in a month that contain that keyword.
So in an average month, people will type “restaurant” into Google 24.9 Million times…
In an average month people will type the words “italian restaurant” into Google 550,000 times…
And one of our keywords, “chinese restaurant” will be searched for in an average month 450,000 times…
That’s a lot of people searching for restaurants!
Of course, based on my default settings this is a snapshot of the entire United States (sorry, can’t drill down any further) so you have to take it as what it is.
However, if you consider that the population of the United States is about 300 Million people, that means every month there’s roughly 1 Google search for restaurant for every 12 people you see out walking around.
Of course, when you look at “Chinese restaurant” specifically, there’s only 1 search for every 660 or so people every month (.15%). However, let’s imagine that you’re the first website that comes up when someone searches for “Chinese restaurant” in your local area. If you can leverage this position to get .15% of your local population to visit every month, you’re getting incredible ROI from your website.
Let’s do some quick math.
.15% of 250,000 (small local population) is 375, multiply that by a $30 average ticket — because they didn’t come alone — and you get $11,250 per month from your website. Even if only half of those are new customers who come because of your website, that’s $5,625 per month from your website. Now that math won’t work out 100%, but it starts to make an investment of a few thousand in a website seem very reasonable.
I would say unequivocally that if you have a restaurant — whether it’s Italian, Chinese, or some other cuisine — that you should have a website.
Now let’s look at another — smaller — industry
Let’s try this same thing for “pet grooming.” I’ll include “cat grooming” and “dog grooming” too because those are the two primary niches within pet grooming. I’ve gone fast forward through the steps above to get the sorted results:
Because this is a smaller industry, let’s take my technique one step further.
In the restaurant industry I omitted this step because it quickly became clear how much opportunity there is for a local business to build a business website that would return high ROI.
In a smaller industry like pet grooming, taking this extra step will help you determine how much opportunity is actually available — when a quick snapshot doesn’t give you the confirmation you need.
It’s as simple as adding it up.
So at a quick look, here are the relevant keywords with their approximate average search volume (I’m omitting keywords that look like “do it yourself” searches because these are not customers for a pet grooming service):
- pet grooming – 368,000
- dog groomers – 60,500
- dog groomer – 49,500
- pets grooming – 33,100
- dogs grooming – 22,200
- pet nail grooming – 22,200
- mobile pet grooming – 14,800
- groom dog – 12,100
- mobile dog grooming – 9,900
- cats grooming – 8,100
- pet dog grooming – 8,100
- groom pet – 5,400
If my math is right, that’s 591,700 searches per month across these keywords. Which is more than the 450,000 searches I based my math for “Chinese restaurant” on above. So even though 368,000 is smaller than the number for Chinese restaurant, it becomes clear quickly that there is a lot of opportunity for a local business to put a website online in the pet grooming business.
Quick side note: If you have a high customer value (let’s say $5,000 per customer instead of $30) then you don’t need traffic anywhere near these levels to make your website pay off. In a case like that just getting one or two customers from your website can make an investment of a few thousand be worth every penny and more.
And now for an industry that may not need a website.
I had to rack my brain and do a few searches and I could be wrong on this, but I did find one industry that my technique suggests may not need a website for your local business.
If you run a business that exclusively teaches aerobic fitness classes (not a gym with classes, just classes alone), then the opportunity may NOT exist for you to create a local website for your business that will be profitable.
Here’s a snapshot of traffic stats for “fitness classes” and “aerobics classes” and related keywords:
As you can see, the numbers there just don’t add up to anything that makes sense. So I wouldn’t suggest building a website to promote a business that exclusively offers aerobic fitness classes — at least not without some more research.
So there you have it!
Use this technique as you decide the answer to the question, “Should my business have a website?”
It’s a definite way of finding out if people are searching for what you’re offering online. And if there’s enough traffic you can be reasonably confident that your local business can build a website that will pay off dividends.
Of course there’s more to the story.
How to do it? What to put on the website? Who to have help?
Those are questions to be answered a different day. Stay tuned.
- Roy Furr
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From the desk of Roy Furr, February 27th, 2009
Almost everyone who tries to teach you the sales process will make it too complex.
The reality is… Sales is simple.
And once you understand the basics you become a sales superman (or superwoman) who can sell anything worth buying.
Here’s the secret…
It’s all about finding out whether you have a good prospect. And once you have a good prospect whether they’re going to buy from you.
So how do you do that?
Here are the three questions that will take you from the initial conversation… to having a qualified prospect you know will buy from you as long as you make purchasing easy:
- What are you looking for in … ?
- How will you know when you have that?
- If I could show you how to get that, could we move forward and get you the solution you’re looking for?
From here you walk them through how your solution gives them exactly what they’re asking for (and admit while minimizing where your solution doesn’t meet their needs). Then simply ask them for the order.
Presto, you’re super! (Now get off your duff and use these questions to make more sales!)
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From the desk of Roy Furr, January 28th, 2009
We spend our whole life making excuses.
Why we got a bad grade in school. Why someone else got picked over us for the team. Why we haven’t gotten a promotion yet. Why we’re getting fired (or shouldn’t be). Why January’s not even over and we’ve already botched our New Year’s Resolution.
And…
Why I have to say “no” to the salesperson (who’s really pretty nice)… Or ignore the ad (which is really pretty compelling).
In fact, we have a whole arsenal of excuses at our disposal for every little situation in life.
We know just what to say to justify poor performance. We know what to tell others (and ourselves) to skirt our indiscretions.
We’re like Houdini with our ability to get out of taking responsibility for things in our life.
And one of the things we’re particularly good at is getting rid of a sales person or sales message (of course if we weren’t good at saying “no” we’d be dead broke and have warehouses full of junk we’ll never use).
The list of excuses given to a salesperson is endless. However, there are six common objections that come back over and over again — that must be addressed for any sale to take place:
- Not enough time. I don’t have enough time to deal with this right now. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to even think about making a buying decision. Even if I had your product I wouldn’t have the time to use it.
- Not interested. Well, I really don’t see how this is for me. I mean, it’s not really what I was looking for. I don’t think it’ll meet my needs.
- Not a unique solution. Oh, this is just like what Fred’s selling down the street. I know I can get this somewhere else, so I don’t need to buy right now.
- Don’t believe you. Those are some pretty big claims you’re making and I just don’t see how they could be true. Sure, you can promise the moon, but I need evidence… I need proof you’re going to be able to give me what you say.
- Not enough money. Oh, I can’t afford to put money towards this right now. That’s too expensive (for the benefits I expect to get from it). Is this really going to be worth it? How am I going to justify spending this money to (spouse, friend, relative, etc.)?
- Don’t need to decide today. I don’t have to decide today. I can always buy that later. If I don’t buy today it’s not a big deal, I can always get it later.
Sit down with your product, your advertisement, your sales script and seriously think about how to answer each of these objections.
Build the answers into your sales message. So even as the objection comes to your prospect’s mind it’s already been answered.
This greases the skids to the sale and will turn many wavering prospects into happy customers.
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From the desk of Roy Furr, January 19th, 2009
I got an email from Perry Marhsall this weekend that laid out the 6 essentials of a profitable internet business.
I’ve known these things for just about as long as I’ve been doing marketing (and implemented them many times over). But never have they been laid out as clearly.
If you’ll do these — and do them right — you’re almost guaranteed to profit.
Miss a step or two along the way and it’ll quickly chip away at your profits — and even pull the foundation out from under your entire business.
Here, for your benefit, are Perry’s 6 essentials of a profitable internet business, with explanation:
In my experience, the foundation of a stable and profitable
Internet business is having six systems in place. Just six:
1. Market Research
2. Properly built Pay Per Click campaign
3. Conversion Tracking
4. Split testing of key sales elements
5. Seductive copy
6. Automated Email follow-up
That’s it. Just six. You can build a $1 million business, or
in some markets, a $10 million business, with just those
six things.
What do you think?
Posted in Business, Copywriting, Marketing, Marketing Testing, Persuasion, Sales, Website Design | No Comments »
From the desk of Roy Furr, December 12th, 2008
Once you get the attention of a potential customer, there are a few objections to overcome, a few questions to answer, and a few sales pitches to make…
But there’s one very specific thing going on in the mind of your customer that you have to rip right through or your sale is doomed.
And you better work through it fast…
Because until it’s been worked through… Each question you answer remains partly unanswered… Each objection you overcome is not quite overcome… And each sales pitch you make falls on half-deaf ears.
So what is it you need to work through with each customer, before the sale can be made?
Skepticism.
It will hold up any sale, unless you address it.
How?
I’ll give you a two-step strategy for taking care of skepticism. From here, you can plug your skepticism-reducing and skepticism-eliminating tactics in and go — and make the sale!
STEP 1: Show sympathy for your prospect’s skepticism. Without sympathy, there’s no way you can minimize and work through it. They want to feel noticed, to feel like you’re paying attention. And the best way to do that is to say…
“I recognize that you probably have some degree of skepticism about this offer. After all, you know what they say about ‘too good to be true.’ But if you’ll just suspend your decision until I’ve had a chance to prove why everything I’m saying is true… And until I’ve had a chance to prove that my product will do for you exactly what you want it to… I think you’ll realize you’re making the right decision. Now here’s the reason why my product can do exactly what I’m telling you that it does…”
STEP 2: Prove it! Support every claim you make with an overabundance of proof. There are a number of different proof elements you can use, not limited to demonstration, risk reversal, case studies, explaining the mechanism behind why your product works, showing success statistics, and so on. We can’t cover them all here, but they’re a good start.
Once you open up someone to letting go of their skepticism by recognizing it and showing sympathy for it, you can pile on the proof and melt it away.
And that’s how you work through skepticism, straight to the sale.
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From the desk of Roy Furr, December 12th, 2008
Mark Twain once said, “There are two reasons a man buys anything. The reason he can tell his wife… and the real reason.”
In that spirit, here’s a list of the real reasons. Figure out which one is relevant for your product, and you’re in good territory. Subtly weave it through your sales pitch, and you can leverage it straight into stellar sales.
Here’s your list, in no particular order:
- Fulfill greed
- Get a better deal than others
- Have more or better sex
- Attract love
- Experience intimacy
- To be healed or stay healthy
- Self-improvement (career, social, personal, spiritual, etc.)
- Avoid loss
- Gain respect
- Feel pleasure or enjoyment
The list looks simple, but this is valuable stuff. Use it wisely, my friend.
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From the desk of Roy Furr, December 3rd, 2008
I’ve been listening to a lot of radio recently. Especially talk radio. It’s a good way to keep your finger on the pulse of our culture. Flip between conservative, liberal, “middle way,” Christian and any other stations you can find on the dial, and in just a few hours you know how most of the country thinks.
Listening to the radio also has me listening to something else.
Radio advertising.
On the radio you find a lot of direct response marketing — a little hook to get you interested, along with an offer and a call to action. In fact, I think radio has a higher ratio of direct response to brand marketing than any medium other than the internet. Which alone is another good reason to listen to radio, if you’re in marketing and advertising. There’s a lot of great inspiration.
But that’s not the only reason I’m writing to you today.
I want to tell you about which type of radio advertising gets results!
It’s been known for a long time that editorial-looking advertising in newspapers and magazines get 5X higher readership. And when responses are tracked, the difference in response is similar and sometimes much greater.
So… Shouldn’t the same work for radio advertising?!
… (Dramatic music) …
It does!
Here’s two ways to take advantage of this.
1. Come up with a script for the host of the talk show to read during a commercial break (or better yet, record, send to you for approval, then play during multiple commercial breaks!). This script should go something like this:
“Hi, this is [host name] back with an interesting discovery I made recently. I don’t know if you’ve dealt with [insert problem here] recently, but it’s something I’ve had personal experience with. And I’ve found that [insert product name or solution description here] from [insert your company name here] was able to help me pull through. In fact, [give a very compelling statistic or other proof element here].”
“They’ve put together a 30-minute CD explaining how you too can overcome [problem], including a really important tip regarding [small but important part of solution] that you can apply to ["feel better"/"make more money"/"live a better life"] right away with very little effort.”
“You can get the CD by calling [insert your phone number here]. That’s [repeat phone number]. Again, this is [host name] telling you to call [your company name] to get a free 30-minute, content-rich CD on how to deal with [problem] — their number is [phone number] and you can call 24/7 to leave your name and address to get your free 30-minute CD.”
One huge benefit of this approach is you inherit the credibility of the show’s host, and all you have to do is ask (and usually commit to a certain amount of advertising budget — but be sure there’s a clause that says you can get out of this commitment the moment the advertisements stop working).
Another benefit is because the advertising is done in the voice of the host, most listeners will think the show is coming back on, and listen long enough to absorb the brunt of your advertisement. And those that are interested in the topic or need the problem solved will listen long enough to hear your offer. A high percentage will respond, too.
2. If the host is not available or will not agree to read your advertisement, all is not lost. You can get another recognized name (celebrity) to read the same basic script, with almost equal results. This borrows the celebrity’s credibility, and it’s often hard for the listener to identify up front if this celebrity is a guest on the show or if this is an advertisement. So you’ll get listeners and response.
3. If you’re not able to get or afford the host or another celebrity, one more choice is to make your advertisement sound like an urgent news broadcast. A low-price voice-over actor will work to read the script — as long as they’re convincing as a news announcer in the context of the surrounding program. Leave out the hype — you don’t want your advertisement to actually sound like an advertisement, it’s supposed to sound like news content.
4. Finally, treat yourself like a celebrity. By this I mean get on the radio yourself (meaning, record your own advertisement) and tell about your personal story of dealing with the problem and what you’ve done to create a solution… Because no solution out there was quite good enough for you. Again, invite listeners to call for more information in the form of a 30-minute content-rich CD.
The key to making any of these strategies work is to make them sound as much like helpful editorial as possible.
Advertisements have music in the background — important editorial is voice only. So pick voice only.
Advertisements sound excited — important editorial sounds serious with a need to communicate. So sound serious with a need to communicate.
Make all your decisions on the basis of…
“How can I make this sound more like an important editorial announcement up until the point we’re asking for action?”
Then make it easy and painless for listeners to raise their hand and express interest, by doing something such as requesting a free CD and information packet.
That’s how you’ll create effective radio advertising that sells!
Posted in Business, Copywriting, Marketing, Persuasion, Sales | 1 Comment »
From the desk of Roy Furr, November 19th, 2008
There are three areas a business has to succeed to be healthy in the long term.
- Managing people.
- Managing product lines.
- Marketing/sales/business development.
Managing people means keeping workers happy without letting them control the business decisions. Especially when it could be detrimental to the business. Organized labor has too much control over Detroit’s big three and have developed non-sustainable demands — they are literally choking to death the companies they rely on.
Toyota and Honda have fended off union control so far. (Keeping employees happy goes a long way.) That’s one reason they’re not in the same mess the others are.
If your business is good at managing people, you’ve succeeded at one of the three pillars of business success and are unlikely to need a bailout like Detroit’s big three.
Managing product lines means finding out what flush, hungry mobs want and giving it to them. In this green, energy-conscious world with gas prices spiraling out of control, there’s a new Hummer. Enough said there.
VW won with the ugly, cramped little Beetle when the cars of the 50s and 60s were mostly gas-guzzlers and people were looking for something different. And Honda and Toyota are mostly on target with their high gas mileage, environmentally friendlier cars. Small is big now, and if Detroit is slow to recognize that and react to the market it’s not taxpayer’s responsibility to bail them out for their poor product choices.
When’s the last time you looked at what flush, hungry mobs were asking for, and gave it to them? It’s a valuable thing to do…
Marketing, sales, and business development means taking a product that was created for a specific market, and introducing the market to that product. Then asking for the order. Not a fancy commercial produced to win advertising awards with pop-ish music and fancy graphics.
Sure, it makes you feel good when your ad agency takes you out for a $1,000 steak dinner because they won an award on your dime (and then charges it to your company in a transaction you’ll never see), but is this really growing your business?
How about a few commercials with a reason why I should prefer your product over every other one available in the marketplace, tied with benefits of buying your product and doing business with you, and finally tying in the commercial with something going on at the local dealership right now, such as an event I can go to? It’d be a start in the right direction.
I don’t have much sympathy for failing automakers. I feel sorry for people who feel they have no control, and who may lose their jobs when those companies go under. But we can’t get into the habit of propping up companies who fail on so many levels, just because the company is big. Then nobody learns and the cycle continues.
Posted in Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Sales | 3 Comments »
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