You are reading RELAUNCH. Keep reading for 300 and

Transcription

You are reading RELAUNCH. Keep reading for 300 and Copywriting
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First, the promise
We don’t know anybody out there who hasn’t tried to launch a
product and had it fall short of expectations.
Sometimes sales come up a little short, and that’s disappointing.
Sometimes sales aren’t anywhere near what you needed them to be,
and it can be heartbreaking.
We understand that, because it’s happened to us at one time or
another, too. (Yes, it does happen to everybody. Everybody.)
In fact, it’s one of the main reasons people hire us for consulting – a
rough launch has left them reeling and not knowing what to do next.
They’ve poured their heart, soul and time into creating a product and
trying to launch it, but it just didn’t go the way that they’d hoped.
It’s really, really painful, and it can make you wonder if you’re cut out
for this “selling things to people” thing.
If that’s happened to you, we can help. Your hard work need not
go to waste. In the vast majority of cases, your launch is redeemable.
That’s what we’re going to help you through in this book. Getting
redemption for what you created and getting it out in the hands of
the people who need it.
It’s going to be okay. We’ll help you figure out what went wrong,
how it can be fixed, and what to do next.
As you go through this book, you’re going to have your hand held as
we step through all the things that could have gone wrong with your
launch, so you don’t have to wonder anymore what you could have
done differently.
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(And speaking of that, we’re going to give you our
complete permission to cut yourself some slack. Don’t
read this book as an exercise for beating yourself up.
Launches are complex and challenging beasts, and if you
haven’t spent years studying marketing and promotion,
then you have no reason to kick yourself and say “I
should have done better.” That helps no one.
Be nice to yourself, and use this as a chance to get
yourself in the place for a better launch, not to kick
yourself for not doing something right.
The answers to these questions do not go on your
permanent record. You’re safe.)
The point of all this? Regardless of how your launches have gone in
the past, we’re going to work on making them better.
Business is a long game, and you have plenty of time to tweak and
experiment and grow. Nobody gets rich quick, but we can start
putting a little more money in your pocket soon, no?
So, the promise?
We’re going to create a safe place for you to figure
out what factors affected your last launch, and some
very specific guidance on what to do moving
forward, so you can end up in a better place than
you are right now.
Let’s talk about how we can make that happen together.
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How you’re going to use this book
Reading this book is going to be a lot like being on a consulting call
with us.
The primary benefit of this is, like a consulting call, you don’t even
have to wear pants if you don’t feel like it. Feel free to sit around in
your unmentionables, sipping slowly from your favorite beverage, as
you do your thing.
The other benefit is that we will make this fun for you. We will be
our ordinary, charmingly strange selves and keep you entertained
throughout these pages. Don’t be surprised if we digress into a little
industry gossip or share some embarrassing stories about what we’ve
gone through ourselves. We know that’s really what you paid for.
So, here’s how you’re going to use this book.
First, we’re going to ask you a whole bunch of questions –
twenty-seven to be exact – that will help you look at your last launch
and figure out what went wrong (and why).
It’s really important you read all of the questions, especially the ones
that you might not think apply to you.
Based on what we talk about for each question, you might discover
factors that were affecting your launch that you didn’t even realize
were there. Read them all, so you don’t miss something important
that doesn’t necessarily seem obvious to you.
Next, we’re going to figure out what strategy is going to work
best for your unique situation to get your product selling.
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In some cases, it’s going to be a relaunch in the near future if that
makes sense for your situation. (But it might not – if you discover a
certain problem that is going to take a while to fix, you can’t exactly
do a relaunch in 3 weeks.)
But if an upcoming relaunch is the best fit for you, we’re going to put
you on a Relaunch Track to get that process started for you.
But! There are other options!
If a relaunch doesn’t make sense for the near future (or in some
cases, isn’t the best strategy for your product), we are going to put
you on a Catalog Track so we can get your product into your store if
it’s not there already, and set you up so that more people will start
buying it there.
For a lot of people, this is a very good option, because it gets the
product selling better without all the fuss of a relaunch.
But that doesn’t mean that the Catalog Track will take you away from
a relaunch – sometimes it’s best to do a small amount of work to get
your product selling well in your store. Then you can start making
money on that while you’re prepping for a relaunch.
“But wait!” you ask – “How can I relaunch a product if it’s already in
my store?” Well, we have options for that, too.
The third section of this book is called “How to relaunch a
product that did perfectly well the first time around,” and you
can use what’s in there to relaunch anything in your store, any time
you want. This is particularly applicable for products that had limited
quantities – like a class, a membership program, or a physical product
that had a limited initial run – but it works for most any product or
service.
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(Yes, this section is perfectly applicable if your product didn’t sell
well the first time, too. It’s just named that because it’s also perfect
for a garden variety “I want to relaunch this product for the hell of
it” situation.)
Ideally, you’ll want to read through both the Relaunch Track and the
Catalog Track, even if you know for certain what track you’re
supposed to be on. You’ll learn a lot from both of them, and you’ll
be better equipped to get more sales flowing on every product your
ittybiz sells.
Onward!
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Figuring Out
What Went Wrong
With Your Last Launch
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The Usual Suspects: The Three Biggest
(And Most Common) Launch Problems
Ok, imagine you’ve just called us up and said:
“Hey! Dave and Naomi! My launch was crap, and I
need to figure out how to recover. Also, I keep hearing
there’s a story about a blackjack table in Vegas. What’s
up with that?”
Naturally, we would respond, “We can totally help you figure out
what happened with your launch.” (We would then pretend you
didn’t ask about Vegas. Some things are better left unsaid.)
“Now, back to your launch!” we say, cleverly keeping things on
subject.
Typically we start with three important questions, and they’re
important because they are the three biggest reasons your launch may
have, well, not gone according to plan.
They are not the only three things that could have gone wrong, but
they are the big ones. They may sound a bit obvious, but out of the
hundreds of clients we’ve talked to about launches, they’re the usual
suspects.
Let’s talk about them for just a moment.
Was your list too small to
support the sales you wanted?
Launches have been hyped to such a degree that people tend to
forget to do the math before they go into launch mode. They hear
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Joe Marketer made a gazillion dollars with his launch, so it stands to
reason that even one-tenth of a gazillion could be in your happy little
hands.
(Now, maybe it’s not that extreme in your case – you may have
wanted far less than even 10% of a gazillion. But we all have a
certain dollar amount – 1% of a gazillion? – that we picture in our
heads as being a fantastic payoff for our launch-y efforts.)
However! We need to look at your list and see what kind of sales it
can conceivably support.
Let’s talk about conversion rates for a moment. The average
conversion percentage for a list is going to look like around 2-3% if
all goes wonderfully.
But that statistic can be a little misleading, because there are so many
factors that go into the “wonderfully” part. First, there’s the “how
many people are on your list?” part. The there’s the “how many
people actually open your launch emails?” part. And then there’s the
“how many people actually click the link in your email?” part.
(Not to mention the “do you even have a list to speak of?” part.
Launching to a blog or social media following will dramatically
change your numbers, too.)
That’s a lot of parts. Let’s say you had 1,000 people on your list. If
you had an open rate on your emails of 20%, that means 200 people
are reading your email. If you had a click-through rate of 5%, then
that means that 40 people get to your sales page. 40 out of 1,000 is
not a whole lot of people going to a sales page that might convert at
whatever rate it converts at. (If you had a wonderful 10% conversion
on your sales pages, that’s still only 4 sales out of those 1,000 people.)
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Lest you be discouraged at this point and say “Holy crap, I’m never
going to get people to buy unless I have a million people on my list!”
let us tell you that there are factors that can work in your favor.
First of all, this is exactly why we send several emails over the course
of a launch, because those 20% who open are usually not the same
200 people every time. Some are brand new, and may buy. Some
may have opened both the first and the second emails, and then
decide to buy.
Second, it does not factor in your “last day” emails, which by nature
have a bit of urgency. Regardless of how many people open or click,
they’re going to be a lot more likely to buy on that last day. (Ever
wonder why people send two emails on the last day? This is why.)
Third, it does not take loyalty into account. If you have a very good
relationship with your list, the percentages of open, click and buy are
going to be much more valuable to you. 200 people who love you is
a very different group than 500 people who think you’re just okay.
Now, back to the size of your list. If you were hoping to sell 100
copies of whatever it is you’re selling, you’re going to need a lot more
than 100 people on your list. A good rule of thumb is to multiply the
number of sales you want to make by about 50 to 100 times to get
the number of subscribers you need to have a reasonable chance of
getting your numbers.
So that means if you want to make 100 sales, you’ll likely need 5,000
to 10,000 people on your list, on average.
If that makes you panic – again, fear not. If you’ve built up enough
loyalty with your list, your multiplier may be a lot lower than that.
This is a bit of worst-case scenario here, because these multipliers
take into account a lot of other factors, like a colder list, or a weaker
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sales page, and so on. We can’t speak to exactly what your particular
situation is yet, but we can tell you some ways to get an idea of what
your multiplier would be.
For example, if you had a list of 500 and you made 7 sales, you can
see that you had about a 1.4% overall conversion rate. So if you were
to take that conversion rate and say “How big would my list need to
be to make, say, 50 sales? You’d want about 3,571 people on your
list for that.
But you wouldn’t necessarily need 3,571 people on your list. If you
were to go through the questions in this book and realized you could
correct ten problems on relaunch, then you might double (or triple)
your conversion rate.
If you double it, then you’d only need about 1,600 people on your
list, total. That’s about 1,100 more than you’d have now, and that’s
doable. If you triple it, then you’d only need about 1,200 people on
your list, total. That’s only about 700 more people than you have
now, and that’s starting to border on easy.
But the main point you need to take away from this section isn’t that
your list is too small conceptually, but that it may be too small to
support the sales you wanted using the methods you used. So if
you had that list of 500 and hoped to sell 50, and only sold 7, that
doesn’t mean that your launch was a failure.
It means the math said that your list simply couldn’t support it. So if
you want 50 next time, there are specific actions you can take.
Important! If your list was too small to support the sales you
hoped for, then you need to make sure you don’t beat yourself
up for even a second thinking your launch was a failure.
That would be like beating yourself up for not being able to go to the
moon when the real problem was that you only had a car. If your list
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was too small we can work on fixing that, and we’ll talk about that
later in this book.
That brings us to our next question …
Was your sales page good enough
to sell your product in the first place?
Sales pages can be tricky beasts, so we’re going to think about a few
different things to see if that’s the problem that you had on your last
launch.
The first thing is understanding the actual conversion rate of
your sales page. If you don’t have the actual numbers of how many
people saw it versus how many people bought from it, you won’t be
able to tell if your sales page is the weak link.
If you have something like Google Analytics set up on your sales
page, you can look at the page views to see how many there were.
Divide the number of sales by the number of visitors, and poof,
you’ve got a number to work with. (Technically, you could compare
unique views to repeat views, but that’s more granular than we need
to get here.)
If you don’t have any means of figuring out the page views of your
sales page, you can simply go to your email software and check to see
how many people clicked on the links in your launch emails. That
will give you a rough (though not perfectly accurate) idea of how
many visitors you had. Again, divide sales by visitors and you’ll have
your conversion rate.
The second thing is understanding what that number means.
If it’s higher than the general average (around 2-3% for most people
selling to warm traffic, over 5% for those with substantial
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copywriting experience), then that’s a clue that your sales page is not
a real problem.
It’s always good to tweak and test to see if you can increase that
number, but it’s safe to say that if you’re at those numbers, then your
sales page was not the biggest problem with your launch. (If this is
the case, then you can pat yourself on the back.)
If your conversion rate is lower than 1%, then you’re probably
looking at a sales page that needs work.
A caveat: just as we did in the last section, we’re going to say that
statistics should not be taken at face value. If your sales page
conversion rate was very low, it does not necessarily mean that your
sales page itself is the problem.
This brings us to the third thing: understanding what could
have impacted the conversion rate.
If you had a lot of cold traffic going to your page, that can decrease
conversion, because those people don’t know or trust you yet like
warm traffic from your list would.
If you had problems related your pricing, with the offer itself, the
name of the product, or if some external factor affected your
audience’s ability to buy, then that would have lowered your
conversion rate as well.
We’ll cover all those possibilities later in the book, but it’s important
to be aware of them now, so you don’t just blindly take the
conversion rate as an indicator of whether your sales page was good
or bad.
It’s a lot easier to tell if the sales page isn’t the problem than if it is,
because if you had a decent conversion rate, then that’s an indicator
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that the page was good. But if your conversion rate was
exceptionally low – under 1% - then the sales page is definitely one of
your likely suspects.
We’ll cover ways to objectively look at your sales page to see if it’s
got major problems later in this book, but at this point, you’ll mainly
want to get the conversion rate figured out so you know what you’re
working with.
That brings us to our third of the “big three” questions to ask …
Did you sell strongly enough
to get people to actually buy?
This is very often the main culprit in a launch that didn’t perform
well. Selling didn’t happen strongly enough or often enough to really
get people to buy your product.
What we mean by “selling strongly enough” comes down to a few
things:
First of all, did you send enough launch content? This is a more
frequent problem than you might imagine. Four pieces of launch
content is probably the minimum you should send out, and if you’ve
done fewer pieces than that, your audience probably didn’t get
enough exposure to your launch in the first place.
One of the big reasons people don’t send out enough launch content
is because they’re afraid of overwhelming their audience. That is a
well-justified fear, because we’ve all been on the receiving end of
really, really lousy launch content.
Personally, we had to unsubscribe from more lists than we can count
because of all the marketers who thought telling us how excited they
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were about their new videos counted as content. Or how excited they
were that they had something to sell us.
Note: Your audience rarely cares if you’re excited. If you want to
take away the fear of sending too much launch content, you need to
make it something they can truly get excited about. That’s what
makes the fear go away. (It also increases sales, which is nice, too.)
Second, did you make your launch obvious in your content?
This is also a frequent problem. If your launch content came across
as plain old garden-variety content from you, people’s attention isn’t
going to be drawn to the fact that you’re running a launch.
Again, this usually comes down to fear (and again, we can help make
that fear go away).
That fear can make you think “I’m worried about making
promotional content, so I’ll just make even-better-versions-of-myregular-content and mention my launch gently somewhere in the
midst of it.”
The problem with that is people aren’t going to notice that you’re
actually running a launch. You’ve got to tie your launch content
directly to the product you’re selling, and you need to explicitly tell
them that you’re sending this content as part of your launch, which
ends soon.
Making really good, product-relevant launch content is the key to
making the fear go away here, so if you’re also struggling with the
first issue, this will help you kill two birds with one stone.
Launch is not the time to be soft on the selling. That doesn’t mean
you hit people over the head and say “Buy now, damn it!” – but you
do need to make it very, very clear that you’re selling something.
You can be a little softer about the sales part in the earlier pieces of
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the launch content, but you’ll need to gradually increase the visibility
of “click here” as it progresses.
Third, did you give strong enough calls to action in your launch
content? Calls to action are the critical factor in selling strongly.
Your calls to action need to be substantial and obvious, or your sales
will never be what you need them to be.
Again, this does not mean that you grab your readers by the
proverbial lapels and shake them into submission. It does mean that
in every piece of launch content you clearly remind them that your
product is for sale, and there’s a deadline they need to purchase it by
if they want whatever incentive you’re giving them.
This is often the hardest part of selling for people, because you’re
clearly and strongly asking them to buy what you’re selling. It can be
intimidating. But it has to be done. The good news is that when you
start giving stronger calls to action, you’ll notice that people don’t
freak out on you the way you might imagine they will.
People understand commerce. They understand buying things from
people. They understand that you sell things because you, like they,
enjoy having food on your table and a roof over your head. If it’s
intimidating to you, just know that the intimidation decreases very
rapidly once you actually start doing it.
Fourth, did you close the last day strongly? Yeah, this one can be
a little scary, too, because it essentially means sending two emails in
the same day that you’re closing your launch.
The two-emails-on-the-last-day strategy is what will drive the vast
majority of your sales. Without exception, more people buy on the
last day than any other day. Look at your shopping mall on
Christmas Eve and you’ll see exactly what we mean. Notice
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how the stores don’t take their sale signs down on December 24th
because they don’t like feeling pushy.
The bulk of your buyers will wait until the last day for a number of
reasons. Maybe they’re waiting to get paid. Maybe they’re still
thinking about whether they want to buy or not. Maybe they keep
meaning to buy, but they keep saying they’ll get to it later.
Usually, it’s a combination of two things. One, they’re exhausted
from their day-to-day life and suffering from what neuroscientists call
“decision fatigue”. They wait until the last possible moment to make
their decision because deciding on stuff takes energy, and they’re
running low. Two, modern commerce has trained people to know
that when the last moment arrives, they will be reminded.
They expect to get “one day left” and “last call” emails. It’s part of the
dance. Your customers get that everywhere else, and they expect
they’re going to get it from you, too.
By sending two emails on the last day – one early on, one later in the
day – you’re getting the attention of the people most likely to buy,
because they know your launch is about to close. So if you’re not
emailing twice on the last day, that’s a big indicator of why your sales
weren’t what you hoped they’d be.
Hello there!
You’ve reached the end of the sample for Relaunch.
You can continue reading the sample for 300 and Copywriting,
Or pick up all 3 ebooks for $97 here:
http://www.ittybiz.com/3-for-1-preorder
(The 3-for 1 ends Tuesday, April 3rd at midnight EST)
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You are reading 300. Keep reading for the Copywriting course …
.
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First, the promise
You have a dream for your ittybiz.
It’s a good dream.
It probably does not involve making a million dollars by Wednesday,
eating filet mignon seven times a day, or rolling around in piles of
money with the supermodels of your own choosing.
Your dream probably has a few more down-to-earth qualities to it:
• You have a certain amount of money you’d like to make.
(You’re not greedy – you know that money isn’t everything, but
it’s sure right up there with oxygen.)
• You’d like to feel like that amount stays fairly stable from
month to month. (It’s always nice to feel like you can prevent
as many dips in your income as you can manage.)
• You’d like a little more clarity and simplicity on the plan
that will actually get you there. (With so many people giving
you systems and formulas and the hottest new trend, keeping
up with it all is more than a bit overwhelming.)
We may not have pegged your dream perfectly, but after talking to
hundreds of clients about their goals, dreams and plans, this pretty
much seems to sum it up.
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That’s why this book is in your hands – because so many people,
from so many types of industries, have asked us to give them a plan
to bring in more repeat business for their ittybiz.
There are a lot of plans out there already. More systems and
formulas than anyone can really count.
What we know – because we’ve bought almost all of them to study –
is that they tend to be very good for people who run a very, very
specific kind of ittybiz.
Which is good for those people. But if you’re not one of them,
you’re kind of screwed. We don’t want you to be screwed. So we
created 300.
It’s not really a “system.” It’s more of a series of steps that is
carefully designed to apply to just about any kind of ittybiz we can
imagine.
Of course, 100% of this book will not be 100% perfect for 100% of
the businesses out there. (Nothing can be.)
But a damn lot of it will be very, very useful to you in terms of
getting more loyal, repeat customers, starting right now.
So, the promise?
We’re going to walk you through the most
effective steps you can take in six core areas of
your ittybiz to attract more loyal, repeat customers
and help you create a stable, growing business
that takes you closer to your dream.
That is 300. Let’s get you started.
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How to use this book
Before you begin reading this book, we want to help you set some
expectations (and a bit of ground rules) so you can begin your path to
getting 300 loyal, repeat customers while keeping it as stress-free, fun
and exciting as possible.
If you do the things we tell you to do, and if you do even just a few
of the exercises to begin with, you'll be on your way to thinking like a
"300 ittybiz" - and you'll start seeing improvement and progress.
But … that's IF you do the exercises. A 300 ittybiz doesn't grow on
its own - you have to DO it. But we've designed this book to teach
you what you need to be thinking about, what you need to do, and
perhaps most importantly, what you need to stop doing right now so
that you can grow the way you want to.
We know you can do this. We believe in you.
Let's begin at the beginning ...
How this book will work for you
This book is not a simple, pat, formula to follow. But it is a system
of sorts – a system of very important questions you need to ask
yourself, think about, and apply to your ittybiz in order to get it to
grow.
300 is not about telling you “what to do.” The stuff we’re going to
cover in here is stuff you’re probably already doing in one way or
another.
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300 is about telling you how to do those things RIGHT. How to do
them in a way that makes your customers extraordinarily loyal and
willing to spread the word about you because they can’t help it.
That doesn’t happen by accident – you need to have a little finesse.
And that’s what we’re going to teach you in this book. How to have
finesse, how to think like a seasoned, experienced marketer, and how
to figure out exactly what needs to change in your ittybiz to get it on
the 300 track.
What you'll need to do to become a 300 ittybiz
• First, approach this process with a sense of compassion
for yourself. Yes, you’re going to discover a lot of things
you’re not getting right in your ittybiz, but now is not the time
to beat yourself up. That helps no one, and frankly it’s not nice
to you. And we like you. Don’t think things that hurt you.
Remember as you read this that the lessons you’ll learn are not
things you would be expected to know intuitively. The two of
us have studied marketing for a combined four decades plus,
and we’ve been selling things since we were in grade school.
You’re not supposed to have known this stuff at birth.
So keep in mind that though we are going to be pretty blunt
telling you to “do this” and “don’t do that,” we’re not judging
you. Don’t judge yourself, either. Just figure out what you
need to do, and do it.
• Second, read this book all the way through BEFORE
YOU DO A SINGLE EXERCISE. Your intuition is going
to tell you what you’re going to need to be working on first –
maybe something easy to start you off, maybe something
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harder that’s more high-impact – and you need to go with your
gut. Trust the gut, no matter who tries to sway you saying “you
need to follow this new trend right away!”
When you complete the book, you’ll find a reference sheet at
the end you can print out and use to figure out what you want
to work on first. It truly doesn’t matter – just as long as you’re
taking ongoing action. Do it in the way that’s most enjoyable
and sanity-preserving for you.
• Third, take advantage of our Free High-Five program.
(We don’t actually have something called the Free High-Five
program, but Dave insisted we call it that.) Here’s how it
works:
o When you get to the end of this book, you can email
[email protected] and say you finished it. You will get a
virtual high-five via email congratulating you on getting
through it.
o Each time you go through an exercise, or take some kind
of action to get you on the 300 track, send an email to the
ninjas if you want a high-five for that, too. Do this as
often as you want. Seriously. Having someone cheer you
on can make all the difference.
o Keep us posted on your success stories. The ninjas will
keep giving you high-fives and sending your stories over
to us. They really make our day.
o Oh, one last thing – when you email the ninjas, please
be patient for your high-fives. They get a constant
stream of emails, and they do their best to keep on top of
them, but just know that we are listening to you, and your
high-five is on the way.
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That covers what you need to know to get started.
Ok, we lied. There’s one other thing you need to know
before diving in.
Here’s the one thing: You cannot, cannot, cannot phone this in. You
have to do the work. We know that for most people, doing exercises
and worksheets seems like physical and mental torture, but if you
don’t do them, you won’t get results.
So we’re just going to ask you to pose a single question to yourself
every time you see a question or worksheet:
“Will doing this exercise make it easier to make
more money with my ittybiz?”
If the answer is categorically YES, then do the worksheet. (Spoiler
alert: We actually designed all the exercises to make the answer
“YES” for you. We’re tricky that way.)
Ok, now let’s dive in.
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A bit of good news for you
Over the next however-many pages, we are going to dig into six core
areas of your ittybiz and see where you are in each of them.
We picked these six because they represent the six most effective
growth opportunities for you, and they also represent six areas where
300-level businesses categorically do things differently.
Most businesses dabble. They don’t go deep. They don’t give their
best to doing things in these six areas RIGHT. They do it okay, or
they kind of suck at it, and it cripples their growth and does nothing
to build customer loyalty.
That’s good news for you.
The reason it’s good news is because 99% of your competition is
lazy, trapped in short-term thinking, or just operating on beginner
marketing principles (or sometimes, all 3).
That means if you answer the questions we’re going to pose to you,
and if you think about how to apply them to your business, you will
know how to think like a marketer, and they won’t.
And the cookies will be yours, while they wonder how you did it.
(We love when that happens. Especially when it happens for YOU.)
We want you to have the cookies, and without further ado, we’re
going to tell you how to start getting them, beginning on the next
page.
See you there.
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The branding that gets you
to 300 loyal customers
So we’re starting with branding, but we promise it won’t be boring.
Most people talk about branding as “the face of your company” or
“your unique value proposition” or “logos and typefaces.”
That’s not what’s going to get you to 300, hon. We need a new
definition for branding, one that captures what seriously branded
business do to get their base group of loyal customers.
May we present to you the definition of branding for a 300 ittybiz?
300 branding is creating a level of affection and
attachment for the way you do things that make the
details of WHAT you sell become virtually
insignificant, because people will buy from you on
principle.
Yeah, you’re not going to find that definition in any dictionary.
(That’s good, though, because remember the other 99% - they don’t
know this stuff.)
If this definition seems a little hard to wrap your head around, let us
give you some examples.
• Dave loves Steven King novels. Whatever ol’ Steve publishes,
Dave will buy – no matter what the title, no matter what the
topic, and no matter what it costs. Dave is not price shopping
when it comes to Mr. King. He knows it will always be good,
because it always IS good.
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• Naomi loves Andrea Bocelli. (Seriously, she hearts him.) If
Andrea’s in town – any town – she will be buying tickets. She
doesn’t need to know what day the concert will be, because she
will move things around in her calendar to make sure she
doesn’t miss it. Naomi isn’t asking “What songs is Andrea
singing this time?” because frankly, if he was reading the phone
book on stage, Naomi still knows she’d enjoy it. (Hello! The
accent?) She wants Andrea on principle, because he delivers a
consistent emotional experience.
• Dave trusts the “For Dummies” line of books. He knows
they’re not encyclopedias of knowledge, but they consistently
cover the basics in a way that’s always easy to understand. So
when Dave decided he was going to explore the idea of
becoming a Reiki practitioner, he didn’t go and research the
best starter book. “For Dummies” books are consistently good
for people starting from zero, so they win his business every
time.
• Naomi is was a Starbucks customer. We say “was” for a
reason. In the past, Starbucks coffee was always good, the
employees were consistent, and the environment was luxe and
relaxing, and that made her feel really, really good. If she saw
another coffee shop she never said “Ooh, I should try that …”
because as far as she was concerned, she already had a coffee
shop. She didn’t need another one. (Now that Starbucks isn’t
training their people as well, the coffee is hit or miss and the
store plays loud, obnoxious music 4 times out of 10, it’s now
lost its 300-level branding for her.)
These four examples are here for a reason – to underscore how
important emotional tone and consistency are for a 300 brand.
Steven King, Andrea Bocelli and the “for Dummies” books will
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always get our money, because the consistent, emotional experience
we have doesn’t let us down.
Dave’s not looking for another new horror author – he already has
one. Steve gets his money, no matter what he writes.
Naomi’s not looking for another hunky Italian – she already has one.
Andrea Bocelli gets her money, no matter what he sings.
Dave’s not looking for another beginner-level book series – he
already has one. The Dummies aren’t very dumb at all, because they
get his money.
Starbucks had Naomi. They even had Dave for a while. There was a
feel and an experience to it that made us never even look at
competitors, because our needs for that experience were being
consistently met. But once that changed, the competition became
noticeable – and started getting our money.
The lesson for you:
If you want to be a 300 brand, you have to create an experience
for your customers that is so fulfilling for whatever it is that you
do that they don’t even think about competition and
automatically want to buy from you, regardless of what you’re
selling.
(Obviously, there are exceptions- if Steven King started selling
portable electric grills, Dave wouldn’t be inclined to buy because it’s
not congruent with what he wants from the author. Neither would
he buy Stephen’s Guide to Building a Deck, should he write one. But
as long as what he writes is reasonably in the sphere of what Dave
wants, conceptually, Dave won’t think twice before buying.)
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But the idea here is that once your customer links a consistent
emotional experience to your brand, that creates loyalty.
Naomi consistently gives business advice that’s laced with raciness,
bluntness, humor, honesty and respect to the emotions her
customers experience. She is exciting and (consistently)
unpredictable, in the most boring of markets. Customers keep
coming for that consistency.
Dave consistently gives in-depth, detailed training on difficult and
scary concepts that helps beginners get the information they need
from someone they trust, without feeling bad about being beginners.
He is also boring and incredibly nerdy. (Note: Hey, Naomi, I want you to delete this line, okay?*) He goes into detail that most other
marketing trainers don’t, and customers keep coming for that
consistency.
*(He also doesn’t make the final edits to our ebooks. Naomi 1, Dave
zero!)
The bottom line
Basically, a 300 brand’s function is to make the buying decision
effortless. If you are considering buying something from an
unknown author or singer, you have to wonder if it’s going to be
something you like. If you see a new book or album from someone
you know you already like, you don’t have to ask yourself if you’re
going to like it.
That makes selling so, so much easier because you are already sold –
and better than that, you aren’t even shopping for a competing
experience. You already have what you need from that seller.
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That’s how a 300 brand creates loyalty – which is 10 times more
important than sales. It is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,
very, very important. (That’s ten “very”s, if you’re counting.)
The reason it’s so important is because when your customers trust
you to deliver consistency, they create a personal set of expectations
about the quality (and qualities) of what you’re selling even before they
have any idea about the specifics of what they’re buying.
In other words, they know it’s good because it comes from you.
This is essential if you’re selling a commodity (where
features/benefits are the same for all sellers) or if you’re selling in a
very competitive marketplace. If there are a million Etsy sellers or
life coaches or marketing experts out there, you need a 300 brand
more than ever to get known and stay known.
But you have to be known for the right things. In a world of infinite
choices, you want your customers to come to the conclusion on their
own that there’s no reasonable, equivalent choice to you.
That may sound daunting, but fear not! We will help you figure
out what to do.
We’re going to ask you some questions – the questions that 99% of
your competition isn’t thinking about – and you can start thinking up
answers that make sense for your ittybiz.
Let’s begin.
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Creating a 300-worthy brand
The most important question to ask:
Do you have, communicate, and reinforce
a visceral emotional attachment for your brand?
This sounds like a complicated question to answer, but it’s actually
going to turn out to be very easy for you. It just takes some time and
thinking to work through.
Every brand has a visceral (gut) element to it – the feelings,
characteristics, and associations that are part of the brand itself. They
are what make the brand the brand.
These are not elements or components you can cobble together or
mix and match – they are the whole, not the sum of the parts.
When we say “home cooked meal, like Mom used to make,” it
evokes a certain gut “feel” to it. (Even if your mom was a terrible
cook, you must admit to getting a certain feeling in your gut when
you think of it.)
If I say “fast food dinner,” you are NOT thinking of the proverbial
(or literal) mom. Mom cooks with care, and the dining table has a
certain feel to it. There’s an emotional tone to the dinner. There are
memories and feelings and positive (or not-so-positive) associations
that make up the “dinner at Mom’s” visceral emotional attachment.
In a sense, it can’t be duplicated.
Especially by a fast food restaurant. It doesn’t even come close.
Impersonal, untrained employees slapping together greasy food in
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soggy bags and tossing them out drive through windows. Compare
that to mom’s home cooking and you get that visceral reaction.
You also don’t have to explain the difference between the two to
anyone – they just “know” at a gut level what it means. “Home
cooked meal” makes them think of good food and love and family.
“Fast food” makes them think of the smells of hamburger grease and
bad decisions. It’s visceral, and it sticks with you emotionally.
We keep using the word “visceral” here. It’s not a pretty word, and
it’s not supposed to be. “Branding” and “ethos” and “tribe” are all
easy words to dismiss. You can’t take action with words like that.
You can say “Yeah, I’m working on my tribe, and my branding, too
…” and you never know if you’re really doing anything effective.
Not so with “visceral.” If it hits you on a gut level, you know it.
Now, that’s not to say that it has to be violent or jarring or anything
like that, it just has to be total and complete. Think of your favorite
actor or actress or comedian. Picture them in a role that was perfect
for them just as they were, where it was like they were born for that
role. If it wasn’t perfect, it would be painfully obvious.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was born to be the Terminator. Robin
Williams was born to be the funny man. Everything about who they
are makes them a perfect fit for the role they play. But if they
switched places, it wouldn’t be even close to perfect. (Sorry Robin.
Just sayin’.)
Your 300 brand needs to be the same way. When a customer
thinks of you, they need to see your brand – which may simply be
you – as the perfect fit for creating the emotional experience they
crave. Starbucks was a perfect fit for customers who wanted the
luxe, premium experience. Wal-Mart was the perfect fit for those
who wanted a spacious, all-purpose store for the decidedly un-luxe.
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Everything inside and outside both of those stores fit and supported
the brand perfectly, like an ecosystem.
You don’t have to describe the feel of Starbucks or Walmart. You
just know what the experience is automatically, and that knowledge
creates loyalty for the appropriate few.
But …
How do you make that happen for your ittybiz?
We’re glad you asked.
You’ve reached the end of the sample for 300.
You can continue reading the sample for Copywriting,
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You are reading COPYWRITING. Look at you, still going strong!
Page 37
Page 38
First, The Promise
For once in my life, I wrote the book before I wrote the introduction.
Let me tell you, it’s a lot easier. (There’s your first piece of advice.
Write the book first.)
Why we wrote this book
About five years ago I (Naomi) was approached by the publisher of a
copywriting course, asking if they could send me a review copy of
their course. They thought perhaps I might like to be an affiliate of
theirs.
It was a good course. It came in a binder and it was really heavy, and
it was $400, but other than that it was pretty good.
When the affiliate manager touched base with me later, she asked me
what I thought about the course.
It was good, I said. But where was the stuff for people who weren’t
trying to become professional copywriters?
“Yeah,” she replied. “We don’t really do that.”
Hmm. Okay.
Maybe six months later I received a similar invitation from a fairly
well known direct response copywriter. Would I like to take a look at
his course?
Of course!
It was a good course. It came in three binders and they were really
heavy, and it was $1600, but other than that it was pretty good.
Page 39
When we got in touch again, I asked the famous direct response
copywriter the same question I asked the affiliate manager six months
before.
“Yeah,” he replied. “I don’t really do that.”
By this time in my career I felt brazen enough to ask why.
“Nobody buys that.”
Not at $1600, no. I would imagine not.
About a year after that, the owner of a prominent copywriting
website approached me about co-creating a course together.
I will not lie to you. I was very excited. (Ask Jamie about it some
time.)
When it came time to talk about the details, it came out that they
weren’t actually interested in making a product about copywriting.
“Huh?” says I. Clearly they had not approached me on the strength
of my vocabulary. “Why not?”
“Nobody wants a copywriting product. They’re afraid of it. They
think it’s too hard.”
“Uh… they do?”
“Yeah. Or they think they don’t need it because they’re already good
writers.”
“Oh.”
“Plus it’d be a bitch to make.”
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We didn’t end up making a product together. On my end, it’s because
I really wanted to make a copywriting product. On their end, it was
probably because I only speak in interjections and hesitation devices.
I never really got over it.
I refused to believe that people wouldn’t want a straight copywriting
course that didn’t have “six figure” in the title. I refused to believe it
had to be hard. I refused to believe it had to be scary.
(I did believe it’d be a bitch to make, though, but they’re all a bitch to
make.)
What follows is the result of my disbelief.
Dave did the hard bits.
What you will get out of this book
The primary benefits of this book are as follows:
1. It is fun.
2. It is easy.
Since this book was written because of a combination of naïveté and
me feeling the need to prove a point, it is (literally) guaranteed to be
fun and easy.
They tell me fun and easy cannot be done.
Lord have mercy on the person who tells me that something can’t be
done.
Page 41
We’re going to teach you how to write much better copy for your own
stuff. Your sales pages and your blog posts and your newsletters and
your ads and whatever stuff you’ve got laying around in your head that
needs writing.
So, the promise?
Your writing will be better by the end of this book.
Your writing will be easier by the end of this book.
And you will have a good time.
We will NOT tell you how to get copywriting clients, how to bid for
jobs, how to raise your copywriting rates, or how to pad your
portfolio when you haven’t had any clients yet.
We WILL tell you about the political proclivities of country music
singer Toby Keith, the time I almost wrote a blog post entirely about
chili, and the astrological implications of sharing a birthday with
Dave.
As well as some other stuff.
Page 42
NOBODY IS THE BOSS OF YOU,
or How To Read This Book
Please answer the following multiple-choice quiz.
When an author tells you how to read their book, do you:
A. Follow their instructions to the letter. This is life, dammit, and life
has RULES.
B.) Shout, “YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!” and start reading
from the back on principle. Alternatively, hurl the book at the wall.
If you answered A:
Please start reading this book at the beginning and read straight
through until the end. Perform all exercises in order. Not because it
matters, but because that’s what you were going to do anyway.
If you answered B:
Please do exactly what you like. That’s what you were going to do
anyway. However, if you’re reading this on your computer, you may
want to exercise caution when throwing it at the wall.
The truth of the matter is, you can read this book however you
want.
If it were us, we’d read Copywriting Concepts first because the
individual Crash Course sections will be a lot easier to follow once
you’ve got the concepts under your belt. But it’s not like you lose the
game if you do it the other way around.
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Copywriting
Concepts
Page 44
Copywriting Concepts
OK. The next 315 words are going to be the hardest part of the
book, so brace yourself.
This is the part where we talk about copywriting concepts, and that’s
where most people get intimidated.
You do not have permission to be intimidated.
You are not going to learn anything complicated.
You are going to learn 19 things in bite-sized chunks that used to
seem complicated, but are in fact quite accessible.
“Primacy and recency”, for example, means, “the stuff at the
beginning and the end is usually the most memorable for the reader,
so those are good places to put your good stuff.”
That’s about as complicated as it’s going to get.
It’s kind of like those optical illusions. Somebody shows you a picture
and demands you tell them what you see. You’re like, “Dude. It’s a
vase.”
And they sit there, smug, asking you what else you see. And you’re
all, “If I saw something else, I would have said I saw something else,
wouldn’t I?”
And then you hate them.
Page 45
Except in this case, we’re going to say, “See how you only saw a vase
before? Check THIS out. If you look at these parts like noses and
these parts like chins, it’s kind of like two faces, right?”
Then you see it like two faces, and forever after, you always see it as
two faces. And you don’t hate us.
When we explain how copywriting concepts work, it’s like seeing the
other side of the illusion. You’ll understand why copy is written the
way it is, and you’ll immediately be able to start seeing the patterns
everywhere you look.
All that exposure to really simple tactics and patterns will make you
less intimidated to try it yourself. And then you will try it yourself and
you’ll realize you’re better at writing copy.
Welcome to the no-intimidation zone. Please make yourself
comfortable.
Who’s reading this sh*t, anyway?
(Writing for your desired majority.)
The first question to answer – or at least consider, if you’re not in the
position to answer it yet – is who is going to be reading the thing
you’re going to be writing.
We’ve heard it said many times that your writing, especially if it’s
online, should be accessible to anyone. If you have a sales page, for
example, you should write it so a stranger from Bhutan could come
in through Google and be just as interested in your product as
someone who’s been following you for three years.
That is terrible advice.
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This advice makes the blank page even scarier than it already is,
which is pretty scary indeed. You have to write something that could
appeal to anyone? And everyone?
Traditional marketing advice suggests that you should figure out who
your “reader” (or customer or lead) is based on your target
demographics, or the people you want. What’s their gender? Their age
range? Their income bracket? Are they liberal or conservative? Do
they have children in the home? Do they prefer Mini Wheats or
Chocolate Cheerios?
Based on that theory, you need to know your reader’s or buyer’s taste
in breakfast cereal before you can write a word.
That’s terrifying.
Terrified people seldom write great copy.
Yes, it’s a good idea to know a bit about who’s reading and cater to
them. It’s a good idea to think some basic thoughts about who you
want to be reading, and cater to them, too.
If we were starting from scratch, with nobody reading at all including
our own mothers, yes. You may as well figure out who you WANT
to be reading, and write for them.
But for the normal writer who is not appearing out of the ether for
the first time, it’s easier to just think about who is reading. Who’s
already warm? (When we say “warm” here, it means they know you,
or they come referred by someone who does. “Cold” would be
people who come out of the blue, like search engine traffic, or people
who have clicked on ads.)
In our case, most of our buyers are women over the age of forty, so
we tend to make references and examples that will appeal to them.
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But it’s not like a 34-year-old straight male reader is going to say,
“Husband? HUSBAND? I can’t read this drivel!” and quit IttyBiz for
good.
Most of our readers have also been around for a while, so we’ll often
refer to past products, or make references to things that have
happened in the past. But it’s not like a reader who just got onto our
mailing list is going to say, “Emergency Turnaround Clinic? I’ve
never heard of that! These people must be morons!” and mark us as
spam.
Writing to the majority is like the old sales page writing advice that
says you should write to one person. The idea here is that you’ll have
a whole lot easier time writing if you’re thinking of one specific
person when you write than if you’re trying to come up with
something that will be resonant or applicable to the whole world.
This is especially important when it comes to writing sales
pages.
Yes, it would be lovely if our gentleman visitor from Bhutan bought.
But if you’re primarily making products for your own audience, or
the type of people who would be inclined to be part of your
audience, write for them.
Screw you, Bhutan guy.
If you write for Bhutan guy, you’re going to come off like a used car
salesman to your own readers. If we wrote for Bhutan guy and you
saw it, you’d be like, “What the hell happened to Naomi and Dave?”
We don’t want that to happen, so we write everything for you. If
Bhutan guy likes it, he’s welcome to join the party. If not, we’d rather
write something you’re going to like than make some generic, onesize-fits-all crap for him in the hopes he might give us $50.
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We’d rather have you than his $50.
How to do this
If the majority of your readers are warm, write for warm readers. This
means you can refer back to the past more, discussing things your
readers already know about without explaining them, and make (a
FEW) inside jokes. Write as if you are writing to a friend or
colleague.
If the majority of your readers are cold, write for cold readers. This
means you take a slightly more distant approach. You still write to
their demographics – if they’re probably women, you can write
assuming they’re women – but take your time explaining things.
Write as if you are writing to a nice stranger.
Exercise for Who’s Reading This Sh*t, Anyway?
For your next piece of writing, whether it’s a blog post, a newsletter,
or even just a Facebook update, consider who’s reading it and how
you could tailor your piece to them a little bit.
It doesn’t have to be a huge thing.
If you’re writing a blog post and a lot of your readers have children,
throw in a little parenthetical aside saying something like, “Please tell
me your kids do this, too.”
If you’re writing a newsletter and a lot of your readers are
traditionally employed, say something like, “Raise your hand if your
boss has done this.”
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If you’re writing a little Facebook update and a lot of your Facebook
friends are local, ask a question about how everybody’s handling the
weather.
(All of these examples create real or perceived interaction as well,
which is a nice little bonus. You’re not just doing something to
identify with them, you’re also creating a space where people could
interact with you, even if only in their own heads.)
If you’re feeling a little braver, you can craft a piece from scratch on a
topic that would be of interest to your majority reader. It won’t
alienate non-majority people nearly as much as you think it will.
If you’re writing a sales page, see if you can throw in an anecdote
about something your most likely reader will identify with. Even one
line will do.
If you can’t face writing today, go back and change something you
wrote in the past. Even one line. The first step is the hardest. Once
you get that out of the way, it gets easier from there.
The Takeaway:
If most of your readers are warm, write for warm.
If most of your readers are cold, write for cold.
Don’t worry too much about everybody else.
Page 50
It was a dark and stormy night.
(Leading with a story.)
There’s not much to do in the Yukon in winter. It’s pretty cold, for
one. Fairly snowy, too. It makes going out to the bar or the park a
little more challenging than it is for those of us in balmy southern
Ontario. (Temperature in London, Ontario at the time of this writing:
seven degrees Fahrenheit.)
One of the downsides of it being cold and snowy – apart from the
cold and the snow – is that it’s pretty tough for anything exciting to
happen. If it’s too cold for you, it’s too cold for everybody else, so
the circus isn’t exactly coming to town.
Official storytellers in the Inuit culture thrive in winter, and not just
because the listeners are too cold to do anything else but sit and
listen.
Jack brought back a photograph from the local children’s museum, a
picture he’d taken of a sign in their My Arctic Discovery exhibit.
It said:
Storytellers tell the same stories over and over because the stories are so good.
Sometimes they change an old story just a little bit. Sometimes they make up new
ones. If the new stories are good, they are told over and over and become old
stories.
The Inuit like stories because they help people learn.
What kind of stories? Where animals come from. Why the seasons change. What
is…
The photo cuts the sign off there, and that’s why we’re telling you
this today.
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Naomi is desperate to know what happens next.
What’s the last thing? What’s that other thing they tell stories about?
Whatisitwhatisitwhatisit?
It’s killing her.
She wants to know the end of the story.
In the Inuit culture, the nipiq is the voice of the storyteller.
In your ittybiz, you are.
=-=
We’re not going to bore you with what happens in the brain when a
person hears a story. (We’ve got at least a dozen more of these things
to write, and you have to read them. Who has time for this?) But we
will say that stories are pretty much unmatched in the How To Get
Your Point Across And Make People Actually Care round-robin.
We care about stories for a lot of reasons.
Stories make your writing less boring.
Stories make your readers more connected to you.
Stories suspend reality for a moment, drawing your reader into your
newsletter, your tutorial, or (especially) your sales page.
And storytelling, unlike copywriting, is something that tiny children
can do. We are biologically wired to do it.
Page 52
When you pick up the phone to talk to your best friend, the only
thing you do is tell stories. Translating that capacity to the written
word is not nearly as hard as you think it is.
Stories make learning easier. They make teaching easier. They make
bonding easier. They make connection easier. And they make writing
easier, because stories take up a lot of your word count, and then you
don’t have to think up so much to say.
What does a story have?
Well, fancy copywriters put lots of extra stuff in there like nested
loops and pattern interrupts – we teach you those later in this book,
don’t worry – but at it’s heart, a story is just a beginning, a middle
and an end. (That definition, by the way, belongs to Aristotle. If it’s
good enough for Aristotle, it’s good enough for us.)
Tell us what happened. Ideally, do that in order. And be mindful of
why we should care. We might care because we’re learning something
important. Or we might care because it’s entertaining as hell. Both
count.
Tips on storytelling for the nervous:
1. You don’t need a moral, but you do need a point. Why are you
telling this story? When you have an answer to the question, face the
writing task by asking yourself, “What’s the best way to get that
across?” Just asking the question will make your story tighter.
2. Be brief, especially if you’re new at this. The longer your story, the
more chances the reader has to get bored. Length isn’t everything.
Ahem.
3. Make your details better. Don’t say “big” if you mean “beefy”.
Don’t obsess, but at least try.
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4. Value quality over quantity when it comes to detail. Don’t give
three attributes when one will do.
5. Incorporate the senses. We pay far more attention when our senses
are involved. Donald Maass, author of Writing The Breakout Novel,
says that every fiction scene needs at least three senses. Taste and
smell count for two.
6. Pay extra attention in the nested loops, pattern interrupts and
primacy and recency sections of this book. You don’t know anything
about those yet because they come later in the book. It’s cool. Add
those techniques when learn them.
Exercise for It Was A Dark and Stormy Night
For your next piece of writing, see if you can start it with a story.
It doesn’t have to about something unusual like the Inuit tribe. It can
be as simple as “So I woke up this morning, and X happened. It
made me think of writing this for you.” (This isn’t a skill you have to
be a master at to get started. You just need to start making a bit of
storytelling something that feels natural to you.)
And if you’re feeling a bit nervous about getting into a full-blown
story, here are two very useful tips to help you get your feet wet.
• If you don’t have any ideas, think of something interesting
that’s happened to you in the last week or so, and see how you
can tie that into something you’ve written. (If you need a bit of
guidance on how to tie things in, check out the writing prompts
in the 365 Days of Honor and Celebration in the back of this
book.)
• Start reading other people’s content with an eye for story. Any
time you see something that screams “this is a story!” stop for a
Page 54
second and ask yourself “Hey, how can I do the same thing
that they did in my writing?” Paying attention to examples is a
really, really fast way to learn this.
Establishing relevance
(How to get people to read ALL of your copy)
In this section we’ll talk about how to get people reading your copy
in the first place, and how to keep them very, very interested in
reading it all the way through. It’s a pretty simple process, so you’ll
be able to start putting it into practice as soon as you’re done reading
this.
Basically, if you want people to keep reading your copy from start to
finish, you have to give them a damned good reason to believe it’s
worth their while.
People like to skim and scroll, and they give you about a split second
of consideration before they decide whether they are going to pay
attention or not.
Here’s how to make them pay attention.
First, remember that they’re not reading what you write as a favor to
you – there’s some benefit they want out of it. Your job is to make it
very clear to them that the benefit they want is contained in your
copy.
This sounds obvious. But it’s something that is really easy to screw
up, because when we’re not careful we tend to try and write things
that “sound good” without thinking of the reader’s attention span.
Page 55
Most people who tend to skim wouldn’t even make it down to this
part of what we’re writing right now, but you’re still reading. Why is
that?
One of the reasons is probably the title and the opening paragraph.
Take a look at them again. The two sentences in the opening
paragraph there for two very specific reasons. (Seriously, go and read
it again. We’ll wait.)
That first sentence is where we establish immediate relevance.
Notice the title above it – we make a promise there that we’re going
to tell you something. Then in the first sentence goes into just a bit
more detail about what you’re going to learn in this section.
Your headline (or title) is where you need to make a relevant promise
to the reader about what they’ll get out of your copy. They will
decide whether or not you will fulfill that promise based on your
opening statements. That’s why there’s specific detail in the first
sentence – to start building that trust.
The second sentence reinforces the “immediate” part of immediate
relevance. We tell you that you’ll be able to put this into practice as
soon as you finish reading this. That tells you that you’re going to get
a benefit very, very soon. That’s a powerful statement for the reader
and makes them want to pay attention.
Why this is still working as you read this text
We made a promise in the opening statement that you were going to
learn something of benefit from you, and the paragraphs after it
began to fulfill that promise. What that means for you as the reader
is that there’s a little bit of trust forming in your head that when we
say we’ll tell you something, we do.
Page 56
And each section of copy after that does the same thing. We had a
subheader underneath the first section that said “Here’s how to make
them pay attention,” and we told you. Ping! That trust just got a
little stronger.
Then the next subheader says “Why this is still working” and now
we’re explaining it. Ping! That trust just got a little stronger.
As long as you keep repeating the promise-deliver cycle, your readers
will want to keep reading, because you are keeping their interest.
You’re consistently delivering something of benefit to them, so they
develop a (well-earned) trust that you’re worth reading to the end.
How you can make this work in any copy you write
You can use this process in a lot more than sales pages – your blog
posts, articles and emails can have the same escalating trust built into
them. Even fiction can be written like this – set up something
interesting, deliver something interesting, and the pages get turned.
All you really have to do is this:
• Think of the primary benefits your reader wants out of
whatever it is that you’re writing. (Do they want to learn
something? Feel entertained? Feel moved?)
• Then think of how to summarize them into sections, each
with its own benefit (specific learning, something entertaining,
something meaningful, etc.).
• Then write each section of copy so that the beginning hints
at what’s coming, the middle delivers, and the end hints at
what’s coming in the next section. (Alternately, if the last part
feels awkward to do, you can add a subheader in between
sections as the way to promise what’s in the section to come.)
Page 57
How you can start getting good at this today
Find some piece of writing you’ve already done, whether it’s an
article, sales page or email you’ve written, and do a little bit of editing.
Think of the primary benefits your reader wants to get out of your
writing, and edit your opening so that it does a better job of
communicating what’s to come. Even if what’s to come is, “I’m
about to tell you a very funny story.” That’s still making a promise.
Then see where the copy naturally moves from one topic to another,
and find a way to edit in a good transition. Maybe it’s by adding a
subheader. Maybe it’s by adjusting the last lines of section one so it
leads into section two. That alone will take you a very long way in
getting your copy better than it is today.
If you want to make it even better, you can go into the body of your
copy and see if it’s clearly delivering on the promises you’ve made,
and edit it if it’s not. Your copy will become stronger, and more
people will read it, just like you’re doing, all the way to the end.
Or, you could say “Screw editing old stuff, I’m just going to write
something new.” In that case, you can start small. Just make a little
promise, and then keep it. A few promises in a row, and you’ve got
the system down. Now you know what to do – all that’s left is to
decide what copy you’re going to write next.
You’ve reached the end of this section of the sample.
You can continue reading the next section,
Page 58
Writing Prompts!
(With example ideas
from Naomi and Dave)
Page 59
Writing Prompts!
(With example ideas from Naomi and Dave)
Hey there. Naomi here.
Welcome to what might be your favorite section of this book.
Ha!
See what I did there? It might be your favorite section of the book. It
also might not. But it’s a nice easy way for me to introduce the
section, isn’t it?
Once upon a time, many years ago, I read a list of blog post ideas.
It was terrible.
Like, really terrible.
It was on one of those “pro blogs about problogging” that are only
really read by people who also want to write pro blogs about
problogging. (There was a huge rash of these blogs for a while, and I
use the word “rash” quite consciously.)
I thought to myself, “Self, this sucks. But it’s a nice idea. Maybe there
are more of these lists out there, ones that perhaps do not suck.”
So I Googled it. And then I went to my kitchen with the intention of
quietly drinking myself to death.
So you are not forced into the same predicament, I will summarize
the content for you.
Write posts with lists.
Page 60
Write really pillar posts.
Write posts that people will link to, ideally pillar posts, or ones with
lists.
Write how-to posts. Make sure your how-tos are pillar, and in list
format.
I think the questions on everybody’s mind here (other than, “How
much wine do you have to drink before you die?”) is WHEN THE
HELL DID PILLAR BECOME AN ADJECTIVE?
(I have now written “pillar” so many times in succession that it feels
like I’m spelling it wrong. This is like when my father used to make
me write, “I will always say please and not be rude” 300 times before
I was allowed to go to bed. Don’t try this at home, by the way. It
doesn’t work.)
These posts were very popular, and they got a lot of traffic, because
they were claiming to (and, to be fair, trying to) solve a very real
problem…
What the hell do I write about?
The problem was – and still is – it’s just not that easy.
Well, actually, I guess it is.
You can write very “popular” blog posts and newsletters and ezines
and columns and articles this way, if the metric you use to measure
popularity is pageviews or social media shares. This type of content is
very easy to share, and the headlines DO beg to be clicked when they
show up in your inbox or social media timelines.
Page 61
Headlines like these:
• 7 Weird and Wacky Ways To Lose Weight
• 7 Weird and Wacky Ways To Use Your New Quilt
• 7 Weird and Wacky Ways To Clean Mysterious Stains Off Your
New Quilt While Losing Weight And Quitting Your Day Job
To Become A Problogger
Yes, they’re clickable.
But they suck.
We wrote an entire book on creating a brand that doesn’t suck (shout
out to 300!) and we’ve written THIS entire book on writing stuff that
doesn’t suck.
And just because a piece gets traffic or “opens” or shares doesn’t
mean that it will engender one whit of loyalty, or be any good at all.
And we like it good here.
A few years after the tragic 101 Ways To Get Blog Post Ideas
incident, I found The Writer’s Book Of Matches, a tiny book
designed to help fiction writers beat writer’s block. I thought, why
isn’t there one of these for people who write something other than
novels?
(SARK has a similar list that is thoroughly delightful in Juicy Pens,
Thirsty Paper. But again, it’s really targeting fiction and memoir.)
So Dave and I had a long wine-fueled chat about what makes for
good content on an ittybiz blog, one that is not necessarily on the
topic of business, marketing or How To Make A Lot Of Money By
Page 62
Becoming A Marketing Consultant For Owners Of Tiny Businesses.
(A lot of these are cropping up lately. Hmmm.)
What follows is what we came up with.
We wanted ideas that would work for Etsy sellers, unschooling
coaches, web designers, astrologers, and past life regression
therapists. In theory, pretty much anybody could write on pretty
much any of these topics. Not all, sure, but most.
This list is designed to be used in tandem with 365 days of Honor
and Celebration. I in no way recommend you use all of these ideas,
nor many in consecutive succession. (This will only lead to you
looking like the most self-centered person on the internet.) But they
might be a good way to get started when you’re strongly
contemplating quitting business entirely and moving to Texas to
become a cocktail waitress.
We’ve included our own answers as best as we can for each of the
prompts. (Obviously the answers to some we can’t answer fully
because that would take a whole article, and then we couldn’t actually
write an article about them one day.) It seems helpful for some
students to see an example, and we’ve done our best to give you ours
in each case. Please forgive the self-indulgence.
Pick a piece at random, pick the one you like the best, pick the one
you wish someone else would write – you don’t have to do this in any
order. Just do what you like. We like it scattered around here. (Well, I
do. Dave doesn’t. That’s why I got to write this part.)
Pay special attention to the ones that you think you could never
write. They tend to work out the best. I know you don’t believe me,
but I don’t care because you’ve already bought my book.
Onward!
Page 63
The Prompts
1. What is the biggest misconception about what you do?
Naomi: In my case, I’d say the biggest misconception about marketing
is that it’s hard.
The biggest misconception about what I do is that it’s easy. I love my
job, but it’s very, very difficult.
2. What’s the most common question you get asked?
Naomi: The most common I get asked is whether or not I’m sleeping
with Dave.
I think we can all agree that would make for a very interesting blog
post. We’ll save it for a low traffic day.
The second most common question is “How do I start a business
with no money?”
My answer:
When you say “no money”, do you mean “no money” or “less
money than you’d like to have”? Most people say the first and mean
the second, and it’s really bad for your mojo if you walk around
saying you have no money when that’s not true.
If you truly have no money, you should probably try to get your
hands on some. Even $500, and you don’t have to have it all at once.
Page 64
Buy a course, or an or two of hour of coaching, from an expert you
trust very much. (Confirm before you lay out your cash that their
method works for someone who’s broke. Like, don’t buy a course on
Facebook advertising, because you need money for that.)
Do what they say to the letter, to the extent that your resources allow.
Work very hard.
Expect very little.
And when you DO make money, even a tiny bit, reinvest it.
Repeat for a long time.
3. What would you do if you weren’t doing this?
Naomi: Easy. I’d write novels. Long, sprawling novels full of
romance and scandal and intrigue and spiritual torment. Maybe
ghosts, too.
I’d be like Diana Gabaldon, except all my books would be the long
ones. Because, seriously? Why write 890 pages when you could write
1472?
(I imagine Dave would say the same thing, except without the
romance and ghosts. Either that or “astronaut”.)
4. What’s an important lesson you learned the hard way?
Page 65
Dave: That you have to put more attention on promoting yourself
than you do on getting other people to promote you.
When I started out (way before blogs became mainstream), it felt like
the only way to get subscribers and traffic was to get other people to
promote me to their lists. So I put tons of attention into building
relationships with people, but I didn’t get a whole lot of promotion in
return.
Eventually I realized that my problem was self-confidence; I didn’t
think I could grow on my own at a speed that would be worth it. But
once I started creating more content of my own (and not just
products), I started gaining more attention. Only later did I realize
that this was the strategy that all those other people – the ones I
wanted to promote me – had used themselves.
So the lesson is to spend more time building content and your list
and less effort on getting others to promote you. This way you’re
building an audience that’s yours from the very start, and not based
on “lucky breaks” from people who link or mention you.
You’ve reached the end of this section of the sample.
You can continue reading the next section,
Page 66
More Ideas!
365 Days of Honor
and Celebration
Page 67
More Ideas!
365 Days of Honor and Celebration
Hi there. Naomi again.
Sometimes, you have to do something crazy.
Many years ago, in an office I used to work in as a temp, I came
across a yellowed newspaper article with an entire year’s worth of
things to celebrate. Among the usual suspects – Valentine’s Day, St.
Patrick’s Day, Halloween – they had a celebration for every single day
of the year.
I used to stare at it a lot while pretending to make photocopies.
Years later I was in a novelty store (in West Virginia, of all places)
and saw a poster with the very same premise. I think it was called
“Every day is an excuse to party” or something. Sure enough, 366
reasons to have a party. (Granted, some were a bit of a stretch.)
I went online later to see if there was some kind of official list. (There
isn’t, although many people say there is, and they just happen to have
it.) I found a lot of websites, as well as Wikipedia. (The latter had a
pretty good listing of important stuff that had happened on every day
of the year, but what’s important is seldom what’s interesting.)
Eventually I found one website that had a list of everything any
government, state, province, municipality, or sponsor had deemed to
be an “official” day. It had everything from Martin Luther King Jr.
Day to Stewart’s Root Beer Day.
As I was looking through it, it occurred to me that it would make a
great list of article ideas.
Page 68
Some were a reach, I grant you, but that’s kind of what made them
fun.
I got to wondering… if I had to write a relevant, topical piece for
every day of the year based on what the “official” day was, could I do
it?
I don’t know what the answer is, honestly. Probably not. Or I could,
but some wouldn’t be very good. But there were a couple that I
thought of then that I can still remember to this day.
February 23rd, National Chili Day
Hmm. Chili on a website about small business development and
marketing. Tough one, yes?
Well, yes and no. I was reminded of a story from Carolyn See in her
book, Making a Literary Life. At the time I read it, this was by far my
favorite book on writing, mostly because it had nothing whatsoever
to do with writing. She tells the story of 18-minute chili vs. 18-hour
chili.
Carolyn’s father was a master chili chef. He could make him some
damn good chili. He was known especially for his 18-hour chili, a
laborious process that took – well, 18 hours, or thereabouts.
But sometimes you’re hungry and you can’t wait 18 hours for chili
perfection, chili held to the standards of art and literature.
Your main priority is eating food soon.
So he also had an 18-minute chili recipe, for a warm meal on a cold
day that was Damn Good Enough.
Page 69
There are a lot of life and business lessons to be found there, and it
seems like a Damn Good Enough article could be made out of a few
of them.
Doing the best you can with what you have, perhaps?
March 30, Pencil Day
Well, then.
Pencils.
Noble, yes, but fairly unappreciated.
What could I write about pencils?
I could write about rough drafts. I could write about mind-mapping.
I could find all sorts of tie-ins.
Eventually, I settled on The Art Of The Hand-Written Note.
(In hindsight, this also came from Carolyn See. Clearly my 21-yearold self was more influenced by her than one might realize on first
consideration.)
Our world is one of instant email, bite-sized tweets, and hastily
thrown together Facebook updates. Blog posts are ephemeral, articles
get lost in the clutter of the internet. It’s pixels, pixels and more
pixels, just… floating.
I miss getting mail. I miss sending mail. I miss tangible things.
I wish we still sent letters.
Page 70
There are literally two “people” that even know my home address, let
alone send me mail. One is my electricity company. The other is my
casino loyalty program.
My mother is a little hazy on the details of where I live.
I get some mail now – thank God my mailing list software makes you
put your office address at the bottom of every email – and I love
(almost) every piece of it.
The pieces that do not include death threats are pinned to my office
walls. A lot of people send me their picture, and I put those up on
the walls, too. And I wish we did more of that, as a culture.
I love seeing people’s handwriting.
I love seeing what kind of pen they used.
I love the tactile nature of it.
And so I thought it would be a really nice idea to celebrate Pencil
Day with a piece on The Art of the Handwritten Note.
And so, the list.
There are a lot of days in the year, and all but a handful of them have
holidays, observances or blatantly commercial sponsored events.
In the list that follows, you’ll find a lot that you can’t use, ever.
(February 14th, in addition to being Valentine’s Day, is also Condom
Day. Many people probably won’t blog about that, but who knows?)
But you’ll find a lot that you could.
I like to look at a list like this one and think of what I would write if I
absolutely had to. I’m very glad I don’t have to, mind you, but it’s nice
Page 71
to know that I could. And in realizing how very much I do NOT
want to write a piece about dressing up my pets, it does make me
think a little bit about dressing up the Self, and that is something I
could write about all day long.
Writing about radishes becomes writing about roots.
Broccoli becomes learning to accept things you don’t like.
Bananas become sweet things under bitter exteriors.
Eliza Doolittle Day (May 20th) could very well inspire a piece about
transformation or limiting beliefs.
Lasagna Day (July 29th) could become a series about layers.
National One-Hit Wonder Day (September 25th) could become
Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping. (“I get knocked down, but I get up
again.”)
Or you could just use National Hanging Out Day and National
Silence Day as the perfect excuse to cut yourself some slack and take
April 19th and 20th off.
So give it a look over, and see what speaks to you.
And if you find a tie-in for Appreciate a Dragon Day, I’d love to read
it.
Page 72
JANUARY
January boasts the honor of being Apple and Apricots Month,
National Child-Centered Divorce Awareness Month, and National
Mail Order Gardening Month.
It is also National Poverty in America Awareness Month, as well as
International Wealth Mentality Month. (It could also be National
Irony Awareness Month. I'll keep you posted.)
Weekly observances include Someday We'll Laugh About This Week
(the 2nd through 8th), National Fresh Squeezed Juice Week (the 17th
through 23rd) and Clean Out Your Inbox Week (the 23rd through
27th).
National Cowboy Poetry Gathering Week starts in January, but it runs
through until February 4th.
• Jan. 1. New Years.
• Jan. 2. Happy Mew Year For Cats Day AND 55-MPH Speed
Limit Day
• Jan. 3. Drinking Straw Day, JRR Tolkien Day and National
Chocolate Covered Cherry Day
• Jan. 4. Trivia Day and World Braille Day
• Jan. 5. Bean Day
• Jan. 6. Three Kings Day
• Jan. 7. I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore Day, International
Programmers Day AND National Tempura Day
• Jan. 8. Bubble Bath Day and Show and Tell Day at Work
• Jan. 9. Balloon Ascension Day and National Static Electricity
Day
• Jan. 10. National Cut Your Energy Costs Day and League of
Nations Day
Page 73
• Jan. 11. Cigarettes Are Hazardous To Your Health Day (the
rest of the days are grateful) and Learn Your Name In Morse
Code Day
• Jan. 12. Marzipan Day. (There are allegations that this day is a
FAKE. Scandal!)
• Jan. 13. Rubber Duckie Day and Public Radio Broadcasting
Day
• Jan. 14. Organize Your Home Day and Dress Up Your Pet Day
• Jan. 15. Humanitarian Day and World Religion Day
• Jan. 16. Appreciate a Dragon Day
• Jan. 17. Cable Car Day, Kid Inventors Day and Rid The World
of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day
• Jan. 18. Winnie the Pooh Day and Thesaurus Day
• Jan. 19. Popcorn Day, Tin Can Day and Get To Know Your
Customers Day (If we are among your customers, please know
that we both like popcorn and tin cans. Naomi is a Pisces, with
Aries rising and an Aries Moon. Dave is a Gemini, with Taurus
rising and a Pisces Moon. Both of us enjoy romantic dinners
and long walks on the beach. We hate rainy days and rude
people.)
• Jan. 20. Camcorder Day and International Fetish Day. I find
this combination hilarious.
• Jan. 21. National Hugging Day and Squirrel Appreciation Day
• Jan. 22. Celebration of Life Day and Answer Your Cat's
Questions Day. (“Mummy, where do kittens come from?”)
• Jan. 23. National Handwriting Day and National Pie Day
• Jan. 24. Belly Laugh Day, National Compliment Day and
National Peanut Butter Day. (Have I ever told you what lovely
taste in peanut butter you have?) Also, Talk Like A Grizzled
Prospector Day. Obviously.
• Jan. 25. A Room Of One's Own Day and Macintosh Computer
Day. (Do you think Virginia Woolf was an Apple fan?)
Page 74
• Jan. 26. National Peanut Brittle Day and Spouse's Day. (I can
think of the perfect gift!)
• Jan. 27. Holocaust Memorial Day, National Pre-school Fitness
Day and Fun At Work Day
• Jan. 28. National Kazoo Day, Thank a Plugin Developer Day
and National Seed Swapping Day. ("I BEG your pardon!" says
Naomi, in her mother's voice.)
• Jan. 29. Curmudgeon's Day and National Puzzle Day
• Jan. 30. Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day (although that's
actually on the last Monday of January, we thought it was worth
a mention.)
• Jan. 31. Inspire Your Heart With Art Day and Appreciate Your
Social Security Check Day. Hmph.
This is the end of the sample for this section. There are 11 more
months in the book. And the year, come to think of it. You can
pick it up now.
Pick up all 3 ebooks for $97 here:
Page 75

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