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What Just Happened? (As Verizon Customers Correct A HUGE Marketing Mistake By The Telephone Behemoth)

Verizon
A quick note before the year runs out on us: Customers are more in control than ever before.

Point: Recently, Bank of America retreated on its plan for a $5/month debit card fee.

Point: Today, Verizon retreats on its "we'll charge you $2.00 extra to pay your bill online" fee.

What were they thinking?

When they came up with that idea, I mean.

Here's the takeaway for every copywriter and other smart marketer:

You'd better start paying consistent and careful attention to your customers.

They're already in charge of your business.

Just don't make 'em show you. 'Cause you could get hurt.

Or deeply, publicly embarrassed... at the very least.  Like Verizon was, today.

Alright, with ears perked and eyes wide open, here's to a fantastic 2012 for each and every one of us!

David Garfinkel

Co-Founder, Fast Effective Copy

December 30, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Trick To Creating Irresistible Offers

Wilson-web

A few months ago I had the honor of meeting a legend, the Lion of Internet Marketing, Dr. Ralph Wilson.

Really. I mean it. The guy is one of my heroes.

But it gets even better.  He interviewed me on offers.

Ralph's a nice guy, but he's tough as nails as an interviewer.  Questions like:

⸧ How do you go about creating an offer?

⸧ Give me an example of how we might build a compelling offer

⸧ More tips?

⸧ Still more tips!

⸧ How do you add urgency?

I had zero advance knowledge of what he was going to ask me. He really did put me on the spot with some of those questions.

Fortunately, it was one of those days where everything went right! (I've put in a request for a greater number of such days next year.)

If you are looking for some can-do information on how to improve your offers, make sure you watch this video.  It's only 7 minutes 16 seconds long, and, Lion that he is, Dr. Wilson squeezed value out of every second :)

goo.gl/cQdeI

David Garfinkel
Co-founder, www.FastEffectiveCopy.com

December 22, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (1)

What I Realized About Copywriting From Watching A Football Game On TV

9356132_s

I’ve been following the rising fortunes of the University of Michigan Wolverines, and yesterday I heard some commentary from ESPN analyst Urban Meyer that really got me thinking.

If you follow football, you know that Meyer has been an extraordinarily successful college football coach as well, at the University of Florida.

During Michigan’s rout of the Nebraska team, the question came up among the commentators: Why was the team’s defense doing so much better this year than last year? Many of the same players, but awesomely improved results.

I’m pretty sure it was Meyer (hard to tell for sure when listening to three trained “announcer” voices amid a lot of crowd noise) who said that there’s a progression of feelings among players that determines performance:

Trust, in the coach, leads to belief.

And belief, in turn, leads to confidence.

Confidence, then, is what gets the team to play better, and get those awesomely improved results.

That little chain of cause and effect has had my head spinning.

What he said is true, in my experience, and not just in football.

Certainly in copywriting and sales.

If people trust you, they will believe you.  They will have confidence in what you say.  And they will be more likely to buy.

I think this formula is true in all of life, too.

It probably sounds simplistic to the disengaged.  That is, if you do not have skin in the game and do not understand difficulties of actually establishing trust in this world, but are looking at it from afar, you might think, “Well, that is like saying water is wet, and wetness causes dampness, which leads to humidity.”

All well and good.

But once you are actually in the fight and you’re depending on finding people you can trust and gaining the trust of others, Urban Meyer’s statement becomes profound and worth remembering.

So let me ask you:

  • Do you agree?
  • How do you gain trust in others, in your copy, and otherwise?
  • What leads you to trust?  To distrust?

This stuff matters.  I’d like to know what you think.

David Garfinkel

Co-founder, FastEffectiveCopy


November 20, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (8)

Fear of, and Bolting from,
The National Enquirer

All literature is gossip.
        --Truman Capote


5384561_sMy client and friend Susan Bratton asked me to review a sales video.

Suz is no newbie; the video is for a product that has already made six figures in sales in a launch.

And she has dozens of other online products.

One of my criticisms of her video was that she was using too much abstract and conceptual language, and she needed to get down to earth and write more of her copy in visual, visceral, emotional, concrete terms.

She asked me how to do that.

It's hard to give direct instruction.  But I urged her to look at the writing techniques used in The National Enquirer, since they do that kind of writing so very well.

She came back to me a day later, baffled and a little put off.  And, she asked for clarification.

She liked the email I wrote her in response so much that she urged me to share it with you in this blog.

Here it is, slightly redacted to respect her privacy and confidential issues in her business -- and with one addition at the end:


Fair question.  But I wonder if you are asking me this question in the context in which I suggested you read the Enquirer?

As I remember, you said:

Where can I get examples of how to write more viscerally/visually/emotionally?

And as I recalled, I did not say:

Suz, follow the approach, mindset, context and worldview of the National Enquirer word-for-word.  Adopt your entire way of writing to model it, lock-stock-and-barrel.

What I said, as I remember it, was, you can find examples of this more conversational and direct, emotional, connected style of writing, in the way that the Enquirer writes.

For example, compare this, page 6, October 24, column 1, paragraphs 3, 4, and 5:

"The 5-foot-7 mother of six has slipped to a near skeletal 97 pounds, sources say, and her partner Brad Pitt is concerned that she may be popping weight-loss pills to boost her energy level.

"'Angie used diet pills a few years back, and everyone around her believes that she's started up again,'" says a source.

"'She's burning the candle at both ends - juggling career demands with her humanitarian work and trying to keep up with her rambunctious kids.  Angie believes the pills give her energy to help her get through the day.'"

Now, that reads like the way people talk when they're gossiping -- which is a lot like what copy needs to read like -- and it reads very concrete, emotional, visceral and visual.

Compare that in concrete, visual, visceral, and emotional qualities to this passage you wrote for your video script:

Every relationship is like a snowflake. Your specific situation is infinitely unique with it’s own history and hungers and demands personalized tactics. Like a new house where the floor plan is set and you personalize with flooring, paint and lighting that fits your style. Start with the 4-step floorplan:

- Establishing Polarity

- Overcoming Resistance

- Seductive Psychology

- Seductive Sexuality

Then you personalize your turn-around plan from the strategies of more than a dozen of the world’s leading seduction experts I hand-selected for their deep expertise in situations like yours.

What you have written there is far enough removed from the immediate here-and-now of visual/visceral/emotional experience as to have a negative effect on your level of engagement with the reader, and your sales.  To disconnect, and reduce response.

Here is a partial rewrite of the above:

Your relationship is unique to you and your woman.  You have laughed together, fought with each other, known the bitter and the sweet. But if you're like many couples, it's cold and dark and unhappy when you're together much more than when you first met -- and you have no idea what to do about it.

Especially when you're in bed.

I'll show you, step by step, how to turn back the clock and get the juices flowing again! It's amazingly easy and it will lead to nights of wild, almost magical, passion. Nights that, until now, you thought were long gone, never to return!

My proven four-step action plan (it has worked for thousands of men) is simple.  Anyone can do this. And here's the good news: You don't have to be a movie star, a celebrity athlete, or The Most Interesting Man In The World. :)

Step one is creating the Sexual Tension that she craves (and so do you).  I'll show you exactly what to do.

Step Two is melting her Ice Queen façade (she wants you to, but she doesn't know how to tell you to do this. Lucky for both of you, I do... )

---

and so on. Plain, roll-up-you-sleeves, face-to-face English.

Like you'll find in the Enquirer in just about every single article.

Now, am I a fan of the hammer-and-tongs, do-everything-we-can-to-destroy-the-lives-of-celebrities spirit of the Enquirer?

You mentioned you weren't.

I'm not either, Suz.

But I have a paid mail subscription and have had it for about 17 years!

Because the writing itself is actually quite brilliant in its simplicity and dy-no-mite powerful in its emotional impact.  That's why I asked you to look at.

I have learned tons about how to communicate with people across a wide spectrum of socioeconomic and psychographic categories, by reading this publication every week.

Without ever having to compromise what I hold near and dear, myself.

Get agnostic about what they're writing about and look at how they use words and particularly how they describe people and situations to elicit emotion and evoke experiences.

And here's the part I didn't tell Suz, but I'll share with you now:

I have a youtube video called "How to Read The National Enquirer."

If you haven't seen it yet, take a few minutes -- it's a real treat!

link to video

David Garfinkel

Co-founder, www.fasteffectivecopy.com

P.S. The day after I posted this, Copywriting Authority Bob Bly sent out a newsletter revealing a marketing secret of The National Enquirer.

He was kind enough to allow me to post his newsletter text here.

October 30, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (3)

The Marketing Legacy of Steve Jobs

Steve_Jobs_Headshot_2010-CROP2 The media has been saturated the last couple days with memories of Steve Jobs.

Here’s mine — it lasted about two seconds.  It was the late 1980s, and I was at a press conference. All I remember was he was speaking. I don’t know what the press conference was about, or who I was freelancing for at the time.

For a brief moment, I caught his eye. I remember a distinct impression that I got as he looked back into my eyes. It was something I’ve never seen or experienced before or since.

He had a smile on his face — a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. The look in his eye said to me, “Just watch what we’re going to do!”

What he did, of course, was take an impossible concept — a warm and connected digital device, the Macintosh — and use it to lead Apple to becoming the world’s most valuable company, in hard and cold dollar terms. With a string of similar products: the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad.

And a company culture that had all of the irresistibly magnetic qualities of a cult.

At another time, he told a reporter that his goal was to “put a ding in the universe.”

Well done, my two-second friend. You definitely accomplished your goal.

How he did that, what he did, and how it has affected us -- those are what fascinate me the most.

I am certainly looking to find those things out. I don’t pretend to know that much about them yet.  I have a few clues, though, and I’d like to share them with you here today.

The first clue is that he was probably more fluent in the language (and non-verbal experience) of emotion than anyone else in Silicon Valley.

He didn’t talk in bits and bytes. He talked in you and me.

Here is what he said during his famous Stanford commencement speech in 2005:

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

Interesting stuff. Really profound, but easy to understand.

Can you imagine any number of smartest-guy-in-the-room Silicon Valley honchos even lip-synching the words?

I can’t.  It takes an emotional genius to say something that simple and yet that universally connecting.

The second clue is that he didn’t consider customers a necessary evil or an annoyance to be tolerated. He knew that they were the lifeblood of his business.

A lot has been said about how he didn’t listen to customers, he told them what they wanted. That he destroyed entire segments of the industry -- desktop computing, the use of the floppy disk, even the use of the CD drive in the latest MacAir -- out of his own visionary arrogance.

But it may not have been that simple.

Or even that way at all.

Yesterday I heard Netscape pioneer Marc Andreesson talking on Charlie Rose’s interview show.

Andreesson said Jobs was frequently seen in the evening at the Apple store in Palo Alto, talking to customers, asking them about their experience with the products.

Of course, this seems just like Jobs.

But remember, he was CEO of the corporation that kept playing tag with Exxon-Mobil to be the most valuable corporation in the world by market capitalization, earlier this year.

So can you imagine Rex Tillerson going down to the local Mobil station to ask customers how they liked the gas?

(Nothing against Tillerson. I don't know anything about him and in fact had never heard of him until I just Googled him a few seconds ago. And he looks like a very civic-minded and engaged person, outside his job as Exxon-Mobil CEO. But as I stare at his corporate photo on the company site, I have a hard time imagining him mixing it up with refueling motorists.)

The third is how high a priority Steve Jobs placed on aesthetics... and how he, as best I can figure out, not having any inside information, refused to compromise.

When I made the switch from Windows to Mac a little over a year ago, I found I actually looked forward to working on it and looking at the screen. It was like the difference between driving a Camry and driving a BMW. Both get you where you’re going... but one is really fun along the way.

Aesthetics and user experience. Brian McLeod, My partner in Fast Effective Copy, is a Mac-maniac from way back.

Look at this video he did for us and you can see the impact Steve Jobs’ sense of aesthetics has on his work.

It’s no coincidence that every film coming out of Pixar, the animation studio Jobs created, was extraordinarily profitable in the marketplace.

I know a number of my Mac-maniac friends felt they had some kind of personal connection to Steve. I didn’t and I don’t. I didn’t know the guy. I had all of two seconds of actual personal connection with him.

But I feel a warm connection in spirit to who the man was—and what he stood for.

And that’s good enough for me.

I’m sorry we lost him on Wednesday and I’m grateful for what he brought to us while he was here.

David Garfinkel

Co-founder, Fast Effective Copy

October 07, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (15)

Tales From The Studio, Or: Do You Speak (and write) to the BEST in people... or to the WORST?

Director
Whether you are writing copy, managing people, or trying to coax the best performance from an artist, it's all about the same thing: inspiring people to take the action you want them to take.

Some words of wisdom from a man who has been around the block, Wally Amos:

It has been said that common sense is not so common. When I was an agent in show business, attending a recording session or a television taping, and the performer would miss a lyric or flub a line, the producer or director would stop the tape, have a friendly chat with the artist, and announce, "OK, let's do another take. We're rolling; take 25."

Why is it when people make a "mis-take" in business we get so angry, and our response is anything but friendly? It would help us all to remember the times we made a mis-take and realize we are all in training and in the process of becoming a better parent, student, friend, employer and employee.

—Wally Amos, writing in the Costco Connection

Yeah, yeah, so it's great Mom-Flag-And-Apple-Pie advice.

And besides that, what if you're not in show business yourself?

Well, first of all: You are in show business, whether you realize it or not.  Everyone's watching.

And second: For copywriters in particular—When your reader has grasped your offer and gets the sense that you know who he or she is, the next (often subconscious) question on their mind is:

"Is this guy on my side?"

Think about that, and about what Wally Amos said, when you set your emotional trajectory the next time you write.

David Garfinkel
Co-Founder, Fast Effective Copy

P.S. If you like what you just read from Wally, I have a treat for you.

After I originally made this post, my friend Michael Senoff offered me this link to an interview he did with Wally Amos.

July 29, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (20)

Finally, Instant Online Access To Copywriting Templates™...
And A Whole Lot More

5094160_s From the moment I introduced Copywriting Templates™ seven years ago, people started insisting I take it out of paper and CD/DVD format and put it online. (Or at least it seemed like people were clamoring for it right away.)

That was because this time-saving, brain-boosting, profit-generating copywriting toolkit was just a LITTLE inconvenient to use in dead-tree form.  I knew it. But some things take time, and now, what I have been referring to as "Project X" is ready.

My friend and partner on other products, Michel Fortin, referred to the original version as "a swipe file on steroids."

Good call. If that was the case, the new version (which has a lot, lot more than the original product), is a swipe file on steroids... online! ☺

My partner on the new project is Brian McLeod. He and I have a complete description of what's included elsewhere, so I won't go into it here. You can find out more about Fast Effective Copy at http://bit.ly/lHHCTC. 

And there is a reason you should take a look right now.  For my newsletter subscribers and blog readers, we have an insanely low introductory price.  That expires noon Pacific on Wednesday, June 8. At that point the price goes up 50%.

There's a lot more for you to find out and I hope you do by visiting our site.

And if you were one of the people clamoring for me to put this online... thanks for your patience.  I think you'll like what you see!

David Garfinkel
Co-Founder, Fast Effective Copy


June 05, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Do You Recognize The 7 Deadly Sins That Could Be Killing Your Online Sales?

IStock_000015590109XSmall When was the last time you visited a Web site and asked yourself what you were doing there — and in that moment wondered if it wouldn’t be a better idea to go watch a YouTube video instead... or check your email... or do anything besides stay on that Web site?

Now imagine someone else was that person looking at a Web site and getting confused... or frustrated... or bored out of their skull.

And now, suppose the Web site someone else was looking at... happened to be your Web site.

Ouch! Someone having that reaction about your Web site?

Not good.

But that’s exactly what’s going to happen, if you don’t steer clear of these Seven Deadly Web Site Sins:

Deadly Web Site Sin #1: Putting a large, confusing, moving, obscure logo at the top of your home page

I found a technical services firm’s site with the image of a spinning, transparent globe on a pedestal connected by spokes radiating outwards, to gadgets -- odd shapes that looked something like people, and other ones that looked like laptop computers.

I’m sure that mysterious logo meant something deep and important to the person who designed it, and possibly even to the owners of the company. But it sure as hell didn’t mean anything to me... and I bet other prospects felt the same way, if they bothered to think about it... which most prospects won’t even do at all.

Don’t fall into the “clever, abstract logo” trap. It’ll make people click away from your site. Instead, put an image up that clearly conveys a message about the end result that your business delivers... that customers want. A logo like that will make them want to find out more about you.

Deadly Web Site Sin #2: Having a landing page that takes forever to load (or, anything longer than a microsecond)

Your Web designer can make you or break you. Go for the first option. One way your designer can make you (as in, “make you lots of money”) is by providing you a great- looking page that loads fast.

Web pages that load slow are so Web 1.0.

And people you thought were going to be visitors to those pages are so... gone.

Deadly Web Site Sin #3: Using a “Splatter Home Page”

Let’s say you were to put a bunch of pictures and ideas in the blender, and turn it on “high” — without managing to put the cover on top of the blender first.

What you would have stuck on your kitchen ceiling would look an awful lot like a “Splatter Home Page” (many of which actually exist in great numbers, destroying conversion for businesses everywhere). These pages consist of images and ideas splattered up on the Web randomly, with no apparent rhyme or reason.

If you have noticed a lot of people shrugging their shoulders or furrowing their brows when they look at your site, this might be your problem. To fix it, either you need to learn more about reader-friendly design — or find someone who does.

Deadly Web Site Sin #4: Mistaking the Site for Your Own Personal Vanity Mirror

Hey, cupcake, here’s some breaking news: If your Web site is all about you, all about your company...

... but it gives short shrift to things like:

  • your customers
  • what’s on your customers’ minds
  • what your product or service will do for your customers
  • how your company is set up to make doing business more convenient

... so if your site is sorely deficient in things like that...

well, don’t worry how your totally self-centered focus will affect your customers.

Because you won’t have any.

Deadly Web Site Sin #5: Having a Stupid Slogan

It’s possible to have a successful business if the tag line of your business is full of empty words that add up to nothing — or, for that matter, words that could mean just about anything — but if you want to sell to new prospects with words on the Web, you’d better use words that ring a bell with your prospects and customers.

Here’s the kind of thing that doesn’t do that.

It’s typical, and it produces yawns, head-scratching, and the predictable response of “close browser window”:

Anticipating and Facilitating Organizational Improvement Since 1987

From a business consulting firm’s home page.

(Words changed ever so slightly to protect the guilty.)

Deadly Web Site Sin #6: Be Hard to Read and Painful to Look At

You might be surprised that an Ivy League Art School has such a horrendous site — but it does:

http://art.yale.edu

I found out about this awful home page is from the 2010 edition Web Pages That Suck. A year later, the page hasn’t changed much, except it’s less colorful. When I looked at the May 2011 version, it hurt my eyes to watch the flashing lights.

Maybe this will work for an art school trying desperately to appear cool, but it won’t work for a site that has to pay for itself. Your site needs to be easy to look at, not painful!

Deadly Web Site Sin #7: Setting Up A Venus Flytrap Lead Capture

Remember Ned Ryerson, the insurance salesman from hell in the movie “Groundhog Day? ” The kind of guy who gives high-pressure salespeople everywhere a bad name?

Ned’s biggest problem, seems to me, was that he started closing the sale (or trying to) before he ever established rapport, qualified his prospect, or demonstrated so much as a scintilla of value.

In a word, it made him obnoxious.

The Venus Flytrap is a flower that snaps shut on spiders and insects when they touch two of its delicate hairs within a 20-second timespan. The flora version of Ned Ryserson.

The Web site version of Ned is the site that demands your contact information before it has said, “Hi... hello... how are you... what are you looking for?... here’s a little taste of what we offer. ”

One kinda sad example I found was for a trade school’s Web site. As soon as you get there, in the upper right-hand corner, a huge window pops up saying “FIND OUT MORE TODAY” and immediately asks for your email address, or to call an 800 number.

Uh... no thanks.

The Biggest Secret to Keep Your Web Site from Tanking

As with many things in life, making your Web site work does not require black magic, the strength of Hercules, or more money than Bernie Madoff was hoarding at his peak.

All it takes is a little common sense.

Ask yourself:

If someone is looking to buy what you sell when they come to your Web site, what could possibly go wrong?

Make a list of all the problems that could come up. (See the 7 Deadly Sins list, above, for help with your list of problems.)

Then... just go fix them.

David Garfinkel
Co-Founder, Fast Effective Copy

May 15, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (7)

Satire and Spoof Hit Internet Marketing

The Internet, April 1, 2011

IStock_000013303706Small

The way you know an industry has made it to the big leagues is when it has its own niche version of The Onion mercilessly making fun of it.

So by that yardstick, you could say today April 1, 2011, Internet Marketing has arrived.

“The Moron Letters” (a blatant takeoff on the late mega-copywriter Gary Halbert’s “Boron Letters,” which he wrote to his son while serving a prison term) has a trumped-up female jester named “Casey Porter-Pierce.” She writes preposterous emails to such Internet Marketing icons as John Reese, Jeff Walker and my old friend Marlon Sanders.

“Moron” in this case means “idiotic on purpose” (referring here to the person who purportedly wrote the letters... not the Internet Marketers!).

If you have a little too much time on your hands – and you don’t mind some rude, juvenile humor – then you might get a giggle or two out of this foolishness.  (I did.)

Head on over to:

www.themoronletters.com

_______________________________

In other April Fool's news, Google's at it again with Gmail Motion.

This almost believable spoof (it had me going for a while) professes to let you write your email with hand signals and body postures.

To quote:

"The mouse and keyboard were invented before the Internet even existed. Since then, countless technological advancements have allowed for much more efficient human computer interaction. Why then do we continue to use outdated technology? Introducing Gmail Motion -- now you can control Gmail with your body."

Goll-ee!

Who woulda thought Big G woulda had such a good sense of humor?

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter

April 01, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (3)

How much better would your copywriting be... ?

Dilbert-wisdom ... if when you were in school, instead of being taught to think like an employee, you were taught to think like an entrepreneur?

I've spent a lot of time thinking about, and honing methods, to teach people copywriting. My conclusion: The number one advantage is mindset.  When you think like a copywriter, the writing part is comparatively easy.

And guess what?

Thinking like a copywriter boils down to thinking like an entrepreneur.

So it was with great delight and amazement this morning that I stumbled across Scott Adams' modest proposal to tweak our educational system to create better entrepreneurs -- something he managed to do himself when he was in college.

It's all described in this great post from yesterday on his Dilbert Blog.

I really like his work.  Besides being a very funny comic-strip artist, he's a remarkably practical and innovative thinker.

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter

✫ Scott Adams' updated, expanded version: Wall Street Journal article 4.9.11

February 08, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (9)

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