He told me he really liked an email I’d sent him and that he’d be writing about it in a future book. I had no idea he’d actually written about it until a lovely lady who works for a bank in Iowa contacted me out of the blue citing an article he’d written. I then discovered that it had appeared in many different publications, including:

• The Idaho Business Review — How to make your emails deliver the click
• Midlands Biz, Columbia, South Carolina — Set the hook, get the email
• Crain’s Detroit Business — Set the hook, get the click, capture the e-mail address, and bank the money

Since I don’t consider myself to be a copywriter, it gave me an ego boost. But more importantly, the article makes some very good points about what made Jeffrey “click” on the link in email. So I asked Jeffrey if I could share his article with you, and he kindly agreed. Here’s what he wrote:

I got an unsolicited email this morning that gave me no choice but to read it. My interest had to do with the subject line, the headline, the design of the content, and the copy.

The subject line was: Jeffrey, How to go from market penetration to domination. Ok, I clicked to open:

Then the headline: What one thing determines your success in business, more than any other single factor? Ok, I read it. The very tastefully designed letter said:

Hello Jeffrey,

This is Robert Clay.

If you were asked what one thing determines your success in business more than any other single factor, what would you answer?

Perhaps you’d say it was down to the quality of your product or service, or your people, or trust, or competitive prices, or availability, or profitability, or the number of customers who return to do business with you again.

These are the responses I get all the time. While they’re all good answers, the biggest factor that determines your success in the marketplace is one that is hardly ever written or spoken about … and in ten years not one person, out of the thousands I’ve asked, has been able to tell me what it is.

Perhaps you’ve heard me speaking on the subject in the past, or read about it in my book. The point is, once you know that one factor that makes a world of difference, you can take a few simple steps to move your business from market penetration to market domination.

Just look at Google who now have 85% of the global search engine market; and Apple, now the world’s most valuable technology company, who dominate the market for music players, smartphones, computers priced over £600, and now tablet computers too.

When times are tough you REALLY need to work smart. You need to do what Google, Apple and others have done. You need to know that one factor that can change everything for you.

That factor is explained in my book on Page 10. And you’re welcome to download a copy with my compliments, with absolutely no obligation. Just click here, enter your name and email address, click the confirm link on the email you receive and you’ll be taken to a page where you can download the book immediately.

If you enjoy the book, let me know. If what you learn leads to the transformation of your business, as it has for some, then be sure to let me know!

Click here to get your copy of my book, with my compliments.

Warmest Wishes,

Robert Clay
Marketing Wizdom Ltd

Ok, I clicked, subscribed and downloaded the free book, and immediately went to page 10 to find the answer… Eh, not so fast. That’s not what this lesson is about. The point of this article is for you to see what Robert Clay’s writing was about, what got me to “click,” and most important: how can you use these same elements in your communications – both as email cold calls, and email follow-ups.

The object of an email is NOT to get it opened and read. The object of an email is to get RESPONSE. Positive response.

Here are the “buttons” Robert Clay pushed to make me “click here” to get the free report and the answer to his headline question:

• He asked me provocative questions.
• He made me curious.
• The letter had value-driven engagement.
• The message had perceived value to me as a reader.
• The letter had a free “hook” offer that promised “value-first.”
• The letter had NO offer or obligation to buy anything.
• Clay offered new information.
• Clay offered success information.
• The letter offered something about or for ME!
• The letter had the lure of an “answer” about something I want.
• The letter met a now-need that I have (timing of the message). I want to know this, or have this, NOW.

The reason I’m sharing this information is not to prove a point, or even to provide an “AHA.” I’m giving you this information and challenging you to take a close look at the way you send emails, and the way they are responded to (or not).

Now that you have seen what makes me click, why not study what makes your customers and prospective customers click. What’s their button? What answers are they looking for? Where’s your value?

Or are you just “checking in” or “touching base,” making a feeble (and obvious) attempt at trolling for dollars.

In today’s world you have no choice but to be seen, known, and perceived as a person of value if you want to differentiate yourself, make the sale, and build the relationship.

Every sales oriented email you send should answer the question, “Where’s the value?”

If you want the answer to the question of what one thing determines your success in business, more than any other single factor? Go to www.gitomer.com and enter the word CLAY in the GitBit box.

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The New York Times best sellers The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Black Book of Connections, and The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. All of his books have been number one best sellers on Amazon.com, including Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Patterson Principles of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching!, and The Little Teal Book of Trust. Jeffrey’s books have sold millions of copies worldwide.

President of Charlotte, North Carolina based Buy Gitomer, he gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts Internet training programs on selling and customer service at www.trainone.com. He can be reached at (+1) 704-333-1112 or e-mail to salesman@gitomer.com.

What have you learned from the email and Jeffrey’s challenge to the way you write emails to achieve a response? Please share your thoughts below.

Brought to you by Robert Clay - Visit Website

Robert Clay is an entrepreneur and marketer who has been growing businesses since age 19. He has studied and mastered more than 200 of the world’s most successful marketing strategies, building-up an unprecedented 1.8 million page knowledgebase. For a decade he conducted an experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and has now launched an extraordinary new program that helps aspiring market leaders to create breakthrough marketing results.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to be notified when other new articles come up, just click here. To get your free copy of Robert's well regarded book “Learn how to grow your business … in just two hours: An introduction to low risk/high-return marketing strategies that will help you transform your business”, click here. If you would like to share any of your personal experiences, observations or the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, please leave your comments and/or thoughts below. We always love to hear from you:

Both tips are incredibly simple and easy to apply, but less than one in a hundred written pieces even begins to get them right.

Write as you speak

You’ve undoubtedly seen classic bureaucratic writing like this:

“Your letter of June 30, 2008, is acknowledged. Pursuant to the request therein, said request is hereby denied. Any and all appeals regarding aforesaid decision must be submitted in writing to the undersigned by July 15, 2008. There are no exceptions to the aforementioned procedure.”

You have to admit that is terrible! Nobody speaks in such a convoluted way in day to day life, so why write that way? Writing in such a detached manner demonstrates a disdain for others and suggests that you’re devoid of all human feelings and emotions. It is both belittling and disrespectful, and it makes the reader feel angry and resentful.

Yet amazingly some people are still taught to write that way. My former PA completed her law degree in 2005, and was taught that this was the correct way to write. She eventually conceded that emails or sales letters written that way would immediately be thrown out, unread. And that’s exactly what will happen to your letters, emails and other written communications if you write in a bureaucratic style.

My first million dollar copywriting tip is therefore to “write as you would speak” (within reason!). Be you. Use everyday language. Give your writing a human voice … and let your passion shine through. It is easier and quicker to understand … and infinitely more effective.

Use the “Point of YOU”

My second million dollar copywriting tip—a golden rule for effective direct response copywriting—is such a simple concept, yet it will have a profound impact on how your written communications are received.

It is to write everything from the reader’s perspective, not yours, and use the word “you” in your correspondence far more frequently than than the word “we.” The higher the ratio you have of “you’s” to “we’s,” the better the results you will achieve.

Here’s an eye-opening exercise you can do right now: Grab your existing letters, emails, brochures, direct mail pieces, adverts, website copy, company profile … and any other written communication pieces you use.

Next get a couple of highlighter pens. A red one and a green one. Then go through each written piece … and highlight with your RED pen every time you see the words “I”, “me”, “my”, “we”, “our”, “us” or the name of your company.

Then with your GREEN pen, highlight every time you see the words “you”, or “your” or the other person’s name, or the name of their company.

Now count the number of green and red highlights in each written piece. If your communication is effectively written in what we call “Point of YOU” format, you’ll have about 5 GREEN highlights (you’s!) to every RED (we’s) highlight.

If you have more reds than greens, which most people do, you have a problem. Your focus is on YOU, not on the reader … and your written pieces won’t perform anywhere near as effectively as they should. You therefore need to rewrite everything in a “Point of YOU” format.

Turning copy around

Here’s a headline written from the typical “we” perspective:

“Why We Can Teach People Everything They Need To Know About Selling On The Internet”

The headline is quite frankly ineffective. If you’re the reader, it’s all about how SOMEONE ELSE can teach OTHER people what THEY need to know about selling on the internet. There are no benefits in it for YOU, it doesn’t involve YOU in any way, and it gives no reasons why YOU should read on. You’d probably dismiss an ad like that in an instant, assuming you even noticed it in the first place.

Here’s how it could be rewritten in a YOU orientation:

“How You Can Discover Everything You Need To Know About Selling On The Internet”

What a difference! Suddenly there are strong benefits in it for you … and a good reason to read on if you’re in the market for such a service. I promise you it will work many times more effectively than the first headline.

Examples of the “we” perspective

Here’s an example of a typical ineffective advert, email or sales letter:

Dear John,

ABC Copiers services and supplies photocopiers, printers, fax machines and scanners. We have been trading in our industry for more than twenty years and we pride ourselves in offering the latest office automation technology with value for money and excellent local service, etc …

You’ve probably received endless letters and emails along these lines from people in many different industries … and most of them have probably been chucked out within seconds of opening. You may even—unwittingly—have written letters like this for as long as you can remember. DONT! it doesn’t work.

Here’s another example of a letter written from a “we” perspective, this time from a bank:

Dear Mr Smith,

I write further to your recent conversation with my colleague, Fred Jones, to introduce myself and the service I provide which I believe will be of interest to you.

I operate from Bank House where I act as Relationship Manager to various small businesses. My objective is to provide my customers with a specific point of contact for all their banking requirements.

In future, I would be delighted to act as your business manager and would suggest that we meet up to put faces to names and consider any ways I may be able to help you, etc …

Who is that letter about? It’s about the person who wrote the letter, not about you the reader! This extract contains thirteen “we’s” and three “you’s”. To be effectively written there should be no more then three “we’s” and more like thirteen “you’s”.

A letter written in “point of YOU” format

Now let’s look at a letter specifically written in “point of YOU” format. We wrote this letter for a recruitment consultant ten years ago. Recruitment is an extremely competitive industry and they found it hard to get through the door to see new prospects. They had tried letters, but none had worked. They tried everything they could think of but the door was still slammed firmly in their face … and they were fed up with it.

We first created a “behind-the-scenes” story setting out everything that happens—from a client perspective—when you deal with this particular recruitment consultancy. Extracts of that story were then used to create a three page “door opener” letter in “point of YOU” format. It was tested initially on twenty prospects who had already slammed the door in my client’s face. Fifteen responded within a few days requesting a meeting.

Ten years on, that letter is still used whenever the client wants to open new doors. It still works like crazy, and in the meantime his business has grown ten-fold. Here are the first few paragraphs from the 3-page letter to give you a flavour:

“Your Hassle Free Search & Selection Service…
Providing Valued Managers who Share
The Same Ethics and Drive as You”

Dear Mr Smith,

For your company to perform as effectively as possible, you need to find the right people for senior and middle management. Not only do you need people with the right background and experience … but you deserve people who’ll be valued members of your team.

By discussing with you your individual requirements, you’ll experience a hassle free process on which you can depend. Your time will be left free to manage your business until your shortlist is ready for presentation.

Understanding Your Needs

Our first meeting with you will identify your exact requirements. Firstly we want to know as much about you as possible. A history of your company; the nature of your business; your markets; your strategy and culture – the challenges that face you in the future.

You’ll feel more secure knowing that we fully understand the purpose of your role; its dimensions; the primary relationships (internal and external); the key result areas; the performance indicators; the decision making demands; the key competencies and the job challenges.

This information will enable a profile to be designed of the person who will best suit your requirements, enabling us to look for far more than just the right background and experience.

After the meeting this information will be fed back to you so that you can be sure we have a full understanding of what is required from your new team member before your recruitment drive commences, etc …

Can you see the difference! This letter is totally about YOU the recipient. Here is a company that is clearly dedicated to solving YOUR problems and making life easier for YOU. So much better than saying: “ABC Recruitment supplies permanent and temporary office staff. We have been trading in anytown for more than twenty years and we pride ourselves on providing value for money and excellent local service, etc …”

The extract above contains 29 “you’s” and five “we’s”. That’s roughly a six to one ratio. No wonder it worked so well, and it still works just as well today as it did ten years ago.

The advice that paid for itself in advance

I’ll finish this post with a quick story.

Around three years ago I received a phone call from a complete stranger. He owned a business and wanted to become a client, there and then, for a service we were offering at the time. I told him it would cost at least £16,000, and could be as much as £28,000. He didn’t bat an eyelid and wanted to know how soon he could go ahead.

Somewhat taken aback, I tried to explain what the service entailed, but he didn’t want or need to know. He had already decided he was going to work with us, and that was that. Because that was somewhat unusual, I asked him why.

It turned out that he knew another of my clients socially, and when they were chatting over a drink in the pub one day my client passed on to him the copywriting tips mentioned in this post. It made sense to him so he hurried back to his office and rewrote all of his copy without delay. His revised letters immediately produced TWELVE TIMES the response he had ever achieved before. The basic message was unchanged; it was sent to the same list of recipients; the cost of getting it out to them was no different; but the way it was written, in “point of YOU” format was entirely different.

He asked my client what it would cost to work with us. Since he’d already had a payback several orders of magnitude greater than any sum he would have to invest, he considered our service had already more than paid for itself in advance. He became a client. We developed a great relationship. He was introduced to many more low-risk/high-return strategies in the months that followed. He continued to get great results. It just shows you how powerful these seemingly simple copywriting tips are.

If you don’t implement these suggestions, who knows how much potential you’re leaving on the table. You can’t afford to make that mistake at the best of times, let alone in the middle of a major recession.

If you have any comments about this post, or would like to share the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, we’d love to hear from you.

Brought to you by Robert Clay - Visit Website

Robert Clay is an entrepreneur and marketer who has been growing businesses since age 19. He has studied and mastered more than 200 of the world’s most successful marketing strategies, building-up an unprecedented 1.8 million page knowledgebase. For a decade he conducted an experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and has now launched an extraordinary new program that helps aspiring market leaders to create breakthrough marketing results.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to be notified when other new articles come up, just click here. To get your free copy of Robert's well regarded book “Learn how to grow your business … in just two hours: An introduction to low risk/high-return marketing strategies that will help you transform your business”, click here. If you would like to share any of your personal experiences, observations or the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, please leave your comments and/or thoughts below. We always love to hear from you:

Since Google AdWords was launched in 2002 the face of advertising has been changed almost beyond recognition, writes Robert Clay of Marketing Wizdom. Using AdWords it’s possible to achieve things today that could hardly be imagined just ten years ago.

When Google was founded in 1997, the “big boys” in internet search like Yahoo, AltaVista and Inktomi were already well established. Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had little idea at that time how their company would make money.

Unlike so many other players on the internet they weren’t concerned with “spreading hype” about their product, or “locking users in” or “making their site sticky.” Instead their mission was to build a better mousetrap — in their case a search engine that would give people exactly what they were searching for, and as rapidly as possible.

If you were searching for car rental in Birmingham, or Geneva, or Seattle, they wanted to give you the very best and most popular car rental websites on the very first page of results.

They developed an amazing mathematical formula for figuring out who visited websites and why, and used that information in their search engine. Their entire focus was on improving their web search technology … and word soon started spreading about the quality of Google’s search results, the lack of clutter on the page, and the speed with which relevant results were obtained. It wasn’t long before long the world beat a path to Google’s door.

By June 2000 Google had indexed more sites than any other search engine, and from that point they never looked back. Today Google Search is the leading online destination in virtually every country in the world. According to Comscore, a leading internet marketing research company, some 61 Billion searches are conducted worldwide each month, with each user conducting around 80 searches a month.

We increasingly see the effect of this when carrying out customer surveys for our clients. In industry after industry Google Search is increasingly the first port of call when people search for a new product, service, supplier, job, home, car … or almost anything else. In some industries we have discovered that up to 85% of initial research is carried out through Google searches.

If you’re not geared up to benefit from this effect then you are probably losing out in a big way.

Since the introduction of Google AdWords in February 2002, Google themselves (as well as millions of businesses who use this form of advertising) have benefited massively from the vast volumes of online traffic generated by their quality approach to internet search.

Quality has always been the driving force at Google. So when they started selling their Google AdWords “Pay per Click” advertising programme, they were extremely concerned that the advertisers who would benefit the most would be those who also put out the most relevant messages.

With that in mind Google rewards you for being relevant, and they establish relevance by letting the people vote who are searching for your type of product or service. If people click on your ad it’s relevant. If they don’t, it isn’t.

If too few people click on your ad, Google eventually disables it. The higher the percentage of people who click on your ad, the less you will pay for the position you want and the more traffic you will receive. This creates a “Darwinian” effect, a deliberate natural selection process that weeds out bad advertisers and rewards good ones.

The bottom line is that both your ads and the content of your website must be relevant to what searchers are looking for. To harness the power and the business volumes that Google is capable of delivering to you, you need to understand the issues that your prospects and clients want to solve, or what they most desire … then show them how and why you can solve those problems and/or give them the outcomes they are seeking.

So, when someone types in “car rental in Birmingham,” you need to understand what they are really thinking. Figure that out and present it to them both in your Google AdWords ad and on the pages they will land on on your website, and you’ll beat your competitors by a country mile.

To develop the best possible AdWords ads, you need to test several alternative ways of putting your message across. I’ve come across instances where reversing two lines in a Google Ad, i.e. using exactly the same words but with the contents of the third line transposed to the second line and vice-versa, produced more than twenty times as much traffic for the same investment.

Unless you test the alternatives in this way, you’ll never discover what really motivates people to do business with you and how much potential you’re leaving on the table. Testing alternative approaches not only pushes your cost per click down, it simultaneously pushes your traffic up … AND you’ll be able to use the winning approaches you uncover to develop compelling offers, copy and high-performing headlines for any other media you may be using, from direct mail to print advertising and brochures etc.

As a case in point, we recently launched an email marketing campaign for a client who had used the same medium with reasonable success a number of times before our involvement. The campaign we develped produced very good results … Although the percentage of people who opened the email was virtually the same as before, the number of hot leads produced by the campaign per 1,000 emails jumped by 560% and at around 20% of the previous cost.

The new message, which was based on research into what really mattered to our client’s prospects and clients, was obviously much stronger than anything they had used before, and therefore was not worth tampering with.

To push response rates up further, it was therefore necessary to get more people to open the email in the first place. This entirely depends on whether or not the subject line compels more people to open the email. To discover the most effective subject line then simply becomes a matter of using Google AdWords to test 10-20 different possibilities. Within a matter of days it’s clear which headlines (or subject lines when applied to an email) are most appealing to users.

That established, you simply discard the lower performing alternatives, and focus on variations of the highest performing ads. Using the highest performing version in the subject line of the email should then drive up opening rates, which in turn should generate many more hot leads. The winning AdWords ads can also be used in dedicated AdWords campaigns to drive additional traffic to your website.

Best of all, once you test your messages via Google AdWords, then apply your findings to everything else you do, you should achieve a lot more response for the same investment in every other medium you use.

Getting responses is one thing. Converting that response into business is another. The better the copy on your website, meaning the better it demonstrates an understanding of the prospect or client’s problems and issues and the better you manage to address those concerns and provide the proof that you can do so, the more highly Google will rank you, the more traffic will be converted into business and the more revenues you will generate without spending a penny more on leads.

Best of all, you can use Google AdWords as a way of testing all sorts of assumptions so that instead of spending fortunes developing products, services and ideas that nobody wants, you’ll only ever have to invest a few £ hundred — or in the worst case a few £ thousand — to discover what people really want.

Harnessing Google’s power by approaching your marketing in the quality manner that Google rewards, allows you to obtain solid marketing results more quickly and easily and at much lower cost than virtually any other alternative. No wonder Google is such a phenomenal success!

Brought to you by Robert Clay - Visit Website

Robert Clay is an entrepreneur and marketer who has been growing businesses since age 19. He has studied and mastered more than 200 of the world’s most successful marketing strategies, building-up an unprecedented 1.8 million page knowledgebase. For a decade he conducted an experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and has now launched an extraordinary new program that helps aspiring market leaders to create breakthrough marketing results.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to be notified when other new articles come up, just click here. To get your free copy of Robert's well regarded book “Learn how to grow your business … in just two hours: An introduction to low risk/high-return marketing strategies that will help you transform your business”, click here. If you would like to share any of your personal experiences, observations or the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, please leave your comments and/or thoughts below. We always love to hear from you:

Companies go from start-up to market leadership through the correct use of stories. By articulating everything you do in a compelling manner in the form of a story, you bring everything alive, you make the invisible visible, you enable everyone in your team to rapidly understand exactly what you’re about, and deliver your product, service or expertise in a better and more consistent manner.

Present your story to the right people in the right way, and they will intuitively embrace it, buy into it, develop a passion for what you do and pass your story on for you. And this will happen in a fraction of the time it would take to get your message across by any other means.

An Innocent Promise

In less than 10 years Innocent has become one of the best selling juice brands in the UK. As it now prepares to burst through the £100M turnover barrier, it has become one of the most feted brands in the UK. That success has been achieved, despite the expense of its products, more because of the story they tell on each bottle or carton than for any other reason. People pick up the bottle, read the story, and immediately buy into the brand’s values. Once they’ve done this they happily come back again and again, and pay a premium price for the privilege. Here’s a simple example taken from one of their bottles:

“An Innocent Promise: We promise that anything innocent will always taste good and do you good. We promise that we’ll never use concentrates, preservatives, or any weird stuff in our drinks. And we promise to eat our greens.”

Pret’s Passion Facts

Pret have always been brilliant at this, too. Their sandwich boxes, bottles, napkins, paper bags, coffee and soup cups … and anything else you might pick up and take away invariably tell a story. Bit by bit Pret’s values seep into your consciousness. And before you know it you’re buying from Pret in preference to anywhere else. Here are some examples of the many “Passion Facts” they use to educate you:

“Just roasted. Like bread, coffee beans go stale. Big coffee companies keep schtum about this. The truth is, after a couple of weeks the flavour goes out the window. Anyway, we get ‘Just Roasted’ beans delivered every day to every Pret. Coffee beans not used quickly go to the compost heap. We grind a generous 14 grams of ‘Just Roasted’ into every Pret cup. Our Barista Council is obsessive. Our milk is organic and has been for yonks.”

“Chop Chop. It takes three months to slice our vegetables. Sounds mad but that’s how long we train our people before they’re able to get chopping. This means they’re super-fast, scarily accurate and can spot a badly sliced vegetable at 500 paces. Only then are they let loose on the tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.”

Stories like this succeed because they make the invisible visible. They capture the imagination of large and important audiences. They make a promise. They explicitly set out what you do, how you do things and why you do them. All of this engenders trust, one of the scarcest and most valuable resources in today’s world where no one trusts anyone.

Great stories allow readers to draw their own conclusions … resulting in a higher level of buy-in than would otherwise be the case. They also work fast. The reader is engaged the moment the story clicks into place. This often eliminates the need for twelve-page colour brochures or face-to-face meetings.

Great stories should be aimed at a specific group of people who are in the market right now for what you offer. If you have to water your story down to appeal to everyone, it will likely appeal to no one. Runaway hits like Innocent and Pret take off because the values they communicate in their stories match those of a small group who share the same passions—and that group then spreads the story.

The best stories fundamentally change the way the target audience experience your product, service or expertise. They don’t teach people anything new. Instead, they reinforce what the target audience already believes and makes that audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the first place.

Schlitz Brewery

A classic story is that of the Schlitz brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which in 1904 was caught up in a market share war with the other major US breweries.

All the breweries at that time were claiming superiority with headlines that emblazoned the word “PURE” across their ads. One would extol “PURE” in bold capitals. The next would take a double page spread and put “PURE” right across the two pages. They didn’t explain to the beer drinker what pure really meant, they just said “pure, pure, pure”. It was a market share battle going nowhere.

Schlitz, at number seven in the market, realised they had to bring in the best advertising advice to gain an edge. So they called on a brilliant copywriter called Claude Hopkins, famous for his ability to dig and delve into a client’s product and the market to find a compelling story to tell. His first request was to do a master brewing course.

They obliged, and showed him large rooms with double airlock doors and foot thick glass walls that kept the air inside pure. Inside he saw giant pulp filter towers filtering the purest of water over and over. He was shown how the water came, not from the nearby Lake Michigan … but from two specially constructed 5,000 foot deep artesian wells right on the shores of the lake. Even though the water back then was very clean, they had to go deep enough to find the right combination of water with the mineral content to make the best possible beer.

They took him to the laboratory and explained how they went through 1,200 separate experiments over five years to identify and develop the finest mother yeast cell that could produce the richest taste and flavour, and explained that every bottle of Schlitz beer came from cells grown from the mother yeast cell.

They showed him how they went through a process of distilling the water before they used it to brew the beer, where it was heated to five thousand degrees Fahrenheit and then cooled down and condensed, and they did that three times to make sure it was absolutely purified.

He saw bottles and vats being cleaned and sterilised by super-heated “live” steam, where they steamed each bottle at temperatures of sixteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit to kill all bacteria and all germs so that they could not possibly contaminate the rich taste of their beer.

Then they explained that every batch was aged for six months until thoroughly fermented, then tasted to make certain it was, in fact, pure and rich and at its very best before they’d bottle it and send it out of the door.

Hopkins became very excited. He went back to the Schlitz management to tell them he’d discovered the theme that would set them apart. Hopkins told them of his discoveries about the mother yeast cell, and the pulp filters, and the live steam and the 5,000 foot bore, and the foot thick glass walls …

Well … the Schlitz management just looked at him. “Why is that anything special?” they said, “ALL BEER IS MADE THIS WAY!” … “Yes!” Hopkins replied, “You know it, and now I know it, but no one in your industry explains that. The first person who tells that story and explains how and why you do something, will gain distinction and predominance in the marketplace from then on!”

So Hopkins wrote a wonderfully engaging full page ad, telling this fascinating account … all things that not merely CLAIMED purity … but perfectly articulated what “purity” WAS!

Schlitz became the first company who ever told the story of how their beer was made. It made the word “pure” take on a very different and much more dimensional and tangible meaning in the eyes, the minds and the palates of all beer drinkers around the country.

To cut a long story short … Hopkins’ ad caused a sensation. People who’d never consumed beer in their lives or let a drop of alcohol pass their lips were compelled to try Schlitz just to experience its purity. So many people changed to Schlitz as a result of that story that Schlitz soared from number seven in the market to equal number ONE in a matter of months. And it retained that number one position for nearly fifty years!

That’s how powerful your story can be.

Brought to you by Robert Clay - Visit Website

Robert Clay is an entrepreneur and marketer who has been growing businesses since age 19. He has studied and mastered more than 200 of the world’s most successful marketing strategies, building-up an unprecedented 1.8 million page knowledgebase. For a decade he conducted an experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and has now launched an extraordinary new program that helps aspiring market leaders to create breakthrough marketing results.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to be notified when other new articles come up, just click here. To get your free copy of Robert's well regarded book “Learn how to grow your business … in just two hours: An introduction to low risk/high-return marketing strategies that will help you transform your business”, click here. If you would like to share any of your personal experiences, observations or the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, please leave your comments and/or thoughts below. We always love to hear from you:

If you don’t have a compelling story to tell, one that explicitly sets out everything you do and how and why you do it—and very few businesses do by the way—then there’s a very good chance that everyone in your business will have a different response to a simple question like “why should I buy from you?” That’s because everyone probably sees and buys into your product, service or expertise in different ways.

If no two people inside your business can describe what you do in the same way, or if they can’t answer a question that everyone is likely to ask in the same way, or they don’t all see what you do in the same way, they’re singing from different song sheets, and you’ve got a problem.

It’s even worse when your clients or potential clients get different stories from different people they speak to. This sends out an inconsistent and confused message, and when clients or prospects are confused by the message, they simply go elsewhere.

Putting together the right “behind-the-scenes” story will allow everyone in your team to understand and communicate what you do from the same perspective. It will allow everyone to buy into your values and deliver according to those values. It will often promote passion for what you do. And it should form the basis for virtually every marketing message you’ll ever need to communicate.

What makes a good “behind-the-scenes” story?

It may only be ink on paper, but your story, properly constructed, has the power to do nothing less than transform people’s perception of your business. So let me now explain what makes a good “behind-the-scenes” story.

It should be addressed specifically to your prime target audience, and no one else, and must be compelling, interesting and engaging to them specifically.

Its primary aim is to give your prime target audience the clarity, understanding and motivation they need to desire, embrace, buy into and actively seek out your product, service or expertise … then act on it and keep coming back to you again and again.

This can be achieved by educating your readers about the benefits or outcomes of your product or service and anticipating and overcoming any concerns they might have about you or your industry.

And it is crucial to provide proof in support of your claims to give your audience peace of mind and eliminate any doubts they may have about your product or service.

Who should your story be aimed at?

Before you can write your story you must be very clear as to who and where your prime target audience is. There is no point in aiming at people on the fringe who may, someday, perhaps, possibly be interested in your product, service or expertise. That will just dissipate your energies to little or no effect.

Your story should therefore focus solely on satisfying the wants, needs and desires of your prime target audience. As such it must connect immediately, clearly, powerfully and directly to that audience, and to no one else.

Those people should immediately identify that they’ve found an important answer or outcome they’re seeking, backed up with as many tangible, compelling and meaningful reasons as possible as to why they’ll benefit if they move forward and do business with you.

How do you achieve the desired effect?

Your story’s first job is to grab the reader’s attention. The headline and opening copy should contain a specific benefit, promise or outcome that the reader greatly desires so that they have a compelling reason for reading on.

You therefore need to demonstrate awareness of your audience’s problems, needs or concerns and the outcomes they’re seeking. Believe it or not, hardly anyone wants to buy your product or service, whereas large numbers of people could be very interested in achieving the outcomes provided by your product, service or expertise.

The desired outcomes will vary enormously from one product or service to another, but could include some of the following: Results; solutions; benefits; answers; enhancements; improvements; reliability; time-saving; convenience; avoidance of pain; elimination of worry or fear; freedom; protection; safety; economy; pleasure; enjoyment; happiness; prestige; health; popularity; better appearance; more self-confidence; risk reduction; comfort; pride of ownership … or indeed many others.

Once you’ve got your readers’ attention your next task is to deepen their interest by packing your story with a continuous barrage of features, advantages and benefits. In doing so, you should never talk about the features of your product or service without mentioning the advantages and benefits as well.

Once you’ve gained your reader’s interest, your story needs to increase their desire. You do this by educating them about what you do on a far higher and deeper level than any of your competitors do. This requires you to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes and anticipate and answer every possible objection to your product, service or industry. You need to overcome their concerns and show them exactly how they can achieve the outcomes they’re seeking.

You must lead your reader step by step through all the arguments for and against what you do and set out in explicit and compelling detail what you do, how you do it and why you do it at every point along the way to overcome each of their concerns.

As your target audience read your story they should be able to clearly visualise every step in the process until they can see themselves achieving their desired outcomes. It should therefore paint a word picture that takes the reader ahead into the future, helping them to experience everything about your product or service in their mind, before they experience it in reality.

What, how and why

You need to explain WHAT you do and HOW you do it: How you select your team members; how you and your team are trained or gained your experience; how your products or services are created; how you choose your suppliers or the components of your product or service; how your product or service performs more advantageously, beneficially or tangibly for your clients than the alternatives; how you share, appreciate and embrace your client’s vision; how you’re still there for your them after the transaction has been completed.

It’s just as important to explain WHY you do things in certain ways; why what you do is in your clients’ best interests; why your product or service performs better for the client; why your product or service is more appropriate, superior or desirable for your client than someone else’s; why your product or service is priced the way it is; why it will help the reader in their life or their business; why they should buy from or do business with you; why they should put their faith in your product, service or company; why they should act today.

It is also important to construct layer upon layer of comparable value, contrast and measurable ways in which readers can see the benefit, the intrinsic value and worth of your product or service.

The entire thrust of your story should be focused on your prospect’s interests. It should advise and guide them and provide meaningful recommendations, suggestions, counsel, direction and advice on everything they need to do to solve their problems and achieve the outcomes they’re seeking.

People need proof

Finally, and most importantly, your story should give its readers complete peace of mind. Every claim should be quantified and backed with proof, endorsements and testimonials. People are wary these days, and with good reason. Claims alone are not enough. They must be backed by solid proof. So you’d better provide it.

Create a story that does all of these things and use elements of it in every marketing activity you engage in and you’ll never be short of business as long as people are seeking the outcomes you can deliver.

Brought to you by Robert Clay - Visit Website

Robert Clay is an entrepreneur and marketer who has been growing businesses since age 19. He has studied and mastered more than 200 of the world’s most successful marketing strategies, building-up an unprecedented 1.8 million page knowledgebase. For a decade he conducted an experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and has now launched an extraordinary new program that helps aspiring market leaders to create breakthrough marketing results.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to be notified when other new articles come up, just click here. To get your free copy of Robert's well regarded book “Learn how to grow your business … in just two hours: An introduction to low risk/high-return marketing strategies that will help you transform your business”, click here. If you would like to share any of your personal experiences, observations or the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, please leave your comments and/or thoughts below. We always love to hear from you:

If you really want people to buy into your product, service or expertise, it is incredibly important to fully and deeply educate your prospects and clients about what you do, writes Robert Clay of Marketing Wizdom.

Updated Feb 2010: You have a story to tell in your business. And you need to tell it! If you really want people to buy into your product, service or expertise, it is incredibly important to fully and deeply educate your prospects and clients about what you do, writes Robert Clay of Marketing Wizdom.

I frequently come across people in business who claim very high success rates once they can get their prospects to meet them face to face; or visit them in their premises; or see how they operate; or to see their processes in action. Each of these situations represents a valuable education opportunity. When you educate your prospects and clients properly, it brings out the uniqueness of your business, sets you apart from all of your competitors and dramatically increases the chances that you’ll end up doing business together.

Unfortunately, each of these interactions can also consume massive amounts of time and resources. That means you’re limited by the number of prospects or clients you can handle. But that limitation no longer has to exist if you develop a compelling “behind the scenes” story for your business.

To illustrate the power of education that this represents, let’s say you read a compellingly written article in a magazine or newspaper like the Sunday Times. When you first spot the headline, you probably have no more than momentary or passing interest in the piece.

But let’s say the headline grabs your attention and, as you start reading, you learn about a fabulous travel destination. You may not even have been aware that the place existed and you’ve certainly never considered going there before. Prior to this article, you may have known little or nothing about the place, its people, culture, scenery, climate or magnificent buildings.

Yet, as you read the article, you’re more and more drawn to what you’re discovering. By the time you’ve read the article you want to visit the place. You may even be ready to book a trip right away.

The point is, do you believe it’s possible in a single reading of a well-written article to go from passing interest at most, to actually wanting to experience what the article describes?

I’ve asked that question hundreds of times, and ninety-nine percent of people tell me that a well-written article has that power. A single reading of a well written “behind-the-scenes” story like this can take people several rungs up the buying ladder in a single step, dramatically speeding up their decision-making process. And if it’s possible for mere ink on paper to have such a powerful effect, then why aren’t we all using that power every day in everything we do?

Critically important

That’s why a behind-the-scenes story can play such a critical part in your marketing success. In my experience every business has a story to tell. Yet less than one business in a thousand has ever developed such a story. But those that do are often catapulted from obscurity to market leadership in their field. For example:

One client, a 23-year-old entrepreneur operating a business from his spare bedroom, went to No.1 in Europe in his field within four years of developing his story.

After six years he won the national Ernst and Young Young Entrepreneur of the Year award (the previous winner was Stelios from easyJet). A year later he was mentioned in the Sunday Times Rich list for the first time. A year after that he sold a stake in his business to a private equity company, and pocketed £ millions. Three years later, in December 2007, his business was sold to another private equity company for £75 million. Today it is a well-known and highly respected brandname. But this would never have happened if we hadn’t helped him to put his “behind-the-scenes” together.

As a result of their story, another new client immediately won two contracts worth some £2.5 million in extra profits. In another example, the right story helped a new start-up business to achieve it’s first year’s objective in its first month of trading. In the next 8 years they went on to build a group with annual revenues of over £100M.

These stories should tell you that creating your “behind-the-scenes” story is critical to your marketing success. In fact it is so important that we always make this the very first task we undertake whenever we work with a new client.

Creating your story

We no longer offer one-to-one consulting, but when we did, we evolved an in-depth process for developing a world-class “behind-the-scenes” story.

The process would have started by getting the all of the key leaders in your business to respond to a long list of questions that provided an array of deep insights into your business; how your clients view it; who you compete with; what sets you apart from your competitors; who your ideal clients are; what concerns or issues the story need to address; where your biggest opportunities lay … and a variety of other factors.

The responses were then analysed and deconstructed virtually to a molecular level. An outline of the compelling story that needed to be told was then built up over a number of days. Along the way we would spot gaps in the story, or need further information so that we could elaborate on certain points. This would result in another long list of questions.

A comprehensive customer survey (and I mean really comprehensive) was then carried out to build a profile of your ideal clients; to understand their attitudes and perceptions of your products and services and your industry; to discover where you can (or do) add the most value; to measure how well you perform in many different areas; to establish how you can serve your clients better .. and a whole lot more. This exercise alone often produces hundreds or even thousands of pages of incredibly valuable data.

At the same time we would analyse your competitors using a combination of desk-based research, telephone calls and face-to-face visits. Many facets of your competitors’ businesses would be analysed including their product or service offering; their marketing messages; how they handle enquiries; their competence; their effectiveness; their strengths and weaknesses; and what, if anything, sets them apart.

The information assembled from these exercises was then used to create a 30-50-page brief for a professional copywriter who would have the task of creating an incredibly powerful “behind-the-scenes” story for your business. These stories would run anywhere from 20-70 pages, depending on the business. The finished stories were used as internal working documents, “master” stories, if you will, from which all subsequent marketing messages for that business were extracted and developed.

On the subject of copywriters, we found that most of them are not that good, and some are truly useless. But we would occasionally find ones who were really excellent, who would get the job done right first time, every time. Copywriters like that are rare. And worth their weight in gold. We used to keep copywriters like that very busy.

It normally takes many drafts to get the story right (fewer if you have a really good copywriter), and many more questions would undoubtedly arise as we picked up on points we particularly wanted to develop or emphasise. Once the job had been done to everyone’s satisfaction, it was tested in the marketplace. Feedback from those tests was then incorporated into the final draft.

What your story will do for you

Your story, once completed, will do nothing less than revolutionise the way that you, your team, and your prospective clients will perceive and understand your business. It will dramatically speed up your prospects’ decision making processes; your existing clients will do a lot more business with you … and it will give you a sound basis for dominating your marketplace.

Best of all, you can put your story to work in front of tens, hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of people simultaneously. Without spending a lot of money. And the right story will produce far better results for you than you could ever achieve using any other method.

Creating a world-class story that produces results of this magnitude is no trivial task. It took years to develop the robust procedures we used to do this and it was quite normal to invest around 750 hours of our time whenever we did this for a client.

We now teach this process to the aspiring market leaders who participate in our invitation-only Eureka program. We also recommend selected third parties who can provide one-to-one help with this process, as appropriate.

If this seems like a lot of work, it is. If you’re bothered by that, you should know that it’s quite possible to craft a decent story with a fraction of this effort. But the result is unlikely to be anything like the 20-70 page world-class story that emerges from this process, and which has been the catalyst for many businesses to emerge as market leaders in their niche.

So do you tell your story? What do you say? Have you articulated it in writing? Where and how do you use it? What’s your experience when you do? We’d be very interested in your thoughts, feedback and experiences.

Brought to you by Robert Clay - Visit Website

Robert Clay is an entrepreneur and marketer who has been growing businesses since age 19. He has studied and mastered more than 200 of the world’s most successful marketing strategies, building-up an unprecedented 1.8 million page knowledgebase. For a decade he conducted an experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and has now launched an extraordinary new program that helps aspiring market leaders to create breakthrough marketing results.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to be notified when other new articles come up, just click here. To get your free copy of Robert's well regarded book “Learn how to grow your business … in just two hours: An introduction to low risk/high-return marketing strategies that will help you transform your business”, click here. If you would like to share any of your personal experiences, observations or the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, please leave your comments and/or thoughts below. We always love to hear from you: