Posts filed under 'Marketing Maestros'
This blog is by Bob Hanson.
I look to Bill Gates - one of the most extraordinary business people ever - for inspiration
My favorite quote from Gates goes something like this: “We tend to over-estimate what can be done in the short-term (under a year), but underestimate what we can do in the long-term (18 months or more).
One of our key strategies to get more prospects, clients, and income over the long-term is to figure out the LITTLE things that made a BIG Marketing difference and try to make sure they are used over time.
To qualify as “little,” I’ve included only strategies that take less than 15 minutes to do, but could have a major impact on your fees and income.
Four Little Marketing Tactics
That Can Make A Huge Difference
I. Strategic or Warm Introductions
By warm we mean from a referral, a connection, a center of influence, etc. While cold calling is inefficient and generally frustrating, a welcome call with a purpose can yield tremendous results.
There are really two steps here. First, initiate that contact to set up a warm introduction. Then, go ahead and make that call.
II. 15 Minutes Today Saves You 12-1/2 Hours A Year
Take a great marketing tactic that worked once, or requires manual effort, and systemize it so that it happens on an ongoing basis.
You could, for example, train an assistant to spend 15 minutes a week on something you normally do to carry out this marketing tactic, and over 50 weeks (2 weeks out for vacation) this can save you 12-1/2 hours a year.
More important than hours saved, though, is the ongoing marketing effort that’s getting done.
III. Review Your Headlines
Simply, a headline is an ad for an ad. That’s why it’s vital to wring every ounce of power that you can from those few words.
A headline appears on all of your marketing documents. It’s there at the top of every page on your website, it’s the title of your new article or seminar, it’s the subject line of an email, and there it is as the first line of a letter.
Turning a boring headline into something of great interest, curiosity, or benefit for your prospects can literally increase readership or prospect attention by 200 percent, or much more.
IV. One Thank-You Call
Expressing gratitude feels wonderful and wins friends. Besides, it can also be a powerful long-term relationship-building strategy.
We invite you to discover more articles like this at
http://www.marketingplanfinancialadvisor.com/
November 26th, 2008
“Focus is magical.”
Richard Koch in “16x: Real Simple
Innovation for 16 Times Better Results”
A financial advisor client, we’ll call him Glenn, told this story. Recently, he attended a workshop where Ed Slott spoke. No ordinary CPA who prepares taxes! Slott is the go-to guy in an important specialty. He was named as “The Best” source for IRA advice by The Wall Street Journal and called “America’s IRA Expert” by Mutual Funds Magazine.
Glenn was more fascinated, though, by how Slott placed himself in this “Category of One” than in his advice about IRAs. We have a word for it: Focus. Slott chose a specialty where he could shine, and he concentrated on marketing that specialty with all his might.
Missing Focus
As we talk with financial advisors, we find many suffer from lack of focus that can take many forms.
From One Extreme . . .
There’s the financial advisor who immerses himself in every one of the details of his business — all being equal. The pesky client with a few thousand dollars in stocks gets the same care as his “A” clients. Marketing doesn’t fit into the picture because no one is clamoring for his marketing attention.
Year after year he takes care of the “urgent” details, and the important ones never get done. He relies on the momentum of the marketplace to stay in business. Prospects arrive by chance not from deliberate, focused action.
To The Other Extreme
There is the committed financial advisor who reacts to an avalanche of marketing opportunities. Lack of focus shows up when he is unable to select his prime options and just let the others go. The choices he sees in front of him include participating in a radio show, networking in groups made up of his target market, creating his own monthly newsletter, writing a brochure, organizing talks for his clients and their friends, expanding his website, and more. This is an exercise in being overwhelmed — the opposite of focus.
Planning On Marketing Focus
A plan brings marketing into the daily routine of someone too “busy” to market. And a plan helps to select marketing tools with the highest priority for the hyper-committed marketer so that he doesn’t waste his time.
In the words of a client . . .
Before A Marketing Plan:
“Developing my marketing was a big task, and sometimes it seemed overwhelming. All these ideas were swimming around, and I didn’t know whether they were good and worth pursuing or a waste of time. I just reacted to ideas without having any clear direction.
Afterwards:
“The marketing ideas that weren’t worthwhile just fell away. Now I have a focused system, and my production is up a bunch!”
Marketing Focus is about both: Taking up the very few marketing actions (We always recommend more than one) that will make the most difference and letting go of those with less power.
Our Sample Marketing Plan focuses on what goes in and what stays out of a marketing plan. You’ll find it at:
http://www.marketingplanfinancialadvisor.com/sample-marketing-plan.html
March 29th, 2008
It’s treacherous out there. And scary headlines don’t help. Are we heading for a repeat of 1929? Are we in an earth-shaking bear market?
Your clients may be calling with troubling questions - questions that are at odds: One may ask, Why aren’t we buying now? Another challenges, Shouldn’t we be selling? Still, others argue for or against staying the course.
Times like these are not for the faint of heart. The solution we talk about today may provide safe passage for your financial advisory practice.
We could call it Practice Insulation.
It may be something you’ll want to think about as you plan your marketing to make a difference in2008. Here’s why: It protects your practice from turbulent financial waters and makes competition irrelevant, to boot.
To make this remedy real we begin with an example from a client (We’ll call him Matt):
When he came to us, Matt had started a new financial services business - new in the sense of a being only a year old and new because he blasted away from other businesses in his field to open up “untapped marketing space.”
Matt’s background is this: As Vice President of a national firm, he designed and copyrighted a system that took the company from $80 million in 2001 to more than $250 million in 2003. Two years later he left the company to start his own firm and took several top producers with him.
Matt’s Practice Insulation Has Three Differentiators:
1. One Stop Shopping
He collected a team to cover everything his clients need from medical planning and income stream needs to IRA needs, death probate documents, and Ethical Wills, to 401k rollovers and asset protection, and more. Simply, his firm coordinates legal (by an attorney) and non-legal
needs — financial services along with custom estate planning “in a unique package.”
2. One Fee For Life
What’s more his firm also offers knowledge and resources for a lifetime at a one-time reasonable cost. This includes free reviews once every 12-18 months along with free planning anytime. When a spouse dies, the remaining spouse has help and a plan and so do the children when the second spouse dies.
3. Endless Questions
And there’s another added service: The firm gets paid by lifetime service contracts and through transactions. But planning is free to everyone. Anyone with a particular question gets an answer quickly even those without a lifetime contract.
A couple comes to a seminar and, subsequently, meets with a financial advisor. They get answers and may bring in their children and grandchildren for the same help and assurance. Various generations of the family, then, become clients.
With Uncontested Marketing Space
Competition Vanishes
Matt’s uncontested marketing space comes from:
- Coordinated services that traditionally are separate,
- Attracted prospects into the sales funnel by providing free (and continuing to offer for free) consultations that others charge for to answer important questions, and
- Broadcast his differentiation through consistent marketing.
Three Key Questions Can Point To
Your Uncontested Marketing Space:
1. How completely can you solve the broad range of deep, troubling concerns your prospects and clients have?
2. What services can you add that will help to cement prospects and clients to your practice?
3. What can you provide free or as part of your package that others charge for?
Is “uncontested marketing space” in your marketing plan for 2008? You can differentiate through services that are geared to your target market. Then, let your differentiation shine through clear, focused marketing communications.
Yours for great marketing in ‘08!
Free access to our “7 Client-Attraction Secrets of Highly Successful Financial Advisors” is at http://www.marketingplanfinancialadvisor.com
January 23rd, 2008
“The Secret” is out - or at least the “secret” revealed in the #1 “New York Times” best-selling book or DVD and also on Oprah and Larry King Live. Dr. Joe Vitale is eloquent, persuasive, and memorable in the book and DVD.
I knew him before he became a “superhero,” when I approached him (a cold call) and asked him to contribute to my ebook, “12 Million Dollars Worth of Web Marketing Mistakes And Solutions.”
What he revealed in our interview goes beyond the web to all marketing messages wherever they appear.
So I’d like to pass along this “Secret” from Joe Vitale: How to find the right words to “hypnotize” your prospects.
This is a special talent of Joe’s and one that’s at the core of his money-making success. He revealed where the power came from that propelled results such as a sales letter that attracted a 91% response. If you’d like to find out more about Joe go to www.mrfire.com
The Problem
It’s really about the ego - whether you are coming from your own ego or from your prospect’s ego.
Joe said, “And my rule of thumb, my little motto, the little slogan that’s carried me through all my copywriting, marketing, web sites, books, email, and sales letters, is simply this: “Get out of your ego and get into the customer’s ego.
“And I have found that to be the fundamental key to success, but it is also the fundamental problem that most marketers have.”
So far so good. But how do you spot a self-centered egotistic message?
It shows up in words like ‘we,’ ‘our’ and ‘us.’ You are talking about yourself, not your prospect or customers.
“Most people,” Joe said, “will not sit there very long if the copy is focused on the person who wrote the copy. The copy, the web site - all of it - has to be targeted to the person who is browsing.”
Liberate Your Site With Your Own “Copy Translation Service”
His solution is what he calls a “Copy Translation Service.”
That’s when you take self-centered words like “we,” “mine,” “my,” and “our” and convert them so that you are talking about you, the prospect. He’s also wary of “words that speak about The Company (most corporate web sites make this mistake, but most individual sites also make the same error of being self-absorbed).”
Here’s how the “Copy Translation Service” works.
First, in your mind translate the words just as if you are having a conversation with the person reading the web site.
Next, put this translation on paper, and
Finally, change the wayward web site.
The Solution
Here is the compass that directs you to “hypnotic” marketing.
“I want to be so in tune with whoever is coming to look at my web site so that I know what their pain is, I know what their concerns are, I know what their dreams are. I’m going to translate everything into their language.
“I’m NOT going to tell them all about myself. To a little tiny extent I might explain how I came across whatever it is I’m offering; but, by and large, my focus is on the person looking at the web site.
“In contrast, most self-centered web sites will just list the features of their product. They may say something like, ‘I have a book. It’s 300 plus pages long and it’ll teach you how to make money fast.’
“Calling my ‘Copy Translation Service’ into action, I’ll translate that into the benefits which might sound something like: ‘This is an ebook so that you can read it anywhere, anytime, and download it to your Palm Pilot, or print it out, and walk away with it. It is more convenient than buying a printed book.’
“Or I might say, ‘This book will make it a breeze for you to make money when everybody else is struggling in a bad economic situation.’”
The Secret Plain And Simple
The Secret is to slip into what’s going on in your prospect’s mind. Know their pain, their problems, and their dreams. That’s how you’ll discover the advantages they care about most.
Then, saturate your copy with their thoughts and words so that they see themselves in your words.
P.S. Free access to our own “7 Client-Attraction Secrets of Highly Successful Financial Advisors” is at http://www.marketingplanfinancialadvisor
September 6th, 2007
Only a handful of the email newsletters that I receive fall into the can’t-wait-to-open category. Where does that open-at-once power come from? What makes the difference?
For me, they plug a gap. Stretch my thinking. Arm me with solutions. Simply, they give me what I want and need.
Experience tells me that there is a greater than 95 percent chance that I’ll be able to grab something that I can use right away. Or, equally rewarding, something that I’ll be able to turn to later as motivation for clients or food for an article.
“America’s Greatest Copywriter”
One such colossus is Gary Bencivenga and his ezine Bencivenga Bullets.
If you haven’t “met” Gary Bencivenga, let me introduce you. He’s been called “America’s greatest copywriter.” He’s a master salesman in print, applied to direct response marketing. His writing is unpretentious and down-to-earth, yet he calls on just the right words for his story. And he’s so good it’s difficult to imagine telling the story any other way.
His ezine articles make me larger as a consultant, and as a person, so that I can give more to my clients.
Continue reading for Bencivenga’s specific techniques to give you that open-at-once power . . .
Power Headlines
Exhibit A is Bencivenga’s newsletter - Bullet #23 - with the headline “The One Word That Teaches Almost Everything.”
We might as well stop here for a lesson in a headline that has magnetic power. He follows his winning formula:
Interest = Benefit + Curiosity
That formula says to drum up Interest you need a Benefit mixed with Curiosity. He reminds you to hold something back to prompt readers to jump into your ad, sales letter, or email or to read your ezine.
So what is that One Word That Teaches Almost Everything? I’m definitely curious. And I love the benefit – teaching me almost everything with that word. Notice how the word “almost” gives it believability; it erases the suspicion that I’ll find just another wild claim.
So there’s your recipe for a power headline. Start with a big Benefit and add Curiosity and you’ll attract interest. Use it wherever you want to compel readers to plunge into the story you have to tell and buy the product or service you have to sell.
Gary Bencivenga is not selling anything but brilliant copywriting (He’s retired). His free ezine is at www.bencivengabullets.com.
The Power Word
And here’s another morsel from that Bencivenga’s Bullet #23. I probably shouldn’t, but I’ll go ahead and reveal that one word. It’s “Why?”
And why “why?” Because, he wrote, “it is the world’s best teacher, a one-word university more valuable than a king’s library. As far as learning is concerned, a day without raising a good “why?” is a wasted day.”
How about you? Are you wasting today without a good “why?” What’s YOUR answer to the question, “Why would someone open my mail immediately or click open an email straight away? For you, where is the open-at-once power? Could Gary Bencivenga’s headline be your answer?
July 10th, 2007
