11 . Avoid My 8 Figure Mistake
"Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving."
I once did a split test for a sales funnel in a company I'm invested in. The winning results told me something depressing.
If we had tested 5 years earlier and found the winner sooner we would have made an extra 8 figures of revenue.
If you think you test a lot now, multiply it by ten. That will be about the right testing intensity.
12 . Big Ideas
"It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea."
Ogilvy wrote this before Seth Godin wrote Purple Cow.
The world is afraid. The amygdala part of the human brain controls fear and basically is the big bad 'bully' of our thoughts.
Your customers want a savior.
Big ideas save people.
So come up with something big.
I once read a political analyst who said that in his research of who wins the US Presidential race it's always the candidate who most acts like the "Moses" character in the Bible.
Intellectuals like Joe Lieberman don't win. Strong leaders who promise 'salvation' win.
Promise your customers to save them from some problem in their life.
One of the smartest business partners I have told me, "Tai if people aren't buying from you, you aren't promising enough."
Promise something big and then deliver.
13 . Flag Them Down
"The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down readers..."
Ogilvy continues, "On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar."
Want to know some of the best headlines of all time?
Next time you are the grocery store look at the tabloids. Those writers are the best at grabbing your attention. Subscribe to Cosmopolitan or Vogue or The Enquirer just to learn how to market.
Also using handy Google.com I found these:
HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE
THE SECRET OF MAKING PEOPLE LIKE YOU
HOW A NEW DISCOVERY MADE A PLAIN GIRL BEAUTIFUL
WHY SOME PEOPLE ALMOST ALWAYS MAKE MONEY IN THE STOCK MARKET
HOW I IMPROVED MY MEMORY IN ONE EVENING
IS THE LIFE OF A CHILD WORTH $1 TO YOU?
Get good at writing headlines. It's Marketing 101.
I make my staff print out the list of the top 100 headlines of all time and pin them to their wall to look at every day.
14 . Native Ads
"There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 percent more readers."
Those ads in magazines that look like articles but say "Paid advertisement" sell a lot of products everyday.
That's the idea behind product placement in movies. I saw World War Z with Brad Pitt the other month and the scene where he blatantly drinks a Pepsi before fighting zombies cracked me up.
But it works on the subconscious. It's called the association cognitive bias. When ads are 'associated' with real stories, articles, and content we trust them a little more.
The Google guys and Mark Zuckerberg are making billions by nestling advertisements into the news feeds and search results and making them look almost identical.
You should do the same. Just don't be cheesy about it.
15 . Be Specific
Speaking in generalities won't get anyone excited. Excited people buy. Bored people move on and shop elsewhere.
If you get a text from your friend that says, "Man I am having a bad day." You might feel sorry for your friend.
But if your friend says, "I am having a bad day. My wife just ran off with the milk man and I got run over by a school bus" you will write them back in a hurry.
Describe colors, use first names, use words that conjure up the imagination.
A famous study by Davis and Mcleod in 2003 found that humans remember a handful of key specific themes: Death (accidental or natural), murder, assault, robbery (loss), reputation (gossip), heroism, altruism, marital issues, harm or injury (health), abandonment, taking a stand, and fighting back.
Tailor your marketing message with specific words around specific themes like these.
16 . Sell To Only The 18%.
Ogilvy says, "...flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising."
Notice he doesn't say flag down all readers.
I teach a business principle that I coined called the law of 18%.
Market in a way that out of 100 people who hear about your customer 82 of them leave but 18 of them get obsessed.
Even the great conqueror Genghis Khan didn't try to conquer the whole world overnight.
He picked his battles.
Be like Jack Welch, the most famous CEO ever, who said focus on the niches that you can be #1 or #2 in and forget the rest.
Market in a way that people either love you or don't ever want to hear from you.
17 . The Magic Blend
Success in almost anything is like a good beef stew. It has more than one ingredient. Not just beef, not just broth, not just vegetables. A little of all in just the right ratio.
This is the lollapalooza effect in persuasion the billionaire Charlie Munger always talks about.
In his speech at Harvard University in June 1995 Munger gives an example of why you should never go to an auction, "The... auction is just made to turn the brain into mush: you’ve got social proof, the other guy is bidding, you get reciprocation tendency, you get deprival super-reaction syndrome, the thing is going the other way… I mean it just absolutely is designed to manipulate people into idiotic behaviour."
Munger is saying that an auction has a magical blend of persuasion elements too strong to resist.
Watch this Ogilvy ad for gasoline from the 1950's. Notice how many elements of good marketing he has incorporated into it's own lollapalooza effect.
It tells a story, it's specific, it informs, it's congruent with the brand, it gives you something, it's visual, visceral, and my grandma would understand it.
I want to find that gas somewhere haha. The bouncer in my brain was definitely convinced.
18 . Kill Cliches
Say things people have NEVER heard before.
I always tell my staff I have a simple goal for the articles I write. I want people to always walk away saying, "Tai said something I never heard before."
Kill cliches before they even leave your mouth.
19 . Fear The Drop Off Point
People get bored easily. Every boring word is a potential drop off point. You could write 10,000 beautiful marketing words but if even one sentence is cliche, boom they are gone without reading all the other good stuff.
20 . Make It Available
I can't tell you how many times I consult for a business that wants to make more money and my diagnosis is "It's too hard for clients to buy from you."
The bouncer in your customer's brain wants things easily available. Psychologists call this the availability bias.
It's one big reason people eat crappy food at Mcdonalds. Because it's so easy to buy.
Make sure your website has the buy button ALWAYS visible on the top.
Make sure you clearly tell people what they are buying and the price.
Frank Woolworth founded Woolworths. When he died his net worth represented 1/1214 of the whole US economy!
He pioneered the now-common practices of buying merchandise direct from manufacturers and fixing prices on items, rather than haggling.
What was his secret:
"He pioneered the now-common practice of fixing prices on items, rather than haggling. He was the first to use self-service display cases so customers could examine what they wanted to buy without the help of a salesman."
