Want Remarkable Success From Your Marketing? Know When And Where To Use WHY And HOW

First things first! If you’re playing baseball (or any ball game that involves three bases and a home plate), what is the first thing on your mind as you come to the plate? Yeah, yeah... hitting the next pitch over the fence and winning the game with one swing of your bat. Of course. But that doesn’t happen often.

Back to reality. The first thing you want to do is get to first base. That’s a good start. You can’t bat a run in and you can’t score one yourself if you’re sent back to the bench with your head hanging low and your bat dragging behind. Gotta get to first, first.

Same thing in business. You gotta get to "first base" if you want to get the lead, the prospect, the customer, the client, the subscription, the sale. It won’t happen if you’re "sent back to the bench" which, in marketing, happens when someone leaves your ad, email, flyer or Web site to go check out another one. That’s like saying "Yer out!"

Now, as much as I agree that first base is important, I think it will be much more profitable if, instead of merely getting to first base (which can be accomplished by having a 7-foot yellow chicken wave a banner and hand out chicken nugget samples in front of your diner) you get to what I call "Firm Base".

My business philosophy is that from first base... well, you might get some reaction, and possibly some action... but from Firm Base, everything is possible.

What is Firm-Base? It’s when you have someone’s full attention, when they are truly interested in what you’re telling or showing them, not just merely curious — as is the case with the big yellow chicken. Full attention is the key!

Now, as was pointed out in one of my recent articles, "interrupting people’s brain pattern" to get — and hold — their full attention long enough for them to do what you want them to do (so you will generate the leads and prospects you want, acquire the customers and clients you want, and make the sales you need so you can make the money required for you and your loved ones to enjoy the good things in life) is not an easy task. So many things are competing for their attention!

But it is paramount that you DO get their full attention if you are to achieve any significant level of success marketing your business, regardless of the type of business, and regardless of what marketing methods you use — Web sites, business cards, flyers, banners, networking events, emails, ads, articles, etc.

Here is a powerful tip: to grab people’s full attention, start by telling them WHY what you are marketing should be of interest to them. And THEN, you hold their attention by telling them HOW you will provide them with the benefits promised in the WHY.

WIII-FM is the most listened-to radio station in the world (What Is In It For Me?). You want to get people’s full attention? Tell them right away what is in it for them if they do what you will ask them to do — visit your Web site, subscribe to your ezine, purchase your product, join your business opportunity.

In other words, tell them WHY they should "bother"? WHY? WHY they should stop doing what they’re doing, WHY they should pay attention to you, WHY they should give you, a stranger, five to ten or more minutes of their time, WHY they should be interested in what you have to say, WHY they should ask questions, WHY they should remember you afterwards and go visit your store, your office, or your Web site, or refer you to some of the people in their sphere of influence, WHY they should subscribe to your ezine, WHY they should buy your product or avail themselves of your service, and WHY do business with you? WHY! What is in it for THEM?

Now, if you’ve done a great job with clearly stating the WHY — you are now standing on Firm Base — it will make the interested party ask "How do you do that?" or say "Tell me more!", even if just in their own head. That’s when they "open up a drawer in their mental filing cabinet where you can put all the information they need, or want, to do whatever it is you want them to do (buy, refer, visit, support, order, register, sign up, subscribe, join, donate, etc.). That’s the ONE and ONLY purpose of the WHY — get them to ask HOW?

Until people know WHY, the HOW is totally irrelevant, of no interest to them. You want the chance to tell them HOW smart and qualified you are, HOW good your offer is, HOW helpful your newsletter is, HOW fantastic your product is, HOW incredible your MLM or home based business opportunity really is? Then get their attention FIRST with a solid WHY.

Now, here’s another potent tip: your WHY should be entirely made up of BENEFITS, while you save all the features for the HOW. Continuing with our baseball comparison, you get to Firm Base with a potent WHY, you round the bases on your way to home with an effective HOW.

The HOW is your 30-second commercial. It tells the listener HOW — HOW you do what you claim you do, HOW you deliver the value, HOW you provide the benefits you’re promising, HOW you are different from all the other accountants, realtors, lawyers, insurance brokers, coaches, speakers, financial planners, home based business builders and Internet marketer they know. HOW!

Bluntly put, if what you’re offering does not hold any BENEFIT for me (real or perceived), I do NOT care how nice you are, how long you’ve been in business, how many degrees you hold, how many awards your company has garnered, I do NOT care that you currently have a two-for-one offer, that you offer free shipping, that there are 10 glowing testimonials on your Web site, that I can get a thousand dollar of bonuses if I order your eCourse today... I will NOT CARE!... until I can SEE the BENEFIT for me!

This is so common sense it’s pathetic. However, as we all know, common sense is not common practice — ESPECIALLY in marketing and advertising.

One more thing about benefits and features: you need to know the difference.

This is a serious problem I observe daily in marketing campaigns everywhere: most marketers, it seems, don’t know the difference between the two. Let me shed some light on this. A feature is what something IS or HAS (a 28 inch blade on a lawnmower) while a benefit is what something DOES (saves time mowing the lawn). And even better if you can express the benefit(s) in terms of what that thing does FOR me, the buyer (What Is In It For ME!!!).

For example, which one of the following two approaches do you think has a better chance of enticing Bob (who’s eying a big Toro in the store) to pull out his credit card?:

"Good day sir. That baby’s got a 28 inch blade, you know?" (Bob thinking: "Who cares?")

"Good day sir. That baby will cut your mowing time in half. Now what could you do with that extra time?" (Bob dreaming: "I could go fishing, play golf, or detail my sports car...")

The first statement talks to the head — features. The second — benefits — goes straight to the heart. "Ka-ching!" Put another way, "Features tell, benefits sell!"

Here is a (often disputed) fact of (business) life: people buy on emotion and justify with facts. You get to Firm Base by getting people’s full attention. You get that by giving them the right information — the BENEFITS. You get to home plate by giving them an excellent (and justifiable) reason — the features — to take action. People DO buy on emotion, and justify their actions with "facts". The sooner you’ve accepted this axiom of communication, the sooner you can use it to become more effective and persuasive in ALL your marketing messages.

Look, you’ve done a good job if you’ve made it to first-base through your marketing messages, but in my opinion, it’s not enough. Not in today’s fast-paced business world. If you want massive success, you have to get people’s full attention, aka "Firm Base"... from where EVERYTHING is possible. I call that approach "Firm-Base marketing"...

I wish you ALL the personal and professional success you desire and deserve. (Just remember that...what you "desire" is a function of your ambition, what you "deserve" is a function of your ACTIONS...Are the two aligned?)

Daniel G. St-Jean, BB, IMA, AMA, FBMI, SEM
(BizzBooster, Internet Marketing Advisor, Article-Marketing Alchemist, Firm-Base Marketing Instructor, Successerenity Exponent & Mentor)

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If You Want ALL Your Marketing to Be a Phenomenal Success, Adopt These 2 Invaluable TIPPPS™

First, let me share with you a definition of marketing I found on Wikipedia: "Marketing is a societal process which discerns consumers' wants, focusing on a product or service to fulfill those wants, attempting to move the consumers toward the products or services offered." (aka selling)

That sounds about right. Let me follow that with a brilliant observation from Donald Cooper, one of America’s top professional speaker and corporate trainer: "We are all human beings selling something to other human beings. How damn complicated should that actually be?"

Apparently, complicated enough. The facts are: businesspeople are selling all the time, and consumers are buying all the time. The question is: are they buying YOUR products, services, subscription, business opportunity, expertise, concepts or ideas? If not, WHY NOT? Well, I don’t have ALL the answers to that last question, but I have some.

My signature says I’m a "BizzBooster" and an Internet Marketing Advisor. That’s true. My wife (the other BizzBooster) and I teach businesspeople how to boost their business, particularly on the Internet. We are teachers.

To be effective teachers, we need to be good students. We are. We study marketing 24/7 (pretty much) and we make good notes of the harmful mistakes people make in their marketing strategies for the purpose of teaching our customers and clients how to avoid those mistakes in order to boost their business.

By "boosting their business", we mean making things easier, saving time, saving money, beating the competition, generating more leads, prospects and customers, making more sales, more money, and ultimately, more profit!

If those are results you aspire to in your business, read on because the 2 marketing tips (we call them TIPPPS™) I will talk about here will help you avoid two of the god-awful mistakes we observe all the time that cause businesspeople to fail—or at least underachieve. I promise you that marketing any business successfully will be a lot easier when you apply those 2 expert TIPPPS™ Thoughts Ideas Principles & Practices for Professional Success).

Here’s the first TIPPPS™: "Everything people do, they do either out of their need to avoid/reduce pain, and/or their desire to gain/increase pleasure."

Or as Jeremy Bentham once wrote, "Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure; they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it."

It is crucial for the success of your marketing endeavors that you understand the pain and pleasure motivators, and how to use that knowledge when designing marketing material, of any kind.

Most people in marketing and psychology agree that the first motivator — pain — is more powerful than the second. For example: Joe will be quite willing to work 50 or even 60 hours a week in his business so he can buy the BMW he’s been dreaming about (aka pleasure).

Now, imagine that Joe needs to make a lot of money in order to keep the IRS from seizing his store and his house and throwing him and his family out on the street (pain). Joe will be willing to work a LOT harder (80 hours a week?) to avoid that pain than he would be to gain the pleasure of owning a fancy car.

People will do things to avoid pain they would not even consider if it were merely to gain some pleasure. What that means to you is that to get the maximum results from your marketing materials, you should use what is known as the AIDA formula: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action — where the word Interest represents pain and problems.

With that in mind, "most" of your marketing should follow along the easy path of answering these questions:

1. Are you getting ATTENTION with your opening?
2. Are you stating a problem (pain) your prospect is INTERESTED in?
3. Are you offering a solution your prospect DESIRES?
4. Are you asking your prospect to take ACTION?

Of course, I had to use the word "most" above because there are instances where it’s all about pleasure; dance classes, cooking courses and piano lessons are 3 examples.

Back to AIDA: If you sell products that help people who suffer from sore feet (for example), the best opening to get attention would probably be "Sore Feet?" (pain) as opposed to "Want foot relief?" (pleasure).

Bottom line, walk in your customer’s shoes for a while (pun intended), find out what his "pain" is, what his problems are, use that to get his attention, and then present your product or service as THE solution that will rid him of that pain and you will do exceedingly well. For Internet marketers, remember that the vast majority of people go online to find a solution to a problem. Focus on solving that problem and you’ll smile all the way to the (virtual) bank.

In other words (and this is the second TIPPPS™): "To have success, it is necessary that you bait the hook to suit the fish."

I don’t mean any disrespect to shoppers, leads, prospects and customers by using the word "fish" This is actually a recommendation from Dale Carnegie in his famous book How To Win Friends And Influence People.

Here’s what he said: "I often went fishing up in Maine during the summer. Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found out that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm in front of the fish and said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to have that?’

Why not use the same common sense approach when fishing for people? When someone asked Lloyd George, then Great Britain’s Prime Minister how he managed to stay in power, he replied that if his staying on top might be attributed to any one thing, it would be to his having learned that it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish.

The only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it."

And as was pointed out earlier, what people want more than pleasure are ways, methods, strategies, tools, products and services that will help them avoid pain or at least reduce it. Bait your marketing "hook" with a solution, and the "fish" will bite.

I hope the "knowledge" you gleaned from this article will be helpful. Remember though that knowledge is power ONLY when it’s combined with ACTION! If you think the TIPPPS™ above are valuable, DO something with them, and seek out more of them.

I wish you ALL the business success you desire and deserve. (Just remember that...what you "desire" is a function of your ambition, what you "deserve" is a function of your ACTIONS...Are the two aligned?)

Daniel G. St-Jean, BB, IMA, AMA, FBMI, SEM
(BizzBooster, Internet Marketing Advisor, Article-Marketing Alchemist, Firm-Base Marketing Instructor, Successerenity Exponent & Mentor)

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Powerful Marketing Tip For Massive Business Success: Make Sure You Use THE Essential Ingredient

More than likely, these are three facts of (your) life:

• You're marketing a great product or service
• You gotta make sales if you (and yours) want to eat
• It's a jungle out there in your business world

And because of the "jungle" reality, it is possible — more like probable according to statistics — that as a businessperson (in any business) you're you having PROBLEMS...

• Grabbing and keeping shoppers' attention...
• Driving lots of targeted traffic to your Web site or place of business...
• Generating scores of quality leads and prospects...
• Getting and keeping customers or clients
• Making enough sales to cover your expenses (even though your goal is to make lots of money to do the things in life that you and your loved ones really want to do).

If you’re experiencing ANY of the disheartening problems mentioned above, a big reason for your lack of success could be that you’re making a marketing mistake of Xorkian proportions.

Many of you (especially baby boomers) will remember "Mork & Mindy", the popular and funny sitcom of the late 70’s. Mork (Robin Williams) was an alien from Planet Ork sent to Earth to study human beings. He looked just like an earthling (though he did not behave like one) and lived in Boulder, Colorado, with beautiful Mindy (Pam Dawber).

I want you to imagine for a minute that Xork (Mork’s brother) and his girlfriend Xindy arrived on earth a couple of days ago. Now they’ve decided it’s time to learn to drive a car — the one parked in your driveway.

Having seen TV commercials about "filling up", the first thing Xork does is to grab the garden hose and fill your near-empty gas tank with water.

What do you think will happen next? How quickly do you think Xork will learn to drive? How far will he go? You can pretty much figure out that the whole project will be a disaster.

Yet, the car is in great working order (except for the content of the tank), the keys are in the ignition (tsk tsk tsk...), the roads are fine, the weather is great, the instruction manual in the glove compartment is very informative and user-friendly, Xork and Xindy are patient students and they really want to learn. And yet, disaster looms. Why is that?

Because the ‘essential’ ingredient for the success of this endeavor is a tank full of gas. And in the scenario I just described, there’s no gas — just water. No matter how good the car, the road, the weather, the manual, the student or the intention, without gas Xork & Xindy ain’t gonna go nowhere.

Does that sound like some of your marketing endeavors?

Here’s why that’s the case: no matter how many people are out there looking for what you have to offer, if you don’t have the ‘essential’ ingredient, you won’t get a whole lot of traffic. And without the ‘essential’ ingredient, the little traffic you’ll get will be made up of poor quality leads, they won’t sign up for your newsletter, they won’t join your business opportunity, they won’t buy your products or retain your services. And you might go broke as a result.

Now, let’s juxtapose your situation with the Orkans’ to bring the point home. No matter how good the car (your marketing material), the road (your marketing medium), the weather (the Marketplace), the instruction manual (all the marketing strategies and techniques available), the student (the shoppers) or the intention (looking for a product or a service), without the ‘essential’ ingredient, your marketing — no matter what method you use — will be a flop. Without "gas", you’re SOL — just like Xork & Xindy!

Well, if the ‘essential’ ingredient for Xork is gas, what’s the ‘essential’ ingredient that will make your marketing take off like a Ferrari on steroids? It’s simply this: knowing precisely what makes people tick. If you don’t know that, you’re up a creek without a paddle.

Some of you might be slightly disappointed that the ‘essential’ ingredient is something so "ordinary", so... common sense. It IS that, but as you are well aware, common sense is not common practice. What is baffling is that no sane person would think of starting a road trip with a thank full of water, and yet, those same "sane" businesspeople will start a marketing campaign with messages full of the wrong stuff, stuff no one really cares about — like features for example.

Look, do you want to succeed with your marketing campaigns so you can make tons of sales so you can make lots of money so you can have some time freedom to enjoy your life? Do you?

Good answer! The sure-fire way to do the aforementioned is to be "in-the-know".

What does "in-the-know" mean? It means knowing precisely what motivates people to act — to click, to subscribe, to sign-up, to join, to buy — to do anything, really. It’s knowing WHAT to say (or write) and WHEN to say it, and it’s knowing what NOT to say (not that you want to hide things, but for example, telling people all the details of HOW you would complete their tax return — aka the features — before you tell them WHY it’s important that it gets done properly — aka the benefits — will be a big waste of everybody’s time).

Now, as a businessperson, your chances of success at selling — as in trading goods or services for money, but also as in convincing, persuading, influencing — will improve significantly, perhaps even dramatically, if you are selling what the surfer is wanting to, ready to, and agreeable to buy! And to do that well and consistently, you MUST be in-the-know.

Here, for example, are three irrefutable and undeniable facts of life you become acutely aware of when you’re "in-the-know":

• The most listened-to radio station on Earth is WIII-FM: What Is In It For Me?
• People buy on emotions... and then justify with facts.
• Everybody, all the time, is looking out for number one — himself or herself. That’s because self-preservation is the first principle of human nature.

A successful marketer is one who uses that knowledge — and the many other facts of life one learns when "in-the-know" — to design every element of his marketing campaign, keeping in mind at all times that the best possible selling-buying scenario is the one where, at the end of the deal, EVERYBODY WINS!

So, if marketing your business successfully is key for you and your family living the Richer Life you all desire and deserve, do your research and your due diligence and find out all you can so that you are "in-the-know" about what will grab the shoppers’ attention, what will make them stop what they were doing long enough to read your material, internalize your message, and follow your command — click, join, subscribe, come to my store, buy — now!

The information is out there. Find it, and be "in-the-know": it’s a matter of (Richer) life or (business) death!

I wish you ALL the business success you desire and deserve. (Just remember that...what you "desire" is a function of your ambition, what you "deserve" is a function of your ACTIONS...Are the two aligned?)

Daniel G. St-Jean, BB, IMA, AMA, FBMI, SEM
(BizzBooster, Internet Marketing Advisor, Article-Marketing Alchemist, Firm-Base Marketing Instructor, Successerenity Exponent & Mentor)

P.S.: This article was inspired by a very informative and enlightening 5,500-word article which you can read by following the link listed in the Resource Box.

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We want you to visualize a big 747 plane—big jumbo jet with whatever colors and emblems you want.

As big and complex as a 747 is, the success of its operation relies in great part on a few small things. Things like tires for example—at least small in relation to the size and cost of the whole plane. But what will determine whether this big bird delivers its 400 passengers to the airport terminal or to the city morgue depends on what happens when the tires make contact with the runway.

Think of this; the plane will be in the air for roughly 15 hours when it flies from Chicago to Tokyo, yet, the success or failure of the flight could be determined in the 4-5 seconds it takes for all the tires to be in contact with the pavement.

Now, what does this have to do with you and your business? Everything. When we share this with the participants to one of our marketing workshops, many say it’s the most impacting ah-ha moment of the day when they get it.

The big 747 in our analogy is in fact your marketing: your plan, your massive investment of time and money in your communication tools, promo material, web site, billboards, memberships in networking groups and cost of attending events. For many entrepreneurs or professionals, it’s a huge deal. Like a big 747.

The runway is the marketplace—the place where you connect with someone in person, online, on the phone, or on paper. The tires are your points of contact—a time or place when you are in contact with someone else for the purpose of serving or marketing.

For example, if you’re an accountant working in your office 40 hours a week, there are not that many points of contact with your clients or prospects in that week, relatively speaking. A dozen short phone calls, meeting a few people at a breakfast event, a few visitors to your web site, a couple of people leaving a message on your voice mail. It’s a larger percentage of time than the 5 seconds compared to 15 hours in the example of the 747, but it’s still relatively small.

Yet, those points of contact are vital. Well executed points of contact can allow your business to soar like an eagle. Badly executed points of contact can make your business crash in flames.

No matter where you are in the development of your career or business or how much or little money you’re putting into your promotional material, it MUST be completely professional looking. Anything less will seriously hurt your credibility. If the first impression is unprofessional, it will take many subsequent contacts to erase that—if ever. Start on the right foot by making sure that at EVERY point of contact, ALL your basic marketing tools reflect a truly polished image.

Because people are selling ALL the time, and because people are buying ALL the time, your points of contact are EVERYTHING you do EVERYWHERE another human being is present, whether you are there with that person physically or not. Everything… everywhere… every time!

Here’s a very apropos text by Harry Beckwith, from his bestseller Selling the Invisible:

"Study your points of contact.

To get started, study every point at which you make contact with a prospect. Your business card. Your building / store / office. Your brochure. Your website. Your public appearances. A sales call or presentation. Be aware of your performance at each and every one of these points of contact—the moments that decide whether or not you get the business.

Then, ask: What am I doing to make a phenomenal impression at every point? Don't squander one point of contact. It may be your only one. The points of contact continue once the person becomes a client. The moments could be surprisingly few. A call here and there. A meeting now and then. Maybe just a few points of contact. Did you get everything possible from those points of contact? Did the client feel respected, impressed, delighted, amazed?

Study each point of contact. Then improve each one—significantly."

There’s no doubt you have to spend resources on that big 747 that is your marketing. But where too many people fail is they don’t spend enough time and energy on the tires—the points of contact.

We were reading recently this quotation from the CEO of a big European airline company…(we forgot which one…). But he was saying that to complete a transaction, each customer deals with about five employees on average. That’s all the chances you have to do better than the competition… Five fleeting moments…He went on to say that since his airline serves about 10 million customers a year, the success—or failure—of his business depends on how well—or how bad—things go at each and every one of those 50 million points of contact.

It is our opinion that there’s no such a thing as a ‘neutral’ impression when you come in contact with people. You make a good one, or a bad one, with different degrees of course, but you make an impression every time, at every point of contact. Why not put all the chances on your side?

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