Archive | April, 2019

Why do some brands succeed beyond all reasonable expectation, while other brands that are just as good or even better wind up failing within a few months? How is it that an Oprah becomes an icon, while dozens of other talk show hosts quickly fall into oblivion? Why do brands like Nike inspire fierce loyalty while other brands struggle to get attention?

In the book Primal Branding, Patrick Hanlon explains his theory for “Creating zealots for your brand, your company and your future.” He explains how the powerful brands become that way by carefully (and sometimes accidentally) creating a community of believers by employing seven different marketing tactics. All seven of these components are found behind every super-successful brand, product, service, personality, social cause, religion or movement.

Imagine if your product inspired the same level of loyalty that Apple, Disney and Starbucks receive from their customers. Now imagine you can actually engineer that loyalty right into your brand – it makes your head spin a bit, doesn’t it?

According to Patrick, these are the 7 key ingredients that you or your product, service or brand must have to inspire zealous loyalty.

The Creation Story – This is the back story that sets the stage. Think of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak working out of a garage building the first personal computer, Jeff Bezos writing Amazon’s business plan in the backseat of his car, or pharmacist Dr. John Pemberton concocting Coca-Cola.

You need a back story for your product, service or business. This might be how you got the idea, your struggle to solve a problem, your inspiration, etc. Storytelling is as old as language itself and touches people on a very deep, primal level. Do you want to foster a real, unifying connection on a subconscious level with your prospect? Then you need a story.

The Creed – This is what you believe in, your core principle, your mission statement. A creed differentiates and motivates. According to Sidney Pollack, “It’s the spine that supports the entire enterprise.” See if you can recognize these creeds:

“It’s the real thing”
“Save the whales”
“All men are created equal”
“Just do it”

So what’s your creed? Invest some time to get this right. And if you have more than one product and the products are wildly different, know that you’ll want a different creed for each one. For example, you won’t have the same creed for an info product on traffic generation as an info product on building your abs.

The Icons – These are best defined as a quick concentration of meaning. This could be a logo like the Nike swoosh, the smell of Cinnabons in the mall, a country’s flag, a national anthem, Alice Cooper’s eye make-up, Kiss’s face make-up, the Budweiser Clydesdales, Disney’s castle as well as Disney’s 2 black mouse ears, McDonald’s arches, the 2 notes Law and Order plays just before the show appears, the opening music to any television show or the 5 signature notes of Intel.

Choose your icon carefully, and then use it in all of your marketing. Update it when needed, being careful not to lose it in the process. It should always be instantly recognizable and tightly tied to your brand.

The Rituals – This is how our customers interact with your product and service, and how you interact with them. This one is a little harder to define and illustrate. We have rituals for everything we do on a frequent basis, including brushing our teeth, doing laundry, driving our car and checking our email. The key here is to focus on improving the experience the customer has with your product or brand. How can you raise the experience to a higher level? How can you make it more enjoyable, or even something they look forward to? How can you take the stress out and put the fun in?

What can you do to make the ritual of discovering, buying and using your product more enjoyable – so enjoyable, in fact, that people will talk about you and your product?

The Pagans, or Nonbelievers – These are best defined as “those other guys.” Us against them. Apple vs P.C. and Internet Explorer vs Firefox vs Chrome. One political party vs their opposition. One sports team vs their rival. Nothing unites a group faster than having a common ‘enemy.’ 7up declared itself the “un-cola.” Taco Bell tells you to “think outside the bun.”

Defining your pagans is important in defining who you are. Do you teach methods of getting free traffic? Then paid traffic methods are your pagans. Do you show people how to eat only clean, healthy foods? Then pseudo foods, pseudo food manufacturers and people who eat pseudo foods are your pagans.

The Sacred Words – Words specific and exclusive to your own product, service or brand. Walt Disney has ‘Mickey Mouse,’ ‘Goofy’ and ‘Donald Duck.’ Starbucks has a ‘grande.’ Dr. Seuss invented an entire world of sacred words. Apple has “think different.” Texters have their own sacred language. Information product creators and authors create their own terms to define what they’re teaching. By creating your own sacred words, your fans and followers are on the inside of the secret circle with their own language. It’s a cohesive, insider’s-only knowledge that brings a group together.

Think of a young couple in love – they develop their own language that is indecipherable to anyone else, and in this way they become 2 against the world. You can replicate this with your own sacred words, so don’t be afraid to get creative – your customers will love you for it.

The Leader – This person is the catalyst, the risk taker, the visionary, the iconoclast who set out against all odds to achieve something. Think Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Oprah, Gandhi, Richard Branson, Nelson Mandela and others who have led movements, companies and causes.

The leader could be the founder or it could be someone who takes their place functionally or symbolically. This means if you don’t want to be the leader, you can choose someone else, like a spokesperson for your brand.

Does all of this sound like too much work just to sell a product? Perhaps it is if you’re thinking small. If your goal is to sell a few hundred copies of something and move on, then you don’t need these 7 steps. But if you want to create something that takes on a life of its own and grows exponentially, then adhering to every one of these 7 pieces of the Primal Code is essential.

We talk about making a video or an idea or a product go viral. How does that happen? Is it an accident, or is it because that product or idea meets every one of these 7 criteria? Spend some time looking at the famous people and especially popular brands, and see if they don’t use all 7 of these in their marketing.

Look at it this way – if you could create a brand that grows like a religion, wouldn’t you want to? Imagine the people you can help, the alliances you can forge, and the profits you can make.

You’ve either got a blog already, or you’re just about to start one. Congratulations! You are one of only 500 million. Now then, knowing that your blog is (statistically speaking) less than a needle in a haystack, how are you going to get it NOTICED and read?

In one word, the answer is BRANDING. You can either throw together a blog and hope it somehow gets found, or you can carefully craft a brand that captures readers’ attention and keeps them coming back for more.

To throw one together, just do what 99.9% of other bloggers do – wing it. Fly by the seat of your pants and hope for the best. In six months (or sooner) you’ll likely be so discouraged you’ll give up.

Building a brand is obviously the way to go. Think Google, Coke, Apple and Nike to understand the huge potential branding holds for your blog. Brands stand for something, mean something and create loyalty in their customers. They stand apart and often far, far above the competition. And best of all, really good brands get remembered and are sought out by consumers.

Here then are 10 tips for building your blogging brand:

Who are you writing to? Exactly who is your blog meant for? Create a clear picture of your ideal reader, including age, profession, family, worries, problems, hobbies, etc. You’ll be writing to this one person rather than trying to talk to everyone. Remember, when you target everyone, you interest no one. But when a certain segment of the population believes you’re writing just for them, you’ll build a loyal following.

Why are you writing to your specific readers? What is your goal? It might be to educate, to persuade, to motivate, etc. Keep your goal in mind at all times.

What are you writing about? This is your topic. It might be physical fitness, marketing, dating, etc. Decide in advance what your message is going to be.

Choose a brandable name. If you’re creating a fitness blog, for example, then you might choose a one or two word brand name that people are likely to remember, rather than a keyword laden name.

HowToGetHealthyAndLoseWeight.com isn’t really brandable – it’s too generic and too keyword rich. Think in terms of “Google” – now that’s a brand. You might try things like FitMonkey.com or SkinnyCakes.com – those are brandable and memorable.

Create a snappy tagline. A name generally isn’t enough – you also want a tagline to help brand yourself, to clarify what you do and to make your blog more memorable. If your blog is on bacon recipes, your url might be DeadPiggy.com and your tagline might be “Bacon lover’s recipes for the non-chef.” See how the tagline not only defines that the site is about bacon recipes, but also narrows the niche to those who don’t consider themselves to be good cooks? This is a prime example of using a tagline to define what you do and WHO you do it for.

Get a logo. Can you picture the Apple logo? Nike? Coke? A logo is an integral part of your brand. Make it clean, simple, eye-catching and unique. It’s worth the extra money to get your logo just right.

Adapt your logo into a favicon. Again, this is an important part of branding your blog.

Use a website design that matches your topic. A header full of balloons and clowns on a website about grieving generally isn’t going to work. Dull colors on a children’s website or a lack of photos of gardens on a gardening website won’t work. Make sure all of the visual elements of your site correspond with your topic.

Choose a writing style and stick with it. Take a lesson from McDonald’s here and give your readers what they’ve come to expect from you. Maybe you’re writing to a technical crowd – then you might write like an engineer. Or perhaps you’re taking on a persona, like the Rich Jerk. Odds are you’re going to write like yourself, which is perhaps best of all because you won’t have any trouble maintaining that style. Consistency is key because if one day you’re writing like the guy next door and the next day you’re writing like an English professor, your readers are going to get confused and likely won’t return.

Promote your blog’s name through social media. Consistently use your blog’s name everywhere. Don’t use “Law Enforcement Weight Loss” on Twitter and “Muscle Cops” on Facebook – no one will realize it’s the same blog you’re referring to. Again, this is another reason to choose a unique, short, brandable name that no one else is using anywhere.

If your blog is going to stand apart from the crowd, then you’ve got to do a little extra work, but that work will likely pay off handsomely in the end.

Not only will you stand apart from the crowd, you’ll also discover that if you ever decide to sell your blog, you’ll be able to charge a great deal more because you took the time to brand it.

It’s fine to build your business gradually, a step here and a step there. But it’s so much better, faster and just plain more FUN to build it by leaps and bounds.

Below you’ll find the magic words that will help you to do just that. Forget taking the long, slow painful route and resolve to achieve a quantum leap, or true metamorphosis in your business.

1 Magic Word That Quadruples Productivity And Profits

There are a myriad of tasks any one online marketer needs to perform, and the faster and better those tasks are completed, the more profitable the business can be. But struggling marketers who are trying to balance administrative duties, product creation, social media, customer service, formatting and uploading books to Kindle, writing blog posts, setting up JV’s, recruiting affiliates, writing emails, setting up autoresponders, doing research, writing sales copy, answering emails, forum posting and all their many other marketing tasks might be better off doing less, not more.

If you’ve ever been on a ship, you probably noticed the captain doesn’t cook the meals or swab the deck. Nor does he maintain the engines, hoist the sails, plot the navigation or the other 101 duties that are done aboard a ship. Rather, he is the pilot of the entire operation, instructing everyone else on what to do.

Perhaps it’s time you think of yourself as the pilot of your own business. Do those tasks which you are extremely good at, and OUTSOURCE the rest to professionals who excel in those areas. You will not only get far more done, but odds are the work will be completed faster in a more professional manner. And when you can quadruple your efforts by adding a few part time outsourcers, you can also quadruple your results and your profits.

Don’t kid yourself – you cannot do it all and make the kind of money you want. As soon as you can afford to, start outsourcing. It’s not only one of the most profitable things you can do, it also gets you away from the grindstone and able to see the big picture so you can better navigate the waters of your business.

2 Magic Words To Make You A Marketing Rockstar

If you want your content to be seen and shared, and if you want it to make a lasting impression on prospects, then the written word is seldom enough anymore. Let’s do a test: Tell me everything you can about the person who wrote the blog post you read yesterday. Drawing a blank? Now tell me everything you can about a video you saw yesterday. Different story, right?

What if someone calls you on the phone to sell you something you’re interested in, versus someone that shows up at your door. Which one are you more likely to buy from? Assuming you’re not freaked out that a salesman appeared out of no where with the product that adequately fits your needs, you’re going to buy from him, not the faceless person on the phone.

Obviously you can’t visit your prospects in person, but you can do something almost as good – USE VIDEO. People remember video over the written word because it engages more of the senses. If you only use the written word, you’re simply not going to make nearly the same level of connection that you could have with video.

Now then, you might be afraid to get in front of the camera. If so, you can start out with slideshow videos, animated videos or screencast videos. Then move up to videos of yourself because this is the real pay off. This is where people start to feel like they can really connect with you and they KNOW you. Remember, content is more important than quality. You don’t have to be the next Steven Spielberg to make this work, you just have to be authentic with something to say that people want to hear.

3 Magic Words That Can DOUBLE Your Sales

You should be doing this every single time you sell a product or service because it will invariably increase your bottom line. Marketers have added hundreds of thousands of dollars to their sales funnels by simply incorporating these three words into every sales system they create.

What are the 3 magic words? ALWAYS BE UPSELLING. Every single time you sell anything, offer an upsell / downsell sequence because it can turn your original $47 sale into a $300 sale or more, simply by offering the customer additional options.

Offer something that is complimentary to the original offer. It might make the original offer easier or faster to implement, go into more depth, offer more options, or even perform a service for them. It could be coaching, an additional information product, software, a membership program or anything else that helps the customer to achieve the result they want.

What if you don’t have a product or service to offer as an upsell? Then find an appropriate affiliate product that matches your original offer. And here’s a secret: When a customer turns down an upsell, they are typically more open to buying a lower cost (downsell) product. It’s almost as though the higher ticket item warms them up to the downsell offer. This is why car dealers and real estate brokers like to show cars and properties that are too expensive for the client. Once they show the client something more affordable, the client is more likely to make an offer than if they’d been shown the lower cost model in the first place.

4 Magic Words To Get You More Clients

If you’re selling big ticket items or services, I’m about to utter the 4 words 9 out of 10 marketers dread: PICK UP THE PHONE. Nothing sells as well as face to face contact except perhaps the phone. Let’s face it – your prospects are inundated with emails and shout-outs on social media. If you really want to connect and make the sale, you need to pick up that 500 pound phone and establish a real one-on-one relationship.

If you’re phone-a-phobic, start with existing customers. Find out how they’re doing with the product(s) they’ve purchased and what you can do to help them along (coaching, perhaps?) Next, move on to your lowest hanging fruit – those prospects you deem most likely to bite. Make it a rule to call 5 people each day, and within 3 weeks you’ll notice 2 things: First, being on the phone isn’t so scary anymore. And second, business is definitely picking up.

5 Magic Words That Virtually Eliminate Any Competition

Whatever your niche, there are others who are doing very nearly the same thing, better known as your direct competition. For example, if you’re a weight loss coach, there are thousands of other weight loss coaches you’re competing against to gain clients.

That’s why you’ve got to find a way to stand completely apart from the crowd, and the best way to do this is to CREATE A UNIQE POSITIONING POINT for yourself and your business. Find that one thing that makes you totally different from all the other weight loss coaches out there, that thing that draws customers to you like flies. And mind you, saying that you’re better, that your work is higher quality, that you’ve got more experience, etc., isn’t unique. Everybody says those things.

Can’t think of anything? Try this: “I will show you how to lose weight while NEVER feeling deprived and still eating the foods you love.”

Sign me up!

Here’s one from a carpet cleaner: “If I don’t remove your stain and get you sparkling clean carpets, I’ll pay you $50 for your time.”

You’re hired!

I wouldn’t need to hear another word in order to choose this carpet cleaner over all the others – would you?

A Chiropractor might advertise: “I’ll get you immediate relief from your back pain or your visit is completely free.”

That’s what I want to hear – make me an appointment now!

6 Magic Words That Double Subscribers

You already know how crucial it is to continually build your list. But are you being aggressive enough? The vast majority of websites are missing opportunities to grab more subscribers because they don’t PLACE OPT-IN BOXES ON EVERY PAGE of their website. Yet this simple step can as much as DOUBLE the number of subscribers you get from your site.

Most websites have an opt-in box on the homepage or none at all. But very few have an opt-in box on every single page. And fewer still place opt-in boxes on both the right sidebar above the fold, and again at the bottom of each post. But adding these boxes along with a great incentive to sign up will increase the number of subscribers you get. And make sure your opt-in box stands out with clean lines and no clutter.

Go ahead and place opt-in boxes in unexpected places as well. Do you have sales pages? Place an opt-in box on each one. Do you have more than one sign-up incentive? You might place one incentive in the right sidebar, and the other at the bottom of the page. This way if one incentive doesn’t interest them, then the other one might. You can then position your follow ups according to the incentive they chose.

You might even place a video with your opt-in boxes, instructing the reader to fill in their email address and press the button to get the incentive. By telling people what to do, you increase the chances they’ll actually do it.

Can you make a short, snappy and powerful quiz people can take? This is another way to capture email addresses. Once they finish the quiz, you request their email address so you can send them their confidential results via email.

7 Magic Words To Build Your Visibility And Reach a Larger Audience

If you’re not doing Google Hangouts yet, you’re missing the boat. Google Hangouts will increase your visibility, help you boost traffic to your site, improve your search engine ranking, improve your authority, increase the distribution of your content, and connect you to your potential customers, affiliates and joint venture partners. Therefore, HOST REGULAR GOOGLE PLUS HANGOUTS ON AIR. Hangouts are multi-participant video chats. When you host a hangout, you can carry on a training or conversation.

Your Hangouts might be informal chats, scripted or anything in between. You can keep the Hangout private, or you can live stream and broadcast your Hangouts on Hangouts On Air. By publicly streaming your show, it’s automatically recorded and added to your YouTube account. You can also embed it on your website.

If you don’t want it to go live, you can make it private, download it when you’re finished and edit it before posting it.

This is a great way to reach a huge audience and strengthen your reputation. Make a plan on how and when you will use Hangouts on Air, and set up a regular schedule for broadcasting. Think about using Google Hangouts for teaching and lecturing, for coaching, consulting, interviews, webinars, product demonstration, hold question and answer sessions, etc. The possibilities are exciting and nearly endless.

Live Hangouts On Air8 Magic Words That Increase The Money In Your List 10 Fold

A list full of buyers is worth at least 10 times more than a list full of people who haven’t purchased anything from you yet. In fact, in most cases a buyers list is often worth closer to 100 times more than a list of prospects, and here’s why: When someone purchases anything from you, even if they only spend $1, they are now in a vastly different mindset concerning their relationship with you and your products. They now have an OWNERSHIP mindset because they own one of your products, and because of this they are far, far more likely to purchase from you again and again and at higher and higher price points.

So what are the 8 magic words that increase the money in your list 10 fold or more? TURN PROSPECTS INTO BUYERS AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. In the beginning it doesn’t really matter if they are spending $1 or $100. The important thing is they have crossed that threshold from prospect to buyer.

How do you get prospects to immediately buy? The easiest way is to get them pre-sold by people they already know and trust. This means having affiliates refer people to you. If you cookie the affiliates in so that they receive commissions on anything prospects purchase for a long period of time, such as a year or even lifetime, affiliates will be more than happy to send you referrals.

Other ways to get people pre-sold on you before they even hit your site is to guest blog, to do joint ventures, and to create products that others in your niche can give away as a bonus to their own product. Whatever it takes, turn your prospects into happy customers as quickly as possible and you’ll be able to continue to sell to them for a long time to come.