Archive | June, 2021

I’m surfing the internet in an early morning pre-coffee daze when I see an ad for an odd-looking watch that says, “Handmade in Switzerland: 24 hours and only 1 hand…” And I’m thinking, “Ohhhh-kaayyyyy… what fresh overpriced gimmick is this?”

And I click on the ad because, well, why not?

Now I’m on a website called slow-watches.com and it’s asking me,

“Are you ready to be slow?”

Wtf?

I need my coffee for this.

“We created a watch that allows you to experience time in an entirely new way.”
“The slow watch reminds you to stop chasing the minutes and live for the moments.”
“The unique 24 hour one-hand concept fundamentally changed our way to perceive time – yours too?”

Ha! I love how they don’t claim this watch will change your life or how you perceive time, but instead they pose those claims as questions.

•   Will this product earn you a million dollars?
•   Will this diet make you 10 years younger?
•   Will the secrets revealed in these videos make you irresistible to beautiful women?

Maybe not, but these questions fly underneath your skeptic’s radar and get you thinking, don’t they?

“Sit back, relax and watch the video. We would like to tell you about our slow story.”

And I’ll be darned if I didn’t watch their video – twice.

www.youtube.com/embed/3SP_s_UUVfM

A few things to notice:

The first half of the video shows you just how miserable your life is without this watch, while the second half of the video shows how wonderful your life will be with the watch.

And it turns a product fault into a positive. “Yes, our watch doesn’t tell you exactly what time it is, but who cares about exact time anyway? We don’t care about seconds or minutes because those are for losers.” (I’m totally paraphrasing here – watch the video.)

Put on this watch and for the first time in your life you will see, “How time naturally flows.”

“Remember, don’t count every second – make every second count.”

Cliches, anyone?

I thought it hilarious that while the silky-smooth talking announcer is telling you to make every second count while admitting their watch can’t count seconds, they’re showing you two good looking guys staring at an hourglass…

I mean just staring at…

And staring at it some more…

Like they are so bored they’re wishing their miserable lives would just end right then and there.

But wait a minute… (pun intended?)

…why are we talking about this crazy watch and how they’re marketing it?

Because there are some great lessons here.

First, making a 24 hour watch is such a simple idea, I’ve got to wonder why we haven’t seen these before. Or have we seen them but they didn’t catch on? The point is this: Simple ideas like this are everywhere if you are paying attention.

Personally, I would love to have a watch that reminds me every hour to get up from my chair and MOVE. I’d also like the watch the act as a Pomodoro timer throughout the day, with 25 minutes of work and a 10 minute break, or something like that.

Yes, I know my phone can do those things for me, but I leave my phone in other rooms and I’d prefer to have those features on my wrist. Is that a good product idea? I don’t know, but if you decide to create a watch like that, let me know and I’ll likely buy the first one.

Second, the watches cost $300. That’s why they tell you over and over they’re made in Switzerland, because we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that great watches can only be made in Switzerland, so it helps tremendously with price justification.

Third, the watches cost $300 which means it’s going to be all about the marketing and positioning. Most people are never going to impulse purchase a weird-looking unknown-brand watch for 300 bucks. Heck, most people have stopped buying watches altogether because they own smartphones. To sell a watch without a well-known brand for $300, you’re going to have to get slick with your marketing.

Fourth, that is exactly what they’ve done here. When I looked at their website and watched the video the first time, I confess that I WANTED ONE OF THESE WATCHES! Yes, I really did.

Watching the video the second time with my marketing cap on made me totally rethink that impulse. Because hey, I don’t really believe that buying the watch will cause me to move from the city to the country and have absolutely nothing to do but play frisbee and watch an hourglass, two things I don’t want to do anyway. (Watch the video to see what I mean.)

To answer their question: “Can a Watch Change Your Life?”

Potentially.

Regardless, if you can take a simple product like an odd looking watch and use your marketing to make people feel better about themselves, then maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

If you sell a product that teaches people how to make money, for example, then you can certainly paint a picture of their life before and after getting your product. And in fact, you can use this watch video as a template of what that might look like.

A mediocre product with great marketing can sell like gangbusters. That’s what I think they have here. If they get a few celebrities to wear their watches, it could become a viral sensation and they’ll make millions.

Then again, there have been plenty of products that were supposed to be “the next big thing” but failed terribly.

https://digg.com/2021/next-big-thing-fails

Back to you and your business… Take a look at your products and ask yourself, what simple change can you make to totally stand out from the crowd? In other words, what’s your version of going from 12 hours to 24 hours?

Next, look at your marketing like you’re seeing it for the first time. Does it sweep you up in the moment and make you think, “Wow! I want this!” If not, you might want to rethink how you’re presenting your product to the world.

Here’s a neat little trick you can try: Every time you see an ad or commercial, imagine it’s for your product. Look for the elements you can borrow to use in your own marketing campaigns to make them fresh and grab the viewers’ attention.

Can your product change people’s lives (unlike this watch)?

Then just imagine what you might achieve with a fresh marketing campaign that lets people feel what that change will be like when they have your product.

Can you devise a fresh marketing campaign that sells a million copies of your product? I think you can…

Facebook “jail” is when users are blocked or banned by Facebook from posting on the site or accessing their account. This is supposed to happen because of violations or spammy behavior, and it can lead to a Facebook account being deleted permanently.

But here’s the thing…

Facebook can’t accurately police content, which is why Facebook makes 300,000 content moderation mistakes…

… every single DAY.

Here’s what happens:

Facebook content moderators review posts, pictures and videos that have been flagged by users or artificial intelligence about 3 million times per day. To do this, Facebook employs about 15,000 content moderators.

With 3 million posts to moderate each day, each moderator looks at 200 posts per day. That’s 25 posts per hour if they work 8 hours, which works out to 150 seconds per post to decide if it meets or violates community standards.

It gets worse…

Imagine if even a handful of those 200 posts are 10-minute videos. Now the moderator will only have seconds for some of the other posts. That’s mere seconds to make a determination that can affect your account, your business and your bottom line.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg admits that moderators “make the wrong call in more than one out of every 10 cases.” That means 300,000 times a day, a mistake is made. This means that no matter how careful you are, you can still lose your Facebook Page or Group and it won’t even be your fault.

For example, Sherry Loucks runs a Facebook page on breastfeeding. She shares only credible content from fact-based sources, yet Facebook blocks every page she runs and routinely blocks her Page for ‘spam’.

Rectifying an unfair ban from Facebook can be nearly impossible. Remember, Facebook users are not considered Facebook customers. If you contact Facebook, you likely won’t receive an answer. If you do receive an answer, it will likely be, “We are looking into this and will get back to you,” which they never will.

Facebook is providing their online community free of charge to users, which means users are not paying customers and cannot expect customer service from them. When you sign up with Facebook, you agree with their terms and conditions which essentially say (I’m paraphrasing here) that Facebook is God and you are not.

And since there are no laws which require Facebook to allow you to participate… Getting yourself out of Facebook jail can be next to impossible.

How can you reduce your chances of being banned on Facebook?

1: Show nothing that can be considered adult nudity and sexual activity. Yes, this includes anything to do with just about anything related to the human body, including breastfeeding. Just because you’re in the right doesn’t mean an underpaid and overworked moderator won’t ban you for something that is perfectly moral in any circle except a religious order from the dark ages.

2: Display nothing that could under any circumstances be considered violent or graphic content.

3: Do not refer to dangerous organizations, terrorism or organized hate, even if you are 100% against it. People have been banned for simply using the names of hate groups.

4: Don’t use hate speech. Like everything else, this is open to interpretation. If you’re not sure if it’s hate speech, it probably is to someone so don’t use it.

5: Don’t post about ‘drugs’ and ‘firearms’. To be safe, assume there are no exceptions to these two terms.

6: Don’t post child nudity or any kind or sexual exploitation of children.

7: Don’t post anything that can be interpreted as bullying and harassment. Someone posted something terrible and you want to fight back? Don’t engage – just report them and leave it alone.

8: Don’t talk about suicide and self-injury. This one makes me angry, but you need to be aware that even saying something along the lines of, “If you are feeling suicidal, call this number for help,” can potentially get you banned if the wrong moderator gets a hold of it. Yes, I know that’s bull@#$%, but sadly it’s true.

After everything I’ve said here, you might think I hate Facebook. I don’t.

As an online marketer, I realize that Facebook is just one marketing tool of many that we can choose to ignore or use. If we choose to use it, we need to realize the limitations and risks involved.

Above all else, it’s imperative that when using Facebook for marketing, you move your prospects off of Facebook and onto your own website and email list as quickly as possible. Because sooner or later, the day may come when you get that dreaded notice from Facebook letting you know that as far as they are concerned, you are no longer welcome on their site. It’s good to be ready, just in case.

CTA stands for Call to Action. When you’re talking about an email you’re sending to your list, the call to action is when you say, “Hey Reader, click this link to get a once in a lifetime deal” or some such.

The more you can get your readers to click the links you put in your emails, the more traffic you send to your offers. The more traffic you send to your offers, the more sales you can make. Usually.

Okay, there is an exception to this rule, and it’s if you don’t set up your email and your offer to be congruent. Like if you say in your email, “Click here to discover the best fertilizer for roses” and then you send them to a page that is advertising a cleaning solution for rubber duckies… you’re not going to make sales.

But let’s assume that your email sets up your reader to know exactly what to expect when they click the link. The more people who click the link, the more people you have who can potentially purchase the product and the more money you can make.

Thus the question becomes, how do you get more of your email subscribers to click the links without holding a gun to their head?

By using the CBS method:

•   Command
•   Bolden
•   Soften

First, you’re going to COMMAND them on what to do. Don’t be subtle here. Don’t slip your link in there and assume they will click it just because it’s there – they won’t.

You’ve got to TELL them to click it.

•   “CLICK HERE NOW”
•   “Go HERE now for full details”
•   “This is the link to click NOW”

Next, you’re going to BOLD keywords. People tend to scan emails just like they scan sales letters. By bolding the keywords, you can stop a scanner in their tracks and get them to do your bidding.

“The price will double at midnight so to get the discount go here now and check this out before it’s too late”

Read just the bold words above and you’ll realize it’s everything the subscriber needs to know they should click the link NOW.

Finally, you might want to sometimes SOFTEN the language you use.

If you only say, “CLICK HERE NOW” it seems kind of pushy or bossy.

But if you say, “CLICK HERE NOW and see if this is for you” then you’ve softened the language and made it more friendly.

“Click HERE now and see if this can double your income”

“Click THIS LINK now and find out why 2,926 reviewers give it 4.8 stars”

“Go HERE NOW and discover for yourself why grown men blush when they see this”.

Remember CBS to increase your email calls to action: Command, Bold and Soften.