Author Archives: admin

Method Marketing

This is probably not going to come as a big shock to you, but there’s not a lot happening on a Monday night in Rotherham. Which is why I found myself heading up the M1 to see Tommy Steele (No, you’re wrong…he’s still alive) in Doctor Dolittle at the Leeds Grand.

I can heartily recommend both the show and the theatre ~ a fantastic characterful venue, and a great family production. Tommy Steele is excellent, but you do have cause to wonder (or at least I do) what motivates someone like him to be spending a freezing cold March evening in Leeds.

He must be the living embodiment of what I’ve been banging on about for ages…when you find what you’re really meant to do for a living, you’d rather be doing it than just about anything else. And you’ll continue doing it long after the financial need has passed. Not that I have any insider knowledge on Mr Steele’s financial situation, you understand!

Anyway, I gather the show was great. It gets my recommendation.

What doesn’t get my recommendation though, is the coach we travelled in. Now normally, there’s no way you’d get me on a coach. But it was a trip organised by my daughter’s school, and she wanted us to go on the coach. So we did. It’s only a 50-minute journey. How bad could it be? Hmmm…

What I didn’t know until I got on, was that this was no ordinary coach. It was one specifically designed for transporting small humans…kids. I didn’t even know they made such things, so I learned something there. Anyway, all the seats were child-sized, and although I’m not what you’d call large ~ now how can I put this politely?…

I found that I’d got a lot more arse than seat.

Naturally, I moaned and grumbled all the way there, and most of the way back. It was so uncomfortable. And then I realised something ~ this must be how it is for grossly overweight people all the time. But you just don’t realise until you’ve experienced it. If you want to understand something completely, being told about it or reading about it is no substitute for experiencing it first-hand.

Method actors know this of course, which is why when they’re preparing for a part, they often put themselves in the position of the person they’re about to portray. They know that it’s not enough to learn about the person, they have to actually feel like them. It’s only then that true understanding comes.

And it’s exactly the same in the
tawdry business of selling stuff…

Some of most compelling sales messages I’ve created have come because I’ve been able to completely empathise with the potential customers for the product or service. You see, I’ve been in exactly their position. I’ve felt what they’ve felt. I’ve had the same pain, the same doubts, the same anxieties, the same goals ~ the same everything…

And when you’ve done that, it makes it so much easier to craft a message that will appeal. The reason is simple: if it appeals to you, it will appeal to them.

If you’ve only heard, or read about, the problem your product or service solves, second-hand, you’re detached from the emotion. And it’s the emotion that sells. The closer you can get to experiencing the raw emotional appeal of your offering (or the problem it solves) at first-hand, the more powerful will be your sales message.

It’s not method acting…it’s method marketing!

Before this trip, if I’d been asked to write an advertisement for a diet product, I would have focussed exclusively on the health and cosmetic benefits. The problems of living in a world built for people half your size wouldn’t really have occurred to me, and even if it had, I don’t think I’d have thought it very important…

Now I know better…and I have the
painful buttocks to prove it.

John Harrison

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

FINALLY REVEALING IAN’S
“INCOME FOR LIFE”
SECRET!

Hello.

Are you worried you’re going to have to “work until you drop“?

Are you tired of working all day, every day to make someone else rich when it’s YOU who should be the one becoming wealthy?

Ian once shared that grief, but now he never has to worry about money again…

Here’s a PROVEN way to make enough money to retire on as soon as you want, never work again and enjoy a fabulous income for life.

And it’s not like you even have to quit your job if you don’t want. You can keep your regular paycheque coming in if you’d like while you follow the specific steps of this blueprint in your spare time.

Let us show you everything about this when you click the link below:

www.streetwisenews.com/wizard

Best Wishes

John Harrison

Modern Day Suggestion Box

Leave a reply

The internet has given a new lease of life to many old established ideas, and the suggestion box is no exception. Now, instead of it being a dusty unused physical entity, it’s being turned into something virtual, interactive and useful.

Take Swedish Bank Avanza as an example. They have a section on their site, dedicated to customer suggestions for how they might improve their service. Other customers are then encouraged to look at the suggestions and vote on the ones they would like to see implemented.

So customers come up with the suggestions, and then other customers, vet and judge the suggestions. It seems an excellent way to ensure that any changes you make are well received by your customers.

Is this an idea you could incorporate in your own business?

Motivational Quote Of The Day

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Winston Churchill

Alternative Quote Of The Day

“What a kid I got, I told him about the birds and the bees and he told me about the butcher and my wife.”

Rodney Dagerfield

The Extra Time Entrepreneur

If you’re looking to supplement your income by running an enterprise run after work, then you’re part of a growing wave. People have always done this of course, but technology has brought it within the grasp or just about everyone now.

Go back a few years, and we lived in a 9-5 world where it was difficult to get everything done ‘out of hours’. The internet and other mobile communications have changed all that and it’s perfectly possible to become an entrepreneur in your spare time. Whether you’re running a website, selling a service, promoting a product, financial trading or a hundred and one other things – having a job is no excuse for not having a go.

Do you have businesses and ventures up and running and making money in your spare time? If not, why not?

Today’s National Day

NATIONAL DON’T CRY OVER SPILLED MILK DAY!

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

FINALLY REVEALING IAN’S
“INCOME FORLIFE”
SECRET!

Hello.

Are you worried you’re going ot have to “work until you drop”?

Are you tired of working all day, every day to make someone else rich when it’s YOU who should be the one becoming wealthy?

Ian once shared that grief, but now he never has to worry about money again…

Here’s a PROVEN way to make enough money to retire on as soon as you want, never work again and enjoy a fabulous income for life.

And it’s not like you even have to quit your job if you don’t want. You can keep
your regular paycheque coming in if you’d like while you follow the specific steps of this blueprint in your spare time.

Let us show you everything about this when you click the link below:

www.streetwisenews.com/wizard

Best Wishes

John Harrison

How Not To Copy An Idea

Leave a reply

In 2007, ‘music-to-slit-your-wrists-to’ exponents, Radiohead, carried out a massive marketing experiment. They released their latest album via Internet download – but with a twist…

Buyers were invited to pay as much or as little as they liked for the album. They were asked to pay what they thought it was worth.

There seems to be a fair amount of controversy over the results, but the best estimate I can come up with is that about 1.2 million people downloaded the album, 62% paid nothing at all, and the average price paid was around $6.

Given that their product cost was virtually nothing (although there would have been administrative costs) and they didn’t have to share the money with distributors, record companies or retailers, that surely must go down as a big success…Even though only 38% of customers paid anything at all.

Fast forward to last week, and I heard about another marketing experiment along similar lines – but with a very different outcome.

A restaurant in London attempted pretty much the same thing. There were no prices on the menu, and diners were invited to pay what they thought the meal was worth. Customers hated the whole concept, and spent the entire meal worrying about how much they should pay. They were fearful of paying too little, and looking mean ~ or too much, and looking stupid. Nobody wanted to go back.

This is a classic case of taking a marketing idea from one environment and dumping it in another, without thinking through how the new environment will impact on the effectiveness of the technique. It’s worth looking at the two factors that turned a winner into a loser here:

1. Proximity. With a music download, the transaction
is remote. There’s no human interaction, and hence no
embarrassment factor. If buyers had to hand over the
money to a band member (as they do to a restaurant
employee), the result would have been very different.

2. Costs. With the music download, there are no cost
implications to attracting freeloaders and skinflint
customers. In a restaurant, the implications are serious
because there’s considerable product and service costs to
cover. If Radiohead were committed to delivering a
tangible product (rather than a virtual one) they’d have
been in serious trouble.

I’ve made this sort of mistake on many occasions. A marketing idea has worked brilliantly, and so I’ve blindly used it with another product or market, without giving enough thought to why it actually worked in the original situation. And it’s bombed.

When I’ve looked at the situation retrospectively, it’s usually been obvious that the idea worked in the first situation because of factors that weren’t present in the second. This could easily have been foreseen by anyone humble enough to realise that they don’t know everything, and patient enough to sit down and think everything through carefully first. But it’s me we’re talking about here…

Neither patient nor humble – but very good at making mistakes. It’s not a great skill.

John Harrison

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

FINALLY REVEALING IAN’S
“INCOME FOR LIFE”
SECRET!

Hello.

Are you worried you’re going ot have to “work until you drop“?

Are you tired of working all day, every day to make someone else rich when it’s
YOU who should be the one becoming wealthy?

Ian once shared that grief, but now he never has to worry about money again…

Here’s a PROVEN way to make enough money to retire on as soon as you
want, never work again and enjoy a fabulous income for life.

And it’s not like you even have to quit your job if you don’t want. You can keep your
regular paycheque coming in if you’d like while you follow the specific steps of this
blueprint in your spare time.

Let us show you everything about this when you click the link below:

www.streetwisenews.com/wizard

Best Wishes

John Harrison

The Bicycle Library

Leave a reply

Imagine you want to buy a new bicycle. There are hundreds of models to choose from, each with very different characteristics. Choose the wrong one and you can end up making an expensive mistake. That’s the scenario behind the launch of the London Bicycle Library.

The library is based on a double decker bus. The bus contains information and resource materials where visitors can research their choice, and also a wide selection of bicycles which they can try out, and even take home for a few days. If it’s a marriage made in heaven, they can order their own bike, direct from the manufacturers via the library.

One of the greatest fears – and one of the greatest barriers to making a sale – in any market, is the fear of making a mistake. Anything which allows the customers to try-before-they-buy will ultimately be rewarded with increased sales. So is there some way you could adapt or apply this concept to your business?