It’s entirely my fault.

My sincere apologies.

G

PS – There WERE quite a few creative entires, and I will post a winner from those previously entered on Friday, as promised. But please don’t post anymore (and I’ve deleted the 72 entries previously made).

I was eleven years old in 1975.   I was also quite conceited, and VERY insecure.

I’d lived a fairly sheltered life in Great Neck,  NY  (Wall Street’s wealthy backyard – though I had the honor of living in one of the poorest houses in one of the country’s richest communities)

That all changed in the summer of 1975.

And no, I’m not talking about puberty… that was actually relatively uneventful (with the exception of an incident I won’t go into with a girl nick-named “Big Kim”)

I’m talking about one specific drive home with my sister and my Mom.

You see my Mom worked in NYC.  She was a fledgling psychotherapist (like 17 other people in my family) just starting to see patients in her midtown office.   I forget exactly why Laurie and I were with her that day, but I’ll NEVER forget the ride home.

Ask anyone from New York … getting across town in midtown Manhattan on a hot summer rush hour  is much faster on foot than by car.   Which is why my Mom drove us home through Harlem.  It was easier to go straight uptown and head east on 125th street than to try and get anywhere on 57th (around the corner from Mom’s  office)

So uptown we went.

And Harlem was quite a site for a spoiled Great Neck kid.

I had heard all the stories on TV, the shootings, stabbings, drug dealers, prostitutes, muggers, etc.  I had expected to see a veritable prison ward let loose on the streets.

But what I saw instead was quite a friendly, busy neighborhood with street vendors, men dressed all sorts of ways (some in suits and ties, others in jeans and t-shirts, others with “bling”, though they didn’t call it that back then, …. even a juggler and a guitar player, etc)

It lit up my eyes.

Until Mom turned down a side street and the car stalled.

She seemed a little worried, so of course Laurie (my sister) and I were too.  But she remained calm and said we should just sit there for a moment.

So we did.

And then it happened…

A large, Pink Cadillac (I’m really NOT kidding you)  with fuzzy dice pulled up behind us.   And two large, lean black men got out and started walking toward our car.

My Mom turned to us both in the back and said “You guys have been great kids and I love you very much.  But we’re probably going to die now and I want you to know it’s OK” (At least that’s how I remember it  - Mom might have something different to say)

Of course, a wave of anxiety shot through me.  I’d like to say I was planning something macho… but let’s face it, I was eleven and I didn’t even shave.

Before I knew it the men were on both sides of the car, motioning for Mom to roll down the window.

She did.    I don’t think she really had any other choice.

And then,  much to our surprise, the men didn’t take out any guns or knives.   Instead, they gently leaned into the car and said “Is everything alright?  Your kids OK?”

She smiled and said yes.

“What’s the matter then, car won’t start?”

The rest of the conversation I can’t remember.

But the two nice men pushed the car (with my Mom, myself, and my sister in it) over a half mile to the garage they were most familiar with.

And THEN they drove us home in their big Pink Cadillac 35 miles to Great Neck.

My Mom offered them $50 for their troubles and gasoline (a lot of money back then), but they refused saying “We’re all brothers on the road”.

And that was my first exposure to Harlem.

The people we THOUGHT were our worst enemies in a scary situation actually saved us.

And that’s the moral of the story for we marketers.

Because we spend so much time worrying about the competition, we never stop to think how we might work WITH them.

So that’s the question I’ll leave you with …. have you considered how you might work WITH your worst competitor?  The one you’re most afraid of? (Howie Jacobson and I, for example, refer people back and forth all the time, even though we compete for the same traffic.  Same with Terry Dean.  We each have our unique strengths and weaknesses, and dozens of clients buy from all of us)

I’m not saying to make yourself vulnerable.  By all means, be careful.

But they just might be relieved to think of YOU as a friend instead of an enemy too, and it might be worth a conversation.

Food for thought,  do you think?  (Let me know below)

Dr. G

Do It Yourself |  Let Me Help You

1. “30% off today only”
2. “trust me on this one Glenn”
3. “it ends tomorrow”
4. “disturbing things I do in the phone”

Right?

Ben Settle is a master of mixing entertainment and sales.  He writes some of the most compelling subject lines I’ve ever seen (he says he grabs ideas from Comic Books), and implements a very unique style in his blog.

Honestly, I can’t help but look when I get an email, or see a new post from him in my Google Reader.

This was one of the more entertaining and fun interviews I’ve done this year, enjoy!

Dr. G

PS – Be sure to download the comic book classified scans we talked about in the interview.

PPS – In order to use emotional copywriting effectively you need to have KEYWORD FOCUS.  That’s because you can’t know the concerns, objections, and true motivations of your market if you don’t know where your market begins and ends online.  And because the internet is indexed by keyword, you really need to isolate your single most important keyword using very solid rationale.  It’s the only way to write truly powerful emotional copy that attracts hyper-responsive prospects!

We did NOT intend to distribute this conversation, so I apologize for the speakerphone, but I thought it represented a unique opportunity for you to be a fly on the wall to see:

A) How a high-level copywriter interviews “in the trenches” sales people to elicit the benefits and objections necessary to write A level copy

B) How my thinking has evolved into a more comprehensive, yet simpler system for building a solid internet marketing structure

The original purpose of the call was for Tony to get the material he needed to develop a consultation form like the one we’ve got here, but targeted at people who wanted more than PPC management… instead desiring a more comprehensive package including market research + site design/repositioning + PPC/SEO.

You see, it’s been several years since I originally innovated and presented the How To Double Your Business process, and I’ve moved WAY beyond the advanced survey methods I originally presented.  The way I approach markets presently is simultaneously  simpler and more powerful.

1) MAKING MORE MONEY WITH FEWER KEYWORDS

The most successful of the 100+ clients I personally audited at Rocket Clicks last year (especially those who seemed to survive the economic earthquake in the fall of 2008) were   focused on many, many fewer keywords, leading me to develop a set of algorithms for choosing the smallest number of keywords likely to make you the most money.

In fact, I now believe it’s ESSENTIAL  to have a well articulated rationale for choose ONE dead-center bulls-eye keyword for your business… the one you’d advertise on if Google restricted your account to only ONE adgroup with ONE broad match keyword in it.  (The “ultimate elevator speech”).

Considerations of relevancy, volume, and bid price are essential in making this choice.

And once you know your Bulls-Eye, I think it’s also essential to define a very small set of concentric circles around it … no more than six keyword groups.  And you’d better have a good written definition of the CONCEPTUAL BOUNDARIES OF YOUR KEYWORD SET, or else you’ll wind up wasting time, money, and diluting your conversions by aiming off your “keyword archery target”

2) GATHERING MORE FREE COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE THAN ANYONE IN YOUR MARKET

Once you know exactly where your keyword archery target starts and ends (and why!), I’ve innovated a NEW method for leveraging social media, competitive intelligence spy tools, and RSS fees to set up one systematic and comprehensive competitive intelligence dashboard…

Then identifying YOUR SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT COMPETITOR and totally reverse engineering their web testing diary.  (I’m not just talking about the stupid PPC spy tools … I’m NOT NOT NOT talking about figuring out what web changes they made which made them successful in the first place)

3) IDENTIFYING POINT OF DIFFERENCE BENEFITS WITH A NEW 80/20 VERSION OF MY SURVEY INTELLIGENCE PROCESS

On the foundation of a more clearly defined and simpler keywords set AND comprehensive competitive intelligence, we then utilize the survey process to find point of difference benefits for the market.

4) DESIGNING YOUR SITE, COPY, AND FOLLOW UPS TO BUILD ON ALL THIS UNIFIED INTELLIGENCE

With a clearly defined bulls-eye and keyword archery target, the knowledge of who’s winning the game on that target and why, the consumer language, emotional benefits, and point of difference benefits in hand, the process then proceeds to UNIFY ALL YOUR MARKETING COMMUNICATION AROUND A  SINGULAR, WELL RESEARCHED USP.

5) BUILDING OUT PPC AND SEO CAMPAIGNS FOR YOUR VERY FOCUSED TARGET:

SEO and PPC are expensive and time consuming.   The gorillas who survive are the ones who know exactly where to FOCUS their time and money.   The new Livingston Process ensures you eliminate waste and laser focus on a hyper-responsive message for the short set of keywords which define your business.

6) OPTIMIZE YOUR CONVERSION:  Multivariate and Taguchi testing are still VERY powerful tools (always will be).  But they’re only useful when you’ve got the RIGHT INPUT to test.   The new process above ensures you’ve always got a prioritized list of options for continually bringing your business to the next level.

Enjoy the FREE MP3 below please!  :-)

ACTION OPTIONS: Do all this yourself, hire us to do for you,  or have me coach you through it personally.

Con artists use words to damage.  So do politicians.  Words used incorrectly can and do kill.  But words used correctly inspire and heal.

An ethical salesletter inspires the reader to act in their own best interest by truthfully and thoroughly answering 5 questions, with no reasons held back or toned down, yet nothing exaggerated or falsified:

- Why This

- Why You

- Why From Us

- Why at This Price

- Why Now

An unethical salesletter answers these with the goal of getting the reader to act against their own interest –OR– falsifies and exaggerates to move users towards action.  (Unethical even if the end is positive because the ends don’t justify the means).  

Armed with a thoroughly articulated verbal argument, one can (and should) consolidate a salesletter’s message using images.  But I’ve never seen this taken to the extreme of a wordless page.  (At least not one that converts)

Even if it could be done, a process of verbal reasoning would still be necessary to reach it.   Because while a picture certainly IS worth 1,000 words, you’ve gotta write those 1,000 words first if you’re going to choose the right picture.

Until people can reason wholly with images, we’ll need ”words that sell” and experts who write them.

I think it behooves us to rebel not so much against language, but against the con artists who pervert it. And against them I’ll rage right along your side.

I hope that makes sense

(Note: I first read the 5 “whys” on Michael Fortin’s blog)

What if you could see the entire STORY your prospect was engaged in … the problem they were solving, what role they wanted you to play, how they wanted you to transform their lives with your copy?

This has got to be one of the coolest interviews I ever got out of Sharon … see how you can get your copy to write itself.  Free MP3

Email From A Client Who Previously Heard Me Present Hyper-Responsive Adwords Methods

“Hi Glenn, I just picked up your Truth Profits program and I gotta tell you…I was blown away by the PPC section you included. Like a lot of internet marketers, I’ve lost my shirt (and close to my pants! in getting pay-per-click completely WRONG for so long. I’ve purchased several programs but all they seem to do is tell you Google’s “rules” or how to try to “game the system”.

The format that your team used with discussing PPC was like being a fly on the wall as real pro’s discuss what’s REALLY working in this area. It’s obvious that the other marketers you teamed up with were somewhat challenged at some point with PPC. They asked all the right questions (for beginners and pro’s)…and you gave some incredible answers in a real step-by-step format.

I listened to the recording 3 times in a row and found new tips each time. In fact, I listened to it while on the treadmill at my gym and had to keep jumping off to scribble down the thoughts and ideas as they came pouring into my head! (I think you’re personally responsible for about 750 calories I could have lost if I’d just been able to keep running! Won’t hold it against you!)

Anyway, just wanted to say that I’ve listened to many of your recordings in the past but this one is by FAR the best yet. This section alone was worth far more than the price I paid.

Thanks for the tips!”

Jeff Anderson Chicago, IL

Here’s how the list was developed.

We started with hundreds of our own consumer studies and in-depth emotional interview transcripts to find any reference to emotional states related to purchase.

In total, we had over 600 possible emotions to start with.

We then presented these to an expert panel of 16 psychologists and marketing executives, who were instructed to eliminate redundancies and group the emotions into similar piles.  They were able to reduce the list to a little under 100.

We then designed a study to reduce this list even further to a more manageable number.  Our goal was to have the shortest list of human emotions which could motivate purchase … so that marketers could use them in advertising research, and agencies/copywriters could use them in actually developing their messaging.

In the study, we presented over 1,000 consumers FACIAL PICTURES of two dozen different people with a variety of different facial expressions, clothing, … and of different demographic constitution (age, ethnicity, etc)

We asked them ONE question …

“How important might it be to THIS person (picture shown) to feel THIS (emotion exposed) in their life?”  (To avoid fatigue, not every consumer rated all the emotions, nor saw every facial picture)

A kind of sophisitcated mathematical analysis (“factor analysis”) showed fairly decisively that the list could be clustered into no more than 37 emotions, which are represented in the 37 Emotional Benefits chart.  (There’s actually an even smaller, more workable list of 21 if you’re willing to sacrifice a certain degree of statistical accuracy)

Every time we work with a client, they see one of the other 563 emotions we started with which would be more relevant to their work.  But this study showed that what they’re really seeing is just a nuance of one of the emotions in the “magic 37″.   (A lot of clients used to make us prove it to them by testing and then running regressions to show the mathematical relationship … trust me, it always works and it’s not worth the effort!)

Bottom line?

You can really count on this free list of 37 emotional benefits in marketing … whatever you sell, whomever you sell it to, they’re buying it for one of these reasons.

Here’s a different way to break through your wall … try to do the OPPOSITE.

Seriously … spend an hour writing the WORST POSSIBLE ADWORDS ADS you can think of for your market in each ad group.   Ask yourself “if I really wanted to totally destroy my business and/or immediately tank my click through and conversion, how would I write these ads?”

Of course, you won’t publish them.  But giving yourself the freedom to do this will dramatically open your thinking to new avenues and benefits you hadn’t thought of.

The worst possible ads you write will contain, of necessity, the primary objections in the market … once you’ve identified these, it’s EASY to turn them around into positives.

But again, the key is to totally give yourself to the mindset.  When you’re writing BAD ppc ads, write REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD ppc ads!  And enjoy the process.

Here’s an example of an ad I’d like to beat, for my classic old “guinea pig” book:

All About Guinea Pigs
Everything You Must Know About
Pet Guinea Pigs In One Place!
www.GuineaPigSecrets.com 

Now, to really beat this I’d give myself permission to do the opposite.
And I REALLY have to go to the extreme … write things which guinea pig  lovers would hate me for indefinitely, things which no self respecting parent would ever click on, things which would get me banned from Google and get PETA to organize a protest on my front lawn.  (For legal reasons, let me be very clear that I am NOT recommending anyone DO anything in these ads, publish them anywhere, or even necessarily read them!  They’re for illustration of the exercise only)

Delicious Guinea Pigs
101 Ways To Cook Your Child’s
Pet While They Sleep (Free)
www.GuineaPigSecrets.com

Guinea Pig Baseball
Amazing New Game Builds
Child’s Confidence – No Balls!
www.GuineaPigSecrets.com

Piggy Poo Machine
Get Your Guinea Pig To 
Poo In Your Mom’s Room
www.GuineaPigSecrets.com

Do you see the direction I’m going in?   If I were doing the full exercise, I wouldn’t stop here … I’d force myself to write AT LEAST 10 REALLY, REALLY BAD PPC ADS.  But since I want to illustrate how these can be turned around to GOOD ideas, let me stop here and show you.

Take the first ad … did you experience a kind of “evil smile” when you read it?  That’s because you’re tapping into what every parent feels, but none are willing to admit to themselves.  I’ve spoken to parents who’ve gotten their children guinea pigs without educating their kids about care … then wondered what they got THEMSELVES into.  (Smelly, messy rooms, forgotten feedings, etc).  Many parents secretly want to get rid of their children’s piggies.

How could we leverage that?  How about something like …

Keep Your Guinea Pig
7 Secrets To  Raising Lovable,
Sweet Smelling Piggies Now!
www.GuineaPigSecrets.com

Now, let’s look at the next one:

Guinea Pig Baseball
Amazing New Game Builds
Child’s Confidence – No Balls!
www.GuineaPigSecrets.com

Here we’ve tapped into the same socially undesirable emotion (parents
wanting to UNDO the guinea pig at home) , but combined it with something the parents actually wanted for their children … a nurturing experience to help their child build confidence.  Let’s write an ad that appeals to the second:

Confident Kids Love Pigs
Your Child Will Learn Loving
Responsibility (Guinea Pig Info)
www.GuineaPigSecrets.com

OK, … get the point?  Let’s do the last one:

Piggy Poo Machine
Get Your Guinea Pig To 
Poo In Your Mom’s Room
www.GuineaPigSecrets.com

Becomes …

No More Poo Machine
Perfect Guinea Pig Potty
Training In 7 Days or Less
www.GuineaPigSecrets.com

The point is, when you want great ideas, you sometimes have to really give yourself permission to generate the WORST.

Hope that helps,

Dr. G