The Marketing Viking

David Deutsch, a top copywriter, once said that, instead of reading 100 books on marketing, he wished he’d read 10 books 10 times each.

That got me thinking. I’m often asked to recommend marketing books, so here are 5 I think are worth reading multiple times:

Ogilvy On Advertising” – David Ogilvy

There’s a quote on the back of this book by some bloke called “Steve Gibson” who says:

“Simply one of the best books on advertising ever written. If you’re in business, you need to read this book”.

I think this “Gibson” person is right.

By applying direct marketing principles to big business general advertising, Ogilvy became the greatest ad man of his generation and probably the greatest ad man of the last 50 years.

Everything he says in this book is gold.

Scientific Advertising” – Claude Hopkins

This book is the daddy of them all. It’s the book that David Ogilvy said “changed the course of my life.”

Although the book is now 86 years old, everything in it is still true today.

Note: you can get it free online as it’s now in the public domain. However, I think it’s worth coughing up a few quid to get the paper copy as you’ll be far more likely to read it than read a pdf.

Tested Advertising Methods” - John Caples

According to Gary Bencivenga – a world class copywriter who worked for David Ogilvy:

Ogilvy said that he and Rosser Reeves, who were two of the greatest copywriters in general advertising of the 20th century, learned more from John Caples than anyone else. More people know David Ogilvy than Rosser Reeves today because of his books. But both Ogilvy and Reeves said that they learned more from John Caples than anyone else and they shamelessly stole from him and most of what they espoused came indirectly or directly from him.”

Tested Advertising Methods” is the summary of the most important lessons Caples learned from thousands of split-tests.

In it, Caples wrote:

I have seen one advertisement actually sell, not twice as much, not three times as much, but 19 ½ times as much as another. Both advertisements occupied the same space. Both were run in the same publication. Both had photographic illustrations. Both had carefully written copy. The difference was that one used the right appeal and the other used the wrong appeal.”

And he then explained which types of appeal are proven to be the most effective.

Essential reading.

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook” - Joe Sugarman

Joe Sugarman is one of the most successful copywriters of all time, making millions from selling his own products – like the famous “BluBlocker” sunglasses – with space ads in newspapers and magazines.

This book explains his approach to writing copy – including the 31 emotional triggers that cause people to respond to ads – and is, in my opinion, the best book for learning newspaper advertising.

(and most of these techniques are ideally suited to website copywriting)

How to Sell Anything to Anybody - Joe Girard

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, car salesman Joe Girard was the “World’s Greatest Salesman”. But it wasn’t selling that made him the best, it was his marketing.

He had a number of marketing systems that brought in huge numbers of prospects with the minimum effort. That left him free to close those deals and get into the record books.

He shares all this information in this book.

(For example, in Chapter 11, he describes a referral system that sold 550 cars in a single year)

Happy reading!

Steve

Drayton Bird does:

http://drayton-bird-droppings.blogspot.com/2009/01/follow-up-to-those-guys-holding-me-up.html

(”Alex Gibson” = me)

It’s an interesting point: it’s usually cheaper, quicker, safer and easier to increase sales through increasing conversion/response rates, so why do clients prefer the riskier option of spending money on brand new, untested advertising?

Steve

This recession has got me acting schizo.

On one hand, as a marketer I’m busier than a one-legged man in an arse kicking contest. 

But, at the same time, I’ve started to believe the economy was basically a Ponzi scheme and that thick Gordon is so desprate to win an election he’s going to fuck everything up and ruin the value of our money.

So, where do I turn to for advice?

1960s Bob Dylan, of course:

I will not go down under the ground
“Cause somebody tells me that death’s comin’ ’round
An’ I will not carry myself down to die
When I go to my grave my head will be high,
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground.

There’s been rumors of war and wars that have been
The meaning of the life has been lost in the wind
And some people thinkin’ that the end is close by
“Stead of learnin’ to live they are learning to die.
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground.

So, optimism shall prevail and I’m going to work for best while being ready for the worst. And, I’m going to help other business owners do the same.

My newsletters this year are going to revolve around 6 recession-busting core principles that will help every business grow their sales while their competitors sufffer.

To get an idea of what I’m talking about, read this old blog post I wrote in June 2007:

Amateur Hour Is Almost Over

Cheers,

Steve

P.S. Peter Hale has written a 10 point guide to beating the recession, which is well worth checking out.

(not just because I’m mentioned!)

This is a reprint of an email I sent to my newsletter list on January 2008:

————-

I’m sure you’ve been reading about this recession we’re “about to have”.

And, being in business, you might be asking yourself “if this thing hits hard, what’s it going to mean for my company?”

Well, Clayton Makepeace , the world’s highest paid copywriter, wrote something about this a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to share it with you. Clayton wrote:

“Let’s say this recession slashes a particular business’ profits 30%.  Suddenly, the owner is earning only 70% of the profits he earned last year.

Now, as a copywriter, you could just write a better promotion in the hopes of raising his response and average sale.

But to erase that 30% decline, you’ll need much more than just a 30% sales boost.  Your admittedly inspired copy will have to boost his sales by a whopping 42%.

Willing to bet your copy can do that?  In a recession? 
I thought not.

But what if you could help his company cut costs by just 7% …

Bring him 7% more new customers …

Boost his profit on each product sold by just 7% …

Cause existing customers to order from him 7% more often …

Increase his average sale by just 7% …

And keep customers buying 7% longer?

These incremental improvements would restore his profits - and then some — in no time flat!

And if you improved each of these metrics just a little bit more - say, by a meager 10% — he’d be growing his profits by a respectable 24% per year — at a time when his competitors are losing their shirts!”

Clayton’s point - a point that he, I and many other marketers have made for years - is that you can increase your profits significantly if you just find a number of small improvements in key areas of your business.

Obviously, you don’t have to wait for a recession to do this. But if you’re worried about the economy, Clayton’s words should reassure you that business and marketing optimisation puts you back in control of the future of your business.

If you want to read the whole of Clayton’s excellent article, you can find it here:

http://www.makepeacetotalpackage.com/clayton-makepeace/the-insanity-chronicles-part-two.html

Also, I wrote a blog post in June 2007 that gives advice on what to do when marketing gets tougher. Many of the points I make also apply to marketing in a recession:

Amateur Hour Is Almost Over

Best wishes

Steve

Over the last few years, I’ve talked to over 200 business owners and, although their problems have differed greatly there’s an underlying theme that needs to be addressed.

And that theme is, to put it bluntly … Most of You Guys Are Making Things A Lot Harder Than They Need To Be!

Let me explain …

One of my “rules” of business is that: “if you can’t get repeat business and/or referrals, you’re in trouble.”

Why? … because you’ll have to make every sale cold to a stranger that doesn’t know you.

And, anyone who’s ever been in sales will tell you that’s “HARD WORK“!

… But I see a lot of you doing this - you go after strangers instead of spending more time on your existing clients and warm prospects.

So, I’m going to give you a basic rule of thumb: if your time is limited (and whose isn’t?), here’s the sales hierarchy:

1. Enquiries
2. Existing customers
3. Solicited referrals
4. People who enquired, but didn’t buy
5. Brand new cold prospects

Rather than giving you the “how to” myself, I’m going to let you learn from the very best.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, car salesman Joe Girard was the “World’s Greatest Salesman”. But it wasn’t selling that made his the best, it was his marketing.

He was a master at getting huge volumes of people through the door with the minimum effort, and he did it by targeting his existing customers, referrals and people who had enquired, but didn’t buy.

(do these three categories sound familiar?)

If you read his book “How To Sell Anything To Anybody”, he talks in detail about the systems he developed to constantly pick this “low hanging fruit”.

And, that’s my advice for this month: get Joe’s book.

You can buy it from Amazon.co.uk here:  How To Sell Anything To Anybody and it’ll cost you about £6. Or, you can find it second hand for even less.

(Chapter 11, where he gives away the details of a referral system that sold 550 cars in a single year, is just gold … if you apply it)

So, please, get the book. And, once you’ve read it and applied some of Joe’s techniques, drop me an email to let me know how you got on.

Best wishes

Steve Gibson

PS This post is based on a newsletter I sent to my subscribers. If you’d like to receive my newsletter for free, you can sign up here. 

I recently wrote an article for a business website.

If you’d like a sneak preview, you can read it at: 10 Ways To Increase Your Sales.

After writing the article, I went back to some of the articles I wrote a few years ago and it was interesting to compare where I was then to where I am now.

There haven’t been a lot of changes to my approach (which is hardly surprising, my debut in marketing was in 1994, so I was fairly long in the tooth by the time I wrote my first internet articles), but there have been a couple that are worth remarking on:

(1) There’s been in increase in internet-only businesses in the last few years and a lot of them are based on the idea of free traffic/”if you built it they will come” rather than solid business and marketing fundamentals.

(2) Because of this, I spend more and more time talking about those fundamentals. In particular, building a long-term business based on profitable paid marketing.

I’m finding there’s a bigger and bigger gap between me and the majority of the online marketing community.

They’re talking about traffic, traffic, traffic and how to use “web2.0″ sites to promote their businesses, while I’m focused on about buying traffic, increasing conversion rates and raising the lifetime value of a client.  

Time will be the judge on this one, but I look forward to coming back to this post in 2010 to see who got it right. 

Steve