People often ask “does pay per click work”? Or “will it work in my industry?”.
I want to talk about these questions because they don’t really make sense.
PPC is just a form of multi-step direct marketing.
Step 1, someone sees your ad. Step 2, they arrive at your landing page. And so on … and the final step is when they agree to buy.
The simple rule is: if someone doesn’t complete the final step, no sale is made.
When listening to a lot of people talk about doing business online, I realise that many of them are stuck in the “get rich quick” mentality.
They’ve bought into the myths about how you “just stick up a site, drive some free traffic to it and then sit back while the money rolls in.”
But the world is rarely like that … even online.
I’m often asked to recommend marketing books and people are surprised when my #1 recommendation goes to a book written in the 1920s.
But there are good reasons why I believe My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins is the best marketing book ever written:
Firstly, Claude Hopkins was probably the greatest marketer ever. He inspired David Ogilvy, Jay Abraham, Gay Halbert, John Carlton and most of the other top marketers and direct marketers of the last thirty years.
Secondly, Hopkins autobiography brilliantly demonstrates the fundamentals of sales orientated marketing and - despite what the trick-of-the-month internet gurus say - these fundamentals haven’t changed in the last 80 years.
Finally, when you buy “My Life In Advertising”, you get Hopkins’ other book, “Scientific Advertising”, for free. And that’s another “essential read” in the marketing field.
Although you can read it free online on sites like these: Scientific Advertising, you’re far more likely to read it if you have a paper copy in front of you.
So, by all means, check it out on the free site above (in particular, read chapter 15), but do yourself a favour and get “My Life” as it’s an even better book and will be your marketing guide for the rest of your business life.
Steve
Effective copy - whether it’s an advert or a web page - tends to have certain elements and each of these elements serves a purpose and should appear in a logical order.
And one of the key copywriting mistakes I see from non-marketers is that they cripple their response rates by leaving out essential parts of the sales message.
Different marketers have different formulae, but here’s the basic 5-step approach I tend to take:
It’s not cast in stone - as I said other copywriters have different steps - but it’s a great place to start.
If you look at your own ads or your website homepage, does it have those elements? And does it have them in this order?
- Can the reader quickly see what the offer is?
- Does it explain why he or she should buy from you instead of your competitors?
- Is there evidence that backs up the claims you make about your product or service?
- Is it obvious to the reader what he or she should do next?
If the answer to any of these questions is “no”, you’re probably letting a lot of money spill through your hands.
Steve Gibson
In the interview I posted recently (Strategic Marketing Interview), I mentioned a book by Joe Girard:
There’s a great book by Joe Girard … Joe is or was in the Guinness book of records as the world’s greatest salesman … he sold cars … and he had all these systems … it’s a great book … and part of it was just keeping in touch with his customers.
I’ve been asked which book it is.
The book is How To Sell Anything To Anybody and is available from Amazon for around £6.
Joe Girard was in the “Guinness Book of World Records” as ‘the world’s greatest salesman’ for twelve consecutive years, but his real genius was for prospecting.
What separated him from his competitors was his marketing systems that brought a constant stream of prospects through his door.
He talks about these systems in great detail in the book and anyone who applies a few of Joe’s ideas to their business should receive a huge return for their £5.99 investment.
Happy reading,
Steve
When I’m talking about website marketing, I often talk about the importance of “visitor value”.
So, what is it?
Visitor value is the average income accrued by a business from bringing someone to their website.
It doesn’t just mean someone who makes a purchase during that visit, it can be the residual income you expect to generate from someone requesting information or signing up to a newsletter.
Anyway … earlier this week, I posted something on an internet discussion group where I said:
“… if you’ve got a low income per visitor, doesn’t that mean there’s something wrong with either your business model, the quality of your traffic or your website?
i.e. a business with a low income per visitor is a business in trouble.”
Some people seem to doubt this, so I thought I’d address the issue head on.
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