Two dozen 21st Century Proverbs
1. A day without sunshine is like night.
2. On the other hand, you have different fingers.
3. 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
4. 99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
5. Remember, half the people you know are below average.
6. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
7. Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
8. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese in the trap.
9. Support bacteria. They’re the only culture most people have.
10. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
11. Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
12. If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.
13. How many of you believe in psycho-kinesis? Raise my hand.
14. OK, so what’s the speed of dark?
15. When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
16. Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.
17. How much deeper would the ocean be without sponges?
18. Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
19. What happens if you get scared half to death, twice?
20. Why do psychics have to ask you your name?
21. Inside every older person is a younger person wondering, ‘What the heck happened?’
22. Just remember — if the world didn’t suck, we would all fall off.
23. Light travels faster than sound. That’s why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
24. Life isn’t like a box of chocolates. It’s more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your butt tomorrow.
The death of the yellow pages?
A quick thought on the yellow pages: Even a hot-air balloon won’t save them.
I know it’s hard to imagine a world without that big book(s) in your drawer, and I know that sometimes it occasionally still works for finding a local service, like a plumber. Or a roofer. Or a jumpy-house for your daughter’s birthday.
Or does it?
Local Search from Google, Yahoo and MSN (now known as Bing for some reason) will replace the yellow pages, because they’ve all gotten better.
Way better.
Better at presenting all the tradesmen in your area, instead of a random few. Better at displaying all the florists, photographers, estate agents — you name it, it’ll land in Google.
In the past local search has fallen-short because we’re not getting the results we want
. . . so we used to turn to the big yellow book.
But the advertising revenue is too great for the search industry to ignore, so local results are becoming more relevant, more useful, and they have become the search method of choice.
Where is the local-search opportunity for your business? If you deliver a product or service within a specific regional area you still have time to beat the competition. How?
1. Build a clear, smart, professional website.
2. Optimize it (ie search engine optimization, or SEO) for specific, local keyword searches.
There are two simple equations to bear in mind.
No Website = No Top 10 in Google = No chance
AND
No SEO = No Top 10 in Google = No Chance
(SEO is what I do for a website to make it show up Top 10 in Google when someone searches for something).
Here’s the big news: As at July 7, 2009, nearly 90% of people used Google to find what they wanted. Another 5% used MSN (now called Bing) and Yahoo and the littlies got the rest.
How keywords and Google search affect your business income.
Let’s say you have a carpet business, and you’re in the Gold Coast. (There are 105 retail carpet businesses on the Gold Coast as at July 2009).
People searching for anything carpet will use terms like cheap carpet or quality carpet, or discount carpet. They’re called keywords, or key phrases.
NOTE: If you haven’t got a web page landing Top 10 in Google, the people using Google will only see your competition.
And if you haven’t even got a website, you’ve missed out on the lot.
All those searches in Google. All those chances to get new customers.
All that money . . .
Sourced from hitwise.com.au
Just showing up in Google’s “Local Results” is not enough to win the business.
Did you know when someone from let’s say Ashmore, searches for carpet they mostly also type in where they live??They instinctively search for someone near them. So they’ll search for discount carpet runaway bay or carpetlayers ashmore.
So even if someone gets the Gold Coast tag, you can still win by getting something a little closer to home, like best carpet deals nerang
And a one-page website created by your mate’s nephew’s son who’s at Uni is not going differentiate you from the other guys.
Local search is the biggest opportunity for small business on the web.
And THAT ladies and gentlemen is why yellow pages are a thing of the past. They cost too much, they encourage you to pay big money to get tyre kickers, and you can’t change your ad for 12 months. With a website you can change your content almost at will.
How to cut newspaper advertising, and get more customers
It’s so simple, it only takes a sentence or four . . . and we’ll use a carpet business as an example.
- Let’s say you run a little 10 cm x 3 column ad each week. It’ll be costing you around $2000 a month. That’s around two grand a month, to hopefully reach the 120 or 200 people who might be looking for your carpet products and services that week.
- Your ad this week won’t reach people who decide to do their carpet in three month’s time, or next year, so you have to run your ad every week to make sure you have all your bases covered.
- How about if you cut the size of your ad in half? I can hear the cries:?You won’t be able to fit all your advertising in an ad half the size, right?
Wrong. You only need a smart headline to get their attention, maybe a photo, your logo and contact details . . . invite them to call you if they want to speak with you personally, and most importantly of all – invite them to your website.
Your 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week website. In full colour. With all the bells and whistles. And with interactivity.
You can actually serve your customers while you’re asleep. You can show them your wares. Or they can check you out from the comfort of their own home, when it suits them.
With your advertising now cut to only $1000, you can really afford a great website. Grab your share of Top 10 in Google and get more business through your door.
No matter what’s the size of your advertising spend, I guarantee I can work out a solution for you and your business.
Hey, and don’t think I’ve got a dirty on weekly newspapers. I don’t. I owned the Byron News for years, before the internet was invented, and back then it was the best value advertising anyone could get for miles around.
But things have changed. The web has it all now, for much, much less money that print advertising costs.
I have a young mate, typical of today’s under 35 generation, who claims, and I quote, “The only time I ever look at a newspaper is when I pay for my petrol at the servo. And that’s only the cover!”
Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?
Need to find out more about cutting your advertising to get more customers? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743
Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable
THAT curse word that reflexively comes out when you stub your toe could actually make it easier to bear the throbbing pain, a new study suggests.
Swearing is a common response to pain, but no previous research has connected the uttering of an expletive to the actual physical experience of pain.
"Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon," said Richard Stephens of Keele University in England and one of the authors of the new study. "It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain."
Stephens and his fellow Keele researchers John Atkins and Andrew Kingston sought to test how swearing would affect an individual’s tolerance to pain. Because swearing often has an exaggerating effect that can overstate the severity of pain, the team thought that swearing would lessen a person’s tolerance.
As it turned out, the opposite seems to be true.
The researchers enlisted 64 undergraduate volunteers and had them submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice. The experiment was then repeated with the volunteer repeating a more common word that they would use to describe a table.
Contrary to what the researcher expected, the volunteers kept their hands submerged longer while repeating the swear word.
The researchers think that the increase in pain tolerance occurs because swearing triggers the body’s natural "fight-or-flight" response. Stephens and his colleagues suggest that swearing may increase aggression (seen in accelerated heart rates), which downplays weakness to appear stronger or more macho.
"Our research shows one potential reason why swearing developed and why it persists," Stephens said.
The results of the study are detailed in the Aug. 5 issue of the journal NeuroReport.
10 Copywriting Tips for Guaranteed Results
WHETHER YOU’RE writing a brochure, copy for a newspaper ad, a script for a radio announcement or a page or blog for your web site, there are some tried and true techniques that can help you make sure that your copy gets the results you’re looking for.
As I work with clients to either coach them through the copywriting process or write copy for them, I offer some very practical advice that I hope helps them achieve their objectives.
Think about writing copy as making a sales pitch to a customer. Your goal is to persuade that customer to do something – most likely to purchase your product or service.
Here are 10 tips from Strategic Communications on how to write effective copy:
1. Put yourself in your consumer’s shoes
People don’t take action unless there is a reason to do so. “What’s in it for me” may seem like a selfish motivation but it is, nonetheless, human nature. In order to effectively persuade a consumer, you need to put yourself in their place and consider why what you have to offer meets their needs. This should not be a quick exercise or one that is taken lightly. Spend some time to really think about the appeals that you could make that would truly resonate with your target audience.
2. Make it as long as you need to
Ignore anything you hear about recommended length of copy. There are no hard and fast rules. Your copy simply needs to be as long as necessary to convey your key selling points. That doesn’t mean, though, that you should ramble on and on. No. You should identify 3-5 key points that directly relate to customer needs and then clearly and concisely provide enough detail about your product or service to convince the customer to take action.
3. Keep it simple
Whether your target audience is teenagers or physicians, you need to convey a simple message. Your audience is busy and your message is competing with literally hundreds of other messages and distractions. Know the points you want to make and make them simply and clearly. Edit your copy mercilessly so that it contains only those “need to know” elements that will guide the consumer in making a purchase decision.
4. Convert features to benefits
Too often copy focuses on the features of a product rather than its benefits. What’s the difference? Features are the attributes of a product or service – a statement of fact. For example: “XYZ orange juice has calcium.” Benefits, on the other hand, answer the all-important question of “What’s in it for me?” In this case: “XYZ orange juice has calcium to help you build strong bones.” Make sure that your copy goes beyond a description of features to clearly focus on the benefits for consumers. What’s in it for them?
5. Don’t be an “also ran”
Make sure that you distinguish yourself from your competition when you’re writing copy. Spend some time reviewing the advertising of your competitors. Note their key copy points. Note the benefits they focus on. Then be different. You’re trying to convince consumers to pick your product or service over the other options available to them. That means differentiating yourself.
6. Be consistent
All of your marketing communication needs to be consistent to be effective. It’s the cumulative impact of your communication that will eventually make an impact with consumers. That’s why it’s so important that you use consistent themes and messages in all of your advertising. That consistency will help to reinforce your product benefits; continued emphasis on the same points will ultimately lead to sales.
7. Don’t forget the details
Remember, your copy is your sales pitch. But unlike a real sales pitch you don’t have the luxury of responding to any questions that the potential customer might have as he or she reads or listens to your pitch. That’s why your copy needs to include all of the key points and information necessary to help the consumer make a decision. Spend some time thinking of the potential customers that consumers might have about your product or service – then make sure you’ve provided answers to these questions in your copy.
8. Consider the “look”
When you’re writing copy for the web or for print – newspaper or magazine ads or brochures – your copy will be working in concert with graphic elements. These elements can help to drive home your point or they can serve as distractions, or worse, detractors from the copy. Make sure you’re considering the “look” of your copy and how it relates to graphic elements, noting how the reader’s eye is likely to “track” through the copy.
9. Read it out loud!
Remember your copy is your “sales pitch.” Whether you’re writing a radio script which will be verbalized, or copy for a web page, you need to consider how it “sounds.” The best way to do this is to read your copy out loud. You’ll be surprised at the little “glitches” you’ll notice when you do this. It’s a simple technique to tighten and improve your sales copy.
10. Know when it’s time to hire an expert
Copywriting is an art. Good copywriters can drive sales of your product or service upward. Poor copy – copy that doesn’t motivate consumers to buy – is simply a waste of your time and money. If your communications aren’t getting the results you’d like, it may be time to find outside help. It can be worth every cent!
Need to find out more about Writing Great Advertising Copy? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743
