Thanks for being so patient! I got buried under an avalanche-sized to-do list getting ready for the talk I gave to the Glazer-Kennedy folks in Atlanta.
(You can find an alternate version of the talk on Copyblogger, I ended up framing it around the “7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing.”)
But I’m back in the saddle and back to the “What Makes Marketing Hard” series today. I’ve been having a really good time writing it, and it seems to be resonating with folks.
The two places we get stuck
So basically there are two categories of problems that hold us back when we start trying to promote our project or business.
The first category is mindset problems. This is the harder of the two to deal with, because changing your thinking is tricky. It also can be tough because your brain will tend to pay rotten tricks on you.
(To give you an example, I made myself MISERABLE getting ready for the Glazer-Kennedy event. It turned out incredibly well, but for about a month leading up to it I was truly pathetic. Not because what I was doing was hard, but because deep in my little heart of hearts I was afraid I was going to have to sell. And if you know me at all, you know how much I hate to sell. More on that in a bit.)
The other category is not-knowing-how-to-do-stuff problems.
About half the time, these are mindset problems too. But it does help to have good information in a place where you can find it.
The vegetable soup theory
Vegetable soup is pretty complicated. Think about it. You’ve got potage Provençale, sweet and sour soup, edikaikong, minestrone, cockaleekie, miyuk-guk, vichyssoise . . .
There are about six billion people on earth and I bet there are a billion recipes for soup.
So how come when we want to make some soup, we don’t get wigged out by all the possibilities?
Because we know that even really complicated soup isn’t actually all that complicated.
It’s all soup. It’s spiced differently and there are different techniques. Some is fancy and some is stupidly easy. But when you set out to make some soup, you don’t have to know how to make every kind of vegetable soup that exists. You just settle on one recipe that appeals to you.
A marketing soup recipe
So today, I thought I’d give you my crazy simple marketing soup recipe. It’s a variation on the classic marketing theme “AIDA,” which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
Mine is called ACME/Ask Me. This article won’t tell you how to chop every carrot, but it gives you a good general formula you can use whether you’re selling massage therapy, dry cleaning, snow tires, chow fun, or coaching for Olympic curling hopefuls.
A is for Attention
The A in ACME stands for attention.
Every copywriting or marketing formula starts with attention. If you can’t capture attention in the first place, none of the rest of it works.
It’s a little bit like parenting small children. Until you can get their ears and eyes focused on you, there’s not much way to get information imparted into their adorable little heads.
Attention can come from lots of places. Advertising is the traditional one. Public relations is another classic. Blogs are great attention-getters, attracting new people with Google and also via links from your fellow bloggers. If all else fails, going door to door with a good story can work too.
The sales function called “lead generation” is just another way of saying you’ve got to get their attention.
Most “marketing” focuses on attention at the expense of the other steps, which is why most marketing isn’t all that effective. You’ve got to get all the way through the sequence or you don’t make a sale.
C is for Connection
It used to be that you didn’t need connection for every kind of business. Some businesses sold boring stuff that everyone needed, so they didn’t need to form customer relationships or any kind of bond.
That was before the recession made everyone on the planet so freaked out they couldn’t see straight.
Basically, no one buys anything until they trust you. When times are good, trust comes relatively easily. But when the economic conditions are this miserable, trust takes some time to build.
The remarkable communication email newsletter and blog, for example, exist to create a better connection with nice people who might become customers some day.
Like, oh just to pick someone out at random, you.
It gives you a sense of who I am (for better or worse), so when I bust out an offer, you don’t feel like you got groped by some stranger on the subway. Or cold-called by an insurance salesman, which might be even less pleasant.
M is for Me
What do we actually care about? Ourselves.
Our families. Our feelings.
Our desire to look adorable in a pair of jeans. The way we feel when we hug our kids. The way we feel when we do something we didn’t think we could do. The way we feel when we go out for a really nice dinner. The way we feel when we buy something expensive that we’ve wanted for a long time. The way we feel when we donate to a charity that moves us.
The marketing jargon for this is “benefits.” What does this person get out of doing business with you?
You have to have fabulous answers to this question. Multiple answers. Some of them are logical and some of them are emotional. You should have a gigantic list of wonderful things your customers get out of doing business with you.
Putting together a good marketing soup largely consists of coming up with interesting ways to talk about those things.
Failing that, come up with some boring ways to talk about them. Frankly, when you talk about THEM, they always find it interesting.
E is for Experience
We can tell prospects all day long about what our stuff is going to do for them. But if they don’t feel it, they ain’t gonna do it.
Maybe you create experience by giving a “test drive” of what you do. Maybe you create it by getting a creative writing student to write an amazing few paragraphs for you about what it’s like to use your product. Maybe you create it by having a storefront that really shows you care about your customers. Maybe you create it with some killer case studies about people you’ve helped.
But one way or another, you get them to a place where they can feel themselves being part of what you offer.
It can truly be as simple as starting a paragraph with the words, “Picture this.”
Ask Me
The final step is “Ask Me,” because making the formula “ACMEA” would look like some kind of degenerative skin condition.
If you want to make a sale, ask them. Make an appealing offer on great terms. Don’t ever cheap out or sell yourself short. But do offer terrific value for the payment you’re asking.
You don’t have to be the world’s most brilliant salesman or copywriter to do this. In fact, you can actually be a horrible salesman or copywriter. If you’ve got the ACME part down, “Ask Me” is about 1000 times easier than it would be otherwise. Just remember to give people the details on what you’ve got and give them a clear call to action.
Free call coming in a few days!
So I mentioned the Glazer-Kennedy talk I gave — it was a totally fascinating weekend. I learned a ton (some from things I did, some from things I heard). And I’d love to talk with you about the most interesting stuff that came up, and how you can benefit from it.
I’ll let you know as soon as I get it scheduled. It will probably be something idiotic like the Monday or Tuesday before Thanksgiving. (Early next week, in other words.) So look for email in the next day or two with the details. It will be recorded, so if you have to spend 144 hours in an airplane to get to grandma’s house, don’t worry, you don’t miss it.
The membership site is nearly done!
I’ve been trying to launch three projects at once. Which, if I can share my lofty guru wisdom with you, doesn’t work for beans. So lesson one, I won’t try that again.
But my very smart and lovely web person is wrapping up my new membership site. We’re probably launching the week after Thanksgiving. I think it is going to rock. More details very soon. 🙂 (You can read a bit more about it here if you’re mad with curiosity.)
Look for email about the call! Can’t wait to talk with you soon.
P.S.
If you’re new to the list, you may not have seen the earlier “What Makes Marketing Hard” articles in the series. You can check them all out here:
I love the ACME acronym. Easy to remember and simple – just like you make marketing.
A friend was talking to me about marketing that is real, raw, and relevant. I replied to her that this was the essence of relationship marketing – which you introduced to me.
Thanks for all your articles. You’ve made me a better copywriter and content marketer with your insights.
The “picture this” statement immediately grabbed me. Engaging someone’s imagination, the way storytellers do, is a great way to start interacting with your people. If you do it well, it’s a welcome relief from the sell-sell-sell approach. People are already excited about what you’re offering.
thank you for another great post
attention, connection, me, experience – then ask me. I like that, a short memorable lesson that will help me write.
Thank you
Again a valuable article. Thank you. Marketing is getting fun!!
ACME will from now on be the 4-letter word I love 🙂
Well, once again, Writer Lady from Colorado, you’ve made it easy and simple to do something that instills fear and angst. Thanks for that and yes to more!
P.S. Using Napoleon Dynamite is genius! Talk about skills. A woman loves a Guy With Skills. And Gear.
I’m pretty new to marketing my website and learning massive amounts as I go. It is a minefield of marketing with social networking.
My idea for my marketing is to spend no money until i make some, other than buying my url. It’s going pretty good so far although I did have to buy email forwarding for $1.07.
I love the acronym. Anything that gives a good framework to work with is a good thing.
I used to work in sales and always hated it so this series is a very poignant (not sure about spelling) one for me.
Thanks.
Love the soup metaphor! Although I have to admit that I sometimes can’t decide what to cook, precisely because there are so many options:) Love the series, thank you so much, Sonia! And good luck with the three projects!