By Merrill Clark:
Web and Direct Response Copywriter
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Are you a sales rep, or maybe a small franchise owner, selling insurance, power, payroll processing, credit card processing, or any other product or service?
Do you regularly pounding the pavement scrounging for your own leads, hoping to talk with the “right” person?
And more often than not, do you hear: “Sorry… the person you Continue reading
By Merrill Clark:
Web and Direct Response Copywriter
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Nope. It’s not a trick question. Understanding how important promises and setting expectations really are will help you keep more of your clients from jumping ship to your competition.
Just because you’re a superstar in your field and do great work, your clients should Continue reading
By Merrill Clark:
As a business owner or manager, I’m sure you know just how important it is to WOW your clients with excellent customer service.
Learn from my shockingly good (and bad) customer service from companies I would never have expected it from…
Customer service is what separates the men from the boys.
It’s often the difference between keeping a valuable customer happy…or handing Continue reading
How about selling rooms in a retirement community to a teenager using e-mail?
What do you think… would either of these marketing campaigns actually work?
Probably not so good.
But why? Continue reading
Gotta quick analogy for you today…
Your company’s marketing message should work the same way as trying to convince your husband to let you go on a “girls out” weekend.
(Guys… the same principle holds true for you, too)
Let’s say your 3 closest girlfriends in the whole wide world are planning a “girls only” weekend away for fun, pampering, and pedicures, and want you to go, too.
Will your husband Continue reading
Recently, my wife and I are talking, and out of the blue she says to me:
“I bet Billy Bob Biz owner could make more money by sending me a postcard to remind me that it’s been more than a year since I got those expensive new hearing aids and they recommend getting a free hearing checkup every year.”
She goes on to say: “Wonder how many of their customers defect to the competition because Continue reading
Did you ever go to a website where the top header consisted of a series of rotating pictures that weren’t relevant?
Did it drive you crazy because you didn’t have Continue reading
First… SEO is inherently complicated, but I want you to understand why it’s important for you to grasp the basics. So here’s my simple definition without going into all the techie details.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of getting your website’s pages to attract various search engine’s attention.
You’ll notice I said “process” – because good SEO isn’t a one-time thing, it’s ongoing.
Properly optimized web pages help search engines determine what the page is all about, so it can give each page a “rank” in their search results pages (SERP).
Simple… Continue reading
A client recently asked me:
If I send out the same sales message to the same number of people using email and direct mail, which method is more likely to get the best response rate?
Great question!
My answer: Assuming all other things being equal, in my client’s experience, direct mail usually wins the battle.
Why?
I think it’s because readers have an opportunity to hold a letter or postcard in their hands, which gives it a better chance to grab someone’s attention.
On the other hand… people are completely overwhelmed by the number of emails they get, so it’ll most likely be deleted before it ever has a chance.
But that’s my opinion.
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Okay… If you get serious, qualified, pre-sold prospects from your website, that’s great news! You’re light years ahead of most business owners.
But if you don’t, then Houston… you have a problem.
Look… All the traffic and visitors in the world will get you a total of ZERO customers if your website doesn’t convince them you can solve their problem and contact you.
Last time, I discussed 5 of the 10 website conversion “killers” that cause nobody to contact you after looking at your website.
So here are the other 5 big and common failures I see.
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1. No eyeball-grabbing headline
If your website’s headline is “Welcome to my Website”, you can be virtually guaranteed nobody will read the rest of your content.
You need a main headline that quickly grabs your reader’s attention with a benefit or a question that raises curiosity.
There are many proven headline “formulas” Continue reading
