I wrote this article for the Professional Speakers Association of Southern Africa. I think you’ll find that the lessons apply to any organisation that is more “we” focused than “you” focused.
I’m a Legend in my own lunchtime – Jacques de Villiers
My marketing copy has more ‘i’s in it than floccinaucinihilipilification, the English word with the most ‘i’s in it. That’s no surprise. The problem is that the ‘i’s in my copy are predominantly “I”. In the professional speaking world, “I” is typically a precursor to some grandiose claim about the writer.
My claims would make even Narcissus appear coy and demure. To my embarrassment, there are more ‘I’s in my copy than in a Paris Hilton publicity junket …
I can solve your problem. I am the leadership, culture, EQ, presentation skills, sales, marketing, motivation and team-building guru. I am the only expert your company will ever need. I’ve trained more than 80-gazillion people. I belong to the PSASA and save Greece fund. I have climbed the Melville koppies – got to the top after my fourth attempt. I have lived with scorpions, piranhas, baboons, meerkats, man-eating walruses and now make a living speaking about them. I have swum across a reservoir in the Karoo. I am the most wonderful creature since ET flew on a bicycle and if you don’t hire me for your event, you must be stupid.
Reading my marketing copy with a diamond cutter’s eye, I discovered that there’s too much vanity in my approach. Not in a creepy Dorian Gray way, but more in an “I’m a legend in my own lunchtime” way.
As speakers, trainers and consultants we know that it is all about our target market. They want their problems solved and their hopes, desires and dreams brought to fruition.
What do we do if our marketing copy looks like a ‘first date’? We all know the kind of first date I’m speaking about, don’t we? Where one or the other mind-numbingly speaks about themselves for the whole debacle.
If we really want to write copy that speaks to our prospects so that we can convert them to hire us, we need to put ourselves in their shoes and feel their pain:
- What problems do they have?
- How can our speaking, training and consulting solve those problems?
- What value do we add?
- What is the return on investment for the client?
Once we’ve answered these questions, we have the foundation for good copy.
It’s simple, really. 98% of our copy should focus on our prospective clients and their problems. We can knock ourselves out on the 2% that’s left and put in “I can, I am, I will, I solve, I do” and so on. We do, after all, have to give our egos some wiggle room, don’t we?
In case you’re interested, floccinaucinihilipilification means, the action or habit of estimating something as worthless.
Any marketer worth her salt knows that lead conversion whips lead generation anytime.
So that’s why tracking generation-to-conversion is vital to see if your company is getting bang for its marketing buck.
Trolley abandonment is to a marketer what Kryptonite is to Superman. It knocks the stuffing right out of you.
For the uninitiated, trolley abandonment is when you have a full trolley of goods and leave it at the checkout counter for whatever reason … the queue was too long, a can of beans wasn’t correctly priced, the credit card machine is on the blink and so on.
The same scenario plays out on when it comes to your internet marketing strategy in general, and your website, in particular – people want to buy what you have to sell, but you make it too hard for them. You make them jump through hoops just to get what they want.
The #1 rule of both online and offline marketing is “Don’t make me think” and a photo finish second rule is “Make it easy for me to buy”
Don’t make me think
- Is your company’s telephone number on every page of your website?
- Is it easy for your visitor to find what they’re looking for in less than 3 clicks?
- Are you giving your visitors enough reasons to buy – benefits, case studies, special offers and the like?
Make it easy for me to buy
- Do you only have one payment gateway? Or can I choose to pay via credit card, bank transfer or bank deposit?
- Is the price clear and visible?
- Is your guarantee and returns policy visible?
Here’s some examples that have happened to me
Call Centres
I’m not even going to get into call centres. I’ve experience them, you’ve experienced them and what can one really say about them. Nothing is hated more than lack of service delivery, potholes and call centres. I believe they’re the biggest detractors of a brand and lead to unsatisfactory experiences. One has to jump through hoops just to get to the right person. And, if you have the patience and do get to the right person, it is invariably the wrong person for your problem.
In my opinion, there’s only one big winner in the call centre debacle and that’s Telkom and the cellular companies. An average call can take 15 minutes with all the runaround so the telcos are just going “Ca Ching, Ca Ching” and ringing up those cash registers.
Here’s a novel concept. How cool would it be if I phone my bank, cellular service provider, Internet service provider, etc and within 3 rings I actually get to speak to a live person who can help me with my problem straight away?
Oops, I fibbed, it appears I did get into call centres 
IBurst and Neotel
Make it easy for me to buy. I recently tried to get a second Internet data contract from IBurst and a second phone from Neotel. [Understand, I'm not picking on them, the malaise that has befallen them is rampant in most companies.] I’m sure you’ve tried to open a bank account, get a car loan, get a query answered, tried to get your inaccurate electricity bill reduced from R10-trillion to its normal R1 000. You get the picture, I’m sure.
Both accounts are under my company name. I waltz into to each respective store and ask them to add the second device to my company account. I get told that I have to open a brand new account. You know what that entails, don’t you? ID document, CK1 document, proof-of-residence and retina scan (ok, I made that one up).
Guess what? I abandoned the trolley and left. Can you imagine if they actually made it dead simple to add on another device to an existing account, how many more sales would both companies make? The repeat business would be phenomenal. All the marketing hype that probably cost millions to generate the lead came to naught because the systems failed it and resulted in no lead conversion.
UNISA
I tried to find out information on a Philosophy course at UNISA. I click the link to the BA courses. It tells me the duration of the course and that’s all. What would your main questions be that you’d like answered? That right:
- What does the course entail?
- How much is it going to cost?
I clicked everywhere (and I’m no slouch when it comes to navigating a website) to no avail. I finally did what all men dread doing; I asked for directions. Yes, I sent an email to the help desk to see if it could answer my questions. That was in November 2010. I’m still waiting for a response.
But, I’m onto UNISA. This is its selection process. Sneaky creatures that it is. It figures that if I’m too dumb to follow the maze its built for me, I’m too dumb to enroll at its facility. Absolute genius. They’re only ever going to get the cream of the crop.
Walk in your customer’s shoes for one day and try your own system and see if it would lead you to abandon your trolley.
I’ve just redone my marketing website and was pretty chuffed with the result. I got a call from Adolph Kaestner saying my website was a dog’s breakfast and doing my brand a disservice. “Have you been drinking? Because on my screen it looks beautiful,” I replied somewhat whiningly.
It turns out that my website looked great on Firefox, but didn’t stack up in Explorer. It looked horrible. I checked out a couple of fellow PSASA members websites and found that they also had the same issue. Good on Firefox, not so hot on Explorer. So, go now and check what your website looks like on different browsers if you want to keep your brand integrity.
I’d check out Firefox, Explorer (older and newer versions) and Safari. I’m sure there’s a bunch of others. In terms of font, the best one to use is a san serif one called Verdana. Never use Times on a website. Times is for paper and there’s a reason for that, but we don’t have time for a typography lesson now, do we?
Oh, and check out your website on different size screens. If your website is set up in a smaller area it may look tiny on a big 20” screen. Yup, nobody said this website and branding thing was easy.
Business Generator, Jacques de Villiers is a sales training expert.
As a motivational speaker I get to travel quite a lot. Recently, when in Cape Town, I've been staying at Protea's Fire and Ice Hotel in the centre of town. I've stayed there three times already and intend staying there again when I'm back in Cape Town.
The staff gives great service (above and beyond the call of duty). The staff brought me popcorn at 12 am (don't ask … long story).
The hotel just seems to go the extra mile. And, since a picture is worth a thousand words. Just to put it into context … I gave the reception my business card and this is what they did with it. Pretty neat, huh?
This is a great example of the extra mile.
Jacques de Villiers is a sales trainer and knows lots of motivational speakers. And, now he is a raving fan of Protea Hotels's Fire and Ice.
This was send to me by my friend Erich Viedge. It is from the master of permission marketing, Seth Godin.
How to send personal email
Here are some easy to follow tips that will help you avoid being seen as a spammer, or having your emails trashed or ignored. The thing is this: email reduces friction. Greedy, lazy organizations have embraced this and tried to figure out how to blast as many emails as they can as cheaply as they can, relying on the law of large numbers. The real law of large numbers is, "using large numbers is against the law."
I want you to add friction back in. If you want to be seen as being personal, the best strategy is to be personal, which is slow and expensive.
- Don't send the same email to large numbers of people.
- If you have more than a few people to contact, you'll be tempted to copy and paste or mail merge. Don't. You'll get caught. It shows. If it's important enough for someone to read, it's important enough for you to rewrite.
- Careful with the salutation. Don't write, "Dear Claudia," if you don't usually write "Dear" at the beginning of all your emails.
- Don't mush the salutation together with the rest of the note. If I had a dollar for every email that started, "Joe, When experts come together…" That's not personal. That's lazy merging. See rule 1.
- Don't send HTML or pictures. Personal email doesn't, why are you?
- Don't talk like a press release. Talk like a person. A person is reading this, so why are you talking like that?
- Be short. The purpose of an email is not to sell the person on anything other than writing back. If you don't have a personal, interesting way to start a conversation, don't write.
- Don't send an email only when you really need something. That's not personal, that's selfish.
- Do you have a sig with a phone number in it? Your phone number? If you don't trust me enough to give me your real phone number, I don't trust you enough to read your mail.
- Don't mark your email urgent. Urgent to you is not urgent to me.
- Don't lie in your subject line, and don't be cute. You're not clever enough to be cute. Just be honest.
- Following up on an impersonal spam email is twice as dumb as sending the first one. Invest the time to do it right the first time.
- Anticipated, personal and relevant permission mail will always dramatically outperform greedy short-term spam. I promise.
- Just because you have someone's email address doesn't mean you have the right to email them.
Jacques de Villiers is a motivational speaker in South Africa
Whether you run a business totally online, or you operate a
brick-and-mortar business and have a supplemental website, you need to
implement article marketing. If you aren’t marketing your business with
articles, you’re missing a huge chunk of the marketing pie. Let me give
you a few reasons why.
Reason #1: Article marketing is free. Every business owner knows
that advertising isn’t cheap. Every newspaper or magazine ad you run
costs you dearly. By spending just a little extra time writing and
submitting several articles each month, you’ll save quite a bit of
money. Best yet, article marketing doesn’t cost you a dime–just a few
hours every week.
Reason #2: Article marketing brands your business. Have you ever
wondered how some businesses seem to become so well known in such a
short amount of time? They’re getting their name out there. They’re
giving away something of value for free to their potential customers.
Your articles will brand your business and make it a well-known name.
Reason #3: Article marketing makes you an expert. If you write
articles about the subjects you know well, you’ll quickly become known
as an expert in your field. Do you run a website on bird watching?
Writing and submitting fifty articles on bird watching will show people
that you know what you’re talking about.
Reason #4: Article marketing teaches you how to relate to people.
You can’t write a bunch of articles without learning how to communicate
effectively. The more you write, the more you’ll learn how to get your
message across in a friendly, personal tone.
Reason #5: Article marketing creates back links to your website.
Without getting into the technical details of this, back links to your
website are good and you’ll want lots of them. Back links help boost
your rankings in the search engines, thus gaining more exposure for
your website.
Remember that article marketing isn’t the cure-all answer to
advertising your business; it’s one piece of the pie. You also can’t
submit a handful of articles one time and expect to see results.
Article marketing requires persistence and patience. You should
plan to spend a certain number of hours each week writing and
submitting articles to promote your business. Pencil in this time
faithfully and stick to it. Within a few months (maybe even a few short
weeks!), you’ll begin to see the results of your hard work pay off.
Jacques de Villiers is sales and marketing consultant in Johannesburg, South Africa
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