Who is Aida?

Aida will teach you the secret to making all of your advertising effective, persuasive and profitable!

That’s why we people in marketing love Aida with every beat of our heart!  Whether we’re writing a sales letter, leaflet, website copy – in fact any communication where a desired action is required – she showed us how!

So what’s her secret?

The secrets in her name…

A = Attention
I = Interest
D = Desire
A = Action

If you apply this formula to every communication you make it will increase your ad-to-conversion effectiveness in immeasurable terms!

Lets look at Aida more closely…

ATTENTION – normally takes form in a ‘headline’ or striking image – it has to literally ‘hook’ your subjects’ attention…

Next comes INTEREST – Now you have their attention you need to say something that interests them.  This gives you the opportunity to create DESIRE – desire in you, your service, or product.

And last, but by no means least; ACTION.

You absolutely must give your subject an Effective Call to Action.  This means a reason for them to call you, buy from you, or visit your website – not next week, or tomorrow, but right now.

AIDA is tried, tested, and works – she’ll work for you too, guaranteed.

Lets look at two sample pieces of copy – one has ignored Aida, the other has hung onto her every word…

Can you see the difference?

Learn to love Aida, and she’ll love you (and your wallet) back!

Did you know there is a very easy method for breaking into new markets and making new customers?

Even better, this method takes very little time and very little (if any) up-front investment.

It’s called ‘Piggybacking’ and in essence it is utilising the resources, systems, contacts, and the sales force of other organisations that operate in your market.

For example, your new firm produces ‘Point-of-Sale Media’ and you are keen to get a foothold in this market.

Thinking ‘within the box’
Route A, would involve you advertising in trade magazines, doing a PR launch, employing a sales team (or stretching the recourses of your current one), outsourcing telesales, getting up at the crack of dawn for networking gigs, getting a stand at an exhibition here and there, etc.

All this is expensive, time consuming, and stressful.

Thinking ‘outside-the-box’
Route B, is a bit more fun, creative and risk free. To ‘Piggyback’ your new product to market, is to ride on the back of an organisation that also targets your market (but does not directly compete with you).

Our ‘Point of Sale Media’ company for instance, could approach marketers, advertising agencies, manufactures, interior designers, software companies, signage makers, etc, and basically say:-

“We have a product that will add value to the service you provide to your customers, lets reach an agreement that works for us both and allows you to profit from our creation.

Their pain = your gain.
By having these companies selling your product for you, you automatically inherit the fruits of all of the labour your new ‘affiliate’ had to endure in order to get a foothold into your target market.

Needless to say, Piggybacking is not free. You will need to pay your affiliate commission, but this can often be negotiated on a ‘success only’ basis.

If this example is a bit too ‘OTT’ for your needs, Piggybacking can easily be applied on a smaller level. Why not Piggyback your way into your accountants monthly newsletter?

How could you Piggyback your way to market whilst staying at home?

As ever, if you like (or disagree) with my humble ramblings, please leave a comment, digg, tweet, pass it on to a friend, and subscribe.

One Rope. Lifetime Guarantee. Valid for 7 days.

The Credit Crunch.  If you listen to what the media are saying you may feel like paying a visit to your local rope salesman!

If you’re visiting the rope salesman to become an affiliate, then I guess you don’t need to read this blog – on the other hand, if you feel things really are all doom and gloom, put the paper down, switch off the telly and let me give you some home truths…

95% of people who had a job 18 months ago are still employed.  They have at least the same amount of disposable income, if not more.  Thousand of people who have a ‘tracker’ mortgage are sitting happy with much more disposable cash available to them.

What has changed is buying habits.  People (rightly) are more cautious of how they’re spending their money.

That does not mean however that they’re not spending.  Remember, people enjoy spending money – they’re just making sure they get better service and better value in today’s market.

This is good news for you.  By being a small business you are flexible and diverse.  Whilst the big corporates are Cruise Ships, you have the agility of a Jet-Ski and can quickly seize on new marketing initiatives and ‘purple cow’ products!

Couple this with great service, clever marketing, and by not discounting but adding value instead (see today’s Seth’s Blog for more about this) you have an excellent opportunity to cement an unshakable foundation to your business!

Chin up!  It’s sunny outside!

Urinals in an Amsterdam Airport have fly stickers on them to improve aims!

Sometimes, using the “Side Door” rather than the “Front Door” is the best way in.

This especially applies when you’re getting your customers to behave in a way that you want.  It’s not groundbreaking stuff to learn 99% of your customers don’t care about you, or any problems you may be having, etc.

FACT -  Customers are only interested in their own needs.  So trying to control (manipulate?) their behaviour by directly asking them to do something for you (the “Front Door” method) can quite often be a fruitless task!

However, by using the “Side-Door” method, your issues can quite often be resolved, here’s one example for you, I’ll post another tomorrow…

Airport toilet cleaners improve their Marksmen’s aim

Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, Holland had a rather smelly problem to do with their ‘Gents Bathrooms’.  Namely, more pee seemed to end up on the floor rather than in the urinals.  As a result, a whole army of pee-mopping janitors where employed to keep the problem under control.

Almost every Gents Room across the globe shares this problem.  Men, despite being gifted the ability to aim whilst peeing, all too often don’t care or bother.  Traditionally, this problem is handled by displaying notices in Gents Room’s asking patrons to try to keep everything neat & tidy.  This approach has never worked, hence,  cleaners have needed to be employed in order to ‘cure’ the problem.  The ‘vaccine’ to this problem, for years, would remain undiscovered.

However, in 2005 at Schiphol Airport, the ever resourceful Dutch found the elusive vaccine!

“yesch, if we can control the sea, we can control the pee pee!”

What they did.

They understood that men have the perfect equipment in their ‘Netherlands’ to aim effectively, but often, are too lazy to do so.

So what they did, was very simple.  They put a sticker of a fly in the middle of each and every urinal (Just like this one).

The Result?

Everyone who used the urinals now had a little ‘target’ to aim and as a result, concentrated all their efforts on keeping the poor little flies under constant attack!

The effect on spillage’s was a reported 80% reduction.  Not a bad Rate of Return for a sticker that costs less than a cent!

Why the “Side Door” was better then the “Front Door”

By using the “side-Door” and giving the bathroom user an ‘engaging’ experience, their behaviour was successfully manipulated into a win-win scenario.  i.e. the airports cleaning costs where down, and their toilet-visiting patrons enjoyed a cleaner environment and 30 seconds of fun (by the way of target practice)!

Another example tomorrow.

Another, cleaner, example of a “Side-Door” tactic will be posted tomorrow.  So don’t miss out on this little gem by subscribing by the rss/email link at the top of this page.

Also, please tweet, comment, share via the link below.  See you again tomorrow….

One of my photographer friends called me yesterday wanting some advice on own how to generate referrals from within his local community.

My advice?

“Be really nice to your hairdresser!”

Think about it.  What other profession has their finger on the pulse of a local community like this?

They see around 10 people each day and chat to them about what’s happening in their lives.  Furthermore, they have a real relationship with their clients born from seeing them every 4 – 8 weeks, year-on-year.

From a photographer perspective, a hairdresser knows:-

•    When someone’s pregnant (maternity portrait session)
•    When they’ve had the baby (baby portrait session)
•    When someone’s just got engaged (a wedding gig)
•    When they want to get a sexy gift for their new hubby (’boudoir’ photo-shoot)
•    When someone’s opening a new little boutique (PR, product photography)
•    When someone’s auditioning for that part (Portfolio photo-shoot)

You get the picture….

Regardless of the nature of your business, building a mutually rewarding relationship with your hairdresser would definitely be a smart move!

A few weeks ago I had a chat about what blogs can do for business with Dean Chudasama, the MD of a small new build developer called Damson Homes.

They where about to buy some land for a new development of three houses and I suggested he set up a blog to inform potential buyers and neighbours about the progress of the build.

They did.  I was happy he was open to the idea (so many builders are set in their ways).

They set up a basic, free blog with blogspot.  It has been running a few weeks and Dean has now given me some feedback.

The blog is performing really well for them.  It has generated interest and they have already sold two out of the three homes (they’re not even half built yet).

Comments they received about the blog included:

“It’ll be great to see the day by day, how my new home is being built”

“As a neighbour, I was naturally worried how the build would affect me.  It’s nice to see you care enough to inform people what you are doing”

The key to the success of this blog for them is the willingness to be open with the people interested in their product.

I’ve spent 10 years in the ‘new home’ business and one of the main grumbles buyers had against the builders was the lack of communication between the the buyer and the builder.

Many builders took an arrogant attitude.  They would say ‘thanks for your deposit, we’ll let you know when your house is finished.’  That’s it.

It’s fair to say, if you’re a buyer of a new property, getting to know exactly what stage of the build your new home is at is like getting blood from a stone.

Damson have knocked this particular brick wall down.  Now their clients can look behind the scenes.

This has a knock-on effect…

1. They (the buyers) get more more excited about their new home (they see it being build bit-by-bit, day-by-day)
2. They tell all their family & friends “They’re up to the second floor now already, I can’t believe it’s going up so quick!”
3. All their friends & family say “that blog’s a good idea, isn’t that nice..” – they then tell their family & friends
4. All of a sudden, (if Damson play this right), they can get themselves a little tribe going around saying how great they are and ‘how different’ they are to other builders.

This would create a local brand, to a community of say 500,000 (South Birmingham & Solihull, UK).  Using the 3% principal (3% of the average population has a need to move at any certain time) Damson can easily (and for practically free) get their message out to 15,000 people whom would want to buy their future products.

It just goes to show, even in a market as damaged at the UK property market is right now, success stories need not be fiction.

All Damson have done is created a good product, been open about how they are progressing (they even show pictures of each stage of the build so you can see what type of lintels they use, etc.), and have provided a platform where anyone and everyone can see what they’re doing.

There was not a hole in the market they’re in, the hole was in how the market markets itself.  This blog plugged that hole – http://pipersgardens.blogspot.com/