I was recently on a trip to Joe Polish’s Mastermind Group
in Arizona when I saw this ad in the airport:

She’s doing a few things right here, and a few things wrong.

Can you spot them?

1. She’s going after a specific target market: affluent women who are
facing divorce, death of a spouse, or a job change.

That’s very smart.

2. She’s showing her picture – that she’s a woman, which is important
to the women she wants as clients.

3. She’s citing social proof, that she was just name one of America’s
best Financial Planers.

What’s she doing wrong?

1. The headline in the ad needs work.

2. There is no call to action – it doesn’t say what she wants you to do.  Call her?
Go to a website?  Email?

3. There is no Offer!!!!

What about a FREE Report, “How to Overcome the 7 BIGGEST Mistakes
Affluent Women make with their finances when getting divorced!”

And then to get it they have to go to a website like www.ProtectYourAssets.com?

You think that would get her more clients?

Reply below…or opt in and see how we can help
your business avoid making those mistakes…

What is the BIGGEST MARKETING SIN?

Being Boring!

That’s right, it’s got nothing to do with keeping up with the latest social media network of the week,
or how big your budget is.

Look at it this way.

Your first goal of any marketing you do is to get your prospects attention, right?

If your marketing is boring, it won’t do that.  That’s why so many Fortune 500 companies
spend so much money trying to have clever Super Bowl ads.  That’s a whole ‘nother marketing
sin that we will cover another day.

Consumers see an average of 3,000 plus marketing messages a day.  They are bombarded, and
so in order not to go insane from it all, they block most of them out.  Signs on buildings on the way to work, radio commercials (Satellite radio), tv commercials (TIVO and DVR), Magazine and Newspaper ADs, online ads, emails selling us men Viagara, the list goes on and on.

How do you cut through the clutter?

You have to stand out!  If you look and sound like everyone else, you will be ignored.

Think about it.

If there are only 100 providers of what you do in your town, how many of them can be the best?

By definition, only one can be the best.  But if they all are screaming that they are each the best choice,
how can the consumer know who really is?  They probably can’t tell the difference.
If everyone says they give good customer service, and really – a lot of businesses don’t,
and you really do, how would they know to believe you and not the other guy?

You can’t be boring.  You can’t say what everyone else says, and be believed.  You can’t look like everyone else either.

So if being boring is the ultimate marketing sin, what’s the SAVIOR?

Put your PERSONALITY In your Marketing!!!

Let them see your face.  Share your lives with them.  It will bond them to you, and help you stand out.

That’s why the last column I wrote was about my five year old son’s obsession with the
Skylander’s video game.  All you other parents who have kids out there playing it will instantly relate.

That’s what you want.  Them to relate to you.

I guarantee you it will help you stand out.  I’m pretty sure I’m the only nationally
recognized Marketing Expert out there who’s writing about marketing lessons learned
from Skylanders.  You can do the same in your niche, what’s your Skylanders?

The Downfall of PHP Membership Forums
So about 17 months ago I had my first membership site built in PHP.
We used PHP on the recommendation of a mentor of mine, who was
using PHP at the time.  He even offered to build it for us at a very reasonable rate.

How could I go wrong?  How can you learn from my mistake?

I built the marketing funnel that sold the membership site using my favorite
marketing automation software – Infusionsoft.   My first issue came about because when someone
bought a membership in Infusionsoft,they instantly tried to go to the membership
site and login.  Well, they didn’t have a username and password yet, so everyone
clicked the “forgot username and password” link.  They then changed their password.
Except a few minutes later they got their welcome email from Infusionsoft, with their original username
and password that they didn’t recognize, and no longer worked.

Can you imagine the customer service issues we created for ourselves?
We fixed it by having infusion taking them after sign up to a video that explained
how to access their benefits.

The next issue is that PHP only allows you a certain amount of files to upload by
default.  We had four tiers of membership, with at least three files for each level to
download each month – some PDF’s, some jpeg’s, some word doc’s, and two go to webinar
recordings each month – we quickly ran out of space.

We fixed the issue by hosting our downloads on Amazon’s Cloud Server (EZS3),
and just posting the links to the PHP site.

We have had two other issues:

1. Our members aren’t signing in every month to consumer their content.  We fixed this issue
by delivering the content via email (as a download link).  Sending those out via Infusion
allows us to see who is consuming what content, and to automatically follow up based
on their membership activity.

2: Our members have become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content we provide.
We overdeliver and they get overwhelmed and don’t take advantage of it.
We fixed this issue by creating some introductory videos that take them through
what they should do first, second, third, etc.

We are currently preparing for a re-launch of the membership site,
and are building the new version using a much more user-friendly membership
site solution.  Also, one of our biggest factors was customer service.  PHP is open source, which
means you are on your own.  I prefer an 800 # I can call, with someone who speaks English
who can fix my problem right away.

Skylanders And Cabbage Patch Dolls

Are Skylanders the next cabbage patch dolls?

In case you don’t know what Skylanders are, they are THE hot video game
for kids since last year.

You can play on the Nintendo WII, the DS, Playstation, and on the web.

You get these little figurines, a game disc, and a “Portal of Power”

You place the figures on the portal and they come to life inside the video game.

The figures also remember where they are in the game, their money, their powers, etc.

They have adventures, go through levels, fight enemies (and each other).

It really is a pretty cool game, and my 5 year old son is obsessed with it.
He gets up at 5:30 in the morning because he can’t sleep because he is so excited to play it.

So why am I writing about it?

Because the frickin things are ALWAYS SOLD OUT!!!

You go to Toys R Us an HOUR after they get a shipment in,
and the shelves are BARE.  It’s crazy.  If you ask the employee’s of
Toys R Us, Target, Wal-Mart about it – they are very touchy and rude,
because of all the pissed off parents and kids who can’t buy what they want.
The Skylanders are even sold out on all of the stores websites.

So are they the next Cabbage Patch Dolls?  For those of us old enough to remember,
Cabbage Patch dolls had a CONSTANT “SHORTAGE” as well.  Mom’s would literally
camp out at the store waiting to get them.  Skylanders are pretty much the same.

I’m just wondering if the company making Skylanders is not shipping more
in an artificial attempt to spike up demand, or if they truly can’t make them fast enough.

Any thoughts?

As a marketer (if they are doing it on purpose) I applaud them,
but as a parent who’s kid always wants the figures that sell out in two seconds,
it pisses me off.

Let me know what you think…

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