profit boosting course 2008 (by michael lu)

To all Business Owners, Entrepreneurs and Sales Professionals who want more sales, higher turnover and bigger profits...

"How to Use Proven Marketing Strategies to

Dominate Your Market,

Crush Your Competitors,

& Boost Your Business Turnover and Profits...

In Any State of Economy, Any Industry - Anytime"

A Quick and Easy Crash Course on Profit Boosting Direct Response Marketing Principles That They Don’t Teach You at University

By Michael Lu Direct-response Copywriter and Marketing Consultant

[email protected]

“I Will Reveal Hidden Business Opportunities and Boost Your Profits - Within The Next 30 Days... Guaranteed!”

Get your FREE 14 part E-Course “The 14 Deadly ‘Cash Eating’ Advertising and Marketing Mistakes 99.7% of Business Owners Make Without Even Knowing” (a $147.00 Value) NOW.

Recommended Retail Price: $97.00 AUD

Copyright 2008 © Michael Lu. All rights reserved. Published by Michael Lu. Fourth Edition 2014.

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Re:%20Slideshare


Email: [email protected] FAX: +61.2 8080 8252

1

“The-lawyer-made-me-do-it Legal Statement”

The fine print stuff.

Every effort has been made to accurately represent copywriting and direct marketing strategies and its potential. Any income statements and examples on this course are not to be interpreted as a promise or guarantee of earnings. Earning potential is entirely dependent on the reader and we don’t represent or guarantee that anyone will achieve the certain results. Your level of success in attaining the results claimed in the materials depends on the time you devote to the ideas and techniques mentioned, your finances, knowledge and various skills. Since these factors differ according to individuals, we cannot guarantee your success or income level. All information offered on this course are for educational, informational and entertainment purposes only. Use caution and seek the advice of qualified professionals. Check with your Accountant, Lawyer or Professional Advisor before acting on this or any information. Readers of this course are advised to do their own due diligence when it comes to making business decisions. You agree we are not responsible for the success or failure of your business decisions relating to any information presented by the course. Our Business, its advertisers and licensors make no representations or warranties about this course, the suitability of the information contained on or received through use of this course, or any services or products received through this course. All information and use of this course are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind other than specified in this legal statement. The company, advertisers and/or its licensors hereby disclaim all warranties with regard to this course, the information contained on or received through use of this course and any services or products received through this course, including all expressed, statutory, and implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. Our business, advertisers and/or its licensors do not warrant that the contents or any information received through this course are accurate, reliable or correct; that course site will be available at any particular time or location; that any defects or errors will be corrected; or that the contents or any information received through this course is free of harmful components. Your use of this course is solely at your risk. User agrees that it has relied on no warranties, representations or statements other than in this legal statement. Under no circumstances shall our business, advertisers and/or its licensors be liable for any direct, indirect, punitive, incidental, special, or consequential damages that result from, or arise out of the use of, or inability to use, this course. This course may not be copied in part or full without express written permission from the author. All violations will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Note: Any information in the course can change at any given time because of updating and deleting of old information or adding new information. Unless having expressed permission from the author, you agree not to cut and paste, sell, license, rent, lease, distribute, giveaway, modify, copy, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform, publish, adapt, edit, or create derivative works from materials or code or content on or from this course. In addition, use of the content or materials for any purpose not expressly permitted in this legal statement is prohibited. You acknowledge and agree that all content and services available on this site are property of our business and its advertisers and licensors and are protected by copyrights, moral rights, trademarks, service marks, patents, trade secrets, and other proprietary rights and laws internationally. All rights not expressly granted herein are fully reserved by us, its advertisers and licensors. Please contact us if you have any concerns or questions regarding the above. Thank You.

In other words, if unsure, all you gotta do is just ask me first, ok?

Now on to the good stuff.




2

WARNING!

Do Not Read Any Further If You Are:

(Please tick any of the following options that applies to you) Someone who’s SEEN it all and KNOWS it all.

A person with a huge EGO and a CLOSED mind.

Easily OFFENDED about making huge PROFITS and being WEALTHY.

A whinger or complainer who BLAME others for your problems.

An info junkie who wanna get RICH without taking any ACTION today.

If you ticked on any of the above options, please stop reading NOW. CLOSE this file, DELETE it from your computer, and BURN any hard copies you’ve printed out. I do not want you reading on any more.

HOWEVER . . .

If you don’t fall into any of the above options, then PLEASE read on…

Because This Course Could Save Your Business.

Follow These Instructions CAREFULLY:

1. Print this course out NOW;

2. Read it from beginning to end STRAIGHT AWAY;

3. Complete each profit boosting exercise AFTER;

4. Apply the profit boosting strategies in your business TODAY;

5. And watch your business turnover and profits RISE.

NB. This course was created in 2008, but is still relevant for today’s business environment.




3

Table of Profit Boosting Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Lesson One: The Only 3 Ways to Increase Any Business Turnover and Profits . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Number One: Increase the Number of Paying Customers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Number Two: Increase Each Customer Spend and Profit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Number Three: Increase Customer Purchase Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Case Study: A Café Selling Real Espresso Coffee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Bonus Factor: Maximise The Customer’s Business Value Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Instant Business Turnover and Profits Boosting Worksheet #1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Lesson Two: 7 Instant Direct Marketing Strategies You Can Apply To Your Business. . . . . . . . .12

Strategy One: Direct Response Advertising with a Persuasive Sales Message in Print . . . . 12

Strategy Two: Give Away Free Stuff and Provide an Awesome Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Strategy Three: Create Membership and Special Privileges for Members . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Strategy Four: Get Others to Do the Advertising for You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Strategy Five: The Marketing Power of Free Publicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Strategy Six: Create an Outrageous Guarantee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Strategy Seven: Increase Your Price Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17


Lesson Three: 4 Important Ingredients to Any Direct Response Marketing Campaigns . . . . . . . 20

Ingredient One: The Customer List / Target Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Ingredient Two: Package a Great Offer with Quality Products and Services . . . . . . . . . 21

Ingredient Three: Make Your Sales Letter Copy & Communication Totally Persuasive . . . 21

Ingredient Four: Test the Waters and Measure the Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22


Lesson Four: So What Is Copywriting and How Can It Boost My Business Profits? . . . . . . . . . . 25

About The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29




4

Introduction Quick questions: When was the last time you took time away from your business and had a really good look at it? Where is your business now and where are you going with it? How are you going to get your business to where you want it to be? If you can answer positively to all the questions, then you’re already ahead of 75% of all the businesses out there. Believe it or not, most businesses have no clue as to where they’re at or what they’re doing with it. Because recent studies found that a whopping 50% of startup businesses will fail within the first 5 years, and then a further 20% to 30% will survive beyond 8 years (Bjerke and Holtman, “Entrepreneurial Marketing”, 2002). So about 75% of businesses will drop out after 8 years. Scary stats, isn’t it? But it’s true. Why would that be? Is your business one of those numbers? So are you running a business, or simply working in a job that you’ve created? If you can’t wake up tomorrow at noon, have the freedom and choice to go somewhere for a holiday for 3 months and have the business run effectively without you – then you haven’t got a business. You’re still in a job. Except now you’re working even harder, way longer hours, and dealing with more problems than ever before when you were just an employee. You used to work for a control tyrant of a boss. Now you’re working for an even bigger fool – yourself. The money’s not in the product. It’s not in your expertise. It isn’t even about how pretty your logo looks or how smart your business name sounds. And who cares if you’re working 24-7 in your own business. Do you want to know where the money’s at…? The money is in the marketing of the business, and the marketing of its products and services that solves the problems of the customers. And 75% of businesses don’t understand this. Have you ever wondered why they don’t teach you at school or university about making real business profits in the real world? They don’t tell you because they don’t know. How many wealthy professors and teachers do you know? Not many. And those who are, it’s because they know how to market themselves effectively. And I’m not knocking academics and intellectuals. We need them in this world to provide the education. I’m a uni graduate myself with a bachelor degree in business marketing. But I realised quickly that what I was learning at uni was useless when it comes to dealing with ruthless competitions and demanding customers in the real business world. And most marketing and MBA graduates haven’t got a clue on how to make profits for a business. Did you notice that many rich entrepreneurs did badly at school and never went to uni. Instead they learnt real marketing strategies from doing it the hard way themselves in real businesses, and the smart way from people who’re actually rich and wealthy themselves. (Again, I’m not knocking education. It’s important to get an education to build knowledge and character as a basic foundation to most things in life.) Now theories are alright. But I prefer the real street wise direct marketing in the trenches that produces real practical results. I like proven theories that work when implemented in real life. You’ve got to walk your talk.




5

See, marketing is an overused word that sounds good, but is highly misunderstood. The truth is, most businesses don’t know how to market themselves. That’s why most of them fail. This course isn’t the know-all on everything in marketing. And it isn’t all that polished and slick, and the grammar isn’t all that correct. But it’ll cut to the chase with basic no B.S. fluff on proven direct marketing strategies on how to boost profits in your business. I’ve spent a lot of money and time in learning from the very best marketers and copywriters, and can’t take any credit for any ideas or strategies laid out in this course. Look, if you’re currently struggling in your business, it’s not your fault. Remember you didn’t learn it at school. This course will open your eyes to whole new hidden world of how to cost effectively boost your profits anytime. You’ll see how simple it can be. And if you’re doing well, then this course will be a like having a set of fresh new eyes that’ll peel away hidden opportunities and profits in your business. It’ll be like reviving a stale relationship with a hot passionate affair. I guarantee that if you apply at least one of the strategies in this course to your business, you’ll see a boost in your turnover and profits. And if at anytime you felt you got nothing out of this report, and cannot use a single strategy or idea to increase your business profit – show me and I’ll provide you with a prompt and courteous refund. If this course helped you save your business, I’d want to meet you, shake your hand, and hear all about it. Plus I’ll appreciate a cup of real espresso cappuccino.

If you haven’t done so, please make sure you go sign up now for your FREE 14 part E-Course “The 14 Deadly ‘Cash Eating’ Advertising and Marketing Mistakes 99.7% of Business Owners Make Without Even Knowing” (a

$147.00 Value) NOW. Plus we will show you how you can easily get your complete offline and online marketing done for your business by Australia’s top copywriters and marketing experts – all managed under the one roof.




6

Lesson One

The Only 3 Ways to Increase Any Business Turnover and Profits To boost any business profits, no matter what industry is, whether you’re selling 100% organic goat milk or trading aircraft spare engines – you must maximise the number of customers and the amount of profit you make from them… and there are only 3 possible ways you can do that: Increase the Number of Paying Customers Increase Each Customer Spend and Profit Increase Each Customer Purchase Frequency

Number One: Increase the Number of Paying Customers Do you want more leads, more prospects and more paying customers? Yes, and you must increase the number of paying customers in your business. You can either… Go Get Your Own New Customers This one is straight forward common sense stuff. You advertise, you cold call, you beg and plea for them to buy things from you. This is where you try to find new prospects and persuade them to become a paying customer. They can shop and browse, but please show us the money. One of the most cost effective ways of getting new customers is via direct response marketing through the various print media, and online web (see Lesson Two). Action: Write your ad, target your market, give them an offer and watch your leads flow in. You can also… Feed Off Others’ Customers. You can go for a host parasitic relationship, like a vine the grabs hold of a tree and draw the living sap out of it. No, just kidding. I meant use another business’s customer database. Or share your customers with each other. In the business world, there’s nothing wrong with this, as long as you both have an understanding and agree to it. In fact, it makes good economic sense to share customer database between parties. You get more product range, you save time, you save money, and you save all the hassles of getting new customers yourself. There are joint ventures, where 2 or more parties partner up their customer database. Or there’s selling to another business’s clientele and then splitting the profits. Action: Find businesses that compliment yours and approach them for a possible joint venture. (e.g. restaurant and video store, florist and wedding dressmaker, real estate and finance broker) And don’t forget…




7

Getting Others To Bring In New Customers For You. I’m talking about referrals. Word-of-mouth marketing. Celebrity & authority figure endorsements. Look, would your prospects believe you more, or would they believe their family / friends / colleagues / celebrity / authority figure more? You get bet your dollar they’ll believe you last because you’re biased to your own business. Provide excellent product value and service. Study has shown that one happy customer will tell 5 others. But be sure to keep them happy though, as study has also shown the one unhappy customer will report your wrong doings to 20 others! Here’s a simple tip on getting referrals – ask. Reward anyone who refers, and you’ve got a legal way to bribe others to advertise your business for you. Action: Ask your existing customers if they can recommend or introduce 3 other people into your business, and reward them for doing so. Number Two: Increase Each Customer Spend and Profit Get each of your customers to spend more each time. Try to increase the amount per purchase. There are various ways you can do this. You up sell. You add on other items to what they’re initially interested in buying. You ask and you suggest. Because it works. You’re helping remind customers to buy stuff that they otherwise would’ve forgotten. Give them a Basic or Deluxe option. See how McDonald’s teenage workers ask you “would you like a million things with that?” A simple French fry up sell adds millions of dollars to McDonald’s bottom line each year. You increase your price. “No way! I’d lose all me customers!” Ok, I hear you protest. Now, this one’s a hard one for people to accept. Most people think others shop based on price. Actually, it’s the opposite. Study shows people perceive the value of a product is much higher than what the business values it themselves. People are conditioned to think “Expensive = Good”. And they perceive higher price to be of higher quality. So customers are quite happy to pay a higher price for good products and services than you realise. Now, imagine how much money you’ve left on the table so far! Another way is to cut costs. Do you have any staff you don’t need? Could you negotiate a discount with suppliers? Can you find another way to produce the stuff at a lower cost? But be aware to not cut productive costs. This is another subject on its own and I won’t delve into it too much here. Action: Raise all your prices by 10% and see if anyone cares. The chances are, most wouldn’t even notice. This will increase your turnover overnight. Start asking if the customer wants an additional item, and notice how some of them will say yes. Number Three: Increase Customer Purchase Frequency What makes your customers return for more? Get them to come back for seconds. Then the third time. Next thing you know they’re part of the furniture in your shop. Having a customer for life would be ideal.




8

Try getting your customers to come back more often. If they buy once a month, get them back once per fortnight. If they buy only once a year, get them back once every 3 months. And so on. You get the drift. The best way to do this is create a relationship with them. Develop that trust. Communicate with them more often. Give them valuable information. Let them know what’s happening in your business and exciting new products that can benefit them. Make your customer a member of a club – great way to collect their details so you can market to them for life (more on this later). Mail them newsletters or email them e-newsletters. Mail them sales letter and offer them new products and services. Studies have shown people want to have a sense of belonging and desire recognition and personalised attention. By the way, communicate often to sell a product or service. If they don’t buy the first time, don’t fret – you’re just warming up. Studies have shown it takes as much as 7 mailings of the sales letter before the customer buys. It’s not because they don’t want the stuff… it’s because the time aren’t right yet. Isn’t that interesting? How many times have you contacted each customer? More than once, I hope. And you seen those frequency vouchers they give out at Gloria Jeans cafés? They give you this card, and each time you buy a coffee, they’ll punch a hole in it, and after your 10th coffee purchase you get a free cuppa (you can fit 20 coffee purchases on each card). Well, they’re addictive. The cards I mean. I know. Because it wasn’t until I gone through the 3rd card that I realised they got me to spend $180 on 60 cups of flat white within that month. That’s 60 cups of coffee in a month or twice a day – from the same joint! All I got was a measly 9% discount overall. Action: Think about what you can do to encourage your customers to spend and revisit often. Can you start membership club of some kind? Can you start a newsletter with valuable information for your members? Try this, when you farewell your customer each day, finish it with a “See you again tomorrow” – and see how much more often they’ll return. And when you increase all 3 areas, you get the Multiple Effect! Now, if you can increase 10% in each of the 3 areas, it isn’t just a 10% increase overall. It’s actually a 33.1% boost! (10% x 10% x 10% = 33.1%) Look, don’t get too bogged down with the maths. Just know you get the multiple effect. The magic of compounding. The leverage and synergetic combination. That the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. You get what they call a hyperbolic curve. Here’s a graph to show you what I mean.

Figure 1.0 Graph of Multiple Effects

Factors Influenced

Boosted

Turnover




9

Case Study: A Café Selling Real Espresso Coffee Let me share with you a basic example. You run a café. You sell the best brand of quality organic espresso coffee in town. So it isn’t the cheap nasty instant stuff. But it’s been quiet. You want to see how you can seriously boost your profits. Based on a café that sells 30 cups of coffee, trades for 8 hours a day and 6 days a week. This is 1,440 cups of coffee (30 x 8 x 6), or $4,320. Let’s say each cup of coffee represents one customer. You advertise in the local area with an ad coupon handout to offer a buy one get one free coffee deal. (Tip: when doing promotion, try to add free value rather than discount deals.) Let’s say you handed out 5,000 coupons and got a small 0.2% response or 100 redeemed coupons. And let’s say a third of these are new customers (some are probably brought in by existing customers). So you’ve now got 33 new customers walking into your café.

33 x $3.00 = $99 in extra turnover You raise all your coffee price by 10%, at night while the café’s closed. If a regular cuppa is $3.00, it’s now $3.30. See if anyone notices the extra 30 cents next morning. Oops, you get a few complaints, and let’s say 1 out of 20 customers now go to McDonalds across the road for coffee now. Increase price by 10%, lose customers by 5%.

(1440 + 33) – 72 (lost customers) = 1401 x $3.30 = $4,623.30. That’s $303.30 of extra turnover.

You ask them would they like to upgrade to a larger size for only a dollar extra at $4.00. Let’s say a third of customers say yes. More caffeine, more buzz, more profit.

1401 / 3 = 467 x $1 (extra up sell) = $467 in extra turnover Next, you give them a frequency voucher rewards them with free coffee with every 5th purchase. And when you give them the free cuppa, you do it with a happy face and a really big smile. Now maybe a quarter of customers will come back twice as often. They might even bring back a partner as well.

1401 / 4 = 350 x $3.30 and 116 x $1 (those that gets larger size) = $1,271.00 * 80% (5th cuppa free) = $1,016.80 in extra turnover

The café’s now boosted its turnover by $1,886.10 or 43.7%! It now does $6,206.10 instead of $4,320 on coffees per week. That’s an increase of $ 98,077.20 (just short of $100,000) per year in extra turnover! And that’s just promotion on coffee, not food or other products. So all the café did was: Handed out 5,000 buy-one-get-one-free coffee coupons in local area Increased their coffee price by 10% Asked everyone if they wanted to upgrade to a larger size Offered a frequency voucher that gives the 5th cuppa for free

See, this is not rocket science. Simple strategies that can be implemented instantly. You may lose a few customers, but those are the customers you don’t want any. So less headache plus a boost in the bottom line. (Café and restaurants, you’ve got yourself a free $100,000 advice here – you’d be crazy not to do this!)




10

Now, this is just a basic example to show you how the principles apply in real life. You can see how increasing one area can positively affect the other areas as well. This is synergy or the multiple effect at work. There are many effective direct marketing and different advertising strategies that can really boost any business’s turnover, any day. The next 3 lessons will cover some of the stuff on how to do this. And if you haven’t got the time or knowledge – then get professional help. Why learn the hard way? Hire the right people to do the right marketing and advertising job for your business. Bonus Factor: Maximise the Customer’s Business Value Perception Alright, I’ve added this in the last minute. Because this is not something you do instantly, but build up over time. Any of the above 3 factors will contribute towards building up the perceived value of your business. And this is where you can make the biggest dough, in the selling of your business. Whenever marketing your business, you should plan for the exit strategy to sell your business for a huge profit. Great examples are huge buyouts of websites Skype.com and YouTube.com. eBay got Skype.com for $2.6 billion in 2005 but it only did $7 million in revenue for that year. Google purchased YouTube.com for $1.65 billion in 2006 but it was only doing $15 million. Are these sites really valued that much on paper? The values are in the eyes of those who bought it. eBay and Google didn’t buy the sites for their business revenue, they bought those sites for its huge database list of members that they can market to. The founders of Skype and YouTube worked hard at building membership numbers, sold it for an astronomical amount, and are now laughing all the way to the bank. Another reason why customer database list is gold. So look at the previous café example, and imagine what an extra $100,000 could do for its business value when it comes to selling it. This is a whole new topic and there are plenty of books out there that deal with this. Just keep it in the back of your mind. Profit Boosting Exercise #1: Print out the “Instant Business Turnover and Profits Boosting Worksheet #1” now on the next page, and go through how you can boost your turnover tomorrow by increasing your number of customers, increasing each customer spend / profit, and increasing each customer purchase frequency. Don’t worry too much on specifics, just brainstorm on a few ideas.






11

Instant Business Turnover and Profits Boosting Worksheet #1 In my business_______________________________________ (business name), this is my products and services ________________________________________________________________________________ (description). Here are some ideas on how I can instantly:

Increase the numbers of customers 1. ________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ 2. ________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. ________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________

Increase each customer spend / profit 1. ________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ 2. ________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. ________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________

Increase each customer purchase frequency 1. ________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ 2. ________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. ________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________

I can go and implement these simple strategies and ideas immediately.




12

Lesson Two

7 Instant Direct Marketing Strategies You Can Apply To Your Business So you’ve got a basic understanding on the only 3 possible ways to increase your business turnover and profits. Plus you’ve spent some time identifying possible marketing ideas you can instantly apply to your business by doing the “Instant Business Turnover and Profits Boosting Worksheet #1” on page 11. Now you will see specific direct marketing strategies on how you can translate your ideas into real action. There are many direct marketing strategies, but here are 7 that you can instantly apply to your business. Strategy One: Direct Response Advertising with a Persuasive Sales Message in Print Direct response advertising is about a persuasive sales message that works in getting instant response from your prospects and customers. It’s advertisement that works for you in bringing new prospects, or getting existing customers to purchase more often. It gets the sales message across on a mass scale and does not rely on you having to do that one-on-one selling with anyone. I don’t advocate cold calling and door knocking to anyone – it’s a very inefficient use of your time. Let’s put it this way. Would you rather cold call 10,000 individuals at the cost of $2,000 (20 cents / call) and at least 166 exhausting hours (average 1 minute / call) or 20 working days (and that’s assuming your calls connect every single time)? 166 hours at $15/hr is $2,450. So that’s at least $4,450 in cost. Or invest $5,000 (50 cents / mail) in mailing out a powerful sales letter to 10,000 targeted prospects in the one go? If you got a great response pulling sales letter, each time you send it you know the results will be consistent and predictable every time. So what’s your time worth? If you hire telemarketers, will they get your sales message across effectively each time? Will each telephone call be the same? Plus can you handle rejection after rejection after rejection? My skin’s not that thick. Is yours?

Here are some ways direct response advertising can be done: Classified Ads In Newspaper Or Magazines Display Ads In Newspapers Or Magazines Yellow Page Ads Letterbox Drops Sales letter Addressed Mailouts Webpage Sales letter Internet Pay-Per-Click Ads (Google Adwords, Overture) Fax & Voice Broadcasting 1300 Numbers Voice Messages Infomercials Full Direct Mail Campaigns

Crafting the perfect sales message for your business is the best investment you can do to boost your business turnover to another level. Lesson 3 will reveal you the secrets on how to do this.




13

Again, don’t worry, you can always hire the right people to do the job if you don’t have the time or the know-how. You don’t want to waste time and money in making mistakes from the start. Action: Start reading a book or two on direct marketing and copywriting. Attend a few good marketing or copywriting seminars. After going through Lesson 3, see if you can create your own sales letter – this will make you really think about your business. Strategy Two: Give Away Free Stuff and Provide an Awesome Service

Yes, there is such a thing as free lunch. And you wanna be the one giving it, because there’s something about giving others that gives back far more in return to you.

In Hindu it’s called the “Law of Kharma”. In Physics, they call it “Newton’s Third Law of

Reciprocal Actions”. Robert Cialdini calls it the “Rule of Reciprocation” in his powerful book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”.

The effect of giving creates a psychological obligation on the receiver’s part to do something back in

return. But make sure you give something away that is something of value, and not your main product or service. (The coffee’s an exception, I do like my coffee, don’t I?) And you must know how much you can afford to give away. You must know the lifetime value of your customer. That is, how much would the average customer totally spend in their lifetime with your business? For example, if you worked out that customers spends on average $1,000 over a period of 3 years before they drop out, then you can afford to give away or spend $50 to get a new customer, won’t you? So if you spent $2,250 for a display ad in a newspaper with 90,000 circulation, get at least a 1% response rate, and 10% of these leads become a paying customer, then you’re happy. (This equates to 45 new customers at the cost of $50 each.) And perhaps you can give away a free bonus that costs you $50 to every customer that buys your $1,000 product. Giving away a valuable bonus or gift can sometimes double, triple or boost response rates many times. Now, you’re giving away this $50 item to get your customer, but it didn’t cost you a single cent. Make sense? See, your customer’s the one who paid for it. So you’re really giving away part of a profit you wouldn’t have got in the first place. Don’t sweat the small stuff. So how much are you willing to spend to buy yourself a new customer? Here are a few ways in which you can give free stuff: Free Bonus: Give away a free bonus of great value with every purchase of your product. Sample/Trial: Get the prospect to try your product anyway you can. Rewards: Examples are frequency vouchers, points for every dollar spent, discounts for members Grabber: Stick something like a dollar coin or bandaid to the top of your sales letter. It also

grabs your attention to the sales letter. Action: Calculate the total lifetime value of your customers. Now, how much you can afford to buy yourself new customers? Also what can you afford to give away in return to get a new customer?




14

Strategy Three: Create Membership and Special Privileges for Members Start a membership club for your customers. This is a great way to collect their details and start building that list of customers. Create newsletters that provide the latest update on valuable info that they’re interested. Use it as a way to introduce new products and special member discounts. Plus you can communicate with them on a continual basis and form that relationship of trust with them. People prefer dealing with what their familiar with. It’s human nature to want to belong to some group or community. To be recognised and noticed. To bond and associate with others. And you can make them feel really special by giving them exclusive privileges. Remember, it’s about keeping the customer spending with you as long and as much as you can. So how can you start building your membership and newsletters in your business? You have many ways to communicate with your members: Newsletters Personalised sales letters Email correspondence (you can have a whole series of emails sent out for you by Aweber.com) Birthdays, anniversaries, holiday promotions Rewards program

Action: Think about how you can create members out of your prospects and customers, and what you can offer them in your exclusive membership club. Strategy Four: Get Others to Do the Advertising for You How would you like to get new prospects and leads, without the risks and expenses of doing it all by yourself? Get others to do it for you. Wouldn’t you love to turn your customers into your biggest fans and get them to advertise your business for free? How about other businesses endorsing your products and services to their own prospects and customers on your behalf? You can do it through any way that you can get others to do the talking for you. When a friend recommends a product to another friend, it’s a lot more powerful than the recommendation from a salesperson. When a business speaks to clients they’ve been providing products and services for years, the clients listen. When celebrities endorse a particular product, the public are more likely to accept it. And that’s because they trust and listen to someone they’re familiar with. I bet it’s a whole lot easier selling to a prospect when someone they know and trust recommends your product or service to them, than doing it cold on your own.


http://aweber.com/?440229



15

Have a think about it. This is why network marketing is an effective way to spread your business and distribute your products – by providing them a sense of ownership and profit share, you get most of them to do all the selling for you to their friends and families. So it really pays to network with the business community and meet people that can help you. Seminars and exhibitions. Business and marketing functions. Local community groups. Wherever. Here are the 3 methods you can instantly use… Referrals Try this tomorrow. Ask all your customers or prospects if they can recommend 3 other people they know to try your products or services. And give them some sort of incentive or reward for doing so. Give them a free gift or discount. Something of great value to them. If you have your own customer list with all their contact details, you can send them all a persuasive referral letter. Or broadcast them through fax or voicemail. You don’t have to ask them one by one. You can do the same from your network of business colleagues and friends. And you can either give them a fixed fee or a percent of any sales you make from their leads. For example, if you’re a mortgage broker, you can approach real estate agents and get them to refer their clients to you for a commission. Host Parasitic Relationships What this means is you’re the parasite and the other party is the host. Look, I know it sounds kinda nasty. But it isn’t and please let me explain… It actually makes good business sense when you’ve got a great product and the other party’s got a great customer list. Accessing another business’s customer database is one of the quickest way to get you started with new customers. You get the instant access a whole heap of prospects that you can directly market to. And you get the other party to endorse your business to a target audience who they’ve already built a relationship and trust with. And if you make any sales from their list, you give them a profit share of say 50%. So they benefit also. They get to provide their customers with a great product that they didn’t have to create or produce themselves. Another way you can access someone else’s customers is to “rent their list”. Pay them a fee and get a list of customer’s mailing address in which you can directly market to. Usually you get to mail out a persuasive sales letter one time only and have to keep paying the fee each time you want to use it again. Joint Ventures You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours… in the metamorphic sense. Joint ventures are a great to combine skills and resources. And both parties get involved together more than just accessing the other party’s customer database. You both share your customer database and also combine your business name and resources. You can offer your products and services to each other’s customer database, and even combine both your products and services as a package. Or even create new products and services together.




16

Action: Think about any businesses or industries that can compliment your products and services. How can you approach them and what kind of deal can you work out with them that will benefit both parties? What can you give your customers in return for 3 qualified referral leads? Strategy Five: The Marketing Power of Free Publicity This is another under used form of advertisement. It’s powerful. It’s free. And it gives you instant credibility and mass media exposure. You get radio, newspapers and television networks promoting your business for you. You might even get celebrities endorsing your products. How much is that worth to you? Heard of a bloke named Paul Hartunian from the States? He’s famous for selling pieces of the Brooklyn Bridge during 1983 and making millions of dollars. And he did it by creating a simple media release with the headline “New Jersey Man Sells Brooklyn Bridge...for $14.95!” that got most major television networks promoting him like mad for over 6 months – all for a measly cost of $100! Here’s how you do it. Media and press is always looking for something interesting to share with their viewers and readers. Create exciting news and interesting stories about you and your business. You can’t be boring about it either, otherwise nobody would notice you. Come up with different stories and different angles. Send this as a media release to any newspaper, magazine, radio, and television networks you can find. And do this on a regular basis. If it doesn’t work, try something different each time. You have very little to lose on this, but your possible gain are tremendous. Action: Try this first. Create a single page article about something interesting with your business and fax it off to all your local newspaper network. Try and get some feedback from them as well. Strategy Six: Create an Outrageous Guarantee Prospects are skeptical. They don’t trust you. They look at you out of the corner of their eyes and have doubts about whether your products and services are as good as you tell them it is. And they have every right to do so. After all, you are trying to part them from their hard earned cash. But you know your products and services are good. You’re not trying to rip them off. In fact, you know you’ve got the solutions to their problems and wish they could see things your way. Well, no matter how good your product and services are, how good your sales message is, and how good you are at handling every single objections they have – you can really make or break your promotion and super boost your response with an outrageous guarantee. Remove any risk on their part to do business with you. There are several ways you can do this… Give them some sort of money back guarantee if they’re not happy with your products or services. You can make it within a certain period. Tests have shown the longer the period, the less returns you get. Interesting isn’t it? For example, if for any reason within 12 months your customers aren’t satisfied with your product, they can return the product and you give them their money back, no questions asked.




17

Give them a trial offer for a certain period of time before they have to pay. For example, they get to use your product for 60 days before you charge their credit card, and if they don’t like it, they can return it and not pay a cent. Give them nothing to lose in return for getting your stuff. Sure you always get the odd few that would rip you off, but in general you get a whole lot more orders that more than make up for these few losses. But keep in mind, if you’re getting a heap of returns, then there’s probably something wrong with your products. The good thing about an outrageous guarantee is that it forces you think how to make your products and services top quality. If you can come up with a guarantee that makes you sick and your stomach turn, then you’re on the right track. As savvy marketers know it – make an extraordinary guarantee that’s “a little ugly, a little hairy, and a little scary” for you. Action: Think of how you can guarantee your product, and back up all your claims with one confident statement that wipes away any risks or doubts on your prospective customer’s part. Strategy Seven: Increase Your Price Today Ok, I get a lot of protests when I tell people this. You must think I’m crazy. You’re thinking there’s no way you’re raising your price, otherwise all your customers will leave you for your competitors where they can get it cheaper. Anyway, who told you can’t charge your customers more? Probably YOU. That voice in your head tells you so. The chances are, your customers wouldn’t mind paying you more for your good quality products and services. Studies have shown that consumers perceive products to be valued at a higher price than the business thinks. We really do undervalue our products and services. High prices are perceived to be linked with high quality. Higher prices have shown to boost higher response rates than lower prices. You know you’re good at what you do. Charge people more. Simple. Seriously, if you don’t value your own products and services, then the chances are your prospects and customers won’t either. Why cheapen yourself? And if you’re worried about those who shop on price, then don’t worry… Here’s the 20/80 rule. In general, 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. And the chances are, you’ve probably got another 20% of customers who don’t spend much, shop on price, and give you nothing but headache and complaints. And this is just a general rule. Sometimes it’s 10/90, sometimes it’s 30/70. The point I’m making is, a small number of your customers are contributing the most to your business. Those are the ones you really want to focus and reward. The ones that don’t spend much, you can afford to get rid of them because your increase in price will more than make up for this small loss. That’s right, how would you like to fire the customers who don’t spend much and give you problems? And send them to your competitors. With pleasure.




18

Start focusing on the customers who really do appreciate you and your products and services. Increase your prices, today. Imagine if you’re only charging $50 on a product that customers are willing to pay $100 for? Let’s do a quick example. You raise your $50 product to $100. Out of 1000 customers, you pissed off a large 30%. So instead of 1000 buyers, you have 700. At $50, you sell to 1000 customers and make $5,000. At $100, you sell to 700 customers and make $7,000. That’s $2,000 more for 300 less customers (and work)! (Note: When I mentioned in Lesson One to maximise number of paying customers, I meant quality paying customers.) Think about how much money you’ve left on the table all these years! This is instant cash creation for you in your business. By the way, if you still don’t agree with me and want to compete on price, then it’s time you seriously think about doing a makeover on your business, because there’s always someone cheaper than you. Big companies can always stamp you out on price because they got bigger buying powers and negotiate bigger discounts from their suppliers. If you compete on price, then chances are your product is a commodity, and you just got the same business as everyone else. So you got to define your niche market and be different, but that’s a whole new topic and I won’t go through that in this course. Action: Raise your prices today. Test different price points. The 7 direct marketing strategies shown are just some of the many ways you can seriously boost your business turnover and profits instantly. As I’ve shown you, there’s nothing complicated about them once you understand the concepts behind it. And the best thing is you can take real action straight away and start implementing them in your business today. All it takes is for you to break out of your comfort zone, think differently, and a bit of effort to take action. Remember, if you’re doing the same thing you’ve always done, then you’ll just be at the same place you’re always at. In the next chapter, I will reveal all the components to an effective direct response marketing campaign that you can use to really boost your business sales and exposure. Profit Boosting Exercise #2: Print out the “Instant Business Turnover and Profits Boosting Worksheet #2” now on the next page, and go through how you can boost your turnover tomorrow by apply 3 direct marketing strategies mentioned in this lesson.






19

Instant Business Turnover and Profits Boosting Worksheet #2 In my business_______________________________________ (business name), this is my products and services ________________________________________________________________________________ (description). Here are 3 direct marketing strategies I use instantly

Direct Marketing Strategy #1 1. ________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________







20

Lesson Three

4 Important Ingredients to Any Direct Response Marketing Campaigns Direct response marketing is your most effective strategy and most cost/time effective ways to sell your products and services for your business. In fact, direct response marketing can be applied to any business in any industry, under any state of the economy. Basically, direct marketing is all about communicating the right message, through the right medium, to the right people, at the right time.

Right Message Right Medium Right People Right Time

Without communication, prospects and customers will not know anything about your business and how your products / services can benefit them. And direct response marketing is about getting the prospect to respond in the way you want them to – to show interest in your business and seek you out. Dan Kennedy explains in his book “How To Make Millions With Your Ideas”, that the exact ingredients to successful direct mail moneymaking systems is the list, the offer and the mailing. He emphasises on the importance of having the right customer list. My variation on this is… here are the 4 ingredients to any direct response marketing campaigns. Ingredient One: The Customer List / Target Audience Your customer database is gold. Money is in the list or having targeted to correct audience. You must know everything about who your prospects are and try to find out where you can communicate with them. Know which magazines or newspapers are most likely to include your target market. Focus in on where your likely prospects are. Unless you got a huge advertising budget, you can’t afford to go broad. It’s no good selling a rock climbing equipments to a group of gardening enthusiasts. It’s no good selling golf clubs to racing car fanatics. If you have a restaurant, you need that starving crowd. Find that starving crowd for your product. See, even poorly written sales letter can make money with the correct list. But a super persuasive sales letter probably won’t make money with the wrong list. You aren’t going sell much products when it’s targeted at the wrong crowd.

That’s why you should also be working on building your own list, so you can market to them for life or until they drop out of your list..

A great way to make money from your list online is by automating your emails through Aweber.com.

By setting up an email autoresponder and a whole series of follow up emails that is all automatically sent for you on a regular basis, even while you sleep. Go to Aweber.com for more info.






21

Ingredient Two: Package a Great Offer with Quality Products and Services

You must also have a great offer packaged with quality products and great services. In fact, you gotta have an irresistible offer that’s so good… that the prospect have got to be crazy not to take you up on it. A bit more of this will be covered in a minute.

Plus, make sure your products and services are great too. Well, at least it’s reasonably good enough to get the job done. Because again, no matter how super your sales letter is… no matter how mouth-watering your offer is – you can’t sell a bad product or service by trying to make it sound great. The only purpose of a great sales letter with a great offer is for the prospect to buy or try your product. And even if you do sell the product once and it’s crap, you’ve tricked the customer and they’re not coming back for the second round. Plus they’d probably warn 20 other people about you. Plus you get into trouble if you try to make a bad product out to be good. I do advocate you be totally honest and legitimate about your product and your business. Be legal first, and profitable second. Ingredient Three: Make Your Sales Letter Copy & Communication Totally Persuasive This is the most important component of any direct response campaign – copywriting a totally persuasive sales letter that gets your prospects responding the way you want them to. Here’s how you craft a money-pulling sales letter. I will reveal you the essential secrets to creating a highly persuasive sales letter. A sales letter is basically “salesmanship in print”, as John Kennedy puts it. It provides great leverage in terms of time and man hours in trying to contact a large number of prospects at the one time. How long should the copy be? The argument of long copy versus short copy saga still continues. The correct answer is, as long as it explains enough. It’s like a mini skirt – long enough to cover the essentials, but short enough to entice. Tests show the longer copy almost always wins over the shorter copy, because an interested prospect will want to find out everything they can about your product and services. But don’t go overboard and go too long, you might lose the reader and bore them to death. Be sure your copy is all about the prospect and what the benefits your product is for them. When the prospect reads your sales letter, all they’re thinking about is – “What’s In It For Me?”. The words in the copy must enter a conversation that’s going on inside the reader’s mind as Robert Collier teaches, and penetrate straight into their thoughts and emotions. The magic word here is “YOU”. And you must talk in their language as well. Don’t use colloquialism to the sophisticated market, and don’t talk fancy to the general public. The key here is to bond and create rapport being “one” with the reader. My take is this – big words fill up dictionaries, but small words fill up your bank accounts. Emotions sells, full stop. Logic justifies the decision to buy. So your copy must be emotional and get into the depth of what they are feeling about their frustrations and desires. Top copywriters and direct response marketers who specialise in emotional ad writing agrees that you must get your prospects emotionally charged up with every single words you use. Using any of these 5 triggers that will turn your prospects into a paying customer. Greed, fear, guilt, sex & love, and pride. There are more, but these are 6 of the most effective emotions in selling the product.




22

The headline for your ad or sales letter must be attention stopping. It must stop whatever the reader is doing and draw them right into reading your copy. It gotta grab them by the head, pull them by the ear and fix them onto your ad copy. And these days your prospect’s attention span is limited, being exposed to hundreds of ads per day. So you only got 3 to 7 seconds to do so as shown in a study done by JupiterSearch. A handy tool to use with your sales letter is a “grabber”, something such as a dollar coin or a bandaid stuck to the top. The body of your ad or sales letter must cover these 4 areas – problems, solutions, features and benefits. It must get to the core of the problems of the prospects, and demonstrate what the features of the product are and how these benefits and provide a solution to their problems. Arouse their emotions, aggravate their problems, and give them a reason why they should do business with you over and above your competitions. Use stories. Use bullet format. Use bolding, underline, italics, highlighting, and large or different fonts to emphasise important points. And give them great value and hit them with an irresistible offer. Give them free bonuses. Give them chance to win a huge prize. Give them something, but make sure it’s of value. The essence here is value that is way above the price they have to pay. So they’ve got to be crazy not to take you up on it. Now, even with all this convincing copy, your prospects are still skeptical. They doubt you, they fear you. And so they should, they don’t know who to trust these days. So you must build credibility, address their fears, and handle their objections. Erase any doubts they have about doing business with you. You do this with testimonials and guarantees. If you have satisfied customers who’s willing to put in print and stand behind your product, use it. Give your prospect a no risk purchase by offering some sort of money back guarantee or trial usage of your product. The main thing is getting them to use your product. Then finally, get that order and close the sale. Tell them what to do. What number to call. How to order. Give deadlines. Give limited offers. Create that urgency to respond to your offer or they will miss out. A lot of advertising miss the mark by not closing the sale and given the prospect something to respond to. That’s the purpose of the whole ad or sales letter, is getting the prospects to respond, right? Ingredient Four: Test the Waters and Measure the Results Finally… you’ve got the right target market list, you’ve got the best product or services, and you’ve create the perfect ad sales letter. Now’s the time to implement it. But first, you must test the waters before jumping in, and you do this by testing and measuring. Many businesses make the mistake of spending huge advertising expenses in the one go without knowing whether it’s going to work or not – and lose a lot of money. Most businesses advertise the one time, had bad results the first time, and then gave up. Or they spend the big dollars on ad agencies to create beautiful award-winning ads that just look pretty and don’t pull in a single cent. All they say is advertising doesn’t work for them and it’s a huge waste of money. That’s because they either gambled big time, or gave up too easily. Because they didn’t test and measure. Mostly, businesses fail because they’ve either targeted the wrong target market, they’ve provided the wrong product or service, or they’ve created the wrong type of ads themselves. And usually they’ll blame it on the economy, the weather or the neighbour’s dog.




23

You must test. You must measure. Start small. Sample test different customer lists, media, products and services. Split test headlines, ads, photos, offers, guarantees, etc. The thing is, nobody knows until they test. Once you know what works and you hit the mark with a winning ad or list, then you spend the big money to roll it out big time by advertising on a much larger scale. And you do that again and again to make the big bucks. Then you continue to test different methods and strategies to beat this winner. You just never stop testing and measuring. Here’s the biggie, you ready for it? Be prepared to fail. And be prepared to fail many times. You must think I’m nuts to encourage failure. But hear me out… because the key to having a winning ad or product, is to fail small and fail fast. What I mean is you test small, and if that doesn’t work, you quickly tweak, adjust, and improve. Out of 10, you might fail 9 times before you come up with a winner. And this one winner will more than make up for your small losses. Even copywriting and advertising legends like Ted Nicholas and Joe Sugarman fail many times, a lot more than they’ve succeeded. But it’s those winners that made Ted and Joe the multi-millionaires they are today. Ted Nicholas once told me that testing small before rolling out the big winner was crucial to his multi-millionaire dollar success. So here’s the tip – think of failure in terms of measured results. It’s just a temporary feedback telling you what doesn’t work and getting you to change things and try again. Profit Boosting Exercise #3: Print out the “Instant Business Turnover and Profits Boosting Worksheet #3” now on the next page, and answer honestly on how you’ll include the 4 ingredients of a successful direct marketing campaign in your business.






24

Instant Business Turnover and Profits Boosting Worksheet #3 In my business_______________________________________ (business name), this is my products and services ________________________________________________________________________________ (description). Here are what I’ll be doing in for my direct marketing campaigns.

Ingredient One: The Customer List / Target Audience __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________

Ingredient Two: Make Sure You Have a Great Product and Service __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________

Ingredient Three: Make Your Sales Letter Copy & Communication Totally Persuasive __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________

Ingredient Four: Test the Waters and Measure the Results __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________





25

Lesson Four

So What Is Copywriting and How Can It Boost My Business Profits? By now you would’ve known far more than 75% of businesses do in boosting business profits. Now I want to advance that number to a huge 95% for you by letting you in on this stuff. Here’s a quick definition on copywriting. cop·y·writ·ing [kop-ee-rahy-ting] - noun: a writing of copy, esp. for advertisements or publicity releases.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

When I tell people I’m a copywriter, I get these sorts of responses from 9 out of 10 people… and the scary thing is, I hear these comments from other marketing consultants and professors too! “Huh?” (Most people don’t know what copywriting is as they haven’t been exposed to direct

response advertising before.) “Oh, the legal protection stuff…” (…as in copyrighting.)

“Oh yes, I’ve got a marketing degree too…” (Did the person say a Mickey Mouse degree?)

Now, as a copywriter, I must understand direct marketing as well. And I mean proven street wise marketing that works for real, because I have to write sales letter copies for clients that get them real results and make them money. My reputation as a copywriter and direct marketing consultant depends on it. They don’t teach you this kind of stuff in universities. You see, I’ve got a combined double bachelor degree on marketing in commerce and international business. It took me 4 years of study to get this nice looking piece of paper framed on the wall. Plus I got to know what 4 P’s of Marketing Mix Model and the 5 Stages of Consumer Behaviour are. But it taught me absolutely nothing much about real direct marketing to increase turnover or boosting real profits in any business. Now, I’m not knocking universities. I don’t discount education. It really depends on what we want as the end results. Commercial lawyers, commercial accountants and bank loan managers all need their uni degrees – and I need them. Plus I think it’s important that we’re always learning. Read books and learn the stuff that matters and study from those who’ve done it. The richest and wealthiest people in the world have large libraries and a huge collection of books. And you’d learn more about generating real dollars in your business from this quick crash course than in my 4 years of university studies. Again, to make copywriting more specific for your business, here’s my contribution to the definition. prof·it boost·ing cop·y·writ·ing [prof-it bōōst-ling kop-ee-rahy-ting] - noun: a writing of copy that gets you results, esp. for advertisements or publicity releases, or any other forms of mass communication that effectively sells your product, services or ideas to a selected group of target audience – because it produces you excellent response rates, floods you with quality leads and prospects, and nets you sky high profits.


http://www.profitboostingcopy.com/home.html







26

How does copywriting and direct marketing benefit your business? Just imagine not having to cold call or employ a large teams of sales people. Imagine have prospects seeking you out instead of you having to chase after them. Imagine them queuing up in front of your store, begging and pleading for your products and services, so much so you have to turn some of them away. Imagine having the prospects defensive barrier down with you’re helping solving their problems, instead of having their defensive barrier up with you trying to sell them stuff. Wouldn’t that put you in a position of demand and authority? Imagine being able to put ads in the newspapers or magazines today, and getting prospective leads flooding into your business with enquiries and purchases tomorrow. Imagine ads that get traffic flooding onto your websites and watching your email database list grow rapidly. Direct response advertising can do this for you, and a persuasive ad copy is the most crucial component. Excellent copywriting is where you can literally write words on paper to persuade a prospect to respond to your offer. You provide a solution to the prospect’s problem, and you have the ability to communicate and sell the solution many times over. That’s the power of copywriting. It’s the ability to create a salesmanship in print where you can duplicate and leverage your sales message to a big group of prospects all at the one time. I’ve shown you in Lesson Three how to create a powerful sales letter It could be a full copy of sales letter which you mail out to individual addresses. It could be a copy of full page ad in a newspaper or magazine. It could be a copy of webpage sales letter online. The various direct marketing methods are listed in Lesson Two. It’s like an asset in your business that continues working hard for you and making your money while you sleep. A pretty ad by an artistic designer brings in the special awards for the ad agency, but a powerful sales letter with a persuasive message by a great copywriter brings in the cash for your business. So how do you go about creating your own powerful money generating sales letter? You can do it all by yourself. You know your business best, since you live in it 24-7.This way you won’t have to pay copywriting fees for a real professional. (And if you do decide to hire a professional copywriter, learning about copywriting allows you to communicate better exactly what you need.) Basically I’ve shown you what a powerful sales letter contains in Lesson Three’s Ingredient Three. Go through it and work out how you can do this for your business. You can do a few copywriting courses. I highly recommend John Carlton’s “Kick Ass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel” and Clayton Makepeace’s “How to Build a Six Figure Copywriting Business Course” or “Steal These Secrets”. Next, read as many books on copywriting and direct response marketing as you can. Spend some time to educate yourself on the art of copywriting. Understand the principles. Dan Kennedy’s “The Ultimate Sales Letter: 3rd Edition” and Joe Sugarman’s “Triggers: 30 Sales Tools You Can Use to Control the Mind of Your Prospect to Motivate, Influence and Persuade” comes to my mind as must reads.


http://www.makepeacetotalpackage.com/cmd.php?Clk=1978405





27

Then subscribe to newsletters of various copywriters and marketers. I’m subscribed to Dan Kennedy’s “The NO BS INFO Marketing Newsletter”, Clayton Makepeace’s “Easy Writer’s Marketing Club” and John Carlton’s “The Marketing Rebel RANT” where I get exposed to the latest shortcut proven copywriting and directly marketing strategies on a monthly basis. Whenever I receive any of these in the mail, I stop whatever I’m doing, rip open these packs, and immerse myself in their knowledge from beginning to end before I do anything else. Then invest in copywriting seminars. These go into the thousands of dollars in investment, but it’s well worth it for the latest proven strategies and networking opportunities. Now that you’ve made the effort to educate yourself on copywriting, you then start to craft your sales letter copy. But be aware, this will take some time. Anywhere between 1 week to a month or more. Make sure you get it right. Don’t miss any details and don’t say anything wrong that might offend your prospects. Don’t get distracted by other thoughts such as how your business is going or what you’re going do in the weekend. And you won’t always get it right the first time. Start your advertising campaigns. You may sit back and wonder if you’re going to get any calls at all. But don’t worry, just be careful to not blow your budget. You should test and test and test until you produce the sales letter that actually sells. Be prepared to do this many times until you hit a winning sales letter for your business. Or you can hire a professional copywriter to create a persuasive sales letter for you. If you don’t have the time… or if you feel you lack the skills to write an effective sales letter copy… why not invest in getting a professional copywriter to do it all for you. Hire someone who’s invested time and money in learning the art of profit boosting copywriting from the very best… someone who actually specialises in writing persuasive sales letter for a living. This way you’ll save yourself the time and headache… and plus it won’t cost you money in the long run because the high profits you make from a professionally crafted sales copy will return back many times over. Plus the investment in hiring a copywriter is well worth it, because having a great sales letter is an asset in your business… it’s like having the money in the bank… where you can use it to increase turnover and boost profits anytime you feel like. Think about all the profits you’re missing out on by not implementing direct response marketing in your business today. If you want to know more about how a professional copywriter can help boost your business profits, contact me at [email protected]. I want to congratulate you on finishing my course, and understanding on how copywriting and direct marketing can boost your business profits.

No doubt if you applied the proven marketing strategies from this course, you’ll dominate your market, crush your competitors, and boost your business turnover and profits… in any state of economy, any industry – anytime.

I hope this course has been of great informational value to you, and helped your business succeed.

Plus I want to hear from you! You can find my contact details on the “About The Author” page.







28

Please tell me how this course has helped you in your business. If you have any success stories on using the strategies from this course, please share it with me. I really want to hear it about it. And if you have any comments at all on this course, or how I can make it even more valuable to you, please let me know too. Again, if you want to know more about how a professional copywriter can help boost your business profits, contact me at [email protected]. Profit Boosting Exercise #4: Decide how you want to craft your perfect sales letter and when you can start your profit boosting direct response advertising campaign!







29

About The Author

Michael Lu Direct-response Copywriter and Marketing Consultant

[email protected]

“I Will Reveal Hidden Business Opportunities and Boost Your Profits - Within The Next 30 Days... Guaranteed!”

Get your FREE 14 part E-Course “The 14 Deadly ‘Cash Eating’ Advertising and Marketing Mistakes 99.7% of Business Owners Make Without Even Knowing” (a $147.00 Value) NOW.

Michael Lu is a direct-response copywriter and marketing consultant for both offline and digital/online channels. He specialises in writing high response money pulling copies and designing both offline and online direct ad campaigns for his clients. Michael are both multilingual and multicultural – he was born in Thailand to Chinese parents, and grown up and educated in Australia. He speaks fluent English, 3 main Chinese dialects & Thai... and is keen on mastering Spanish. He keeps his finger on the fast entrepreneurial pulse of both the Asian and Western markets, and is looking towards the Central/South American and European markets in the near future. Michael was involved in the hospitality business for 8 years. His passion for real marketing began when he ran his own café for 2 years, which he took over from making loss to creating profits. And he assisted in managing an ice-cream store for a further 5 years. He also holds both tertiary degrees in Bachelor of Commerce and Masters of Business Administration (MBA) who realised universities taught him very little about real business direct marketing. He learned most of his business smarts by being in the trenches and doing it the hard way in the real world. Michael’s a dedicated student to direct-response marketing and copywriting, and has learnt from and been inspired by top marketers and copywriters such as Dan Kennedy, John Carlton, Matthew Furey, Ted Nicholas, Joe Sugarman, Clayton Makepeace, Mitch Carson, Corey Rudl, and Gary Halbert… and many more. And he continues to study and is consistently plugged into the minds of highly successful business mentors.

Michael currently resides in Sydney AUSTRALIA. He also travels frequently throughout ASIA.

You can contact Michael on: Email: [email protected] FAX: +61.2 8080 8252




