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Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13

Rich Hello, and thank you for calling. I appreciated everyone being on the Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic today. I’ve been away for a week or so. Wow, we’ve got a lot of things that have piled up for the Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic. We are going to jump right in and get after it.

We’re going to start with Renaissance Roofing, Mr. Bob. Let me see if I can find you on my list here to unmute Bob. I see you on here, but you need to enter your – There you go, you did it. Bob are you there?

Bob Yes, sir.

Rich Whatever that code is called, thank you for entering it. Can you confirm that you can see your postcard on your screen?

Bob Yes.

Rich Why don’t you tell me about this, and we’ll get rolling.

Bob Sure, we specialize in historic roofing and residential is part of our business. We have canvassed neighborhoods throughout the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Louis of homes that have historic roofing systems. We have a database of about 10,000 addresses.

It’s been a couple of years, since we did anything new. In the past, we’ve used postcards similar to this one. The success of it has fallen over the years. Fifteen years


ago, it worked really well. A couple of years ago; not so well.

Rich When you say, you’ve done mailers. First of all, you’ve got 10,000 on the database.

Bob Correct.

Rich Were these all added some time ago and not so much lately?

Bob That is correct, yes.

Rich Tell me about the mailings you’ve done in the past, not in terms of the content of the mailers, but in terms of the frequency and so forth.

Bob In the recent past, it’s been rather infrequent. Twice a year, maybe three times a year. It was not a monthly effort or ongoing effort. When our work was slow or leads were slow, we would send them out and get a dozen or two dozen leads.

Rich Every time you’d send them out?

Bob Fill up the schedule, right. As the years have gone and the competition has matured, clients – We needed the clients more than the clients needed us. The success rate dropped off. We kind of gave up with it for a while.

Rich When you would send it out more recently, you would not get a dozen or two dozen responses?

Bob That’s correct.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich What would you get?

Bob Eight or ten, at the most.

Rich Okay. I think you combined two stories here. Let me just make sure I’ve got it straight. Before, you would send it out two to three times per year or would you send it out more frequently?

Bob At the most, we would only send it out two or three times per year.

Rich More recently, how often would you send one out?

Bob We haven’t sent one out for two years. When we did, two to three years ago, it was once or twice.

Rich And you only got eight to ten responses?

Bob Correct.

Rich How much did it cost to send this out to 10,000 people?

Bob If I remember correctly – Here I got one that was 39 cents back then.

Rich Let’s assume 45 cents now, postal increases or whatever.

Bob That was actually in January of 2011.

Rich The 45 cents is probably conservative.

Bob Correct.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich It’s going to cost you $4,500 to send it out to other

people, correct?

Bob That’s correct.

Rich When you got responses in the past, did those turn into leads?

Bob Yes.

Rich Leads turned into sales?

Bob Correct.

Rich If you get eight to ten responses, let’s say ten for round numbers; how many sales would you get out of that?

Bob Three.

Rich Three sales. An average sale is worth how much?

Bob It could be $15,000. They run the gamut, but $15,000 would be --

Rich My guess is that these kinds of roofs would be a little bit more.

Bob Right. They can be $40,000 or $50,000.

Rich Here is what I want to know. What would be average? What’s typical? I’m going to guess it’s higher than $15,000?

Bob My average ticket –

Rich On these kinds of roofs.

Bob -- last year was $19,000.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich Do you mind if I round it up to $20,000?

Bob Okay.

Rich Okay. You spend $4,000, and you get $60,000 in sales?

Bob Correct.

Rich Advice number one: Do that again.

Bob Okay.

Rich That’s kind of tongue in cheek, but the reality is that’s an outstanding return on investment. There is nothing wrong with that. If you can spend $4,000 and get $50,000 in sales. Anything over $40,000 in sales gives you a 10 percent cost or less. That’s pretty good.

Bob Right.

Rich Let’s talk about what this would look like, financially, to run this out on a more consistent basis. Here is what you’ve done in the past; you’ve let people’s demand for this kind of stuff filled up. You send the postcard, and it’s like a release valve. You siphon off whatever the current demand is and then you close the valve again. You let it build up for six or eight months. Then you release it a little bit. More recently, you’ve only opened that valve two years ago. Ostensibly, if you sent this today, this exact postcard or one similar to it, you would probably get another ten responses. You would probably do another $60,000 in sales.


Number one, I recommend going ahead and doing that. Here is what is interesting; you’ve got 10,000 roofs on this list. If you understand the concept of accelerated discontentment, I’m sure a little bit of a concept of that, true enough?

Bob Yes.

Rich Here’s what’s happening; people get to a point where something happens that causes them that to feel like they need to do something about their situation, in your case, fix the roof.

What you’ve basically told me is that every six to twenty-four months, about ten people feel urgent about their roofs and pick up the phone and call you when you send them a postcard.

Bob Yes.

Rich Here is what we don’t know. What we don’t know is how many people in the intervening six to twenty-four months; they take care of it through some other methodology besides responding to your postcard. Answer: Probably a lot.

Bob True.

Rich Number two, how many people that do have an issue actually call you, based on the fact that they are only hearing from you, from their perspective, very, very infrequently? Probably infrequently enough that they are


not connecting the dots that this company keeps reaching out to them. Are you following me?

Bob Yes.

Rich From your standpoint, you look at it and say, “Well, we’ve got these 10,000 people on my database. We used to mail two or three times a year. Now we mail them less frequent, but they are still on my database. These people belong to me, they are on my list. These people have some sort of relationship with me.” From their perspective, it’s “We don’t know who you are.”

Bob Right.

Rich I would be interested in exploring the math of an ongoing mailing campaign because it might be worthwhile. It might not be worthwhile, but it’s worth exploring the math.

Bob Yes.

Rich Here is what you’ve got to plan for when you do this kind of a thing: It’s really kind of scary. You start spending some money. You release that initial pressure valve, like we talked about. Any time you start this kind of mailing campaign, you always see a little bit of a bump right up front. Some people get excited about that and say, “Okay. We’ve gotten calls. We made three sales. It cost us $4,000, that’s great.” They sort of expect that the next time they send it out, they will get that same response.


Usually, you’ll see a deep response, the first one, maybe two, sometimes three mailings; then you will see it drop off because you’ve released that pressure.

Bob Absolutely, I understand.

Rich Now you are starting to prime the whale – I was in Hawaii last week watching whales – prime the well, not the whale. You’ve got to start pumping. This is a little bit frustrating because you don’t necessarily see as many calls, but you are still spending the money while you are priming that pump.

What you need to look at is: let’s say we committed to a mailing program for three years. Now, let me very clear. I did not just tell you, “Hey, commit to a mailing program for three years.” This is all hypothetical. We run the numbers and see what that looks like.

Bob Yes.

Rich Here is what you will learn from this discussion; you probably already know this, but just for the sake of everybody on the call. It’s important what you put in these mailers, but how often you send them, actually is probably more important. I’m looking at the one that you’ve got here on the screen.

Is your roof ready for another 100 years? Could we potential write a better postcard than this? We probably could. Is this a horrible postcard? Absolutely not. I’m not looking at this postcard and saying, “Geez, Bob, I’m so embarrassed for you.”


It kind of says, “Hey, if you’ve got one of these tricky kinds of roofs, there is some things that you need done.” Let’s take a look at the back of it. “Call the experts at Renaissance Roofing. Let our service technicians handle your immediate needs.” We can clean this up. We can make this stronger. I don’t want you to be discouraged that this is horrible, but I also don’t want you to get cocky that this is awesome. It’s probably somewhere right in the middle.

If it’s a five right now, that’s going to get the job done. I’d rather send this postcard out multiple times than not send postcards out at any time. Let’s see if we can get it up to a seven, eight, nine, or ten.

For the first part, let’s just look at the numbers. Let’s assume that, through some pre-planning and printing efficiencies, that we can get the cost of this down to about 35 cents each.

Bob Okay.

Rich Let’s just toy with – I don’t want to give you a heart attack or anything. Just for grins. Let’s toy with sending this out twice a month.

Bob Okay.

Rich That’s going to cost us $7,000 per month at 35 cents, times 12 months is $84,000 a year. Let’s say that we committed to it for three years; which is $252,000. You are probably looking at that saying, “That’s a pretty nice little house there,” and it is.


Let’s look at what we would expect to return on a $252,000, three-year. Of course, from a cash flow standpoint, it’s more manageable than pulling that out of your pocket all at once.

Bob Sure.

Rich But expected sales over the course of three years, if we use a 10 percent as a metric, we are going to get about $2.5 million in sales. Does that sound fair enough?

Bob Yes.

Rich If we took your $20,000 average sale and we divide by $2.5 million. Quick math says, what is that – It should be easy enough math that I don’t need my calculator, but I’m so spoiled by my calculator. It’s $125.

Here is what we have to ask ourselves: First of all, out of 10,000 roofs, do you believe, based on what you know about these types of roofs in your experience in the marketplace; do you believe that there are at least 125 roofs that will legitimately need to be replaced in the next three years?

Bob Yes.

Rich If you had to guess, with your expert knowledge, what the number is that legitimately needs to be replaced – Let’s even define this a little more tightly. There are some roofs that kind of need to be replaced, but they could probably go another year or two. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Bob Yes.

Rich Then there are ones that need to be replaced.

Bob Right.

Rich How many out of 10,000, do you think will really need to be replaced in the next ten years. Like, if you don’t do it, you’re asking for trouble, kind of roofs. Take into account, out of the 10,000, some have already been replaced by somebody else and you don’t know about it; all of those kinds of factors.

Bob I think that 10 percent of those roofs are in dire need of replacement.

Rich 1,000 roofs?

Bob Minimum.

Rich We are going to play a little game here. This sounds like a silly game. People might hear this and say, “Gosh Rich, this is kind of stupid.” This game is meant to test your conviction on what you just said, okay?

Bob Okay.

Rich I would encourage others on this call to use a similar approach to test your convictions because there is a lot of money at stake here. We’ve got to make sure that you mean what you said.

Let’s say that we went out and we were able to somehow inspect all 10,000 roofs. I was able to gather the results. We were able to judge how many are “in dire need


of replacement” versus semi- in need of replacement versus not really needing to be replaced at all.

If the numbers come back less than 1,000 that are in dire repair, unfortunately, we are going to put you in front of a firing squad and take care of business.

Bob Sure.

Rich Are you that confident?

Bob Yes.

Rich Firing squad confident?

Bob Firing squad confident.

Rich If it’s 999, we are pulling the trigger, man.

Bob I’m pretty confident.

Rich Okay. What if the number was 2,000, are you firing squad confident at 2,000?

Bob I’m not, no.

Rich Your tolerance is somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000. If it was 800, then you are feeling really confident.

Bob Yes.

Rich Okay. I’m exaggerating, and I’m trying to make a point. I know you understand that, but it really is kind of a life or death situation. Here is what I mean: If you were to spend $250,000 and it doesn’t work, that’s the equivalent of a firing squad, right?

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Bob Sure, absolutely.

Rich The opposite of that is, well, if it really is 1,000, then the opposite of the firing squad is I’m going to hand you $1 million check.

Bob Right.

Rich The reality is if you do $2.5 million in sales and – Let’s just roughly say your costs are half for the install, labor, and the materials. Your margins may be different. It is not important for this call, but for the general concept. Let’s say your margins are half. That’s $1.25 million. You are going to spend $250,000. It’s really $1 million contribution to your overhead, if you can pull this off.

Bob Right.

Rich That’s pretty powerful.

Bob It is.

Rich It’s firing squad or $1 million check, right?

Bob Right

Rich Let’s now look at this, here is what you’ve just said. At firing squad peril, I would bet my life that there are 1,000 roofs. Here is what I’m telling you-- Well, to hit our numbers, you only need 125. Let’s call it, roughly, 10 percent; maybe even 11 or 12 percent. That’s all you need out of the dire needs.

Here is the problem that the marketplace has right now. I understand human nature. That’s what makes me


good at marketing. Here is what human nature says. Human nature says, “if my roof isn’t collapsing on my house and leaking where I can see it in visible, big-time, holy crap way; then it’s probably okay.”

Bob Correct.

Rich I’m probably not going to deal with this. Out of that 1,000 dire need it, it’s going to be a small fraction of them that would agree with you. “Yeah, my roof is in dire need of replacement.” Part of the reason, when you send out your mailer and you get eight or ten responses, that’s the only ones that really recognize, “Hey, it’s dire.” Those are the ones that number one, believe it’s dire, number two, have enough confidence in you, based on prior experience; which in their case, looking from their perspective, it’s very little prior exposure to you.

Bob Right.

Rich These are conspiring against you. If we were able to put together a postcard or mailing-type program, where we sent them a mailer every two weeks, and we told them the following things. We told them what the symptoms and signs of their roof needing to be replaced. We gave them horror stories of people that didn’t know. Not in a “Hey, the Friday the 13th guy is coming to chop your face off” kind of a way, but in a fairly dramatic way.

Number three, we told them who you were and what you were all about, what your vendor selection criteria, hot buttons, and expertise were. How to choose a contractor.


What to look for and what to watch out for. How you have an expertise in this particular kind of roofs and other companies, very likely, do not.

All of these things that we would expect to be part of you case. We start putting this in front of their face again and again and again. Here is what happens; you start to wear down their resistance. You start to open their eyes to the problems. You start to make them very sensitive to the things that they, otherwise, are probably not going to pay attention to. You also, simultaneously, convert them to thinking that your company is the best solution.

Most people don’t know who the best solution is because both people don’t have a roofing company on speed dial on their iPhone. They just don’t.

Bob Right.

Rich I’ve got two or three pizza companies that I can dial right from my iPhone, but I don’t have a roofing company.

Bob Exactly.

Rich This is kind of what you are up against. Do you feel confident to spend that kind of money for that kind of reward? I can tell you this, this is an absolute fact, if you don’t commit to that kind of a mailing program; you can absolutely expect to not reap that harvest.

Bob Right.

Rich Now, here is what I am also not telling. I’m not telling, “If you do this, it will, for sure, work.” This is called


– I’ve got this thing I’m working on over here at MYM. It is called the marketing crystal ball. I haven’t quite finished it yet. I keep working on it, but I need a little more time to finish it. I wish I could finish it because then I could see what is going to happen.

To mitigate these factors, what we do is we say, what can you commit to and how much budget would you be willing to commit to? Can we maybe start with 1,000 instead of 10,000 on this list? Maybe 500, instead of 10,000. Maybe 3,000 instead of 10,000. We adjust the budget to a number that is comfortable for you. Maybe the number $250,000 over three years is already comfortable to you.

It is not a function of how much money is it. It is a function of how much money can comfortably come out of your cash flow that you are not going to feel like if this either, A, fails or, B, takes a long time to mature; your business won’t suffer. You can still make payroll. You can pay your mortgage and keep your family happy; all of those kinds of things.

You don’t need to divulge that information on this call. There are too many people on it, and it’s too personal of a piece of information. I would ask you to consider this. What is the number that you would feel comfortable spending out of cash flow each month?

I would recommend that you do exactly what I said and put together a two times per month mailer. Here is why: Monthly mailers, in my opinion, are too far apart. It


takes a full year, or maybe two years for people to really start to realize, “Hey, there is this company that keeps mailing me.”

You start hitting them every couple of weeks, and they start to feel like, this is coming all the time; which is what you want. Then you take advantage of this principle called left hand, right hand, and trashcan. They see your postcard. They put it in their other hand as they are throwing it in the trash, and you communicate something. When you start saying things to people like, “Hey, you’ve got a historic roof.” “Hey, you are listed on the historic” - What town are you in?

Bob Belvedere.

Rich Belvedere? Is that the name of the major area of the whole?

Bob No, it’s Chicago.

Rich Okay, Chicago. “Your home is listed on the Chicago land historical roofs listing.”

Bob Right.

Rich They look at that and they go, “It is?” Yes, the listing just happens to be your database. They don’t know that. We’re experts in roofing. The fact is that these roofs tend to not be roofed very often because people think that their roofs will last forever. The reality is that’s true. They do last a long time. These are high quality roofs. The other


fact is that most of them are anywhere from 40 to 80 years old.

Bob Right.

Rich I can put a roof on your house that will last another 50 to 100 years. The problem is the materials that they were using 40 to 80 years didn’t last 50 to 100 years. They lasted 20 to 50 years.

Bob Right

Rich Do the math. There’s a problem. Start educating people. Start getting people to see that. My recommendation to you, very strongly, is find a number that you are comfortable spending; and start getting these out there every couple of weeks. Maybe 25 times a year or something like that. You probably would want to create somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10 to 15 different mailers. Just rotate them. You don’t need 25 mailers to hit them every two weeks. You need about 15 that you can rotate through.

Bob Okay.

Rich To be able to accomplish that, it’s as simple as going through the methodology workbook, looking at what the benefits of ownership are, the objections to ownership, vendor selection hot buttons. I would probably put a ratio, in your case, of somewhere in the neighborhood of about 20/20/60 or maybe 30/20/50, in terms of benefits of ownership, objections to ownership, vendor selection. You’ll note that I weighted heavily in terms of vendor


selection because I think the idea and the fact that you specialize in these kinds of roofs needs to be a major theme that they see over and over again.

Bob Yes, you can have the most expensive material, but if it’s installed incorrectly it’s worthless.

Rich The reality is when you start to say – what do you want to call this?

Bob Historic, traditional.

Rich Historic roof experts. I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing there are not a lot of companies that are out there spouting that off.

Bob No.

Rich Sometimes, just saying things enough times, people start to say, “Oh geez.” For instance, do you think that Volvo is really the safest car?

Bob I think so because they told me that.

Rich I personally have no knowledge of this subject. You ram a semi-truck into it; you are probably toast no matter what car it is. I’ll take my chances in a Volvo, I guess, because that’s what they have been telling me.

It’s kind of the same thing. When you start saying, “We are this expert.” It’s a fairly niched thing and fairly clear. Obviously, they can mentally and immediately validate, “Hey, that’s the kind of roof I have.” I would start to brand this as some sort of a historic roofing registry.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Bob Yes.

Rich Or something similar to that, that sounds very official. It sounds almost prestigious. People are going to feel a little bit more special and prestigious if you start saying that. I mean, you could have standing offers for inspections and things like that.

Bob Right.

Rich I would almost – I’m throwing out an idea here that I haven’t thought all the way through. Just kind of take it, and do whatever you want with it. Look at it and see if it makes sense or not. I would almost take this idea, the historical roof registry, to almost an official, sort of, foe official level; where you become the recommended roofing company to take care of the homes on the residential, historic roofing registry, kind of a thing. Are you following where I am going with that?

Bob Yes.

Rich People start to look at that and say “Well, geez, I guess if I have a problem, I guess I need to go to the company that’s designated to deal with the residential, historic roof registry roofs; which I guess I am on.”

Bob Right.

Rich Do you ever get those notices in the mail from companies that are trying to sell you and renew your, update your own domain name?

Bob Right, right.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich You look at it and they look very official. You go, “I

guess this is the company that does that kind of stuff.

Bob Right.

Rich It’s almost kind of like that. It is such a unique situation, that I really believe that you could pull it off; number one, without being dishonest, number two, without getting really silly and stupid with it. But sort of putting an official thing in place that people look at and go, “Okay, I guess this is the company that handles that.”

Bob Right.

Rich We’ve done this before with a roofing company. I had a roofing customer that was in a situation where one of the major roofing material providers – I think it was GAF or something like that – they had a bad batch of roofing materials for four years. This may ring a bell to you because I think it was fairly widespread. Anyway, there was coming a period of time where the roofs that had had poor materials were recalled, but they were ending the recall period. You had to take action by a certain date or you lost out. They started mailing like crazy and started doing seminars and things like that, telling people, implied that “We are the official company on behalf of whatever it was. Guaranteed Roofing. Everybody looked at it and thought, “Oh, geez, this is Guaranteed Roofing that was reaching out to me.” Which, in fact, it was not.

Bob Right, right. I think you could look at that and explore a lot of opportunities there.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich To me, this is very interesting. I love it when a

company has an extraordinarily targeted list that you can just reach out to and start pounding the living daylights out of them. In a nice way, of course. It’s niched.

Bob Right. I have a question. We find that our clients are customers don’t buy in the first quarter. We are getting a snowstorm today. There are not going to be any roofs sold in the next two weeks here, other than those people who have acute problems. Would you recommend – There is just a period of time when we don’t sell anything. Do we force feed them at that point or we just back off and not market to them during that period of time?

Rich Personally, I would just run the program.

Bob Okay.

Rich Here is why. The idea is called accelerated discontentment. Let’s say that you hold off for the first quarter of the year every year. So January through March, nothing, right? Well, then the problems start to manifest themselves during April and May. This is typically when people perceive that, “My roof doesn’t have snow and it’s a good time to do it.” All of those things that are human nature that you really can’t butt up against, right?

Bob Right.

Rich If you have quit priming the pump and April 1st

comes around and they go, “Crap, my roof’s got a problem.” You are not there.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Bob It takes that much longer.

Rich Let’s say you did it nine months and then quit, nine more months and quit. In the third nine months they may go, “Geez, who is that company that used to mail me?” I would rather just have it in their face.

Bob Understood.

Rich Maybe you can adjust your message during those months. “Hey, most people don’t do their roofs in the first quarter. Here is why, but here is why you need to take a look.” I don’t know maybe you can adjust it. I wouldn’t necessarily expect more, but I would definitely be thinking in terms of priming that pump during that period.

Bob Sure. This particular postcard is the largest postcard you can send in a First Class. Does it matter?

Rich Is it 6x11?

Bob Yes.

Rich I love 6x11. I think they are big. They are relatively cheap. You start going bigger than this. You can actually do up to 15 inches in First Class, but they get very expensive. This is a good size for a reasonable price. I would roll with it.

Bob Okay.

Rich What I would do is, I would think in terms of an entire system.

Bob Right.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich I would lay these out and I would create the entire 15

postcards all at once.

Bob Understood.

Rich Then you can start looking at some efficiency in mailing and printing. Not in mailing as much as in printing. You are going to get efficiency if you print. Let’s say you are going to do 1,000 instead of 10,000 every two weeks. If you print six months at a time, you are going to get a better deal than if you print two months at a time.

Bob Right.

Rich You can work that through yourself. If you would like to help Dale, in our office, he can help you with that as well.

Bob Sure, okay.

Rich I think that’s all we have time for based on our large load of submissions today. I appreciate you participating, Bob.

Bob No problem.

Rich All right. We’ll see you later.

Bob Thank you.

Rich Let’s see here. Next is Sarah. Let me see if I can find Sarah. There you are. Sarah, are you there?

Sarah I am.

Rich How are you doing today?

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Sarah I’m doing well. How are you?

Rich I’m all right. I just got back from vacation. I really don’t want to be back from vacation. Do you know how that is?

Sarah I can hear that.

Rich Hopefully, you can’t hear that. I hope I sound like I’m engaged here. Just kidding. No, I’m good.

Is this the postcard we are going to look at here?

Sarah Yes.

Rich Okay. Is there a back to this or just the front?

Sarah There should be a back. I sent both the front and the back.

Rich I see side one. Let me check my email for side two. Something is coming in here. Why don’t you tell me about this while I’m looking that side two up.

Sarah Okay. Basically, just what you were talking to Bob about. What we are trying to do is put together and come up with 13 different postcards to start off our mailing campaign. We are going to – We haven’t got a target market yet or anything. My whole gamut right now is just to come up with 13 different postcards that we can do every other week, sending out to a specific neighborhood, specific homes.

Rich What kind of homes do you want to send stuff out to?

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Sarah Houses that need siding. I will also do some with

windows. I’m going to go back and forth between the siding and windows. What we do is we go through and do a drive-by. We check off the neighbor or the houses that don’t need siding or don’t need windows, so we don’t waste our money on them.

Rich You’ve got a definitive list of people that have a specific need. You are going to develop it, but this is who you are going to mail too, right?

Sarah Yes.

Rich That’s good. You will remember from training, it’s good to know what marketing pieces you are creating for what target market, before you start creating them. That’s why I wanted to know. I’ve got this on the screen here. Do you see this on the screen?

Sarah Yes.

Rich These are two extraordinarily different looking things. Tell me what these are all about.

Sarah Well –

Rich I guess side one and side two of the same thing.

Sarah I’m just kind of putting everything together. I have four different sides, front and back. Now that I’m looking at it, maybe I should have done a different one for the back, but basically we are just trying to get people to know that you don’t have to paint. There is a permanent solution to painting. You don’t have to worry about rotten


wood or someone falling off a ladder or anything. We can take care of it and you will never have to worry about it again.

Rich Okay. Let’s look at two things here. First of all, this – Is this supposed to be a markup or is this the final thing?

Sarah it’s just a mock-up. Everything is a mock-up. Nothing is final.

Rich This one looks pretty decent. I’ve got some comments for you on it. This one here looks, not so much.

Sarah Okay.

Rich If it’s a mock-up. Fantastic. You should see my mock-ups, I draw them by hand and they look terrible. I don’t want to judge anybody’s mock-ups. The permanent paint solution, the last paint you’ll ever buy. Is that for siding or you are going to do a paint?

Sarah It’s just siding. I know.

Rich So, that starts to feel really weasely to me.

Sarah Yes.

Rich The permanent paint solution, the last paint you’ll ever buy. It turns out its siding. I’m a little uncomfortable with that, even though I just got telling a guy to pretend like he was the historic roofing coalition of America or something like that.

This feels a little bit – I find out what it is, I feel like I’m going to get some paint. When I find out it’s not paint.


It, sort of, immediately makes me go, “I don’t want that.” I don’t even really consider what “that” is when it’s not what I thought it was, it turns me off.

What I would rather do is something more like this, okay? “How would you like to never have to paint or replace rotted wood, falling off the ladder ever again?” I’ve given them the benefit of ownership, without really telling them what it was. When I tell them it’s siding, it’s a little easier to swallow then, “Oh, that pain that you were going to buy, it’s not actually paint, its siding”

Sarah Yeah.

Rich Obviously, they wouldn’t actually buy it before they knew what it was, but you get the idea.

Sarah Right.

Rich The first thing I would do on this postcard, I would do what we talked about at the end of that last call with Bob, where I said, I like the 6x11 postcard. This one appears to be a 6x9 postcard.

Sarah Yes.

Rich The reason I like 6x11 is it just gives you more space. I think the cost difference between the 6x11 and a 6x9 is a couple of pennies. Absolutely, they do add up over time, but I think the bigger card makes up for that couple of pennies. I think it costs 3 percent more, but it has 27 percent more bang.

Sarah Oh, wow.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich I just made that number up, but you get the idea.

Sarah I’ll go with it.

Rich Okay. If you have a chance, go grab a 6x11 postcard. A lot of companies send them out so they shouldn’t be that hard to find in your own mailbox. Hold it up against it. You’ll see that extra two inches make quite a big difference.

Now take a look at this postcard. Is this a headline that you wrote based on training and methodology workbook?

Sarah Yes.

Rich It kind of looks like it. I think we have a really good start here. What I would like to do is focus and concentrate on the way that this headline is put on this page. What we’ve got now is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven lines in the main headline; then we’ve got four in the sub headline. That’s eleven. Then we’ve got fifteen total lines stacked up like a Jenga tower here.

Sarah Yes. It looks like a lot of words.

Rich Here is what I want to ask you; what words do you think are the most important that we really want people to see. Not that we don’t want them to see the rest, but we can emphasize things by the way that we place them on the page.

Sarah Right. I think our main would be is “steel siding.” Then, “you never have to paint,” “replace rotten wood.” If


we have to get rid of “following off of a ladder,” we can; but, “paint,” “replace rotten wood,” “seamless steel siding.”

Rich Okay. Let’s do this. Let’s open a Microsoft Word. I’m going to pull this over like that. I’m going to do this. Oops. That’s not what I was trying to do.

“Now your neighbors will never have to paint, replace rotten wood.” Here is what I would like to see; I would like to see this. Bold this. I would like to see this pop off the page. “Never paint.”

Sarah Okay.

Rich We are going to have to re-word it a little bit to get rid of the words “have to.” There is nothing wrong with the words at all; it just kind of ruins the flow of “never paint.” What I can do now is I can come up here above it. I can say, “Now your neighbors,” I want this to be much smaller, right?

Sarah Yes.

Rich “Now your neighbors” – I’ll go a little smaller. We are going to have to re-word it to make it fit. Do you see what is going to pop off of the page here?

Sarah Yes.

Rich “Now your neighbors will never have to paint, replace rotten wood or worry about falling off the ladder ever again.” This is supposed to be a proximity type card?

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Sarah Yes. That’s what we’ve done in the past. We’ve

always send them to home in worked in, but we’ve never done it consistently. Now, we want to do it consistently.

Rich Consistency; wow, major concept. “Now your neighbors will never paint, replace rotten wood or fall off a ladder.” That’s kind of an awkward thing to say because they may fall off of a ladder while they are changing a light bulb, but we’ll talk about that in a minute. Here we made it a little bit bigger. Here is what I’ve just done. This is, obviously, a very rough mock-up using non-precise tools in Microsoft Word, but even still, you can kind of get a look. If you just glance at it, it says, “Never paint ever again.” This is pretty strong.

If you look at it more closely, “Now your neighbors will never paint, replace rotten wood or fall off a ladder ever again.” I think we do need to tweak that “fall off a ladder,” thing because it is not technically true. You get the idea here.

All I’m trying to help you see is that it’s easier to read. I might even come in here and change this text to sentence case. No, I don’t want sentence case. I want capitalize each word. It becomes a little bit easier to read when I took the all caps away from the middle stuff. Did you see that?

Sarah Yes.

Rich I’m going to copy this. I’m going to paste it down here, so I don’t have to change the font size. I’m going to


type over it. “Seamless steel siding is like a magic, no paint, never dull, always fresh” – this is the process, right? I put that on there to be funny. We can always come back and edit and modify and change these later. If you try to wordsmith every single word as you go, it backs up your brain and makes you mentally constipated. We don’t want to do that.

Sarah Right.

Rich Look what I’m doing here. By the way, notice this shift that I did from yours to mine. I used the same format. I used the same general flow, but I made a subtle important change. Instead of simply saying, “Hey, they did this and maybe you should, too.” What I’ve done is tried to come and re-articulate the benefits one more time.

Sarah Okay.

Rich I think when you tell people things like, “Hey, you should do this.” I think a natural reaction is sort of like – This is all subconscious, by the way. The natural, subconscious reaction is, “Yeah, of course, you would tell me I should do that. It’s a postcard trying to tell me something.” At the expense of telling them what they need to know about it again.

Let’s clean this up now. “Seamless steel siding is your never paint, never chip or crack or warp, always looks brand-new secret weapon.” I’m not saying this is great either, but this is an improvement over what was there. Get it on the paper, so you can look at it; then you can


come back and edit it. I want to tie those together and make those visually together. I’m always going to push this down. I’m going to italicize this and see that that does to it.

Here is what I’ve accomplished. That word “never” is a little bit redundant, but I’m leaving that there as a purposeful hyperbole in this headline. I want it to be a little more powerful. I’m not sure I like “secret weapon,” because it is still a little James Bond-y, and Jane Smith might be getting this postcard and she might not really like these “secret weapons.”

Let’s work on that a little bit. By the way, I don’t know if “chip, crack, or warp” is the right thing, but maybe you can change one of those words. Instead of “secret weapon,” what can we say? You’ve got to do some of the work here, Sarah, come on.

Sarah I did and you just changed it. I’m a thinker, I’m not a doer.

Rich Wow. You may want to check into getting that updated. We’ll fix it later.

Sarah Yeah.

Rich I like this, though. Here is what I want you to see. I want you to see that this is good. All I’ve done is help you increase the power of this a little bit. I like the format. I like the words going down the side of the page like this. I like the picture of the house that verifies that this is a nice looking house. “Hey, that doesn’t look what I would think


steel would look like. That looks like regular, nice looking siding.” Then you’ve got this other stuff there.

On the other side of this postcard, this is tripping me out a little bit.

Sarah I know. I did make another one. It looks like the one that we just worked on, but it’s got a picture of a different house. It’s identical. It says in really bold, “Never paint again.” It says, “Now you can install seamless steel siding that will never fade, never crack, and never warp.” That’s all it says.

Rich We’ve changed this front. What I would do is this, I like a format – Hang on just a second. Let me find something, and I’ll show it to you. What you are seeing here is the front side of the postcard is actually the bottom. This is how I like to the second side of a postcard. I like to have a major headline and then some text that people can read if they feel so inclined. Then, of course, the contact information and some kind of offer. I’ll just click through these here on this particular series.

If I go to some other versions of this. Here is for a box company. We’ve got the front headline and a box. This one I actually flipped on the side, but you can still see how this would work. If I flip this over. We’ve got the headline and a little bit of text. We’ve got some things that they can look at. Are you getting the idea?

Sarah Yes.

Rich Let’s look at –

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Sarah On this other side, this is where I need to put more

information?

Rich It needs to be connected to what you said on the front side.

Sarah Right.

Rich Let’s look at Fantasy Tan. We’ve got the picture. That would be analogous of your picture of the beautiful house. “Our tans look better because our solutions are formulated better. Fantasy Tan delivers the perfect looking tan every time.” Here is what you are also seeing. You are seeing different looks and feels for the front. There is not one set way that you do it. You kind of make it look how you like it.

On the back of this, though, “all spray tanning solution is not created equal.” We’ve got sub headlines that are little bit smaller; we’ve got a picture of the guy tanning. You get the idea of that. Here is another series. I could show you 127 examples of this.

Sarah Right.

Rich This is all front, I think on this. I think this one has backs. Here is a front. “When it comes to seeing the dentist, are you a big chicken or a little chicken? Relax, we can help with either kind.” On the back, “The last dentist you will ever need.” This is the kind of stuff that we want on the back of these postcards.

Sarah Okay. That makes sense.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich There you have it. I think you are on a good path

here, just keep rolling. By the way, let me just point one thing out. This is probably very obvious to you, plus I brought it up at training. The front of the postcard is the side that has the address area and the stamp area on it. This is something that lots of people get wrong. They look at the big side of the postcard where they want their main message and they put it on the back.

Mail always gets sorted where the address sides are up. That’s how people are going to read their mail. You want to make sure you have your main headline here. Then as you flip it over, you’ve got a headline that continues to flow. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve seen a headline on the front of the postcard, it doesn’t really make any sense in the context of people reading it first. You have to be careful with that.

Sarah Okay, thank you.

Rich That’s all we have time for today. We’ve got a full load today.

Sarah Thank you very much

Rich We appreciate your time. Let’s move on to number three. John Schroeder. Let’s see if I can pull this up. Let me get rid of that. I can put this up there. Then let me see if I can find John over here. We’ve got a ton of people on this call today; it’s hard to find people. Let’s see. John Schroeder. There you are.

John, how are you doing?

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13John I’m doing great. How are you today?

Rich You know what? If I was doing any better, they would have to institutionalize me. I can't remember talking to you before.

John No.

Rich Who are you?

John I’m with Bordner Installation Group.

Rich That I do know. I probably have talked to you, but I just didn’t remember.

John Yes, we did our intro.

Rich Forgive me for not remembering your name.

John You are fine.

Rich We’ve got Intercom Kansas City. Let’s go ahead and read through this. Why don’t you tell me what you are trying to accomplish with this ad.

John Intercom writes our scripts for us. I’ve got to be honest; this is my weakest point in marketing. That is what you need the most, and that is copyrighting. They write this for us, and I don’t like it. I know it’s not good, but I don’t know enough to come up with something better.

Rich Okay. As a side note, this is something we may want to have a conversation about, in terms of helping you with your radio, in general. That is a side note, but let’s talk about this right now as our main entrée, okay?

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13John Perfect.

Rich Let’s go ahead and read it and see what we think. “When the cold winter months hit us like they are right now. Most of us think that now is not the time to have any work done on the exterior on my home. Big mistake. Bordner Installation Group can still do your exterior products before the spring rush hits. Not convinced yet?” I’m surprised. I’ve given you so much information, you should already be convinced. “Call Bordner Insulation Group now.” “Get all your projects done now, with the best company for the best price.” “Call us or go to our website.”

Okay. One of the things that jump out at me as a deficiency in this commercial is it doesn’t describe what types of projects you actually are telling people to do.

John Exactly.

Rich You use this generic term, “exterior products.” This is sort of inside speak. I don’t know anybody has any idea what that means. Does that mean you are going to come do my lawn, build me a wall, paint my house, and fix my gutter? It could be anything.

John Right.

Rich In fact, I think when people see “do all your home exterior projects” I think that people’s major thought process probably has to do more with lawn and garden kinds of things.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13John Right.

Rich Inside the industry, we know that exterior means windows and siding and stuff like that. The first thing I would do is make it explicitly clear about what it is you are trying to sell people. I don’t know if they know. That being said, let me ask you this; is this where you want to go with this ad? To showcase this 10 percent discount?

John Yeah, I guess.

Rich There is nothing wrong with this.

John We’ve been running this offer for a few months now, but that is our current offer.

Rich Here is a simple principle for you. The principle is telling people what you want them to know in as straight forward of a way as you can possibly think of. Let’s start with that, okay?

John Okay.

Rich They are trying to do this on here, but I think we can do a little bit or maybe a lot better. What I’m going to not do first is I’m not going to write an ad. I want to talk through what I want people to know.

John Right.

Rich First of all, tell me what you want to sell them. Windows? Siding? Roofing?

John Yes, roofing, stucco, windows, and siding. One of the things that we’ve struggled with is that we’ve been around


for a long time. We are known for roofing. A lot of customers don’t realize we do anything but roofing.

Rich Noted. I don’t know if we are going to address that issue here or not, but I am aware of that from previous conversations with you. People think that they don’t want to do that kind of stuff because it is winter?

John Right.

Rich Okay. I’m going to take an approach on this that goes like this. Again, I want you to pay close attention to this methodology I’m using; which is I’m going through the concept first. I’m not, per se, writing the ad; okay?

John Okay.

Rich You saw me do this on paper with the last caller. Do you remember how I put it on the screen and I wrote it out and went back and modified it and edited it; right?

John Right.

Rich Let’s do the same thing. We are going to do it verbally here. Let’s start with this. “One of the last things people think about when the weather is cold exterior remodeling projects. That’s totally understandable.” “When it is 30 degrees out, installing new windows” – see what I’m doing. I’m coming back with the specifics. “Window, siding, stucco, or roofing just doesn’t cross people’s minds.” I’m saying this slow because I’m writing it down here.

John So am I.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich Let’s see what I just wrote. “One of the last things

people think about when the weather is cold is exterior remodeling. That’s totally understandable.” “When it is 30 degrees out, installing new windows, siding, stucco or roofing just doesn’t cross people’s minds.”

“What if I told you that because this is the off-season, we’d be willing” – I understand that they don’t know who we are at this time. They don’t care who you are. Let’s go back and tell them who we are. “We’d be willing to give you a massive discount far more than any other time of the year just to keep our crews busy? That’s right. At Bordner installation, during February and March, our crews sometimes almost come to a standstill.” This might be too long. I’m just trying to get my thought out on paper.

John Right.

Rich “That’s why we are willing to give you full, bona fide, no-tricks, no BS” -- I might actually put some tricks and BS in this. I might not put the 20 percent. 10 percent to me doesn’t sound all that significant. It sounds like something you might offer anyway.

John True.

Rich I might up it to an odd number; 18 percent discount or 18 months”-- See what I’ve just done? I’ve tied this number to both offers. Eighteen months, no interest

Let’s go back and see what we’ve done so far.


One of the last things people think about when the weather is cold exterior remodeling projects. That’s totally understandable. When it is 30 degrees out, installing new windows, siding, stucco, or roofing just doesn’t cross people’s minds. What if I told you that because this is the off-season, we’d be willing to give you a massive discount, far more than any other time of the year just to keep our crews busy? That’s right. At Bordner installation, during February and March, our crews sometimes almost come to a standstill. That’s why we are willing to give you full, bona fide, no-tricks, no BS 18 percent discount or 18 months, no interest, on any windows, siding, or roofing project. This offer is strictly limited to sales during the month of March. Our busy season starts in April, and our discounts go by at least half. If you are thinking about this, if you’ve even considered this; give us a call. We’d be happy to give you a quote. This offer is extremely limited. You must call now. If you don’t feel like you have a need, fine, wait until later. If you want to take advantage of this offer, call us right now.

That’s kind of where I would want to go with this ad.

John Right.

Rich Here is what I like about this ad. Number one, we’ve told them what we are selling. Number two, we’ve given them enough rational and enough specificity that the offer becomes reasonably believable. That’s the genesis of the offer, but let’s show a little soft, underbelly here. This makes people nervous. I think to say to people, in an


environment of advertising to say, “Hey our crews are slow because the weather is cold.” That makes sense. I don’t think that it makes your company is stupid or sucks or is going out of business because of that statement. I think that it seems obvious. I never thought of it, but now that you mention it, yeah, of course.

What you might want to do is find a couple of different of ways to approach this and cut two or three different commercials that you rotate in the schedule so that it’s not just one treatment of it.

Another way to treat that would be, “One of the worst things that I hate in this business is our sales crews and installation crews sitting out, twiddling their thumbs doing nothing.” Think of that for an introduction to a radio ad. “One of the things that I hate more than anything else is my sales crews and installation crews sitting around, twiddling their thumbs, doing nothing.”

That’s an interesting way to start an ad. People are going to say, “Who are these people and why are they twiddling their thumbs?” There are some very mental, image rich words in there. “Twiddling their thumbs.” What a great thing to say. The word, “hate.” “One of the things I hate the most is my sales crews and installation crews, sitting around doing nothing, twiddling their thumbs, wasting time.” That’s what happens over here at Bordner Installation during March. It is still cold. People are not thinking about home improvements. They don’t pick up


the phone and call. They think that they will wait until April. I totally understand that.

Why do you think I say I totally understand that? I’m validating their position, is what I’m doing. I’m not saying, “Come on. You are so stupid. How could you be so stupid to think that? Come on people.”

John Right.

Rich “I totally understand that, but you know what? I’ve got to keep my crews busy. That’s why, in March only; we are going to have the biggest discount of the year. We are going to offer you” --

John Eighteen percent.

Rich “Here is what we are going to offer you. A full, bona fide, not tricks, no BS 18 percent discount or 18 months, no interest financing if you do business with us during the month of March. Maybe you want to make until April or May, I get that. That’s fine, but you’re not going to get this discount. If you are thinking about siding, windows, roofing, stucco, the time to call is right now. We will keep plenty busy in the spring, there are plenty of customers, and we are not worried about that. Right now, we are a little slow. Give us a call. It’s the best offer of the year. Call us right now.

See how that goes?

John Yeah.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich Now you have two different versions of that same ad.

People will hear it from a couple of different angles. The second one, I kind of like that first person approach. It seems more personable. That presents a problem sometimes because you have this announcer voice guy over at the radio station or something. I just wouldn’t do it. It is just not a good way to handle it.

Even if you hire a voice talent to talk first person on your behalf, it doesn’t matter. Nobody knows who you are. If a guy comes on and says, “One of the things that I hate most is blah, blah, blah. Over here at Bordner installation, here is what we do.” Nobody knows how that is or cares. Nobody is like, “Wait a second, that doesn’t sound like whoever.” Nobody knows. If you do go that route, keep it consistent. Hire the same voice talent every time so they get familiar with this voice.

I do encourage you to get away from announcer voices. It is just not a good way to handle it.

John Okay, great.

Rich Does that help?

John Yes, that’s great. I sent a second one over, but that’s more than enough for today.

Rich I don’t want to fry your brain.

John Yeah. I appreciate it.

Rich Like I said, we may want to have a conversation about this a little bit later. We’ve got a lot of experience


with radio and voice talent and optimizing the buys. I’m not saying your buy isn’t optimized, but I’ll tell you this; we are dang good at it.

John Would you like me to send you an email? How would you like me to follow up?

Rich Just shoot an email to Judy and she will forward it to the right person.

John Thank you so much. You’ve been a great help.

Rich Thank you. See you next time. Moving right along and picking up a little steam here. Next is William. Let’s get you going here.

William, how are you doing, man?

William Real good, Rich, how about yourself?

Rich I’m doing good today.

William Excellent.

Rich Let’s pull this up. I’ve got a few attachments here. What should we be looking at first?

William Let’s look at the Angie’s List ad because that is the one that is running now.

Rich Okay. That is a little ad. How big is this ad in real life?

William I don’t know. I think it’s about a sixth of a page. It’s probably two and a half or three inches square. Something like that.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich Okay. “Hate your windows. Find out why so many

people love Fred’s Best.” I tell you what; one of the major templates for writing advertising in general is exaggerating problems to make a point. I see that is what you are doing here, but I think you have gone past the limit of what you are trying to accomplish.

First of all, this window is so horrific looking that people are not going to identify with it at all. Second of all, you have to really look hard to figure out what’s going on here. This looks like a scene out of Friday the 13th. What’s happening here? Is this a barn? Is this an old building? What’s going on here?

William Right.

Rich When they finally figure out, “Oh, this is an old window.” I think it’s just too much mental gymnastics that we are putting people through to get the point across here.

William Okay.

Rich I don’t know that I would use this photo.

William Gotcha.

Rich If we did use this photo, I would recommend that you use a smaller version of it, so that it’s easier to figure out what’s going on here. Let’s say that you zoomed out and the window was visible between the headline and the Fred’s Best. You had more of the red barn showing, but still, I probably wouldn’t go that route.

William Okay.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich “Hate your windows? Find out why so many people

love Fred’s Best.” Do you realize that if you took this ad put it on a plain background -- choose whatever color you want, maybe a light blue or something. Something that has “Fred’s Best” pop out there. You centered this “Hate your windows? Find out why so many people love Fred’s Best.” It is going to be a lot more effective because it will be more readable. I don’t think this is having the same eye-catching attention. I think that you could actually accomplish that with some white space.

William Okay.

Rich Here is what I want to know. Why do so many people love Fred’s Best?

William It was a statement in the ad.

Rich This is going to sound negative and like I’m taking jabs at you, but I want to say it as straight-forward as I can. This is a lazy, weak attempt. When people say things like, “Find out why” or something like that. To me, it’s kind of lazy. People are not going to follow this logic. They are not going to say, “I wonder why? Let me call this number.” “So tell me, why do people love Fred’s Best?”

William Right.

Rich What I would rather do -- I understand that we have a very limited amount of space here. What I would rather do is make some sort of a bold statement that communicates something important that you want people to know about


you. We’ve only got one shot here, so let’s think through it and make it powerful.

You might say things like the following: I’m using the same methodology that I’ve used for the previous two callers. We are going to talk through this. It is not necessarily the headline for the ad, but let’s look at some options; okay.

William Okay.

Rich Maybe we could say something like – I know that Angie’s List has strict limitations on things you can say. What if you said something around the concept of “Fred’s Best is the highest rated window company on Angie’s List for the last four years.” I know you probably can’t say that, but let’s assume you could for just a minute.

William That works.

Rich Fred’s Best has been the highest rated window company on Angie’s List in this area for the last four years.” Where is this ad going to appear, an Angie’s List Guide?

William Yes.

Rich Who is going to see this and under what circumstances? Answer: People that are looking for windows.

William Right.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich Nobody is going to pay any attention to this ad that

is looking for a plumber.

William Right.

Rich Let’s say something that gives us a fighter’s chance of impressing somebody. “Hate your windows? Only Fred’s Best offers 12 different brands and styles of windows to ensure that you will get exactly the right window for you home situation,” or “hate your windows? Make sure that you choose a company that uses XYZ installation methods to insure a perfect fit, so you windows won’t suck again later.” Whatever. These are not your points of differentiation. I’m just throwing out some different points to show, let’s put something in there that people would really look at. This company appears to specialize in something. This company appears to have some specific reason that I should call them, instead of the more generic, lazy, “find out why people like us.”

William Okay.

Rich If you could only throw one spear or shoot one arrow at the metaphor, what do you want people to know?

William We do multiple brands. That’s part of our status. You were right on point with offering multiple brands of windows to make sure they get what they are looking for, I guess.

Rich I’m going to say that with as much word economy as I can. I’m going to try to make it short.


“Hate your windows? Only Fred’s Best offers 12 different brands, so that you can choose the window that makes sense for your situation.”

Something like that.

William I like it.

Rich It is a small ad. Nobody is over here pretending that this is the ad that is going to make all the difference every time people see it. They are going to fall over with disbelief and call you as fast as they can. I like my chances of giving people an expectation of what I do.

William Okay.

Rich This is where identity comes into play. I’m doing a book webinar on Thursday on a book called, Made to Stick. The idea of the book is how to make your idea stick into people’s brains. The first concept in that book that we are going to talk about is simplicity. Simplicity. We are going to talk about the need to pull down your main idea to a simple statement that you can compare what you are doing against.

In other words, to use an example from the book; Southwest Airlines is the low fare airline. That is their first, most important thing. The second thing is that they are the fun airline. It allows them to make decisions for that company that fall under that umbrella. If somebody comes to that company and says, “Hey, we’ve had requests to put some different snacks on our flights, especially going to Vegas, where people are going to party. We think we’d


like a different snack.” They look at it and say, does that help us or hurt us in becoming the low fare airline? If it hurts us, we are not going to do it.

We are a fun airline. Okay, if we are a fun airline and it’s one of the flight attendants birthdays, would it be okay to sing a song over the intercom. Does that interfere with being the low-cost airline? What if we decided to throw a little party and throw confetti up in the air for that flight attendant on their birthday? Does that contribute or detract from us being the low fare airline? Well, it detracts because now somebody has to clean up the confetti.

Here is all I’m saying; we want to distill what you are all about, down to specific points that are very clear. It also helps us now, when we have to write an ad like this, right?

William Right.

Rich What do you want people to know? All of that story is to come to this point. What do you want people to know? Maybe we’ve already answered that question. Let’s move to your next ad, okay?

William Okay.

Rich Which one are we going to look at next? I think, for the sake of time, we are only going to look at two. Pick the other one you want.

William Let’s look at the Crosspoint ad.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich All right. “100+ Crosspoint homeowners can’t be

wrong. Fred’s Best is Crosspoint’s favorite home improvement company.” Same kind of thing here. Hopefully, you are filtering everything that we just talked about as you look at this ad.

William Yes.

Rich How would you update or improve this ad? Give me the general principles.

William We need to tell them why we are the favorite company. What we do that’s different.

Rich Let’s assume for just a minute that the Southwest is the low fare airline. Secondarily, they are the fun airline. Let’s assume for you that you are the company that gives the most choice in windows. I’m not trying to impose that on you quickly in this conversation, but let’s just go with it for the example.

William Okay.

Rich We could easily say, “100+ Crosspoint Homeowners can’t be wrong. Fred’s Best offers the most selection, so that you can get exactly the right window for your home regardless of the situation, every time.” “Oh, okay. That’s why 100+ Crosspoint Homeowners chose this. There is a reason.” When we use the most generic, we haven’t said anything. Number two, this is really dangerous. You say, “How can it be dangerous?” When you say things like, it’s our favorite home improvement company or, on the other, “find out why so many people love us;” people tune it out.


They draw conclusions, “Oh, it’s a self-serving, self-congratulatory advertisement.” People don’t hate that. They just expect it. So they realize, from past experience, that this is probably an ad that doesn’t have any useful information. It just has some self-congratulatory bullcrap, of which I am not interested.

It’s actually very dangerous to put something like this. It’s not just neutral, it’s actually dangerous? “Why have over a hundred Crosspoint Homeowners chose Fred’s Best?” It’s gotten into this third set of words, and you still haven’t said anything. You’ve only reiterated what already wasn’t very good.

William Okay.

Rich The answer is the quality; the quality of our products, our people, our craftsmanship. Your home is not only your largest investment; it’s also your castle.” I’m not trying to shred here. I’m a little bit short on time, but I’m going to take the gloves off and start punching a little bit below the belt a little bit here.

William Go for it.

Rich I’m a huge – what’s the opposite of “fan”? Not fan?

William We’ll call it “not fan.”

Rich “Your home is your largest investment.” This statement is so tired and worn out. Whatever comes after that statement is usually a bunch of crap. Let’s just tell them what we want to tell them. In this case, to use the


southwest airline example again. “We are the low fare airline.” The second thing was fun. In your case, we chose the selection, but now we are introducing this quality thing. I want you to know that it’s okay, just like southwest can be low fare and fun; you can be selection and quality. This is why we talk about identity and not unique selling proposition.

Maybe you’ve heard the concept of unique selling proposition before?

William Yes.

Rich The definition of “unique selling proposition” is what is the singular, unique benefit that people can expect when doing business with you that they cannot expect when doing business with anybody else. In my experience, that’s too narrow and short-sighted and too focused to run an entire marketing campaign. What we want to do is draw this core and then have some outer core things that we’ve put all as part of this identity.

What I’m telling you, it’s okay to talk about quality. You don’t always have to talk about this selection thing or maybe you think that quality is more important than selection and vice versa. You don’t only have to talk about quality. That being said, let’s look at some different ways to talk about quality.

The quality of our products. The quality of our people and our craftsmanship. Obviously, we are deeply entrenched into some platitude territory, right?

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13William Yes.

Rich What do we want people to know about the quality of our products, people, and craftsmanship?

William I’m not sure. You are asking me a question.

Rich Pause. Remember the last guy that I talked to and we were re-writing the ad about the winter discount?

William We couldn’t see what you were doing. We could hear you, but we couldn’t see what you wrote.

Rich I just wrote it on a piece of paper and said it.

William I gotcha.

Rich I’ve got it in front of me. Here is the principle that I was using with him. We were being very specific, we were telling a story. We were being more granular than just saying, “Hey, it’s winter, so we are going to give you a discount.” Let’s get a little more granular. This is how people and ideas become sticky. This is how people believe things that we say and don’t just pass them over with sort of a subconscious eye roll.

William Okay.

Rich What can we say about quality? What would you rather talk about, quality of your products, your people, or your craftsmanship. I’m not suggesting that you can only talk about one, but we have a limited space here. Which one would you like to talk about?

William Products.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich Okay, what about your products is so great?

William The materials, long life-time warranties, really – What else? Craftsmanship for 100, please, Bob.

Rich What materials are you using?

William Top grade vinyl, for windows, kiln dried wood for windows. As far as the exterior, the surfaces of the windows.

Rich Tell me about your warranty.

William It is a lifetime warranty, the lifetime of the building. There is a warranty on all products in the building.

Rich Even if they move out and the next guy moves in?

William I’m sorry, what?

Rich What if they move out and somebody else moves in.

William It’s transferrable to the next owner.

Rich One time?

William One time.

Rich I like talking about warranties because it encapsulates the quality, right?

William What’s that?

Rich We could come in here and say something like, “100+ Crosspoint Homeowners can’t be wrong.” I’ve used headlines like that before. I generally like to use the number when the number is sufficiently large that people


look at it and go, “Wow, that’s a lot.” One comes to mind is 8,448; I used one time. I don’t know why I remembered that, but I do. I might or might not use this.

William 1,438.

Rich That’s a pretty good number. “100 Crosspoint owners can’t be wrong.”

William Our number on that – We are about 168 homeowners so far that has done business with us. We’ve done multiple projects with them, but it’s about 10 percent of the neighborhood.

Rich What if we came in and said something like, “The reason – I’m going to maybe start twofold and you’ll have to rein me back in. “We are the only company that offers a 100 percent, no tricks, no BS, no fine print, no gotchas, 100 percent, full lifetime warranty on every window we install (as long as the building is standing).”

I can come back after this and I could start to say things like, “it’s because of our quality.” Now, this quality discussion has a framework for it to sit in. Do you understand?

William I understand completely.

Rich We are the only company that offers 100 percent, not tricks, no BS, no fine print, no gotchas, 100 percent lifetime warranty on every window we install (for as long as the building is standing).”


Sub headline; “We absolutely refuse to compromise on the materials, installation, or worker expertise. Other companies? Not so much.” Or maybe not. Something like that. I haven’t really given any information of what is such high quality. I haven’t talked anything about the material. I haven’t said anything about training or expertise or longevity in the business. I haven’t said anything about how you install the windows. I still communicated this very powerfully by showing with the symptom is of the high quality.

The symptom. In the discussion of a symptom. A symptom is what is visible, not what the underlying this is, right?

William Right.

Rich You’ve got aches, chills, runny nose, and fever. No you don’t, you have the flu. Those are the symptoms of the flu.

William That makes sense.

Rich We’ve got high quality craftsmanship and materials. How does that manifest itself? “We are the only company that offers a 100 percent, no tricks, no BS, no fine print, no gotchas, 100 percent, full lifetime warranty on every window we install (as long as the building is standing).”

William That’s good.

Rich “We absolutely refuse to compromise.” I’ve just told them that we don’t compromise, but I’ve used such strong


language that it’s kind of like the kid going to the playground after he just moved in from out of state. All of the kids are picking him. He grabs the top of his shirt rips and throws it on the ground, and says, “Okay. You guys want to give me a hard time because I’m the new kid? Let’s go. My only request is no more than two kids at a time. That’s not fair. Who wants to be first? Let’s go right now.” They look at him and go, “Maybe we should be friends with this kid.” That’s what you are doing when you talk like this.

When you talk with power, people believe you are powerful. When you talk with power, people believe in your competency and credibility. What have I just implied about all of my competitors?

William That they don’t know what they are saying.

Rich Have I said anything specifically negative about my competitors?

William No, but it’s the implications that they may be offering tricks and exclusions. That’s great.

Rich I’ve taken something that is fairly generic and mundane, and I’ve elevated it to a prominent position in your marketing.

William Wow. We had a conversation about our identity with you back in October. The same conclusion. This ad was written prior to that, so we just need to tie into that. This is great.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich Now, you go back to your Angie’s List ad. If we want

to take this route, we could do the same thing. You don’t have to trick this out and change it up and find 75 different ways to talk about it.

William That’s great.

Rich Maybe find three or four ways to talk about it. Now, you run an ad on the radio and you say what you just said. Maybe you find another way like I had with the gentleman before Jonathan. Just so that it keeps it a little bit fresh.

Here is what you don’t need. You don’t need 18 ways to talk about it. If we know our core concept and we can find one or two or three good, solid, hard-hitting, powerful ways to talk about it; you are in business for life, buddy.

William That’s great.

Rich This is the secret to what we do. People think we are so good at what we do, and we are actually good at what we do, but we just figure out the identity and everything else just flows.

Williams Sounds great.

Rich Marketing for lazy people. Anyway, that’s all we have time for. We’ve got to jump over to the last person here.

William Thank you, Rich.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Rich We’ve been four for four with nobody that didn’t

show up. Nobody that’s phone was messed up, so this was impressive. Now, we are going to go to Chase. Last but not least.

Chase, how are you doing? Chase, come on. All of that buildup. It looks like you’ve not input your audio pin. Your pin is pound 99 pound.

Chase I got it now.

Rich Yes, we’ve got you now. How are you doing, chase?

Chase I’m doing good, Rich. How are you doing?

Rich Good. Let me pull up your thing. I’ve just pulled this up for the first time, I haven’t looked at it, but it is already 1000 times better than what I looked at last week.

Chase Definitely. Don did a really good job of redoing the postcard. I had him redo this because we are going to do a newspaper ad.

Rich “Now you can get a full set of high-quality eyelash extensions for just $99. It includes a full set, unlimited fills and no lash limit.” I kind of want the word “fills” next to the word “unlimited” instead of on the other line. It’s kind of creating a problem there. It’s broken at the best place from a quality of number of words on each line basis. I want the word “fills” to be right next to the word “unlimited.” I might tweak that just a little bit.

“Only 75 available. Due to staffing and space limits, we only have space for 75 members in our unlimited lash


club.” I might put an underline under the words “unlimited lashes club,” so that it ties it together and people can see that there is a name of this club.

You are just now introducing that, right? That’s the first time they’ve seen that. I would put an underline under that. “First come, first served.” You might want to put a comma in between “come” and “first.” If you are interested, please call us now.”

By the way, I really like that “only 75 people available.” I like that. Adding the scarcity right after they find out what it is. “No need to spend $250, plus $60 every two weeks for fills.” I’m not liking that ellipsis after that $250. Here is the great thing about this conversation, Chase. We are just nitpicking details. This is great.

Chase I think it’s really coming together.

Rich I think the ellipses needs to go away after the $250. No need to spend $250, plus $60 every two weeks for fills.” That ellipsis makes it look like the plus is completely separate. It is visually separating it, but it actually should go together. I might even underline “$60 every two weeks.” It is the same concept as above. We want people to see what goes together versus what doesn’t.

“Only $99. If you have been holding off on lash extension because they are too expensive. You might spend as much as $2,000 a year.” Again, I might underline “$2,000 a year.” Do you understand the concept of underlining to pull concepts together?

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Chase Yes.

Rich Just to make sure they focus on that. “Our system is different. We charge a modest $99 up-front fee for a full set.” I might underline the words “full set” just for emphasis. “The best brand on the market. A $99 maintenance fee per month, to keep your lashes looking long and beautiful and full. All the time.” I might underline “all the time.” For even more emphasis, even though it is all caps.

“You can, and we recommend, coming in every two weeks there is unlimited number of lashes.” This is great. This is really good. It is really clear what you are trying to say here. Perfect. I love this.

“FAQ: Are the fills really unlimited? Why do you offer this program? Can you make any money? How many lashes can I really have put on?” Is that redundant with the first question, or not? It is probably fine.

Chase Yeah.

Rich I might actually flip those two and put yours first and other’s last. I think that’s really minor, so I’m not that worried about. “Call us or visit us online.” This is great. I really like it.

Chase Okay. Cool. Thanks Rich.

Rich It’s really nice when I see this stuff that we designed and I actually like it instead of going, “Oh, we designed that?” It’s rare, but it happens.

Tuesday Morning Ad Clinic3/19/13Chase Thank you. I really like it. Thanks for your help.

Rich I think the picture of the gal is great. She’s got this look of the person that you want to portray without her looking overly –

Chase Yeah.

Rich You picked a good model here, I think. She’s attractive, but not unattainable, I guess. That’s the best way to say it.

Chase Right.

Rich Great. Anything else specific you want to know or are you looking for a stamp of approval?

Chase That was pretty much it. We are going to press tomorrow, so that’s great. I appreciate it.

Rich If you can make those minor adjustments, do it. If you can’t, I wouldn’t have any hesitation with going just the way it is. The edits we made earlier are really minor.

Chase Okay. Great. Thanks Rich.

Rich Good to talk to you. Thus concludes our longest TMAC with the most submissions for the year. Thanks for participating. Happy to do it that long every time. Thanks so much. We will talk to you Thursday where we will talk about Made to Stick. Thanks so much. Bye now.


Rich

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