I want tostart this post with a simple, yet profound question for you to ponder aboutyour own business…“What is the one thing and first thingyou just do to get money in your business?”
The answers Ihear when I ask this question from a live audience ranges from “Create aproduct” to “Make a sale.”
While theseanswers seem to make sense, the very first thing you must do in order to getmoney in your business is to GET THEATTENTION OF YOUR TARGET MARKET. It’sthe critical first step to any marketing effort.
My mentor,Dan Kennedy, has this to say about this topic,
“It happens constantly and it is thehidden secret reason why so many marketing campaigns fall way short of theirpotential. Not because the offer isn’tgood or wouldn’t be welcomed by all the recipients; simply because many of therecipients never know about it because we fail to command their attention.”
Reread Dan’s statement. It’s simple, yet profound. Basically you can have the best product orservice, yet if you are not getting the attention of your target market, you’regoing to go broke.
Reread Dan’s statement. It’s simple, yet profound. Basically you can have the best product orservice, yet if you are not getting the attention of your target market, you’regoing to go broke.
Not too longago I was visiting New York City Times Square . Ifyou’ve ever been to Times Square you know it’san overwhelming sensory experience. There’s traffic noise, visual noise, people noise. It’s a bombardment and if you stay there toolong and your senses start to become numb.
Trying tomarket your product or services today is no different than standing in Times Square and yelling at the top of your lungs. There’s no escape to all the marketing andadvertising noise people face. TV,radio, billboards, newspaper and magazines, direct mail, banner ads, pop-upads, Google ads. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Yourchallenge is to cut through all the noise and clutter and createtop-of-the-mind awareness with your target market.
Sadly… most marketingfails, because it is so “plain vanilla” and ordinary. People are busy. They’re jaded, guarded, andskeptical. Some are cheap and down-right rude.
Lots of folks have no time, no patience, andlittle interest in what you’re selling. So how can you expect to get their attention by simply adding to thenoise?
YOU GOTTA DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY!
One of the most effective techniques to grab theattention of your reader, either online or offline, is to use simulatedhandwritten notes and doodles. In thisday and age of computer-generated everything, the power of handwriting stands out.
You cannot help but see thistechnique used more and more. It’s inthe advertisements in your weekend paper; it’s on television commercials and inmagazine ads. I’ve even seen it used effectively on book covers. You are now starting to see its use on Websites, blogs and squeeze pages.
The use ofsimulated handwriting goes back a long way in advertising, however, manycopywriters and marketers give me credit for this most recent and widespreaduse of handwritten doodles with the creation of CopyDoodles®.
As a matterof fact, marketing guru, Bill Glazer called CopyDoodles, “the biggest enhancement I have seen in the last 10 years for peoplethat are writing copy for bumping the response and making the copy much moreinteresting.”
Before CopyDoodles, theprocedure to add handwritten doodles was both time-consuming and tedious. Now you can add these powerful doodles toyour marketing in mere seconds.
Over the years, my clientsand I have done a number of split tests and across the boards the materialsthat contain handwritten notes and doodles always perform better than thosewithout them.
Of course you have to knowhow and when to use them appropriately (just slapping a bunch of CopyDoodles onyour materials without proper context can be counter-productive).
So why is simulated handwriting soeffective?
Legendary direct marketer andauthor of Common Sense Direct Marketing, Drayton Bird, says, “The use of handwritten notes in themargins can add variety and interest to the eye and brain.” Quite simply, the widespread useof computers, word processing and laser printers has created “homogenizedmarketing.” Meaning 95% of everything looks the same. When you introduce a handwritten orhand-drawn element to the mix, it becomes very different in a simple, human-personalitykind of way.
The effectiveness of a simplered handwritten note and doodle to a web page or direct mail piece can be hugeand over time this type of copy cosmetic technique can add thousands of dollarsto your bottom line. Try it and see foryourself!
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