Is information marketing effective? Does it really work to attract clients and income? Let’s look at Steve Pavlina, one of my favorite bloggers.

For almost four years, Steve has been writing about “personal development for smart people” and posting the articles on his blog. Today, his first book is among Amazon’s Top 100 in sales — three months before its release!

“It currently has a sales rank of 94. It also sits at #13 in the self-help category, #4 in the personal transformation category, and #5 in the motivational category. Those rankings are adjusted hourly, so they may be different by the time you read this.”

Steve has posted about 700 articles. That’s it. No outside promotion or advertising. Just quality content and word of mouth buzz, which have generated an incredible number of incoming links. Even his Google pagerank is a modest 4.

Not only has his writing attracted a publisher, Hay House, (yes, they came to him), but Steve claims the advertising and affiliate links on his blog earn him over $10,000 a month income.

It’s not the mere fact that he’s writing that has brought him this success. It’s the quality of his material.

It will be the hottest marketing promotion of the summer — until it runs out of gas. Companies of all kinds are giving away tankfuls of free gas as long as you buy something: a new car, hotel room, even Calloway golf clubs. With $4 a gallon fuel prices and $50-75 fill-ups becoming part of our auto-oriented lifestyle, gasoline giveaways are a real attention-getting promotional idea.

Expect to see it a lot of them this summer, before they fade away by Labor Day, says a marketing professor at at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business.

But why bother with gas cards at all? Why not just take $50 off the product price, or give customers the cash as a rebate instead? After all, money is money, right? Shouldn’t consumers be just as excited about a $50 discount as a $50 gas card?

Aha, that’s where the psychology of marketing comes in! Any copywriter worth his thesaurus knows that buying decisions are primarily driven by emotion, not logic, no matter how we try to convince ourselves otherwise. Suzanne Shu, a marketing professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, says:

“The more (a) purchase feels discretionary, like staying at a luxury hotel, the more the gas cards have impact because people can use them to justify something they might not do otherwise.”

So if you’re thinking of going down the “free gas” road for your next promotion, just remember those roads are going to get pretty congested. Link

photo credit: pixelnaiad

When is a complaint letter like a sales letter? When it gets the immediate, affirmative response you’re looking for. Take the letter “professional complaint letter writer” Bruce Silverman wrote to the Ritz-Carlton that ended up getting him a week, totally comped, at the company’s Kapalua in Hawaii.

As today’s Consumerist detailed, Silverman has been amazingly successful in getting companies to give him all sorts of free stuff: First class upgrades, hotel room upgrades (how does a free week in the Presidential Suite sound?), hundreds of dollars in cash — all from his way with words.

Silverman has now written a book filled with advice for complaining. The basic technique isn’t too far off from the way to write an effective sales letter. Basically his advice is:

1. Make the opening of your complaint letter personable and personal. Hook their interest.
2. Praise first before you explain why you’re dissatisfied.
3. Keep it brief. The reader is busy and easily distracted.
4. Be reasonable — don’t ask for the moon.
5. Make it clear you haven’t written them off, that you pl;an to be customers again in the future, and that you would welcome some sort of compensation.

As the Consumerist put it, “It’s really just an artful way of demonstrating the basic principle of “it will cost more to ignore me than to take care of my problem.”

Check it out. It’s a fun read. And it may get you what you want next time you’re wronged.

Andy Sernovitz at MarketingProfs offers six WOM tips, gleaned from his experiences with Holly Suttmann, a former schoolteacher who has effectively been promoting her Black & Light Candle company.

“Holly really understands word of mouth,” Andy says. “She’s proof that every business can master these inexpensive techniques. There are a lot of global companies that should study what she’s doing.”

I’m going to extract and paraphrase a few of Andy’s gems:

1. Cultivate key talkers. But use personal notes and e-mails, NOT not press releases, to build a personal relationship with the writer or blogger. As Sernowitz aptly put it, “Not sales calls, just friendliness.” [Note: there is a time and place where press releases are appropriate, but not with bloggers! More on that in a future post.]
2. Give away free samples. People can’t talk about a product they haven’t seen.
3. Make it easy to spread the word. Think coupons, discount codes and other pass-alongs.

Question: What is missing from this list? It’s an essential ingredient for any kind of effective marketing, conventional or viral. It’s mentioned in the MP article, but it’s not on my list. Can you spot what it is — without looking at the original article?

Tell me in the comments.

The always-interesting Freakonomics blog in the NY Times recently cited a recent study that confirms the importance of providing lots of product information in your marketing and sales material.

The MediaPost headline says it all: “Majority Of Online Shoppers Check At Least Four Reviews Before Buying.” Take-away point: A solid 68% do their homework before making a purchase.

As a savvy marketer, how do you respond to this knowledge?

1. First, make sure you satisfy this hunger by providing all the facts and figures your prospects need to make a buying decision. The more complex — or expensive — your product or service, the more information you need to provide.
2. Differentiate yourself. Find something different, unique, special about your widget that nobody else can claim, and emphasize that in your collateral.
3. Make your product data available in a variety of formats to please every kind of buyer: Web page, pdf, print (e.g., spec sheets), free samples, etc. Give the people what they want, the way they want it.
4. Triple-check your facts. Make sure everything is accurate and complete. Fresh eyes find mistakes that eyes tired miss.
5. Add a case study or two. Customer “success stories” demonstrate how you’ve helped other, similar customers in the past. Pretty compelling and persuasive stuff.

Then, of course, you somehow still have to find a way to keep all these facts interesting — better yet, fascinating — to your prospect. After all, you can’t bore someone into buying. A few tips:

• Good copywriting and graphic design are essential. Here’s how it works: An attractive layout catches the eye and encourages further reading. The headline makes you want to read the first sentence. The first sentence makes you want to read the second, then the third, etc.
• Effective copy itself begins by addressing the buyer’s wants, needs, fears, etc. Don’t just start bragging on how great you are. Instead, tell me how my life is going to be better if I make your widget part of my life.
• Balance features and benefits throughout the copy. Don’t just tell me about the advanced anti-lock braking system (feature), for example. Tell me why I should care. Safety, peace of mind, better protection for my loved ones — those are benefits.

And benefits are why people buy.

Another brand shoots itself in the foot. Botox, the popular anti-wrinkle drug, and its competitor, Myobloc, have both been officially linked to dangerous botulism symptoms. In a few cases, the symptoms were so bad that children given the drugs for muscle spasms have died, according to the Food & Drug Administration.

This should not be a shocker. Don’t these wrinkle-challenged women (and men) realize that Botox stands for “botulism toxin?” Score one for truth in labeling, at least.

Don’t they realize they’re letting (in many cases, encouraging) their doctors to inject a deadly poison under their skin — all in the name of vanity?

Is it the doctors? Haven’t plastic surgeons been diligent enough in informing their patients about the risks?

Or is it those damnable TV ads for pharmaceuticals, the ones aimed directly at consumers. You know the type: “Ask your doctor whether this crap is right for you.”

This kind of advertising is outlawed in every country in the world — except two. (The other, I believe, is New Zealand.) And it ought to be outlawed here. Creating a demand for your product or service is one thing. Creating a demand for dangerous drugs is another. It seems to me it’s only a short hop from there… to the creep dealing smack or crack on the street corner. He’s creating a demand, too. “Psst. Hey, man — the first one’s free.”

I hate sales and discounts — at least for professionals and small businesses. When you lower prices, you’re basically training customers to wait for a lower price before buying– a bad habit.

There are many better ways to drum up business, especially during your slow season. Rather than simply offering discounts, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing suggests thinking of some combination of the following offers:

• Exclusive and private members-only discount sale days
• Community-building events that include the entire family
• Early hours just for current customers, where they get first crack at the newest stuff
• Credits and/or discounts for referrals and passing out gift certificates
• Promotion with a non-profit partner that donates a portion of sales during an exclusive event (you can probably find a way to work this into one of the non-profit’s events).

This approach is much classier than simply lowering prices. First, as Jantsch points out, it rewards your good clients. Plus it motivates prospects to become clients, because they see they get lots of unique benefits when they do.

By the way, this approach isn’t only for retailers. It can work just as well for B2B and even service businesses. So — what are your plans for a summer promotion?

By the way, if you need some professional help writing the copy…