up to
50% OFF EVERYTHING

How companies get away with this frustrates me.

We have laws about false and misleading conducts and just last night I watched a TV add that made this claim yet again. This is clearly written, displayed and said in a way to fool people into thinking everything is 50% off.

It might not be false, but it’s downright misleading.

I’d take…

“Up to 50% off”

“Everything on Sale – up to 50% Off”

I love sales, I love ethical marketing, but this infuriates me.

If you’re that desperate to get customers in your store, online or off, take a good hard look at your products, price and customer experiences. Don’t depend on piss-poor and in my opinion illegal promotions to keep your business going.

… and Dear ACCC, please invest some money to take a few to task on this. The more you’re silent, the more people will feel as though they can get away with it. It’s not about fines, it’s about teaching these companies what’s right.

The ripple effect will be magic.

Okay I’ve got that out… Time to do something positive.

Confused? Don’t worry so am I …

With an all clear 13-week scan this morning I am proud to announce that in the middle of this year, all things going to plan, I’m going to be a Dad.

Amazingly scary.

There’s always a lesson or two to learn when you bring a new something into this world, but I’m sure there will be a whole new dimension to this one.

I feel like I’m back to my very first launch where there a more questions than answers.

Consider this my per-launch tease as I’m sure there will be many more stories to share. Some delightful, others not so much. I do also want to give the mums-who-have-a-blog, who owe me a favor or two a bit of a heads up. As a product guy I know my stuff, as a Father I don’t have a clue! Your email addresses have been put on quick reply.

I’ll keep this short as it’s back to work. I need to figure out how to fund this lifelong launch.

As you were.

There was a problem. My grammar sucked. I couldn’t spell and I has absolutely no concept of what a good sales letter looked like — let alone actually create one!

Suffice to say, my first draft was sent straight to the bin.

A couple of years later, with a few more sales letters under my belt, I was asked to complete an email marketing test as a part of my application to join SitePoint.

At that stage, having only experienced writing sales letters, my email was so far off the mark, I still wonder how I managed to get the job!

Fifteen years later, with hundreds of emails, sales pages, blog posts and even two books behind me, I think it’s time to circle back and share how as a person, who loves to tell a story, deals with the fact that words and sales copy are still one of the hardest parts of my job.

Do, do, and do more.

Whilst writing is, and probably will always be a hard task for me, it wasn’t until I confronted it rather than lived in denial, did I start to improve. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I figure if my good to bad ratio is 1 to 10, then I just have to write 10 times more than someone more gifted to deliver the same result.

When it comes to writing, practice doesn’t make perfect, but it certainly makes things better. If I had to only pick the one thing that’s helped me write as much as I have, it would easily be the writing itself.

Everyone thought they could do my job, but I listened to the people that actually could.

The one thing I very quickly learned with the writing world, even more so in a sales and marketing context, is that everyone thinks they can do your job. Well not everyone, but a lot.

Even as a naive youngster, I found it weird that legal, who were part of the approval process of my campaigns, would comment more about my angle and phrasing rather if I was being legally  compliant. At the end of the day, I had to bow to their will, but the feedback never stuck.

What stuck with me though was the feedback from the more experienced people in my team. Colleagues that presented to me different advice, techniques and approaches that they personally took in creating a great copy — techniques I still use to this very day.

Don’t pretend you’re good at it – surround yourself with those better than you.

My job titles and experience suggest that I should be better at writing. As a confident young man, for a while, I bluffed my way through (in reality, I was probably fooling no one). I was only when I wised up and came to terms with the fact that you don’t have to be perfect at everything, could I start to change the status quo?

Being much more open about the stories I had in my mind, articulating how I wanted people to feel and respond while working with the pros enabled me to turn my dribble into something much more meaningful. What was more important was that I could follow their changes. Learning from them was inspiring.

Read more… and read different things

There’s nothing new here. If you want to write better, then read more. I agree. But I write 100+ sales pages and emails to every book, so not only do I try to read more books, but I make sure I read heaps of sales pages, emails, magazines, and blogs to help become better with different styles.

Do I read as much as I’d like to? Nope. But does anyone?

Do I consider myself a good writer?

To be honest, probably not, but I’m better. I will still be envious of bloggers who just seem to spew glorious acts of poetry.

Friends like Sentience, Matt Magain and Georgina will forever be frustrated with the frequent grammar and spelling mistakes on this blog.

What I do know is that writing is and will always be part of my future.

It may never come naturally, but if I continue to work at it, keep surrounding myself with word nerds, and listen to the right people — you never know. Maybe there’s a wordsmith in all of us.

When should I launch my eBook?

Unfortunately it’s one of those questions that requires an “it depends” response…

Today I want to share my thoughts on this, with a little bit more detail than my usual two word response.

There are essentially 4 factors I consider when thinking about when should I launch an eBook. They’re not mutually exclusive factors, they work together to help me identify the ideal time to launch and are:

• My target market
• Time of year
• Buyer mindset
• Competition

My Target Market

This is probably the most important factor because it drives relevance to everything else. When you’re considering the factors of ‘time of year’ your thinking what is happening at different stages of the year with your customers, not those of others.

Think very carefully about who they are and where they are. That said, you should already know this, long before you started writing your eBook!

Time of year

Once we know our target market, we can then look at what’s happening during the year. Your attempting to find the period where they are thinking most about the problem your book is solving. For example if I’m launching a ‘how to entertain your kids during holidays’ eBook and I’m targeting Australia. I’ll want to know when a the biggest holiday periods are, then looking at potential dates just before when partents are stressing about what they’ll do next weel. Another example might be an eBook about setting up a business. This might call for some research to find the time of year where most businesses are created.

Buyer mindset

If you don’t have an obvious time of year, or have multiple options to pick from, another consideration I make is to look at when people are actively spending, either on themselves or others. This can be spending in general, or specifically on eBooks or your niche. The lead up to Christmas and other holidays are times people seem to be in more buying moods. These are obvious ones, but you can think a little deeper about your specific topic. If I was producing a horse dressage eBook for the UK audience, I would have launched it just after the Olympics where people were inspired by the royal performance.

It’s also worth considering that the obvious targets, Christmas, back to school, are periods everyone wants to own. Because they are so lucrative. We’ll talk about competition next, but if you’re small in a competitive market, it might be better to launch in a quieter period with less noise, giving you a greater chance of being heard.

Competition

Whilst I don’t like looking over my shoulder all that often, for launch dates I make an exception. If you’ve got healthy competition in your niche, don’t assume for second that they’re not doing everything above. So do your competitive research, tune into newsletters, twitter feeds, to try to get a feel for what they are launching an when.

If you can pull the trigger a week or two early you might be able to grab the one purchase of overlapping customers. That said, if you’re competition beats you, all is not lost – you should have a unique selling proposition, a difference in the market so don’t let your fast moving competitors freeze you into inactivity.

Thinking in launch day, and launch month

Using the above you might have a target month or even target week. Once you have that you need to narrow this down to the ideal day. For the products I’ve sold, I’ve always loved Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Remembering that these days suited MY target audience. My advice here is to once again find the day people are thinking about to problem you solve, not actually experiencing it.

The second part to this is make sure there no special event in the counties you’re targeting. Public holidays are unique country to country, state to state, so make sure you don’t launch on a day everyone’s mind is off somewhere else.

4 Things not to think about (if possible)

We don’t all live in a perfect world with the flexibility to do what we want, so the below are three things that you shouldn’t concern yourself with, but only if it’s possible.

Cash now

Easier said than done, but if you can, don’t pick a launch day because you want to income right now. Do it only if you need the money right now. Sacrificing on the ideal launch date for cash flow might cost you a stack of launch momentum, which could cost you for months and perhaps years to come.

What the other person did

Don’t launch on the same month and day that someone else did, just because they were successful. Think more about the above, and if all the indicators draw you to that conclusion great, but don’t make the assumption that what worked for them will work for you. They’re likely to have different customers with different circumstances than you.

Wait until it’s perfect

This is more a product problem than a launch problem, but delaying the launch until the eBook is ‘perfect’ will send you to the poor house. The best time to launch your product was probably last year, so if you keep putting things off to perfect your book, you’ll never take it to market as there is not such thing as a perfect book. In two words — ship it!

Not a quick answer, but I hope it helps

You hopefully can see why it’s not a quick answer, but a solvable one with a bit of thought and focus on what’s relevant to your target customers. Good luck with your own launch!

So strong is it’s influence over your judgement, I personally have a number of checks in place to ensure my heads in the right space at the right time.

It’s also why I believe collaboration is much better than working in isolation.

The balcony and the dance floor principle was first presented to me as I was just entering the workforce. The analogy used was when making decisions you need to know if you’re on the balcony or on the dance floor.

As I was right in the middle of the nightclub phase of my life, it stuck with me. And now I want to share it with you…

On the balcony

When your standing on the balcony of your favorite night spot, you’ve got wide view of the entire venue. You can see how all the moving parts of the club work together. How busy the bar is, if there queue for the toilets, where that scuffle just broke out and how far away security is. Sitting on the balcony over time, you’ll also to start to see patterns. Weakness in the way the night club functions.

On the dance floor

As you strut your stuff on the dance floor, your field of vision is limited, but the level of detail you can observe is much higher. You can see just how bad a dancer that guy next to you is, how cute the smile of the woman across from you is, and the face of the guy that spilt the drink that caused the scuffle that just broke out.

There’s no right or wrong when it comes to being on the dance floor or up in the balcony — there’s often time for both. It’s only when it comes to making a decision that perspective come into play.

Let’s say you’re carving it up on the dance floor and about to make a strategic decision, such as if it’s the right time to head to the bar. As you don’t have a wider perspective, you can’t appreciate the broader ramifications of your actions. You’re attempting to be strategic with a very narrow mind and purely gambling that the queue isn’t to long.

Alternatively if your way up there on the balcony, and are about to make a tactical call, like if you’ll ask that woman for her phone number. You lack the detail to make a well reasoned decision. You don’t have all the facts in front of you are making a dangerous impulsive call. Your tactics lack substance, and you’re going to have to include assumptions that come with immediate consequences.

I experienced this very principle just this weekend. It came without consequence but illustrates this in the real world.

For a long time we’ve been planning a camping trip away — a long weekend. We had three requirements. Somewhere we’d all never been before, that was no more than 5 hours away, with a nice isolated camp spot that we could sit around a fire.

Our first step was to decide a location. We drew a line through anywhere that would take us longer than 5 hours to get to, and anywhere within that radius we’d been before. Left with only a couple of options we settled on the otway national park.

Once the destination was decided we needed to find a specific spot to set up camp. We went back to the map, reviewed all the information available and settled on a camp ground that sounded exactly like what we wanted.

Everything was locked in.

When the weekend arrived, we rolled up to our campsite of choice only to find that is was jam packed and felt more like a caravan park. In a final blow, we discovered that we were not able to even have a fire!

Our 4 days away suddenly looked doomed.

The next morning the Park Ranger arrived to check up on us all. We swiftly headed towards him and asked him if he knew of anywhere more secluded that we could have a fire. He paused for minute and then replied “There’s this spot about 20 minutes away, it’s hard to find and not many people know about it. I can’t guarantee someone else is not there, but you can have a fire, it’s close to the beach…”

It sounded great. We piled in cars, headed to spot and there was immediate smiles all round. It was empty and perfect.

Our weekend had been saved.

The otways is a beautiful place, a great destination for a trip. We made a smart strategic decision to head there. But when it came to the tactical question of where to actually set up camp, from our balcony 4 hours away, we made a horrible call. It was only our wonderful Park Ranger, who’s dance floor is the otways, that had the level of detailed knowledge to fix our tactical problems.

We all make decisions every day. Some tactical, some more strategic. It only takes a second to ask yourself two questions. What sort of decision is this, and am I on the dance floor or on the balcony.

That moment of pause will ensure you’re making smarter calls no matter what the occasion.

… and I’m off to try that new dance move. See you all next time.

Let’s say it’s your birthday, happy birthday you!

You’ve just finished a wonderful dinner with your family and it’s present time — yay.

Your partner hands you a box, it’s wrapped beautifully in paper with a bow on top. You grab the box, tear away the paper to see what’s inside. Let’s hope it’s what you were wishing for!

Birthday excitement aside, I want to deconstruct this process a little bit.

The practicalities

• Inside the box: Was an object.
• Around the box: Was some paper and a bow
• Owning the box: Delivered by your partner, on your birthday

The meaning:

• Inside the box: This until opening was a secret, kept from view, it actually was totally irrelevant.
• Around the box: This created an identity for the box. It labeled it as a present. A gift for someone.
• Owning the box: When you were handed the gift, on your birthday, it became your gift.

The value:

• The object: The object is still a secret, it’s potential is its only value.
• Around the box: This is something I’ve earned, just for being born on this day – birthdays are awesome.
• Owning the box: “You remembered me on my birthday” and that makes me feel important to someone.

The next day:

• Inside the box: Is now exposed for critique, was it want I wanted, how much thought was put in, what does it do for me.
• Around the box: Is forgotten and now in the recycle bin.
• Owning the box: There an infinite link between how the box arrived, and the results of my critique.

So what the heck does all that mean …

What I’m trying (and maybe failing) to show is that your product, the wrapper you put around, and the method in which it’s delivered all play very distinct roles in the customer experience. Too often, and more often than not online, these three things get confused and merged onto one profit limiting blob.

Picking on bloggers first

A lot of bloggers I speak to consider their product to be their blog posts — I often challenge that. Bloggers are content creators, and chances are good they are writing, or speaking to deliver a specific outcome. It might be to train people on how to do something, it might be to inspire them, it might be simply to entertain. Whatever the content is designed to do, it’s the content that is a bloggers product — not a blog post.

A blog post is simply a wrapper you put around your content, and your blog platform is the way you deliver it to people.

Now web applications

When we stubble across the latest coolest web application, we are often swept up by how beautiful it is, how easy to understand the UI is. We often forget about what the application actually does. There’s typically a program underneath the UI. Some sort of function it performs to get people from point a to point b. What the application actually does is the product, the glorious UI is your wrapper, the fact it’s an app is the delivery system. A good argument for UI is that it creates a better chance of your product being used and the benefit realized — and I agree. But it’s still not your product.

The wrapper as a driver of value

When I talk value I mean how much are people willing to pay to experience what you’re offering. It might be a problem, it might be something else.

An important factor in value is market perceptions of what a certain product should cost. For a lot of things we have a subconscious range of how much something should cost based history and experience. Tighter ranges might include forms like books, wider ranges might include things like cars. When we see things above and below these ranges we’re relying on other value factors more heavily — we may even dismiss them all together.

These ranges however are driven by the products wrapper. If we look at the car range as an example. The purpose of a car is to get me from a to b. The car rapper means I can go when and where I want.  For that I expect to pay thousands.  But it’s not the only way to get from point a to point b. I can walk = free. I can catch public transport = a couple of dollars. these are different forms of essentially solving the same problem. With different value expectations for each driven only by a different method (wrapper).

How when you confuse your product with your wrapper it limits your value

Let’s first look at the case of bloggers, if you think your product is your blog posts the expected value is free. You initially start surrounding it with ads, put in the odd affiliate link and sponsored post in the mix as well. But at some point, you’re going to start to think about creating products of your own — thus the headaches will start.

Because you consider your blog post to be your product, creating a new product, one that people will pay for (an eBook for example) means that you’ll be faced with the predicament of having to create a whole bunch of unique content to form the basis of the eBook. However, if you consider your content your product, and an eBook just a wrapper, you’ll soon discover that you’ve probably already got 90% of a product already done. You just need to create that eBook wrapper and a way to deliver it.

Same goes for courses, membership programs. All just wrappers on a product you’ve probably owned for years.

Web App developers will often start building an app for a specific device or channel. Then, when they want to create a new product, go back to the drawing board looking for that the next app of the month. Whilst you re-invest from ground up, smart money may lie in putting a new wrapper on your existing application. It might me creating an integration layer for 3rd party apps (licensing). It might be expanding to different native device formats. You’re still solving the same problem with your product, just creating new value streams by putting it in different wrappers and delivering it in different ways.

Keeping your products, wrappers and delivery separate

If its building the next Facebook or simply changing the world thought your content, remember that there is a difference between what’s in the box, the wrapper you put around it, and how it’s delivered to people. Keep them separate in your mind and you’re ability to apply the same solution into different markets with unique wrappers and value propositions becomes so much easier.

And your product, just became a lot more valuable.

Peggy was her first pony, the one that started her passion for horses and for more than 23 years was a part of her daily life. They grew up together, achieved more success, shared more laughter and tears than anyone or anything else in Juz’s life.

Sadly last night, Peggy Sue Passed away.

She was nearing 30 years old, which in pony terms is a pretty good run. But never took a minute of it for granted.

Whilst a growing dark thought in the back of our minds as the years went on, it all happened suddenly last night. Her suffering was short and took nothing away from the grand life of this beautiful girl.

Peggy was the pony that everyone dreams of owning. She was well behaved and proper when asked, but was always up for a game or two, or three, or four. First in line when the carrots or liquorish came out of the tack room and even in her old age, kept the 3 boys of the house in check.

In typcial Peggy style, in her last days, she still had one more gift to give…

She decided her final competition was going to see her become a calender girl, and set out to be the star of next years Hygain Calendar. Having already been named miss December, she was far from done. Fixing her gaze now on the cover and even raided my twitter account to make her case …

But even being the great competitor she was, she just couldn’t hold on — it was time for her to go.

Whilst she’s at piece now, there will always be an emptiness in our paddocks and special part of us forever dedicated to her memory.

… we just simply want to say.

Peggy Sue, we will miss you.

Not just the ‘regards …’ in the email, but the from name and address.

You see all forms of marketing emails have a reason. In most cases it’s to get as many people as possible to read, and in some instances, act on what they’ve read.

When you think of yourself as a reciepient of emails, which one’s do you read? The emails from companies or the emails from real people?

Knowing that, the consensus has been for a long time to personalise the message – because that’s how you engage.

But it’s not as easy as that …

In the real world, when someone is attempting to be personal just because they have to, it’s pretty easy to spot. Whilst their words might be convincing, their body language will be off, they might make a slip up or two, or we get that gut feeling something’s just not right here.

The same rules apply to personalisation of a email messages. If you don’t go all in, it’s very quickly going to come across shallow.

To find out why, you need to look at the different process of a personal email to that of a promotional email.

When you write a personal email:

• you draft it
• you review it
• you approve it
• you sent it

Sure it might happen in 15 seconds but it’s the process and it’s 100% you.

When you create a marketing email:

• a copywriter writes it
• you review it
• a copywriter changes it
• you approve it

Whilst you might not have written all the words, your influence and your agreement to send makes you the owner. It might not be 100% you, but it’s as close as you can make it.

You hit send, it goes out with ‘company name’ in the from field and ‘support@whaterver.com’ as the email address.

The signal you’re sending immediately, before they’ve even read a word of your copy, is that this is a message you’re not willing to put your own name against.

Leaving the recipients wondering just how authentic you are about what your saying.

If I introduced myself to you and gave you my company name and email, and refused to give you my own name, what sort of conversation would we have? I’d imagine a pretty short one.

So consider how truly authentic you’re being with your emails — beyond the words. I bet, if do decide to put you name on it, even more personalisation will bubble to the surface, and that’s going to be good for opens and clicks.

Which is the whole point in the first place.

Bill owns a site that provides a online service called widget X. It’s a site that charges a subscription of $29.95 per month. Customers love using widget X and Bill’s annual profit is $1 million.

Bob runs a very popular blog showing people how to use widgets it improve productivity. All the big widget companies want to advertise on his web site. People love following Bob as he has a in depth understanding of widgets, and his writing style is very approachable and natural. Annually, Bob earns $1 million

Bill and Bob both decide they’ve had enough of the widget business and look to sell. They both talk to a potential buyer called Brian. Brian’s a smart man but only has the cash to buy either Bill or Bobs business.

Who would you rather be, Bill or Bob?

The answer is easy, it’s Bill. Brian can either buy a profitable business that customers love and is contained within an independent brand, or can buy a business where the customers loyalties are attached strongly to the individual who owns the site.

It’s the big downside to entangling your personal brand to your profits. Whilst the day-to-day profits can be fantastic, when it comes to implementing your exit strategy your real businesses value will only be a fraction of what an non-individual specific product or service will be.

Something to think about… that is of course unless you want to work forever.

I’ve been involved in selling and marketing for over a decade. In all honesty I’ve helped sell things that I wouldn’t even tell my mother about. I can’t even describe some of the internal conflicts I’ve had sitting at home questioning if this is really how I want to be remembered.  But one day I made a choice …

From now on, I’ll only ever sell or promote a product that I believe in.

At the time I didn’t really understand why and it was a tough decision to make. People selling shady products seem to be willing to pay more to for people to help market them – but in reflection it was me just putting a price on my morals.

So I’ve given myself a 5 point checklists that ensures I continue to walk the right path of selling

• Do I believe that what I’m promoting will actually solve the problem I’m stating
• Am I actually lying to my audience in the communication I sent to them
• Does the product actually have unique point of difference in the market
• If my Dad purchased this product, would I be happy about it
• Do I care as much about the difference the product makes, as I do zero’s it puts into bank accounts

Now other than the warm fuzzy feeling that selling only products I believe in gives me, I’ve learnt over time that effectively selling quality products, over the long term, is much more financially rewarding.

Rather than use my own experiences (which I can’t really talk about anyway), I’m going to use Darren and Problogger as an example. So Darren’s first product was his book, that I’m sure most of you already own . Now in its second edition and I’m sure that Darren has done quite well from its success. Having spoken to Darren many times about his experiences with product development, one thing that is clear is that he puts his heart and soul into everything he produces.   He’s a guy that jams so much (sometimes too much), value into his products, and this book is no exception.

If we take this initial product and look at the actual, and theoretical path Darren and Probplogger could have walked, if Darren sold himself out, rather than just sold himself.

Scenario A: Selling Himself

Darren pours his extensive experience into the book. 100% focused on putting together a book he wished he had read when he first started, without caring if is sells 1 or a 1 million copies.

The Launch: Given Darren’s reputation in the blogging world, people flock to the book. Thousands fly out the door as soon as it launches.

The Rise of Problogger: So yes Darren’s reputation helped give the book initial momentum, however the fact that it actually delivered what it promised left readers thirsty for more. They blogged themselves how good the book was, sought out problogger the blog, joined Darren’s email list and so on …

Darren’s popularity continued to grow, the second the first book hit the selves. It continued to sell for years, and Darren was able to develop and release his own additional products that were instantly successful. Though value, he successfully transitioned one time purchasers into repeat and loyal customers.

Scenario B: Selling Himself Out

Darren’s asked to write a book. He’s more interested in how much he’s going to earn, so he spends little time writing and more time doing sums on what his royalty check will be. He leaves all his chapters open ended so that people will need to visit problogger for the answer – and he’s starts developing ways to suck more money out of them.

The Launch: Given their reputation in the blogging world, people flock to their book. Thousands fly out the door as soon as it launches.

The Fall of Problogger: People read the book are either disappointed, or uninspired from reading the book. They tell no-one about it because we all hate to admit poor purchase decisions, be they certainly don’t feel any loyalty or attachment to Darren. Darren’s traffic dwindles and his upsell products fall on deaf ears.

So whilst both launches would have landed a nice initial cheque, the value driven approach has resulted in Darren being able to launch a second edition, a private forum, two ebooks and I’m sure there is much more to come. From the book – Darren created a business that continues to pay dividends today.

And a long as Darren maintains his focus in ensuring his products honour point 1 in my checklists, we will all continue to buy them.

… and Problogger will live on forever

So if you’re looking to develop products of your own, actually believing in the value you’re giving, in the long run, can deliver a much greater personal and profitable reward.