Want to show prospects you’re the real deal? Use a bait piece. A bait piece is a giveaway that entices prospects to share their information with you because, in turn, they receive something of value.

A bait piece can help you make an excellent first impression—but only if you do it right.

In a recent post, I talked about why you need a bait piece, and shared some examples of good ones. Today, I’m giving you the dos and don’ts:

1. Give something away for free. When I talk about value, I’m talking about something you might otherwise charge for. This is the real way to show value.
2. Look at clients’ needs, top concerns, and pain points. Nobody can benefit from a generic bait piece. Make sure it’s created directly for your audience.
3. Put effort/time/money into it. First impressions are everything. If your bait piece is the first window you’re providing into your business, don’t you think it’s worth the investment to do it right?
4. Be innovative. Go one step further than your competitors. Give your audience something more. Provide something different—that’s needed—but often overlooked or ignored.
5. Make it visible. Once you’ve created this bait piece, promote it where people can see it. Add it to your blog, social networking profiles and other outlets, including your email signature. Spread the word.
6. Make it easy. If it takes 10 steps to get this valuable bait piece, people will lose interest. Have a simple sign up process, and just give it to them.
7. Don’t make your bait piece an advertisement. This means no sales pitches, one-sheets or promotional language. Don’t try to pass off your marketing materials as bait pieces. It’s just going to annoy people.
8. Don’t use outdated material. Update your bait piece to keep it relevant. Otherwise, your audience might view all of your company’s offerings as outdated.
9. Don’t call it a bait piece. The term is for marketing purposes only.  Please don’t offer a “bait piece” on your website—instead, call it the specific, value-packed tool that it is.

People hesitate to sign up for newsletters. They’re afraid you’re going to send them nonsense (a lot of companies do). By offering something up-front with real value, it will show your merit. Follow the rules above, and you’ll have a bait piece that gets, and keeps, your prospects interested.

Any other rules to add? Please leave a comment.

In content marketing, a bait piece is a free, useful resource that gives prospects a taste of your expertise, and brings them into your business loop. One great use for a bait piece is to build your newsletter subscriber list. Offering your prospects something of value will make sharing their information more worthwhile.

Too many newsletters are actually thinly disguised—and sometimes blatant—advertisements. A newsletter should provide real value and help the reader solve problems and find answers. A bait piece can show you will deliver. In addition to sharing previous newsletters (so prospects can see what they’ll be getting), offering a valuable, immediate goodie can further encourage people to sign up.

Creating an effective bait piece means answering the following questions:

Why should somebody share contact information with you? How will a relationship with you and your organization improve their lives?

The right bait piece does just that by demonstrating value up front, for free, no strings attached.

Consider the following examples:

1. Free email series. What are your clients interested in? For a weight-loss surgery practice, a leading concern among prospects is insurance coverage. An educational series on how to qualify for insurance coverage addresses this concern.
2. White papers. Once found mainly in the technology industry, these authoritative reports now help readers in almost every sector solve real-world problems. For example, one white paper for a fulfillment house shows prospective clients how a new packaging solution delivered annual postage savings of more than $430,000 for one company.
3. Webinars. What keeps your prospects awake at night? What changes have them scouring the Internet for more information? Create an information-packed webinar that delivers information and solutions to their desktops.
4. Free consultation/session: Give prospects a free taste of your services. This allows them to see the value that you offer—and gives you an opportunity to leave them wanting more. (No sales pitches.)
5. Free tools. Give prospects a tool that will make their lives easier. For instance, the contract security sector frequently uses RFP (Request for Proposal) documents to screen vendors. By publishing a free RFP template, a security guard firm can build a positive rapport with prospects that need guidance in creating an RFP document.

Don’t worry about giving too much away. If you make this bait piece available on your website, and somebody uses it, they will learn about, and hopefully lean towards, your services because of it. By showing expertise, you will become their go-to expert and stand apart from the competition.

Which bait pieces have you used? What’s worked the best?

Yesterday, driving to a client meeting, I saw a car in one of those promotional wrappers. This one caught my eye not only because of the bright red color, but also because it was advertising a home goods store where I used to shop.

The store in my hometown had closed, and I feared they had gone out of business. The cute red car let me know they were still selling their beautiful, affordable housewares.

Two minutes online, and I found out they have a new location 10 minutes away (although they’re relocating again).

This is proof that marketing works, right?

Give me a clue

The car wrap featured the company name and tagline prominently on the rear window, but no other information or call to action. If I hadn’t been familiar with the store and products, I might not have figured out what they sold.

As it is,  I’m not sure what they hoped to achieve with the ad.

• Did they want me to visit the website? A web address would have been nice.
• Did they want me to call? Tough when you’re driving, but okay if the car is in a parking lot.
• Did they want me to visit the store? Include a store location and tell me to stop by. (Better yet, offer me a discount if I mention the car.)

Don‘t punish initiative

I liked the store and its products, so I went online to check them out. Here’s what I found:

• The website has been flagged by Google as a possible attack site, with a button that reads “Get me out of here!”
• A Facebook page with four company comments since January 2011, including a response to a Fan post in September 2010.
• Announcements about a new location, followed by news that the location is changing yet again.

Frankly, my inquiries—made with the intention to check out their inventory and make a purchase—have left me feeling even less comfortable about the company’s viability. For all I know, they’ve already closed their doors.

What‘s your strategy?

Before you spend your hard-earned dollars on sales or marketing, invest some time to make sure you’re spending it wisely. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Who are my clients/customers?
• Where are they and how can I reach them?
• What action do I want them to take?
• Why will they take that action?
• How can I encourage them to act?

Clearly, this example oversimplifies the matter, but you get the point: Before you decide to put your brand on a car or to launch a company blog, think about how—or if—that tactic will support your business strategy.

And if you need some help,  send us an email or give us a call.

Do you have any examples of marketing campaigns that don‘t quite hit the mark?  Please share below.

In an age super-saturated with marketing messages, your prospects have developed such an aversion to being sold anything that you have to overcome resistance at every step.

They pick up your direct mail package, see what it is… and toss it in the garbage. So you add some intriguing copy or graphics to the envelope, just enough to make them open it.

They open up your envelope, see what you’re selling… and toss it in the garbage. So you include some headlines that snag their attention, capture their imagination, and keep them reading.

They read some of your headlines, recognize it as just another ho-hum sales pitch… and toss it in the garbage. So you write copy that they simply cannot put down, filled with dramatic benefits, showing them how much better their lives will be if they listen to your message.

They finally reach your call to action, see the cost… and toss it in the garbage because they don’t want to spend any money, even if you’ve managed to get them this far. So now your job is to help them rationalize what their emotions want.

These barriers of resistance are enormous, difficult to overcome no matter how breathtaking your benefits. So how do we, as marketers, get around this?

When defenses are that strong, it is senseless to confront them directly. To borrow the words of Sun Tzu, “Supreme excellence is achieved in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” Our prospect is not the enemy, but his resistance is. Marketers dare not use force to overcome defenses; we’re stuck with persuasion and seduction. So we go around the defenses with approaches that the prospect does not expect. We take the argument in an unexpected direction, evoke emotions that she is not expecting, inspire her imagination, and help her rationalize her action.

In the chain of resistance, you will note that at every stage, the prospect puts up resistance when she recognizes part of the marketing process. “Oh, this is where the sales pitch starts. I don’t feel like hearing a sales pitch right now.” This method of circumventing resistance predicts when that resistance will begin–and shifts gears before it can. As in wooing and warfare, do the unexpected, and you’ll more often experience dramatic results.

At what other stages of the selling process does resistance appear? How do you overcome it? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

As any marketer or sales pro know, good selling is all about the rationalization. We build up prospects’ emotions, touch them, lead them, and then we help them rationalize whipping out the credit card.  The good news is that we, as human beings, rationalize often. To borrow from the film The Big Chill:

Michael: I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.
Sam: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?

And that’s where testimonials come in. We can make the prospect feel, we can make her want, but we cannot make her act–until she rationalizes the action.

That is the purpose of testimonials. They show your audience that other people have bought your product or service and were more than satisfied. Because these customers are unbiased sources with no vested interest in your widget, their opinion carries weight, and helps overcome the audience’s natural resistance. Testimonials help build your credibility, your ethos.

Imagine this situation:

You’re in an electronics store, looking at a new stereo system. You like the snazzy look, the high-end features, and it sounds pretty good—except that you’re surrounded by the noise of the store, other systems, other customers, the thunder of the Xbox demo two aisles over. It’s hard to tell whether that stereo will sound good in your home. And the price tag is $3,000.

As you stand there scratching your chin, another customer walks by, sees you and says, “I bought that stereo last year. It sounds absolutely amazing!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I love it.”

That innocuous testimonial might be exactly what you needed to rationalize that purchase. You buy the stereo, take it home, and you love it, too.

A few simple sentences of praise from third parties are worth their weight in gold. Marketers disregard them at their peril. When was the last time you went a week without buying anything?

The Myers-Briggs Temperament Test is an increasingly popular way to identify what makes a person tick. The Myers-Briggs Test, originally developed in the 1950s, is now used worldwide to identify patterns of behavior and attitude. The expansion of the test’s popularity has been spurred in large part by Dr. David Keirsey, who refined and expanded the Myers-Briggs types in his books, Please Understand Me and Please Understand Me II.

Human temperament theory states the following: all individuals can be categorized as one of four basic personality types. These personality types can each be broken down into four sub-types based on introversion/extroversion and the person’s preferred role as leader/follower, but those sub-types are irrelevant to the core values of the main types. Each holds a specific core value–the thing that drives people of that type.

Artisan (Sensing Perceiving – SP). There are many Artisans, perhaps 35-40% of the population. Artisans want to be excited, stimulated, to make an impact on the world.  They trust their impulses and aspire to virtuosity in their chosen field.

Guardian (Sensing Judging – SJ). Guardians are the most common, making up roughly 40-45% of the population. They are concerned about their lives, families, communities, responsibilities. They trust authority and seek security and belonging.

Idealist (Intuitive Feeling – NF). Idealists are rare, making up no more than 8-10% of the population. They are enthusiastic and romantic, seeking self-discovery and recognition of their efforts. They help others, and in so doing walk the path to enlightenment.

Rational (Intuitive Thinking – NT). Rationals are even more scarce, comprising as little as 5-7% of the population. They are calm, collected, trusting their reason and intellectual capacity. They live their lives in search of knowledge, fascinated by the systems that drive the universe.

With this basic knowledge, a good copywriter can craft a message to appeal to  all these types, or even more specifically to those types most likely to be interested in the message. One can develop marketing messages to maximize impact on certain personality types, or include hooks to appeal broadly to all four. Most of the hooks that will work on a Guardian will not likely work on an Idealist, because each type is driven by different internal forces.

One general difference between the types is that Artisans and Guardians operate most comfortably, and respond most favorably, to concrete things, such as tools, results, real-world things. Idealists and Rationals, on the other hand, are more likely to respond to abstract things, such as holistic concepts or systems.

Your job as a marketer is to craft a compelling message, and human temperament theory can be an absolutely priceless tool in your inventory.

How do you visualize your target audience when crafting copy? Are you a Myers-Briggs fan? Do you use a different approach? Please share what works for you.

Source: Keirsey, David. Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence. Del Mar: Prometheus Nemesis. 1998.

Any good copywriter knows how to capture and lead the audience’s wants and capitalize on its needs, and he knows how to help the audience justify assenting to the call to action. All persuasive writing, including marketing messages, asks the audience to agree and to act based on an endless variety of specific reasons.

For example, in a clothing store:

Retail Seller: You look amazing in this dress!

Customer: Really?

Retail Seller: Absolutely!  Add these shoes and you look like a model.

The sales pitch here goes like this: You should buy this outfit because it will make you look like a model.

The call to action is to buy the outfit. The reason is that the customer will look like a model.

But there is a third element here: the value judgment underlying the reason. It is the unstated assumption that the customer wants to look like a model, that for the customer looking like a model is a good thing.

But what if the customer is more concerned about cost than appearance? What if the customer wants to look like a skater chick?

If the audience does not share your message’s value judgment, your unstated assumption, then your message will fall flat, no matter how good the reasons.

This concept applies to all copywriting. You have to think about what value judgments you are asserting and whether your audience shares them.

Your persuasive writing can (and should) use a variety of reasons and unstated assumptions. However, if the unstated assumptions conflict, your message will contradict itself, and the audience will recognize this.

What if the sales pitch above continued…

Customer: But I’m not interested in looking like a model. I’d rather look more like a professional.

Retail Seller: This would be an excellent dress to wear to the office.

Customer: I said I want to look like a professional, not a “pro,” if you know what I mean.

The customer then shrugs and leaves, and that’s exactly what your audience will do if your underlying assumptions are inconsistent with themselves or with your audience’s.

Remember that the unstated assumption is a value judgment that says something is good, something is bad, something is worth doing, worth having. If you craft messages that share these values with your audience, your message will find fertile soil. Without them, your message will wither like trees planted in a desert.

How do you identify and test your underlying assumptions? Do you have any war – or success – stories to share?

Lift notes, also known as lift letters, are so-called because studies have shown that they can increase the response rate of a sales letter by as much as 50%.  But what is a lift note exactly?

A lift note is a short letter or note from someone other than the writer of the main sales letter—editor, director, expert, creator of the product, etc.  There are three powerful reasons why this is an effective tactic for increasing direct marketing response.

1. The lift note’s physical difference and separateness from the main letter are one more chance to grab the prospect’s attention.  It’s often short and less intimidating to read than a full letter.  The difference in style or voice can also appeal to different types of readers. Furthermore, a good lift note will usually offer benefits not described in the main letter, something special about the product or service, or a special, “personal” offer.
2. When the lift note gets the prospect’s attention, it can bring them into the main letter with positive feelings. Excitement, curiosity, peace of mind that the reader has already read your guarantee, testimonials, special benefits, etc. The lift note compartmentalizes the reader’s attention, similar to a text box. Its brevity is its greatest strength, in that many readers are more likely to read it carefully and hit all your high points.
3. A lift note can give an extra impetus for the reader to act after she reads the letter. It’s an extra opportunity for a call to action, one more perspective on why your product or service is essential for the reader. A lift note works even better if you can take the reader’s interest and build on it with tantalizing leads such as: “Read only if you’re still not convinced…” or “Would an expert’s assurance help you decide?”

A good lift note should do only one thing—whatever that might be—and do it well. Whether that’s offering a “hidden” benefit, “secret” information, or an expert testimonial, the lift note should add another dimension to the sales pitch, not summarize what’s already being said elsewhere.

Session 1: Optimizing Your Facebook Fan Page for Profits

Presenter: Mari Smith

Facebook dynamo Mari Smith first looked at why Facebook is an important social media marketing platform for many businesses:

• Facebook is the number 1 social network in the world.
• Facebook has 500 million “active” users (have logged on to Facebook in the past 30 days)
• Half of Facebook’s user log on to Facebook every day.
• 70% of Facebook users reside outside of the U.S.
• 68% of Facebook users surveyed say they are more likely to buy based on a positive referral from a Facebook friend.

Facebook Fan Pages vs. Facebook Groups

For most businesses, Facebook Fan pages are a better choice than Facebook Groups because:

• Facebook Groups can have unlimited members, but you can’t send messages to more than 5,000 members; Facebook Fan pages can have unlimited fans (those who “Like” the page) and there is no limit on the number of fans to whom you can send messages.
• Facebook Groups do not allow you to customize your content, whereas Facebook Fan pages do.
• Facebook Group content is not indexed by Google; Facebook Fan pages are fully indexed by Google.

The new Facebook Community pages are for causes, activities or interests; not for business. Facebook has created many Community pages based on the interests of Facebook users. If you create a Community page and it becomes very popular, Facebook can take it over, at which time you lose all control.

Main Session Takeaways:

1. You must have a Facebook personal profile or business account in order to create Fan pages.
2. Fan pages are highly customizable (except for the Wall and Info tabs) and each carries its own unique URL. Because of this, you can test which tabs would make the most effective Landing page.
3. You cannot change the name of a Facebook Fan page once it’s created, nor its category. However, you can delete an existing Fan page and create a new one with a new name in a different category.
4. You should always have a Fan page administrator other than yourself; You cannot remove an administrator the originating administrator once assigned, but you can add others. and remove additional administrators as needed.
5. You should develop a strategy before creating a Facebook Fan page that addresses: Your target market; your objectives; implementation strategies; agreement on the technology and tools you’ll use for executing your Fan page strategy; decisions on how to track and measure results.

This is one of two SMSS sessions that feature Mari Smith. A more advanced Facebook session will be held on May 20.

Session 2: 5 Ways to Measure Social Media Marketing Success

Presenter: Jason Falls

As more and more businesses plan to budget for and implement a social media marketing strategy, a common complaint is that social media efforts are difficult to measure in order to determine their corresponding ROI (return on investment). Not at all true, as Jason Falls demonstrated in this session.

In order to develop a social media strategy and best track its ROI, you need to first understand what social media can do for you. Jason put the benefits of social media marketing into five main buckets:

1. Aids in branding and awareness
2. Builds community
3. Provides customer service opportunities
4. Allows for/enables/enhances research and development and collaboration
5. Offers direct sales opportunities

Main Session Takeaways:

1. Once you understand what you want social media to do for your business, you need to develop multiple, singularly focused and measurable goals.
2. Once your social media goals are developed, you need to create clear objective statements for each goal that include your target audience, the level of attainment that will allow you to meet your goal (number of site visitors, number of fans, etc.) and a time frame in which that level of attainment needs to be achieved.
3. Then, you’ll need to develop strategies that will allow you to accomplish your objectives; make a tactical To-Do list for each strategy.
4. Track and analyze results.

Once you follow these steps you’ll have clearly defined ways in which you can measure your social media success.

Session 3: How a Chicago Pizza Franchise Used Social Media to Create Raving Customers (A Case Study)

Presenter:Ramon De Leon, franchise owner of 6 Chicago-area Domino’s Pizza stores

In this session, Ramon De Leon explained how he used a variety of online tools to promote his Domino’s Pizza stores before social media as we know it ever existed. He also told of how groups of college students promoted their local Domino’s Pizza stores before he even became aware of it. A very important part of his early strategy was to allow those students to download pictures of people enjoying Domino’s pizza at various events, with the Domino’s logo on each photo. As students posted the photos to their profiles, the chain became more popular.

I was not able to attend the full session due to prior commitments.

Social Media Success Summit – Index of Session Takeaways

Did you attend any of these sessions at the Social Media Success Summit 2010 (especially the Domino’s Pizza case study session)? If so, what were your takeaways. If not, what are your thoughts on Facebook fan pages and measuring social media ROI?

I tried to drag Uncle Jim to see The Lion King on Broadway. He wasn’t interested. He threw his beer can at me and said he’d rather watch the game.

My brother hates sushi. He says he’d rather eat worms.

My mom loves to cook. My dad can’t even locate the kitchen.

My point? People have different tastes… different interests. And there’s no way you can appeal to all of them. I’ll clarify. You can’t appeal to everyone. Get it?

If you try to, here’s a quick story about what happens:

Setting: Touristy beach town. Restaurants: Hundreds. And every one of them served a plethora of cuisines: Italian, Mexican, Indian, Greek, steaks, burgers, Chinese and more. As you might guess, NONE of their culinary attempts was very good. (Believe me, I tried everything.) By trying to offer everything to everybody, these restaurants ended up serving bland, uninspired, confused food. And I started shopping and cooking for myself.

6 Reasons Why “Everybody” Is Not Your Ideal Customer

1. When you try to satisfy “everybody,” you weaken your quality (e.g., the blandest paella I’ve ever had).
2. “Everybody” is fickle. You can’t possibly begin to guess what “everybody” wants. But you can guess what your ideal customer wants. If you know who they are, you know what they read, watch and listen to. You know what they need – and you know what compels them to buy. You know what keeps them coming back.
3. You can’t use specialized language with “everybody.”
4. You have to be broad to impress “everybody.” But by being broad, you turn people off. People know impersonal when they see it. People want to feel catered to, understood.
5. If you try to market to “everybody,” you could spend millions and get nowhere.
6. Loyal customers are deeply attracted and deeply connected. To make meaningful connections, you need insight. You can’t have insight into “everybody.”

Here’s the deal… No matter how hard I try, I’m never going to get Uncle Jim to see The Lion King, my brother to eat sushi, or my dad to cook. These things simply are not going to happen. So marketing musical theatre, spicy tuna rolls or Tupperware to any of these people is simply a waste of time, energy and money.

Don’t waste your time, energy and money on trying to market to everybody. Everybody is not your audience.

Who is? Figure it out, and talk to them. Listen to them. Market to them.

If you need help pinpointing them, or speaking in their language, we can help. Contact us and start targeting your market.