May 17, 2024: Could This Misconception About Price Be
Stunting Your Business?

You may not know how much can be determined about you by how you price your product or service. Are you an expert in your field? Are you focused on offering value?Or are you focused and competing on price?Competing on price is a slippery slope and can lead to a downward spiral, devaluating your product and with it your dignity.It’s tempting to do, especially when starting out but I propose a different mindset – one that will make you spiral upwards.When you are new, you can’t charge exorbitant prices because price is linked to value and value is linked to experience. I am generalizing here, so if you only offer one service and you are highly specialized and educated in that service, this may not apply to you.Let’s take the example of a nail salon. Say you just finished nail design school and you want to open a nail salon with some school friends. You are all relatively inexperienced, though certified to do nails. This means that you can charge a fair price – the going rate - for your services.If you want, you can charge just under the going rate in the hope that you will attract more customers.But guess what?There will always be another nail salon willing to charge just under that. And another one that’ll charge just under that next one.Rather, you should charge a fair price for your experience level and focus on building your reputation. The quality and strength of your nail art, good customer service and how you conduct yourself as a business owner can all contribute to this.As your reputation rises, so can your prices. People don’t buy on price most of the time. They buy on brand, quality, strength or reputation.People who do buy on price often end up being problematic customers. Because they didn’t buy based on the reputation of the business owner or brand, they are very easily angered when the product doesn’t meet their expectations. They will not hesitate to complain.I see the most success coming from businesses that charge a fair price whilst building their reputation through true quality and value, and then raising their price as it makes sense to do so.You can adjust price or the value – both are currencies. People will buy something when they feel the value exceeds the price. If you work on increasing the value the price will increase as a by-product.

May 14, 2024: You Can Reach The Sky, But Will You Fall?

Eighty percent of people say they are above average.That’s clearly an impossible truth.The small percentage of people rising to the top – let’s call them the professionals – stand out because of their actions. It’s not what they say or what they say they will do – it’s what they do.A professional thinks of others first and foremost and is not moved by his own ego. He performs no guesswork – he has a working system that he employs and is confident in his abilities to accomplish. He is never done learning - he is open to change and he cares to keep all aspects of his mind and body in fit condition.Some professionals cannot be deterred from their path and they will rise to positions of prominence, power and prosperity. Others however will succumb to the pressure of the masses and will level-down to become average. Their dreams will be labeled as fantasies by the masses and their behavior will be shunned as extreme.They will be broken down until they no longer stand out.Let’s say it became fashionable to wear as many pairs of shoes at once as you possibly could. Everyone started doing it – even in the workplace – and now if you aren’t wearing several shoes at once, you become the odd one out. What will you do?The example given is ridiculous on purpose. I wouldn’t give in and wear lots of shoes and perhaps you think you wouldn’t either. But group pressure is a difficult thing to stand up against in the heat of the moment and many say they won’t conform but do then cave in. The masses don’t like it when you refuse to conform because they are afraid to be different.They don’t want to see that you are NOT AFRAID to stand alone.Do you want to spend your life worrying about what other people think and say about you? Do you want to live in hypocrisy by doing things you don’t stand behind just because everyone is doing them?I don’t think you do. The path to being a professional has its own set of challenges, but it’s certainly a respectable path and one that places you as a natural leader in many situations you will find yourself in.There are probably some areas in your life where you could pretty easily level-up. Try to take a look at yourself with as much perspective as you can, and write a list of places you have let slack.You’ll feel good about putting in energy to improve yourself.The best feeling is being as good as you can be in every aspect of your life, which takes hard work. Hard work brings satisfaction.In what area of your life will you try to level-up?

May 10, 2024: An Offer So Good It Would Convince A Vegan To Eat A Steak

The art of advertising is more complex than I ever expected and, now that I’ve learned the gritty details, I’d like to highlight one place in an ad where things can go terribly, dreadfully wrong.The offer.Let's talk about how to get this part so right that your ad could turn a vegan into a carnivore.Most business owners are giving their best when placing an ad for their company but they are not expertly trained in marketing.Why should they be?They are maintaining their business and delivering their services, which are time-consuming and crucial activities.The goods or services a business offers the public are all crystal-clear in the mind of the business owner but what about the potential consumer? What if this gets lost in translation?A confused consumer will never consume.I’m sure you’ve been here too. We are bombarded by posts, ads and videos every day. Say you see a candle in a Facebook ad that you’d like to buy your mother for her birthday. You click the ad and it takes you to a website only showing soap. Are you going to feel like searching for that candle or are you going to leave the site?Most likely you will leave.The candle may have just been one click away or a slight scroll downwards, but a lack of clarity will always drive potential customers away.A really important point about making an offer is that it should be clear. Don’t treat people like they are stupid when you advertise but do treat their time with respect.
I saw a guy selling coffee mugs in an ad. He had a great photo and convincing text describing the handmade mugs. What came next…<<drum roll>>… he described his offer with clarity – the handmade mugs were 10% off during the month of April if you would sign up to their email newsletter. You could fill in your email address for the discount code and then you were redirected to the location of the handmade mugs on their website – perfectly placed to purchase with the discount code in hand.The moral of this story is:
Create an offer that serves your business needs at that moment, describe it well and orchestrate the links to flawlessly take the customer to all necessary sites or forms so that they take action NOW. Put yourself in your customer's shoes and go through your own ad as a customer.Make it so they want to say yes and watch the vegan guiltlessly eat the steak.

May 7, 2024: Finding Your Perfect Customer

It’s true. You don’t want to hear it.Not everyone wants to buy your product even though it’s great. So why should you waste money and effort showing those non-buyers your ads? (You shouldn’t)Your ads need to be shown to people who will love what you do - people who will become lifelong fans of your product. But could it be that you are accidentally ignoring your perfect customers without even knowing it?You may find it hard to communicate your sincerity and simultaneously stand out amidst your competitors in ads. Or perhaps in trying to show the value of your product your ad text comes across sounding too sales-y.There are many businesses that have run failed ad campaigns online and simply don’t believe it is possible to make an ad campaign profitable. It is possible - with the right communication skills - to stand out in an ad and awaken the interest of complete strangers without gimmicks or marketing mumbo jumbo.These strangers can develop into your ideal customers for years to come. Often the hardest sale is the first one. Let me show you how to target those most likely to take the leap.Strategize To Find Your AudienceIf I were to look for you on a busy city street and I needed to get your attention I wouldn’t go around tapping everyone on the shoulder, asking whether they knew where you were.I wouldn’t hop up and down trying to catch sight of your face.I would shout your name. And that would get your attention.Your perfect customer has a particular problem or desire and it’s very important that you try to think from their perspective so that you can offer resolution to this problem right away to be able to demand their attention – just like yelling their name on a busy street.Don’t be afraid of leaving people out – sell to your perfect customer, not to everyone.Now, let’s assume you have thought up an intriguing headline that will stop them in their tracks. Let’s dive directly into the details of your audience selection, an area often overlooked.There are three main factors to consider:- gender
- age
- locationFor some products, one or two of the factors are obvious and for other products, more testing is required to sort out who best belongs in your audience.Let me take an example of a barber shop located in Munich, Germany. Let’s turn first to the easy part – men, not women, go to barber shops. One third of our audience settings are already in place without even having to put much thought into it.The barber shop is in Munich, so does it make sense to target the city of Munich? What about surrounding cities? What about the whole country of Germany?The most logical answer is to target men in the city of Munich because most people get haircuts near to where they live.Now comes the less obvious part. Age. The answer is not one-size-fits-all because we can speculate as to who will be responsive to our ad’s offer and style, but we’ll never know until we test it out.To start, you could run two of the exact same ads – one to be presented to men in Munich aged 18-34 and the other to be presented to men in Munich aged 35-65.With a well-written ad and a clear offer you should be able to gather a sound amount of data fairly quickly and can use it to determine which ad was more successful – that is, which ad brought you more sales.Test Some MoreNow that you know which age group responds better, you could conduct another test. You could run the same ad to the more responsive age group using two different headlines, for example. As before, you would gather enough data on both ads and note what worked better, trying to analyze why so that you can repeat and enhance your success with each future test.I would encourage you to think about your own business and your current clients. Can you come up with any type of consistent profile of an average customer? This can help you when deciding what and how to test in your Meta ads.Meta ads are powerful tools for a small business when harnessed properly because nearly everyone is on Facebook or Instagram these days. Being systematic and active in testing is key to making more money. It may seem overwhelming, but the number of parameters to test is limited and once you get going, it gets easier.If you’d like any help in strategizing for your particular situation and business, feel free to get in touch with us – we’d be happy to help you out.

May 3, 2024: One Easy Tip To Get More Attention Than Your Competitors

We all know how much a first impression matters. In the online world of fierce competition for attention, a first impression is everything.People will scroll past a mediocre or unclear post. When I talk about first impressions, I refer to anything from a blog post title, a headline of an ad, the heading on an X post or even a subject line in an email newsletter.When we sit down to write for the public, we are diving deep into the matter and so we often mistakenly assume that our audience is just as interested as we are and will have patience to read through the entire post or email. This can lead us to underestimate the critical importance of crafting a great headline.Musts For A Solid HeadlineKeep in mind to convey what you can do for people in the headline as soon as possible. Catch them. Ask yourself whether, if a potential customer saw only your headline and was given a way to contact you, they would have enough information to understand what you are communicating or selling.If your headline reads, “You Need This NOW” it would not be enough information for a potential customer to know what you are selling without an accompanying descriptive text.If your headline reads, “The Fastest Way To Grow Healthy Tomatoes – 3 Unknown Tips” then a person would know enough about your offer to take it or leave it.The second example will get more of the right people to read further whereas the first will cause people to scroll past altogether.Strive to articulate the value of your offer from the perspective of the reader. How or what will they gain from you? You can play with angles like emotion, intrigue, urgency and usefulness when practicing writing titles and headlines.Turn Theory Into Practice – Get Better Fast!Be creative and experimental and for every post, ad or email that you write, make at least ten headlines and select the best one. Test your audience – they might gravitate towards a certain angle or style of writing.Test, document, reflect and move forward wiser and better.

April 29, 2024: Describe Your Product Better –
A Mistake You May Not Know You Are Making

When it comes to our own product or service, we often describe each advantage proudly. We have invested time, money and effort into it, and we therefore know it like the back of our hand.We fill the page confidently with bullet points of claims. We are enthusiastic to share the long list of benefits people will receive when they buy from us.For example, let’s say I sell a newly developed energy drink and decide to make an ad for it.The energy drink:- keeps you alert and active for 5 hours
- lifts your mood
- contains Vitamin C
- contains only natural sugars
- repairs gut damageThese benefits are quite different from one another and yet there is a temptation to list them all because we want to convince people of how great the drink is.It’s good to be proud of your product and in time you will get to describe more aspects of its benefits but first, a bit of perspective is in order.Put yourself in the shoes of a consumer for just a moment and consider how you would feel if you came across a drink that was described by the five points above. I would think, “Is this a juice? Is this like Red Bull? Is this a coffee drink?” I would feel confused.A confused consumer will never consume.Confused consumers move on, leaving you in the dust. Upon seeing five unrelated benefits, I would have moved on through my feed, never reading more about the new energy drink.When you have a product that you are proud of, its benefits will make you beam and want to get up on the highest podium to preach each and every one of them to your potential customers.The Rule of OneHere’s the part where you get to do that – knowledgeably and calculatingly.Having a product with several advantageous qualities can be marketed strategically by picking one of the benefits and highlighting it in your ad. Then create an alternate version of the ad, highlighting a different benefit and so on until you feel you are testing enough benefits against each other.You may only have two versions of the ad, or you may have five. That will depend on how strong the benefits are and on your ad budget. This “Rule of One” is a way to keep your marketing clear for the consumer and at the same time test which benefits consumers are more drawn to.The main thing is to create ONE ad with ONE overarching benefit. Focus to keep consumers focused. Test and see what performs best, noting what works for this ad as well as for future ad campaigns.If you’d like our take on how to structure ads for your products or services, get in touch and we can guide you through.

April 16, 2024:
Little-Known Tips To Dramatically Improve Your Marketing Results

If you find creating effective ads, capturing people’s attention and getting more clients or fans difficult, this is the right article for you.I remember how overwhelmed I felt when I started running ads and promotions. When you think of ad campaigns run by huge companies such as Nike, Esprit or Coca-Cola, you have to understand that they are spending millions of dollars each year on ads. Most companies don’t have millions to spend on ads every year.The truth is, ads run by huge companies make up the majority of ads we have seen in our lives. So if you can't model your marketing on these, how can you become a successful advertiser? How can you stand out in an ad as a small business?The approach clearly has to be different – but how to do it?Most Ads Don’t Perform – Here’s WhyWhen I first embarked on marketing, some questions ran through my mind:What is my target audience?
Isn’t it better to try marketing to a broader group of people?
I’ve heard of branding – should I be doing that?I started researching not only these questions but how to create an effective ad, which led me into lots of confusion.I kept reading about branding, brand name recognition and top of mind awareness and not understanding how to quantify these or even apply them. The concepts seemed broad and vague.My conclusion was that these terms are a way that people justify failed or potentially failing ad campaigns. My definition of “failed” is an ad campaign that doesn’t at least bring in as much money as it costs to run.If you have millions per year to spend on marketing, yes - by all means, run a brand awareness campaign. But as a small business you want to squeeze the most out of every advertising dollar spent and thus advertise knowledgeably and consciously.Making Lucrative AdsStatistics and tests are required in every area of life to make sure things are up to standard. If you buy a plane ticket to New York, you expect to have a seat on an airplane and be taken to New York. If you order lunch at a restaurant, you expect to be brought the lunch you selected.A marketing campaign can and should function in exactly the same way.The sad truth is that most businesses throw away at least half of their marketing budget. I suppose they feel like if they throw enough money around, clients are bound to come at some point.I am here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way.Your ads can pay not only for themselves but can bring you two to five times what they cost in profit.How?The best thing you can do is to test aspects of ads and document every ad result tested. In this way you can get to the bottom of what your ideal target audience is, what images or videos perform the best and which headlines pique the most interest.What aspects does an advertisement include?Ads contain:- a headline
- a descriptive text
- an image or video
- an action stepAds can be shown to specific people in a specific place and this is another important aspect to test. If you are going to be selling hearing aids locally you don’t need to advertise to young people nor to people in all parts of the world, for example.Make marketing measurable because it can be.I firmly believe that a marketing budget should exist to leverage more profit for your company. Every ad should be able to pay for itself in some calculable way. It’s time to do away with fancy marketing terms or promises about branding. Tangible results are what we are after.There are many ways to go about doing this and it can be done for any and every business, including yours. If you would like to know how we would do this in your business, get in touch for a free consultation.

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