August 2, 2010
I was speaking at a £20,000-per-head mentoring "get together" late last week in England (that's over US$31,000 at current conversion rate as I write this for all of you who like to go by USD).
It's called the Churchill Apprentice Programme (yes, that's how you spell "program" in good 'ole Britain) and it's run by my good friends who I work very closely (in fact, almost exclusively) with these days from the Cambridge Business Academy.
I gave a couple of presentations that touched on various elements required to build and run a 7-figure business as part of this "Orientation" meeting we had for the new gang of students.
As many people who know me have heard, I've spent well into the 6-figure bracket on my personal marketing and especially copywriting education.
Well, I literally packed everything I could from that education into these two talks about the fundamental but most powerful ways to make more money as an entrepreneur and specifically internet marketer.
Now, if you're part of the direct response advertising world it's possible you're rearing your head right now and are ready to say I know nothing about marketing… but please bear with me momentarily.
You see, I'm very much a direct response zealot. I laugh almost daily at the silly ads I see on tv created at ridiculous costs and worth very little to nothing in terms of maximizing sales for the advertiser who's paid for them (particularly if they're smaller to medium size or even worse, local businesses).
If you know anything about getting the most from your advertising then you would no doubt you shake your head along with me if we were in the same room.
However, as I shared with the small group of 15 I was talking to in Cambridge last week, there's still some real validity to what those "creative advertising" commercials do that we as direct marketers can use.
And as I've already mentioned, that is the strategy of branding.
Let me give you a great example I shared during one of my talks…
Truthfully, I picked it right from beginning, intentionally and purposely.
In addition, the colour scheme of my site and even business cards (the latter of which I must admit I almost never use) has always been the same – purple (because it's my favourite colour), black (because that's what ninjas wear right?) and then of course blended in with white background because as a direct marketer I know the value of maximum readability to any piece of copy.
But having said that I've never made any real effort to ensure I'm introduced as such when speaking at events or even on webpages mentioning me.
And yet here's what's happened… literally since a few months after I launched my copywriting career…
I distinctly remember going to an event in Sydney (my home town) in 2006. I attended the same event in another part of Australia the year before, less than 2 months after beginning my career.
Somewhat unbelievably to me people were stopping me left right and centre to say hello and shake my hand.
Now, at the risk of sounding pompous or arrogant I wasn't surprised this was happening – I knew many of the audience would know me well from my association with the seminar organizers.
But what did surprise me is that they'd almost all say "hi, you're that ninja copywriter aren't you?"… or "you're that purple copywriter ninja guy!".
Even if they didn't remember my name fully, they each… and I literally mean every single one… remembered either "ninja", "copywriter" or the colour purple.
Now as I've said, it was essentially direct response all the way for me through my site and yet with just a clever and yet delicate effort to make myself stand out, I was able to literally brand myself into the mind of many people who otherwise might have just forgotten my name in the sea of supposed "copy experts" who float around such events.
So let me ask you, without sacrificing response or in any way lessening the power of your advertising messages… what could you do right now to get the power of branding working for you in YOUR business?
Steve
P.S As a little aside I actually chose this as the first strategy to reveal today as I wanted to do a little test with speed of ranking after Google's Caffeine update recently – specifically using a longer tail term like "the copywriting ninja". Be interesting to see what happens and report on it in a future post so stay tuned.
Filed under Brand Advertising, Copywriting, Direct Response Advertising, Direct Response Marketing