I know the Holidays are a busy time and people tend to unplug from the world and focus on family. So it’s possible you may not have heard about the typhoon and massive flooding that occurred in the Phillipines recently.

As you may know, lots of people in the Phillipines provide low-cost outsourcing work for small-scale IM businesses and this disaster is going to impact our entire industry – whether you use outsourcing or not!

My friends and colleagues Joe Finn and Justin Wheeler have gotten lots of well-known marketers (including yours truly) to donate over $1000 of products into a pool, and you can get them all for only $17 (and an email address for some of the downloads)…

Here’s a quick shortcut link: http://colintheriot.com/typhooncharity

I won’t ramble on and on about it because the page has full details if you’re interested. Basically, you get a HUGE amount of valuable info and training from reliable, reputable people… AND you get to help out some people who truly need it.
Sure, $17 is a tiny amount, but the boys have collected over $8000 so far, and every little bit helps. 100% of the proceeds are going right to aid efforts over there.

That’s it for now – have a great Holiday, and talk soon!

~Colin

P.S. Part 2 of the “4 Unanswered Questions” is coming soon – I lost my draft of it on Tuesday and am currently rewriting it. If you’ve been waiting for it, sorry for the delay!

P.P.S. Don’t forget you can join me LIVE tonight at 7PM Eastern on Talk Marketing Now and we will (surprise) talk marketing! Hope to see you there!

After a long hiatus from blogging and a mini-retirement due to newly acquired fatherhood, I’m going to make an attempt to blog more regularly here. Yeah, yeah, I’ve said that before, but THIS time, I really mean it.

Here’s the first in a little series on a subject that I did a chat show on a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn’t recorded and a few people asked about the topic.

As a copywriter, I get asked A LOT to review copy for people – and of course, I always check out the big launches and letters written by colleagues. If I had to try and come up with a short list of common errors, this would be it.

There are 4 simple questions that most underperforming copy fails to answer. Yes, you can sell stuff without answering them at all. And no, you probably can’t sell stuff by ONLY answering these questions. But MAKING SURE you answer these four questions adequately for your prospect will UNDENIABLY make your copy better.

Plus, they are REALLY easy to remember. Today we’re going to cover the first one, and I’ll go through all 4 as I find time to write around baby stuff. So take a look, and let me know that you think?

Today’s question:

1. Why Me?

Answer this from the prospect’s point of view. You have a very short amount of time to tell the prospect EXACTLY why this message is for them. It’s NOT for everyone – it’s targeted. You want to give the prospect the feeling that you are speaking DIRECTLY to them. You want to support the ILLUSION that your message is a one-to-one communication.

Now, of course, a sales letter web page is OBVIOUSLY not a one-to-one message – that’s why I used words like “feeling” and “illusion” – it’s got to do with making a connection with the reader. Here are some sub-questions you can use to help develop copy that will help the prospect know “Why Me?”…

- Why are THEY the one who suffers from this great problem your product will solve?
- Why has their situation been unavoidable – why has their problem been unsolvable before now?
- Why are you even talking to them now – help? Support? Compassion? Righteous indignation?
- Why are they even reading your stuff – are they seeking help? Do they even KNOW they have this problem?

Of course there are many other ways to approach this, but when you can answer this question in the prospect’s mind, you’ve hooked them in for the whole ride. If they feel the letter is written to them, and addresses a REAL problem that they FEEL… you’ve got a much higher chance of them sticking around to get to the part where you ask them for money, right?

So why do so many marketers and copywriters leave this part out or flub it? I really couldn’t say for sure, but I think maybe people get so caught up in themselves and their product. I guess that’s natural. You spend so much time creating something worth selling, it can be hard to re-connect it back to the prospect and their needs.

But the fact is, when it comes down to it, ALL the prospect cares about is themselves and their own problems. So IMHO, that’s ALWAYS where you want to start. Your sales letter will end up not just being FOR them, but it’s ABOUT them – it taps into who they are and what their problem is.
ONLY THEN will they be bothered to give a crap about you, your offer, your product, and giving you any money at all.

So that’s it – short and sweet for today. More to come soon in Part 2: “Why you?”

In the meantime, what are your thoughts – do you agree with me, or do you think otherwise? If you DO disagree, let me know why, so I can argue with you effectively.

If you are around in just a couple of hours at 7PM Eastern, come watch my show on http://talkmarketingnow.com – I’m going to talk about the importance of being Known, Liked, and Trusted… but ALSO how you can accidentally get people to Know, Like, and Trust you in the WRONG way, and how you can blow it when you try selling them stuff.

Hey there!

Last minute notice, but in about 30 minutes, at 7PM Eastern, on http://talkmarketingnow.com I’ll be talking about Personal Branding, but not in the usual way.

See normally, I talk about building your brand through messaging on the web.  Having recently attended a live marketing event this past weekend, I’ll be talking about how to represent your personal brand LIVE, in person.

There’s not much more to it than that, and if you want to improve your ability to build your legend and celebrity in a face to face encounter, you’re going to want to tune in!

Hope to see you there on http://talkmarketingnow.com and if you miss it, I can’t say for certainty I’ll get a recording.  So be there, or be rectangular.

~Colin

P.S. I’m on every Thursday at 7PM Eastern, so set your calendar so you won’t miss an episode!

Hi!

I hope you’ll be able to join me live tonight on http://talkmarketingnow.com at 7pm Eastern for my weekly show: Passion, Persuasion, and Profit!

That’s exactly what I’ll be talking about, too.  The name of the show also HAPPENS to be the 3-legged stool of must-have ingredients for a career as an info “guru” with an audience in any niche of your choosing.

So if you have a PASSION – if you are willing to PERSUADE people to adopt your same enthusiasm for your chosen topic – if you want to find a way to PROFIT simply by pursuing your own happiness…

Watch tonight!  Hope to see you all there!

~Colin

P.S. You might want to get ready to record it too, because I’ll tell you how to earn a free hour of consulting with me.  (Normally at least $250.)  I’d take that deal.  That’s a good deal.

Hi there,

On tonight’s show on http://talkmarketingnow.com (7PM Eastern) I’m going to continue last week’s discussion about the strange inner workings of our primitive monkey minds and how we can be tricked into thinking things (and thus, behaving according to those thoughts).  For us marketers, that means making people buy things just by telling them to.

Last week we talked about the Ziegarnik Effect and the Von Restorff Effect and how you can use them to short-circuit the mechanisms of attention.  This week, we’re going to explore those mechanisms further and discuss a long-term strategy for creating a HAPPY and FULFILLED audience… of people who are total ADDICTS for your information.

Seth Godin once said “All Marketers Are Liars” – well I say “All Info Marketers Are Drug Dealers!”

You’ll have to tune in tonight to see why!

Join me tonight, LIVE on http://talkmarketingnow.com (Thursday, 7pm Eastern) and let’s talk about it.

See you there!

~Colin

An intro for my new video series where I will share my morning coffee ideas with you via video instead of just cramming them in my secret notebook.

Hi there!

I hope you can join me LIVE on http://TalkMarketingNow.com tonight (at 7pm Eastern) for a new LIVE episode of my weekly chat show, “Passion, Persuasion, and Profit.”

I’ll be talking about attention:

> How to capture it (even in crowded niches) with sneaky secret tricks…
> How to ensnare it (even when the prospect is distracted) with more sneaky secret tricks…
> How to put under pressure (and release it with a BANG when you make an offer) using yet more sneaky secret tricks…
> How to spin it out into and endless golden thread that you can weave in and out of every message you write…

Yeah, that one uses sneaky secret tricks too. . So if that’s your thing, check out http://TalkMarketingNow.com tonight at 7 Eastern.

I would love to see you there. So when people pay you with the precious currency of attention, you give them something worth “buying”!

Plus, I’m giving away a FREE hour of copy consulting, but you have to tune in to find out how! (That normally costs about $250.)

Hope that got your attention!
Colin

Hi there!

A late but still slightly-ahead-of-time reminder: tonight at 7pm Eastern on http://talkmarketingnow.com I will be continuing LAST week's show.  The subject is "Pwning the Inbox" – so if you want to create a deeper, more influential relationship with your email list, tune in tonight!

I'm going to endeavor to have it recorded, and if it is, I will pair it with the excellent recording I got last week, and make a nice little package which EMAIL LIST subscribers will get as soon as I get it.

Last week we talked about how to create a high-impact, high-response list from scratch.  THIS week, I'll be talking about how you can immediately and intentionally drop a "value bomb" on your new subscribers to make them immediately and deeply connect with you, and your core message.

And it is VITALLY important that you provide this information in one of your EARLIEST messages to them, or else the chance for rapport rapidly evaporates.  So don't squander it!  Tune in tonight to tighten up your email marketing.

I hope to see you there!  That's at http://talkmarketingnow.com tonight at 7pm Eastern.

~Colin

P.S. If you missed last week's "Part 1" episode, subscribe to my list ASAP so you can get THAT recording PLUS this one, as soon as I have them.  (If you're reading this on an email, you're already on the list.  If you're reading this on my blog, best to subscribe now, just in case!)

P.P.S. I'm working with product creation expert (and fellow TMN host) Brad Spencer to package the "Manufacturing Micro-celebrity" webinar recording we created together into something nice enough to share with you.  As soon as it's out of the dirty "BETA" phase I've talked about, you'll be the FIRST to know.

I subscribe to almost everything (for research purposes) and I usually check out what people sent out that day before I go to bed.

Today, I snoticed some common suckiness in today’s crop. And maybe it was because I sorta had a discussion about this earlier today on the forum, but whatever it was, I noticed it a lot more.

Pre-selling is something a lot of list marketers and bloggers TRY to do, but they’re either not very good at it, or they’re leaving a lot of opportunity behind. Here’s my attempt to fix it and make my inbox more interesting.

The biggest issue is that I think gurus and marketing teachers haven’t done a good job of explaining what pre-selling actually IS and what it’s supposed to be FOR.

Here are 5 things you didn’t know about pre-selling.

1. Pre-selling is NOT “selling before the sales letter” - it’s what you do BEFORE you do ANY selling. It’s about getting people to WANT what you will eventually sell them BEFORE they even know it exists. In fact, it’s BECAUSE they don’t know your product exists that we need to pre-sell them.

Giving the hard sell to a cold prospect sucks. It’s sleazy. And for people forced to do business in that position, they often have to resort to pretty harsh tactics like…

2. Using pain and distress to agitate the prospect - this is a BAD pre-selling tactic. Don’t get me wrong, those things are great to use when actually selling, but remember, pre-selling is NOT selling.

The number one thing people do when encountering pain or discomfort is to AVOID it, which means they will walk away from your message before they even hear about your product and its solution. But that’s okay because…

3. We can co-opt and USE this inherent human desire to avoid pain. We do this by using the pre-selling phase to introduce and detail the emergent problems that the prospect will face as they travel ever deeper into the niche.

By pointing out the problems, pitfalls, and potholes, we provide a valuable service WITHOUT needing to actually SOLVE anything. We leave them with nothing to do, so they will be free to buy something later…

4. The secret of pre-selling is in appealing to APPETITES. There are desires common to all humans that are insatiable and bottomless. Learn them, and harness them to your message so that even when you’ve given them exactly what they want, they will still come back for more.

A very important one to note here is our insatiable desire to acquire secret knowledge of shortcuts. Our ancient drive for survival causes us to constantly be on the lookout for competitive advantages. We’re always interested in new ones.

Consider that what we’ve done is simply fill the prospect’s head with potential problems for which they have no solution, but are on the lookout for. They like us, they trust us, and they are going to pretty much already be asking for our opinions on how to solve their pressing problems, which is great.

But at this point it’s important that we don’t make a final HUGE mistake…

5. The prospect has to jump the gap between pre-selling and selling BY THEMSELVES. We can’t shove them. The whole point of the pre-sale is to get them to walk right up and ASK us to sell them. And they WILL. But you have to be patient. You’re giving them a bunch of puzzle pieces, and leaving them all out but one.

When you present your product, you can simply put it in front of them, and in their eyes, they will SEE it as the missing piece of the puzzle… THEIR puzzle. By this point, they’ve internalized the problems you introduced, and they misremember their desire for a solution as being their own idea, driven by their own subconscious desire to have an advantage over everyone else.

That’s what I think pre-selling is all about, and that’s how I do it. So in reference to the title of this post, was I right? Did you know these things? How about OTHER pre-selling tips? I’d love to hear yours!