Lars Lofgren

Are you marketing in the right channel?

May 23, 2012 By Lars Lofgren Leave a Comment

There are dozens of different channels to choose from. And online channels are fragmenting each year, creating endless ways for you to reach your customers.

Here’s a few of your options:

Paid Search
Dispaly Ads
Organic Search (SEO)
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Blogs
Affiliates
Email
Tumblr
Youtube
iTunes Podcasts
Stumble Upon
Webinars
White Papers

Every year, this list gets longer. It’s kind of ridiculous.

Out of all these options, are you marketing in the right one?

Many online marketers will tell you “Hey man, you need to be on the BLEEDING edge of social media!! It’s a gold rush! Jump on XYZ site before you DIE!”

Tell these guys to stuff it. Not everyone needs to be on the latest and greatest social media network. In fact, you can safely ignore the majority of channels. You just need to pick the right ones.

How to Pick the Right Marketing Channel

It’s simple: use the channel that your customers use. It’s that simple. Different customers use different channels which makes them a great way to target your ideal buyer.

Now figuring out which customers use which channels is the tricky part.

Let’s run through this with a real example. Take my Grandpa. He’s 80 years old and hates computers. Other then sending email through AOL, he can’t do anything else. When I was 9 years old, I called him “roadkill on the information highway.” This is still true.

How do we reach him with our marketing? Well, we can immediately cross off every social media platform from our list. And every other online channel while we’re at it.

That limits us to options like these:

Direct mail (catalogs or sales letters)
Newspapers
Magazines
Television Ads

He watches a little television, subscribes to Business Week, and doesn’t get the newspaper. But you know what he pays a great deal of attention to?

Yup, his catalogs. It doesn’t event matter if he’s familiar with the brand, he flips through each and every one. To see what’s new and exciting, he opens the most recent catalog. No blogs, no Today Show, no tweets, just a catalog.

He even circles products and folds the corners so he can quickly remember what grabbed his attention the first time he looked through it.

And he’s not unique. If you’re looking to get in front of a rural, elderly market, catalogs are by far the most efficient way to do so.

But would catalogs work on someone younger? Probably not. They certainly wouldn’t work well enough to turn a profit. If you went after a mid-twenties market with catalogs, you should just light all of your cash on fire. You’ll have a lot more fun than you will mailing catalogs.

Enter SoLoMo

SoLoMo is the horrid abbreviation people are using for marketing that combines social, mobile, and local experiences. Think Groupon and younger markets.

To dominate this space, you need a social media team that can react instantly 24/7, a great app that encourages user engagement, and a plan to personalize everything depending on the user’s location. This is the new world of marketing that we all hear so much about.

Narrow You Options Over Lunch

Instead of committing a great deal of cash in either direation and merely hoping for the best, follow these steps:

Put together a list of the channels that you think your target market uses
Find people in that market and take them out to lunch
Confirm your assumptions and update your list

Now you’ll know what kind of channels your target market uses. Every market is different and will skew towards different channels. Guessing usually doesn’t work so make sure you confirm your assumptions.

For the cost of a few lunches, you’ll have better market data than an overpriced MBA will be able to give you. And you can accomplish this within a week.

Once you know your market and where to find them, pick the channels that make the most sense. Don’t go anywhere near the one’s that don’t.

Bottom Line

You can reach your target market simply by choosing the right channel. Different groups of people consume media in different ways and you’ll waste a great deal of money if you don’t plan accordingly.

So if a social media pundit demands that you create a social media account, make sure your target market is USING social media before you do so. If you’re targeting rural baby boomers, stay away from Facebook and Twitter.

Want to Start a Blog? You Need One Critical Element

May 1, 2012 By Lars Lofgren 4 Comments

I could teach you how to get your posts to rank in Google. I could also teach you how to write posts that people will actually read. We could talk about how to integrate social media buttons, guest posting, email to scale your audience, and building the attention of that audience.

But none of that matters. None of it.

Ignore the traffic consultants and social media evangelists. In fact, tell them to stuff it.

Because if you don’t have one critical element, you’ll never get off the ground. Above all else, you need discipline.

Why Is Discipline So Important?

Ready for the bad news? You will write blog posts for years before anybody cares. The only comments you’ll get will be spam trying to scalp what little traffic you have. The only followers you’ll get are fake accounts trying to shove affiliate links down your throat.

This is all you’ll see for YEARS. Not weeks. Not months. YEARS.

There are two reasons for this:

It takes forever for anybody to start noticing you. We live in an attention-constrained economy and you’re competing with Facebook. It’s going to take awhile before you break through the clutter and gain some momentum.
Your first posts will suck. They’re going to be bad, really bad. You will write hundreds of thousands of words before you develop your own voice and learn how to engage readers.

And this isn’t just about a blog. It applies to podcasting, YouTube channels, email lists, Twitter feeds, Tumbler blogs, everything.

The only way to overcome these two challenges (clutter and initial suckage) is to write week in and week out.

To keep writing for months and years without any signs of gratitude from anyone, you’re going to need incredible discipline. You will be sitting at your keyboard writing your 132nd post when you say to yourself “No one is going to read this, why should I care?” Without discipline, you will quit. Then you’ll never know how far you could have gone.

The Worst Part is the Best Part

So we’ve established why blogging (and content marketing) crushes your soul before you see any return. What’s the upside?

The upside is that everyone else is going thought the EXACT same process. But they don’t have discipline. They’re going to start strong, write feverishly for several weeks, notice that no one seems to care, feel the crushing of their soul, and then they’ll quit.

VERY few people have the discipline to produce content week in and week out with absolutely no reward.

But you will. You’re going to keep going. By pushing forward when everyone else bails, you’ll move from a cluttered arena into one with plenty of space to make yourself heard. And through the sheer volume of content you produce, you’re going to get really good. Your writing will go from total crapola to an engaging narrative that grips your readers.

Then, and only then, will you start to notice the impact of what you’re doing. People will comment on your blog, they’ll reach out to you. You’ll have job and writing offers. For company blogs, you’ll start to move some serious product. You’ll see the ROI.

Make no mistake, blogging is a marathon. So dig your heels in and get ready for the long haul. There are no shortcuts.

Coping Strategies

To get yourself through the soul-crushing phase of blogdom, use these strategies:

Commit to a Specific Frequency: Decide whether you will blog daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Then stick to it. No matter what happens, it is your sole purpose in life to push out content by the deadline you’ve set. But don’t post more than this limit. Once you have your post done for the week, that’s it. Allow yourself to relax because you earned it.

Start with a Content Bank: Before you launch a blog, write 10 to 20 posts and don’t publish them. Keep them in reserve. When that deadline is looming and life conspires to throw you off course, just pull a post from your Content Bank and you’re good to go. This will give you room to breath when you need it most.

Guest Posting: Several years ago, blogging consistently was enough to get noticed. This is still true to an extent put it takes MUCH longer than it used to. Once you’ve got a blogging rhythm going, start reaching out to other blogs and try to get a guest post out there. Basically, you write a new post that gets published on their blog. In return, they link back to your blog. Their readers will then start coming to you. You’ll also get some extra Google juice from the link which will pull in more organic search traffic. You’ll grow your blog exponentially faster.

My Blogging Strategy

When I start a new blog, I follow these steps:

Write 10-20 posts before I even think about installing WordPress, now I have a Content Bank.
Launch my blog and start posting weekly or bi-weekly
Once I hit 30 posts, start building relationships with other bloggers in my space.
Guest post on whatever blog will let me.
Maintain a 1:1 ratio of guest posting and self-published posts.
Over time, get guest posts on the best blogs in my space.

If your content is good, this strategy will give you a sizable audience in 1-2 years.

So get started. There’s no better way to build your brand (for your business or yourself). But prepare yourself for a long slog.

The 35 Headline Formulas of John Caples

April 11, 2012 By Lars Lofgren 12 Comments

I’ve previously discussed the importance of headlines and why they deserve the majority of our attention when writing copy. But what does a solid headline look like? As it turns out, John Caples (one of the most famous copyrighters of all time) put together a list of 35 headline formulas in his book, Tested Advertising Methods.

I’ve pulled all 35 of them for this post. I even included guidelines for how to use each group. You’ll never draw a blank on headlines again.

Using Keywords in Headlines

These are your workhorse headlines. Use them often.

When you can’t come up with anything and your blinking cursor starts staring you down, choose one of these bad boys. Each sets you up to get the attention you need.

Now that I’ve shown you these formulas, you’ll see them everywhere. But don’t worry, they can’t get overused. Now matter how often we see a headline that starts with the word “How,” we never grow immune to it. As long as the rest of the headline is about something we’re interested in, we bite.

These headlines also encourage you to write good copy that provides value through helpful information. Use these headlines to teach, explain, and help people. Then ask for the sale. You’ll build trust with your audience and prove to them that you have value to offer.

Begin Your Headline with the Words “How To”
Begin Your Headline with the Word “How” (It’s basically a duplicate, I know)
Begin Your Headline With the Word “Why”
Begin Your Headline with the Word “Which”
Begin Your Headline with the Words “Who Else”
Begin Your Headline with the Word “Wanted”
Begin Your Headline with the Word “This”
Begin Your Headline with the Word “Because”
Begin Your Headline with the Word “If”
Begin Your Headline with the Word “Advice”

Headlines that Focus on Benefits

My favorite headlines focus on benefits. When people consider new products or services, they want to know how their lives will improve. Don’t keep them guessing, throw that benefit straight into the headline.

These headlines will give you the most sales with the least amount of effort. Take the time to get good at them and you’ll never have to worry about your marketing failing ever again.

Use a Testimonial Headline
Offer the Reader a Test (Can Your Kitchen Pass the Guest Test?)
Offer Information in Value
Tell a Story
Warn the Reader to Delay Buying
Let the Advertiser Speak Directly to the Reader (Write the entire ad in the first person and speak directly to the reader)
Address Your Headline to Specific Person or Group (I suggest you address your target market)
Have Your Headline Ask a Question
Offer Benefits Through Facts and Figures

News Headlines

These 8 headline formats deliver because they do a fantastic job at arousing curiosity. People always want to know what’s new and exciting. And the best way to show them that you have something new and exciting is to blantantly tell them.

Begin Your Headline with the Word “Introducing”
Begin Your Headline with the Word “Announcing”
Use Words that Have an Announcement Quality (Finally, Presenting, Just Released, etc)
Begin Your Headline With the Word “New”
Begin Your Headline With the Word “Now”
Begin Your Headlines With the Words “At Last”
Put a Date Into Your Headline
Write Your Headline In News Style (This one’s a little redundant, focus on pushing the announcement angle)

Price Related Headlines

Be careful with price headlines, they’re too easy. Marketers rely on them WAY too frequently and condition their customers to only respond to discounts. When you can only sell with discounts, you’ve pushed your business into a death-spiral. Keep them in your back pocket for emergencies but avoid them as often as possible.

Now, some businesses depend on low prices. Their entire business model is based on delivering the product or service cheaper than anyone else. Think Walmart and generic brands. If that’s the game you’ve chosen to play, you’ll want to display your prices every chance you get. Put them in each headline you have and hope someone hasn’t figured out how to do it cheaper than you.

Feature the Price in Your Headline
Feature Reduced Price
Feature a Special Merchandising Offer
Feature an Easy Payment Plan
Feature a Free Offer

One to Three Word Headlines

You’ll want to leave these headlines for the pros. Why? Because they still need to accomplish what the other headlines do naturally (grab attention with benefits or curiosity). But they only have 1-3 words to do it.

It’s simply too easy to slip from attention grabbing to completely confusing.

Too often, marketers believe they can be pithy and cute by embodying their message into an abstract phrase or word. Usually, they just end up confusing everybody and the ad is worthless.

Remember: don’t make your copy pithy and cute. No one will get it. They’ll just think you’re boring and confusing.

So approach these last 3 with extreme caution.

Use a One Word Headline
Use a Two Word Headline
Use a Three Word Headline

Headlines: Why You Should Spend All of Your Time On Them

March 27, 2012 By Lars Lofgren Leave a Comment

Want a simple rule for how to write an advertisement or design a web page? Let’s say you have a month to write an ad. Spend 27 days of that month working on the headline. Use the last 3 days for everything else.

You think this is an exaggeration. It’s not.

Of all the elements on your site that need improvement, you need to focus on your headlines above all else. This is also true for print ads, PPC ads, emails, sales letters, and every other piece of marketing material you’ll ever use.

Why are headlines so important?

Many people are going to see your ad or website. Some of them can be sold, some of them can’t. It’s your job to reach out and tell the right people that they’re in the right place. The headline does exactly this, it’s your filter. It grabs your target market (the people that can be sold) and convinces them that they should look through the rest of your ad.

You see, headlines are the only element of an ad or web page that every person reads. In just a few seconds, people decide whether or not your entire ad has any relevance to their lives. And they use the headline to make this decision. So great headlines flag your target market down and convince them that it’s in their best interest to stick around.

Without a solid headline, your target market will never realize that you have something that will help them. They’ll take a quick glance at your ad or web page, decide it has nothing to offer, and move on. They’ll be lost forever. If you even want a chance to make a sale, you have to hook people with the headline. People will cut you some slack on everything else in your ad but they only give your headline one shot. Take advantage of it and spend the majority of your time getting the headline perfect.

Don’t Make Your Headlines Cute, Make Them Clear

Since we’re trying to filter out the portion of our audience that will actually buy what we have to offer, we need to be extra careful not to be confusing. If there’s any confusion, everybody bails and we don’t have any hope of making the sale.

Here’s a list of cute headlines that I pulled from a recent issue of Inc.:

Tomorrow Never Stops Exploring.
Tough Just Got Better.
Choice is Not an Option, It’s a Necessity.
Business Can’t Wait.
Ignite a Movement. Accelerate Impact.
Let Your Inner Business Mogul Shine.

Do any of these headlines grab your interest and make you want to find more information about the offer? Of course not. These headlines are so abstract and cute that we have no idea what they’re talking about. If we don’t know INSTANTLY how our lives are going to improve by continuing to give out attention to something, we move on and never look back. Remember the cardinal rule of all marketing: don’t be cute.

What a Clear Headline Looks Like

Here are a few more headlines (from the same issue of Inc.) that do a much better job at being clear with what you’ll gain if you keep reading:

Now, TEMPUR-PEDIC Beds come in SOFT, FIRM and EVERYTHING IN-BETWEEN!
“Their custom-fit solutions are enabling CenturyLink to add 1,150 employees faster.”
Check “Launch website” off the list (before lunch).
Build Your Business Without Sacrificing Your Family.
Homeowners Insurance. Now Available at your Favorite Online Insurance Store.
Be the ENVY of Your Well-Traveled Friends

These headlines create a completely different dynamic. Now, you might not be interested in these offers. But it’s not due to confusion, it’s because you’re not in the target market for the ad. You’re being filtered out (or filtered in if you’re wishing I included the rest of the ad).

The Most Important Aspect of a Great Headline

To dramatically improve your headlines, focus on the benefits that you have to offer. Remember, benefits are how your customers improve their lives, not the features of your product. I’ve discussed the benefits versus features concept here.

Figure out the benefit that your customers care most about and get it right into the headline. The second batch of headlines does this much better than the first. Stop talking about yourself and talk about how the lives of your customers will improve.

The astute reader (that’s you) probably realized that a few of the headlines above talk about features instead of benefits. This is true. The Tempur-Pedic and homeowner’s insurance headlines only reference new features, not benefits. Talking about features can work once you’ve built a national brand and everyone is already familiar with what you have to offer. For these two headlines, each is supported by the millions already invested in advertising. Bottom line: the rules change if you’re a Fortune 500 company and have the budget to do any marketing you want. For the rest of us, I recommend sticking with benefits.

Now there are dozens of other headline formulas out there. Don’t worry about any of those to start with. Keep it simple.

“But Lars, I’ll exclude too many people if I make my headline too clear!”

You’re approaching this from the wrong direction. Nobody cares about abstract ads that are trying to appeal to everyone. We don’t have the time for it. So we move on and look for something that does appeal to us. If you go after everybody, you get nobody. In other words, every ad starts at zero. The job of your ad is to find the small group of people that do care about what you have to offer. Forget about the rest, you never had a chance to get them in the first place.

The Four Stages of Entreprenuerial Growth – with Michael Masterson

March 14, 2012 By Lars Lofgren Leave a Comment

In Ready, Fire, Aim, Michael Masterson details the process that he’s used to build many multi-million dollar businesses. And it’s one of the best books on entrepreneurial strategy I’ve found yet. You’re not going to find much in the way of tactics here. But you will get a complete framework for how to approach (and grow) different stages of your business.

According to Masterson, every business has four stages of growth. Here’s how they break down.

Stag One: Infancy ($0 to $1 Million in Revenue)

The vast majority of entrepreneurs are in stage one.

Your single overriding, all-encompassing, SOLE priority is to sell your product. Nothing else matters. Don’t get distracted with other product ideas, rigid management systems, or anything else. Spend your time figuring out how to sell to your target market.

Figure out what your target market REALLY cares about. This is not easy and requires countless hours of research. Find people in your target market, then get them on the phone or take them out to lunch. Get to know their fears, desires, and life perspective. Only when you completely understand them will you be able to develop the perfect sales pitch. Don’t think you can do this with surveys either. When you’re just starting, you need to actually talk to your customers.

Once you know who your customer is, you need to figure out the perfect way to get in front of them. It may be specific blogs, trade magazines, sales calls, or conferences. There is no easy way to go about this. Come up with a bunch of ideas that seem reasonable, figure out a way to test those ideas without committing too much time or money, then start at the top of your idea list and work your way down.

You’ll spend your days experimenting with different sales pitches, trying new marketing channels, and getting to know your customers.

If you play this game like a pro, you’ll grow faster than any of your competitors. And as you get some traction, you’ll work on improving your product. But you won’t create new products, that comes in…

Stage Two: Childhood ($1 million to $10 million)

When you start moving into stage two, you’ve become an expert in selling your one product. You know the industry better than anybody else. You’ve mastered the art of marketing and sales. If there’s a customer out there looking for your product, you have found them.

The good news is you’ve found all of your customers, the bad news is you’ve run out of customers. You’ve cornered the market and there’s no one left to sell to. So your growth stalls.

To break into the second stage, you need to transition from an organization that sells one product to one that can create, test, and grow new products as fast as possible. You’re going to diversify and expand your business into new categories. You’ll even create new brands.

You’ll need to figure out how to build new products and how to release them more frequently. Once again, the name of the game is testing. In Stage 1, you tested marketing ideas with a single product. Now you’re testing multiple marketing ideas and multiple products. You’ll need to build an organization that can handle this task.

Stage Three: Adolescence ($10 million to $50 million in revenue)

You’ve turned your business into a selling machine. Even better, you crank out new products at will. There’s just one problem, you’re moving too fast for your own good.

Your business has now grown to hundreds of employees and severely lacks any overall organization. And your customers are starting to notice. Not everything is as polished as it used to be, many details start slipping through the cracks. You’ll need to build the processes and procedures that will take you to the next level.

This is the realm of the MBA. You’ll be making your business more corporate.

The real trick here is balancing the assets you’ve already built (product development, marketing, and sales) with organizational processes. You definitely need more structure to support the size of your business but you don’t want to bury your growth teams with a mountain of paperwork or bureaucracy. You’ll have to keep a vigilant watch during this stage to strike a good balance between growth and structure.

Stage Four: Adulthood ($50 million in revenue and beyond)

You’re no longer a small business and you might actually get featured in Forbes or Fortune. You figured out how to sell beautifully, how to develop an endless stream of products, and to build enough structure to support your growth without crushing it.

This is the stage many entrepreneurs dream of but very few ever get the chance to experience.

It’s also the fun part with plenty of options. you can:

Sell to a larger company
Go for the IPO
Only work on the components of the business that you’re super passionate about
Assume the role of an advisor or consultant to the company
Continue to build the guiding vision of your business

Basically, you get to do whatever you want. You’ve built a business that operates and grows on it’s own. And now, your role will be closer to an investor than the CEO.

Are these hard numbers? Don’t some companies reach Stage 2 before they hit $1 million in annual revenue?

Absolutely. These numbers are very general benchmarks. If you have a super small niche market, you may hit Stage 2 at $100,000 in revenue. Other businesses may achieve several million in annual revenue before they hit that first ceiling. It completely depends on the size of your market.

Instead of focusing on revenue (which are super rough estimates of what you’ll actually face), figure out what stage you’re in by analyzing the skills and problems of your business. Have you become a sales superstar? If not, you’re in Stage 1. Do you know sales better than anyone in your industry but your growth has still stalled? You’re probably in Stage 2 so make new products. Then when you start to struggle to keep up with everything, build the structure to support Stage 3. You’ll be in Stage 4 when you’ve removed yourself from the process completely.

I highly recommend Ready, Fire, Aim, you can pick it up at Amazon.com here.

Why Your Idea is Worthless

February 28, 2012 By Lars Lofgren 2 Comments

Many new entrepreneurs (and plenty of battle-hardened ones) believe that all they need is one brilliant idea. If they come up with the idea for the next Google, Facebook, or Apple, they’ll have it made and be on easy street.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Why? Your ideas are worthless. So are mine. In fact, every idea is worthless.

That’s right, the valuation of your idea comes out to be a whopping $0. Nothing, nada, zilch.

So if the value from a business doesn’t come from the idea, where does it come from? Execution.

Derek Sivers has an excellent way to think about the true worth of your idea (you can check out his original blog post on the topic here). Basically, ideas have no value in and of themselves. Instead, ideas are a multiplier. The better the idea, the higher the multiple. If you want to figure out how much your business is worth, multiply the quality of your idea with the value of your execution.

A good idea (multiple of 10) combined with the value of good execution ($100,000) will give you a business in the $1,000,000 range.

Here’s Sivers’ breakdown:

Awful Idea = -1
Weak Idea = 1
So-so Idea = 5
Good Idea = 10
Great Idea = 15
Brilliant Idea = 20

No Execution = $1
Weak Execution = $1000
So-so Execution = $10,000
Good Execution = $100,000
Great Execution = $1,000,000
Brilliant Execution = $10,000,000

Obviously, these numbers are not empirically based at all. And remember that we always overestimate the quality of our ideas. Brilliant ideas only come around a couple times during a decade.

Did Feacebook, Apple, Google, and Microsoft all start with brilliant ideas? Absolutely. But the reason they’re all billion dollar companies today is because of the brilliant execution.

This applies to all ideas, large and small. Everything from an idea for an industry shattering business to an idea for a better email subject line. Obviously, as your ideas get smaller, they also get easier to execute. But they still depend on execution.

What does this mean for you?

The next time you come up with a great (or brilliant) idea, you’ve only just started. Now you need to build it, test it, and grow it. For big ideas, this takes years of effort.

Honesty time: your idea probably isn’t as good as you think it is (this applies to all of us). Just because you think it’s a great idea doesn’t mean the market place will. This is why the value is in the execution and not the idea. So test your idea, validate it, then try to build it into your ultimate vision.

The better you get at executing, the faster you’ll be able to test and grow ideas. From there, it’s only a matter of time until you do come across that great idea that truly makes an impact.

Some people have a wealth of ideas but can never seem to follow through. If this describes you and you’re committed to getting to the next level, you either need to get better at execution of find someone who is. Either way, the key to success is combining your ideas with great execution.

What about patents and licensing fees?

If you know what you’re doing, you could register a bunch of patents on your ideas and then license them out to companies. Once you’ve secured the deal, you’ll collect royalty checks for as long as your idea is still useful or legally required.

But here’s the thing: not only do you need to secure the patent, then you need to actually sell it to somebody. In other words, this business model still depends on execution. You’ll still need to take the quality of your idea and multiply by the value of that execution.

If you have a great idea and combine with a great patent attorney and salesmanship, you’ll be making a lot of money from your ideas. But the value with be coming from the execution of this strategy, not the actual ideas.

Bottom Line: A brilliant idea only becomes a “billion dollar idea” when combined with brilliant execution. Also, the idea is the easy part. Most people get hung up on the execution.