Book review: Does Your Marketing Sell? The Secret of Effective Marketing Communications by Ian Moore
Does your marketing sell? by Ian Moore
Introduction
This book is essential reading for anyone who works in the marketing industry or anyone in business who wishes to maximise their company’s marketing efforts. This book is also recommend for any entrepreneur who doesn’t have a marketing background and is looking to work with a marketing or advertising agency for the first time.
This book provides a good grounding in what to be aware of in creating effective marketing materials. Whether it’s a brochure, leaflet, mailer, website or Yellow Pages advert. Even if you are not actually producing the materials yourself, it will give guidance to ensure that you don’t buy poorly conceived materials from a so called ‘expert’.
Extracts of this book are available on Google Books, so there is no excuse for not reading at least some of it to see if you like it. The author Ian Moore is a excellent authority of the subject of marketing. Having originally started as salesman in seventies, then working as copywriter for top London marketing agencies, then starting his own successful agency Blue-Chip Marketing in the nineties. Over the decades Mr Moore has worked for household names such as: Kimberly-Clark, Cadbury, Lloyds TSB, Reebok, Scottish and Newcastle, Walkers Crisps and Warburtons.
The author has a strong affinity with advertising legend David Ogilvy (who also worked as a salesman before entering the advertising industry). Both men are copywriters and believe in benefit driven headlines and copy. Ultimately, they believe that salesmanship will create a higher response and sales compared to marketing that is simply showmanship, or showing off.
The book is structured around Mr Moore’s personal take on the famous selling technique AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). This has been developed from his decades of experience. NEWAIDA is Mr Moore’s trademark for courses and workshops that takes the AIDA concept a stage further and more relevant for business today.
While it would be unfair and unethical of me to simply reveal all the concepts in the book on this blog, I will give an overview to whet you appetite. Let’s start with what this book can help you achieve (taken from the back cover).
Get four times as many customers to ready your adverts
Double the response rates to your mailers
Triple the uptake of your promotional offers
Employ the seven most powerful ways to gain attention
Write with the 100 most persuasive selling words
The missing ingredient
So why does one piece of marketing succeed where another fails? What is it that causes almost 20 times as many people to respond to one message than to another? Just how do you make your marketing sell?
It seems there’s a paradox. What well-intentioned marketers think they should do to make their marketing sell often doesn’t work. And that’s because they get salesmanship confused with showmanship.
Salesmanship is the missing ingredient in making your marketing sell. Salesmanship is the quiet skills of empathy and perception. These skills are often abandoned in modern marketing communications.
Very often advertising for big brands is arty or creative and doesn’t engage the majority of the audience. You might find an TV advert funny, but won’t remember the product. Very often the reader will be confused by the advert and not bother to read it, or solve the ‘riddle’. Adverts that capture the readers attention and appeal to them on the desired level, will resonate and be more successful.
I’ve always made it a golden rule never to propose anything – ranging from a rough idea for single advert to a complex multifaceted campaign – unless we could justify why we believed it would sell. If we couldn’t explain how it would engage the customer to achieve the desired outcome, it didn’t get presented. When you apply this discipline to your proposals, you find – magically – that the words of explanation come out in the simple language of salesmanship.
Navigation
Navigation is the first step in NEWAIDA. This chapter sets out principles in helping your customer to know what to think about and to create the desired reaction. If a customer doesn’t know what to do or think about within a few seconds they won’t engage with the marketing material and won’t go any further.
Ease
If the customer perceives your marketing to have too many hurdles they will fail to respond. This is very relevant where success of the campaign is dependant on the number of responses received. Making your marketing easy to use and engage will increase the number of responses. Supermarkets are filled with promotions, discount vouchers or competitions. Their success will depend on how easy it is for the customer to firstly participate, and secondly, if they perceive it as a good deal. If the promotion fails to do this, the response will be poor.
Wording
Since Mr Moore is a copywriter, it’s understandable why he has added this third topic to the AIDA concept. This is perhaps the most important subject of all. The key thing here is to write in your customer’s language.
Good salespeople are taught to speak the language of their customers. This is known as matching is used to build pace and rapport, by mirroring and complementing aspects of the other person. When you match, you show that you are willing to enter the other person’s model of the world – intuitively, they feel more at easy with you.
Seven deadly sins of marketing communications:
1. Hyperbole (exaggerated and bold claims that over promise and usually under deliver).
2. Cliches (example “The sky’s the limit!” any business can make these claims and they are usually meaningless).
3. Platitudes (meaningless headlines posing a something significant. Also, a competitor could also claim eg, ‘We’re the fastest)
4. Word play
5. Riddles
6. Writer’s fog (a formula to ensure the copy is not too dense with jargon, impersonal and verbose).
7. Designeritis (the design of the marketing taking priority of message and content. Gratuitous use of graphics).
Trade press advertising is viewed as rather unglamorous, and I assume that it was assigned to the agency’s most junior and inexperienced copywriters. Maybe these guys had never done a sales call in a corner shop, or been to a presentation at the likes of Asda head office. Whatever their excuse, it showed in their soapbox style presumptuously aimed at some great unseen yet miraculously enthralled crowd.
More practical copywriting advice
Write to a person and not to a crowd. Try to find the right tone. Make it businesslike yet friendly in tone. Keep it to the point. Make it fit consumption at any level, managing director to office junior.
When writing copy use two ‘you’s for every ‘we’
The reading age of the average supermarket shopper is 11.
Use the language of the people, avoid words with Latin or Old French origins. Avoid jargon also.
The brain is designed to hear language. We train our brains to convert it back into sounds when we read. Writing should be treated not as the written word, but as the spoken word. And surely this means a simple, conversational style.
Don’t use full points on headlines, magazines and newspapers don’t.
Imagery
The author does offer some advice on any images used in marketing by explaining that the visuals should do something useful: to enhance and dramatize recognition for your customer – of their need, or the category, or your product. Use it to dramatize the proposition.
Avoid what the author calls the ‘irrelevant simile’ – they prove nothing. For example, a blue-chip company wants to communicate ‘flexibility’ and uses an image a gymnast. Avoid this, people think it’s the analogous item that is being advertised.
From here on in the author gives insights and advice on approaching the classic AIDA selling concept. Below I have quoted key points from these chapters.
Attention
Adverts with benefits in their headlines are read by four times as many people as ads with no benefits in their headlines. For profitable attention, you need a benefit.
Make your advert newsworthy eg. ‘new improved’, ‘new advanced formula’. Use sensory language to engage the mind, such as the ‘The Inch War’ for Ryvita.
Interest
Key tips:
1. Write for the interested customer.
2. Seek out first-time buyers.
3. Key question: “Am I treating my customer as if they’re already interested?”
Content always beats form. A company newsletter can sometimes appear boastful and selfish. An internal staff one packed with stories and pics about them will be a success – because it’s about its customers (the staff).
Desire
You can’t make your customers need your product, but you find out whether they want it. The communication task, then, is to help them realize that they do.
Use layered delivery. In sales letter you should be able to just read the sub heads to understand the content of the letter.
There’s no such thing as long or short copy only enough copy. Give the customer a stream of relevant, interesting facts and benefits and they’ll stay with you.
The book ‘Positioning’ by Ries and Trout supports the theory that if you can’t get into your customer’s mind first, your best bet is to do it by reference to something they already understand and believe.
Action
1. Help your customer to say ‘yes’
2. Offer ‘carrots’ and incentives to encourage customers to respond to your marketing
3. Set a two dates for an offer deadline, date one big prize, date two smaller prize
4. Use the ‘mop-up’ technique to prompt lasped subscribers or customers who have failed to respond
Finally
I should add that this book is a pleasure to read, as it’s well-written and packed with real life examples and anecdotes to back up the author’s points. The review above is just some of the highlights, there is obviously more content in the book. I would recommend reading it once through, then dipping into chapters every now an then to refresh your memory and inspire you to create or ‘buy’ more effective marketing materials for your company. Read reviews on Amazon.
Book review: Think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill
Background to Think and grow rich
Think and Grow Rich is based on Napoleon Hill’s earlier work The Law of Success, the result of more than twenty years of research based on Hill’s close association of more than 500 men of great wealth during their lifetimes. This book was endorsed by many leading businessmen of the era and became a best seller.
“By applying many of the 17 fundamentals of the Law of Success philosophy we have built a great chain of successful stores. I presume it would be no exaggeration of fact if I said that the Woolworth Building might properly be called a monument to the soundness of these principles.” FW Woolworth
Andrew Carnegie believed that becoming successful in business was a skill that could be learned by anyone who applied the principles of success correctly. Hill was summoned to study these great achievers and developed 17 “laws” of success. Think and Grow Rich condenses these laws further and provides the reader with 13 principles in the form of a philosophy of personal achievement.
Here’s a summary of the 13 principles
1. Desire – The first step towards riches
2. Faith – Visualisation and belief in attainment of desire
3. Auto-suggestion – the medium for influencing the subconscious mind
4. Specialised knowledge – personal experiences or observations
5. Imagination – The workshop of the mind
6. Organised planning – The crystallisation of desire into action
7. Decision – The seventh step toward riches
8. Persistence – The sustained effort necessary to induce faith
9. The power of the master mind – The driving force
10. The mystery of sex transmutation
11. The subconscious mind – The connecting link
12. The brain – a broadcast and receiving station for thought
13. The sixth sense – the door to the temple of wisdom
The book has lots of stories about individuals who refused to compromise with life by accepting and keeping a job they did not want. Instead, they looked for opportunities to climb the ladder and did not allow temporary defeats to stop them in their ultimate goal. Henry Ford and Thomas A Edison are frequently used in examples by the author as both men had to over come insurmountable odds and set backs before achieving success.
Is this book useful and relevant today?
As Hill points out this book is not for reading once, but must be digested several times and reflected upon. Senior figures in business believed it should be adopted by all high schools and no boy or girl should be permitted to graduate without having satisfactorily passed an examination on it.
The word ‘think’ in the book’s title is key here as one of the most important principles in the book is the notion of directing your mind to whatever end you may choose. As Hill points out: “thoughts are things, and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and burning desire for their translation into riches, or other material objects.”
As an example, he tells the story of Edwin C Barnes who ‘thought’ his way into partnership with Thomas A Edison. One day Mr Barnes decided he wanted to become a business associate of Mr Edison. Without knowing Mr Edison or anyone connected to the inventor, he travelled by freight train to seek employment at Edison’s offices. After working in Edison’s office in low paid job for several months, Barnes patiently waited for an opportunity to advance his prospects of becoming a business partner with Edison.
When the opportunity arrived, it came disguised as misfortune or temporary defeat. Misfortune is one of the reasons why many give up at this point, as they fail to recognise an opportunity within it.
Mr Edison had just perfected the Ediphone (dictating machine). His salesmen were not convinced it would sell. Barnes saw this as an opportunity and demanded that he get the chance to sell it. This alliance proved so successful that, Edison gave him a contract to distribute and market it all over the nation, giving birth to the slogan, ‘Made by Edison and installed by Barnes.’ Needless to say this partnership made Barnes very rich.
The book is filled with similar stories to illustrate the application of the 13 principles. Some readers might find it hard to believe that ‘broadcasting’ one’s thoughts and desires (principle 12) to create conditions and opportunities for success would work for them. Furthermore, the notion of diverting one’s sexual energy (chapter 10) into their business ambitions too much to ask. Nonetheless, there is plenty evidence in the book to suggest these principles do work. The author also believes that most men reach the height of their intellectual and business powers between the ages of 40 and 60.
On a more pragmatic level, the author explains how successful men leave other skill sets and knowledge bases to others. For example, Andrew Carnegie knew little about the technical side to steel, instead he surrounded himself with a Master Mind group of fifty men who were experts in the manufacture and marketing of steel. Henry Ford had a similar Master Mind group to assist him with the specialised knowledge needed to pioneer in the motor industry. It is by organising and directing specialised knowledge through a plan of action that success can be achieved. Knowledge alone is not enough, it’s how you organise and apply it that counts.
This does not mean that one should become lazy and stop learning as Hill points out: “The person who stops studying because he has finished school is forever hopelessly doomed to mediocrity, no matter what may his calling. The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.” While personal development is noble it can only take you so far and there is no substitute for the wise counsel of associates – very few make it on their own.
Overall book is a worthwhile read, although Hill is sometimes guilty of making ridiculous statements, such as: “Bald-headed men are bald for no other reason than their fear of criticism”. Nonetheless, there are some valuable information and insights conveyed and the stories used to back up key points are interesting and inspiring, especially since many are accounts of men and women becoming successful after losing everything in The Great Depression or adverse circumstances.
In the present day motivational speakers like Douglas Vermeeren have continued Hill’s research and have expanded upon his efforts by including professions and circumstances that were not available in Hill’s day. For example, Vermeeren’s research includes celebrities, athletes, internet entrepreneurs and network marketing giants for example. The Napoleon Hill Foundation continues to promote Hill’s work and other motivational tools.
If you plan to read this book I would suggest you read the definitive version published by Ross Cornwell in 2004: Think and Grow Rich! The Original Version, Restored and Revised (ISBN 1-59330-200-2), which restored the book to its original content, with slight revisions, and added the first comprehensive endnotes, index, and appendix the book has ever contained. This version went into a third printing in 2008.
Below is short clip of Napoleon Hill taking about the book in his later years.
Book review: The E-myth Revisited
The E-myth Revisited by Michael Geber
Why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it. By Michael E Geber
Many people become self-employed for a variety of reasons or circumstances. However, if you focus on the wrong things in the business, it will eventually end in disaster. It might take five or ten years for this to happen but the day will come.
In becoming a one-man business they haven’t really created a business, they have merely created a job. The E-Myth means the entrepreneurial myth. The myth being that most people who start small businesses are entrepreneurs. The fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that technical work.
The problem with many small business owners is that they end up doing the wrong kind of work. As a result, most of their businesses end up in chaos – unmanageable, unpredictable and unrewarding.
This book helps the self-employed or small businesses with how to plan and build a better business. A business that earns more money, and more importantly, a business that does not need the owner to be there all the time. Anyone would agree that your business should be just a part of your life and not consume all of it. Although, it is very easy for it to become the latter. This book shows how to avoid the pitfalls and what to focus on.
The author uses the dramatic device of using an interview with Sarah who is struggling to run her business, All about pies. Sarah has taken on all of the responsibilities in the business including the technical work – making the pies. Sarah soon realises from talking to the author that she must look at her business differently in order for her to achieve everything we wants for the business and her life. Once the author has explained that she must focus on systems and the components of the business rather than the technical work of the service. Sarah therefore, must stop making the pies and hire someone to bake them to her exact specifications, freeing her to manage the business.
However, it is not as simple as that. Sarah needs to make sure everything about the business works well and meets the customers’ expectations time after time. She needs to introduce a culture and systems that keep her staff motivated and all the components of the business working together for a common goal. She needs to plan for growth and manage any expansion effectively. The E-Myth gives an insight in what Sarah must consider if she wishes to do all this, and there is plenty to think about. It is an on going process that requires a lot of innovation and trial and error.
A business must start somewhere and in order to get established the owner will probably work long hours doing everything to get the business off the ground. However, you can’t live like that forever. This book provides advice and insights into how to leverage that kind of fledgling business into a mature one.
The thing is, managing a growing business is not easy and can be traumatic. This is because the owner is often not equipped with the knowledge on how to manage their business through the various challenges. Fear, ignorance and a lack of certain skills can stop the owner from talking the business to next level.
A growing business will usually take the owner out their comfort zone, and if they don’t like this, they will simply revert back to the stage in business they felt more comfortable. For example, downsize from 20 to 5 staff, or a size where the owner feels they have control over everything.
If really want to expand a business you need take on an entrepreneurial perspective and focus on the right areas. This book points out the subjects to address with a significant portion of the book devoted to franchising and creating a turn-key operation.
A turn-key operation is a business where anyone with the right training can take the keys to a business and run it successfully from day one. Operations like this have training manuals that have considered every detail of the business and perfected systems in place. These are then shared with a buyer or franchisee.
The favourite case study of business books, McDonalds, is used to demonstrate how to create a successful turn-key operation. While you may not respect the food they serve, you should respect it as a business, as everything is done to exacting standards and repeated the world over in 30,000 restaurants.
Even if you don’t wish to franchise your business you should manage and structure it as though it were the prototype for 5,000 more like it and make it a business that someone might want to buy. To achieve this the owner must introduce a interdependent program which consists of:
- Your Primary Aim (overall life goals – what do you want out of life)
- You Strategic Objective (define the goals for the business)
- Your Organisational Strategy (create an organisational chart and define the roles for each person in the business, even if its just a few people)
- Your Management Strategy (manage your business to achieve the best experience for your customers)
- Your People Strategy (create the right culture for your staff)
- Your Marketing Strategy (delivering a promise your customer wants to hear and doing it better than your competitors)
- Your Systems Strategy (how to integrate the things, actions, ideas and information to produce a desirable result).
Many of the systems and ideas that you need to introduce into your business needn’t cost a fortune.
You can introduce staff handbooks to explain exactly how their jobs should be carried out and offer incentive schemes to motivate your employees. McDonalds for example, cook all their products to the exact same standards in all it restaurants to ensure the customer’s experience is always the same.
If you own a shop you could change how your staff greet your customers. For example we all usually hear “Good morning sir/madam, how can I help you?” The reply will often be, “I am just looking thanks!” Alternatively, the assistant could ask if they have ever shopped at the store before. If the customer says “yes” the assistant could reply, “May I show you this weeks special offers?” or if the customer says “no” a response could be, “May I show you around our store and help you find what you are looking for?” This approach would create more interaction between the customer and the business and consequently opportunities for sales.
Details like this, no matter how small can make a big difference in a business, and these are the responsibility of the owner. In the early days of McDonalds Ray Kroc would fuss over how long the fries stayed in the fryer, or how the pickles were placed on the burger – McDonalds still do this and nothing is left to chance. Everything is tried and test before becoming the standard at every restaurant on the planet.
How customers feel about your business is also crucial. Sometimes the experience of buying the product is more important than the product or service itself. We all know that the experience of staying in modest B&B is vastly different from a 5 star hotel – both are just beds for the night. Nonetheless, many people prefer the 5 start treatment because they want the experience. Again, the experience of the business is the responsibility of the owner and he or she will need to spend a lot time perfecting their customers’ experience.
I would recommend that novice business owners read this book. We I first read it, especially chapters such as ‘The Technician’s Phase’ it related exactly to my experience of being self-employed. On reading the book several times it has given me the basic tools for taking my business to the next level. I owe debt of gratitude to the business coach for recommending I read this book in the first place.
Book review: How to get rich by Felix Dennis
'How to get rich' by Felix Dennis
Many business books are written ultimately to earn additional income for the author. Not so Felix Dennis, he one of the richest men in the UK and his motivation for writing this book is simply to help those who wish to undertake the massive task in becoming rich. He is very qualified to do so, as his life is a real rags to riches story – he nearly lost it all too.
For those that don’t know, Felix Dennis is Chairman of Dennis Publishing. Titles include The Week, Auto Express, Computer Shopper, Blender, Mac User and Evo. Dennis Publishing is also the owner of Maxim, the world’s biggest selling men’s lifestyle magazine. The 2008 Sunday Times Rich List estimates that Felix Dennis is worth £750 million. He is also a best selling poet, and poetry is his favourite past time.
Dennis uses his poems and passages from those he admires to illustrate key points and chapters in the book. He is not being indulgent either, they do convey the sentiment very well and some are quite pogniant.
The book is essentially an autobiography about Dennis’s business career. Starting out in the late sixties with the controversial OZ magazine, then a well timed Bruce Lee biography in 1973, followed by Kung-Fu magazines then pioneering personal computer titles in the eighties. From here Dennis Publishing introduced other titles with varying degrees of success. The Bruce Lee book was his first major financial success and the circumstances around it are bizarre. Dennis has no interest in Kung-Fu for a start.
Dennis likes to explain his errors and failures more than his success, in the hope that the reader will take heed and avoid similar pitfalls in their journey, even if it’s on a smaller scale. He has come close to losing everything by succumbing to drink, drugs and other vices. Luckily he pulled himself out of the quagmire. Although he regrets the consequences to his health and the time he lost. He wishes he used the time to practice poetry instead.
Dennis’s business principles are usually backed up with a story from his past, which are always interesting and sometimes surprising. For example, few would know that Dennis and Pet Shop Boy’s singer Neil Tennant worked together on the launch of magazine Star Hits in the USA. Tennant left at the height of the magazine’s success to pursue the Pet Shop Boys. His parting shot to Dennis was that his band would be on the cover of the Star Hits within a year – they did it too. Tennant’s departure from the successful US magazine, demonstrated Dennis’s credo of never procrastinating on your ambitions or passing on better opportunities.
Overall the book is difficult to put down and deserves several readings. I like to re-visit chapters every now and then. While one may think being rich is the only way to be, there are many downsides as Dennis explains. While he owns many homes and collects art, the author values time as it’s greatest advantage, as it gives him freedom to do as he pleases – like writing poetry everyday and worthwhile books like this one.
Read more reviews on Amazon.
Book review: Rich dad, poor dad
by Robert T Kiyosaki
Most people in business or interested in becoming more wealthy, will have read the book, or at least be aware of it. The author, Robert T Kiyosaki, describes his childhood lessons and advice he received from his best friend’s dad to illustrate the principles and techniques in generating a significant passive income.
The ‘rich dad’ advice goes against the conventional approach of working for money in a job (‘just over broke’) which his natural ‘poor dad’ did. Although his natural father was middle class rather than poor and had a comfortable life, his son deems him poor because he worked for money all his working life. His dad was smart and educated but he didn’t use his income to work for him and go on to become independently wealthy before retirement. The author achieved this by his late forties, because he learned how to manage his money and time more effectively. Although, he was an employee with various firms until he was secure enough to concentrate full-time on his investing, books, courses, etc.
The book doesn’t explain exactly how to amass great wealth, but provides plenty food for thought and steps you can take go get yourself in the right direction. His two main vehicles for wealth creation are property and the stock market. As the author explains, it takes a lot of time and effort to learn how to be successful in those areas and you must start small on only spend money you can afford to lose.
He also stresses that you start this as a hobby and attend as many classes and seminars in your spare time. As Robert points out, we all have two main choices in life: how we spend our time (spare) and disposable income. Time is the key thing here, as learning through books, internet, networking, courses, etc doesn’t cost that much – it only takes time and commitment.
Using expertise in law, property and investing (learned in his spare time in the seventies and eighties) he was able to buy properties at foreclosure and auctions. He also eventually became a ‘sophisticated’ investor and was privy to legal insider trading.
He was fortunate to buy property when the market was depressed in the early to mid nineties and sell them on later in the decade for a massive profit. Using that income to grow his portfolio even more. However, he doesn’t go into much detail about the property or investment deals that failed, but as he explains, he always speculates with cash he can afford to lose.
Kiyosaki gives a numerous examples of how he helped friends with modest means buy second homes as investments without big mortgages. Using Kiyosaki’s expertise and advice they bought modest homes through banks and auctions with small deposits and the US equivalent of self-certification mortgages. The properties eventually increased in value, allowing the owners to buy another bigger property and do the same again. In one instance, a $7,000 deposit on a house generated a pot of $400,000 over period of about 15 years.
So rather than watch TV, I for one am going to learn more about accounting and investing as these are subjects I don’t know that much about. Overall the book is very easy to read, not at all technical, and the ideas, deals, principles described are very inspiring. I wish I had read it earlier in life!