TheBusinessCommandos.com

The enemy of the entrepreneur is clutter, we are all bombarded by marketing material everyday, don’t quote me on it, but I believe the number is around 4,000 messages per day we’re exposed to.

Attention is what everyone is fighting for today. Your job as an entrepreneur is to attract the Attention of your market place to Stop them in their tracks and take notice of what you have to offer.

Some of the basics includes your USP, what makes you unique in your market and with your marketing pieces your Attention grabbing headline. Depending how far you want to go and how bold you want to be, you could pull stand out stunts like the great Richard Branson, they certainly get everyone’s attention.

Maybe you have some stand out achievements to display or you’ve partnered with celebrities that your market place respect or speaking from the platform is a great media for gaining the attention of your audience.

Crazy guarantees, stand out track records and even authoring your own book are all effective attention grabbers.

Attention is the new currency, in Japan they have vending machines where you can get free drinks or snacks just for watching some advertisements. So the advertisers are paying for your attention

A good strategy in direct mail is to use Lumpy Mail to get your prospects attention, which is covered in detail in my ATTENTION Marketing Program, which will be released for the first time very soon, so stay tuned.

Don’t fall for the plain vanilla, ‘me-too’ strategy, focus on what you can do to stand out and own the Attention of your audience.

Yours in success,

Aaron Parsons

www.TheBusinessCommandos.com

www.BusinessGrowthGuru.com

Just wanted to share some nuggets with you about headline creation and I know we touched on this briefly in an earlier post however, I’m still seeing 95% of people not getting the importance of investing the time to create an appealing headline that gets ATTENTION out there in a cluttered market place.

I’ve already explained how important your headline is, the most important element of any advertisement and your headline will determine 80% of your response/success with your marketing.

Because lets face it, if your headline doesn’t stop the reader in their tracks and grab their ATTENTION, then the rest of the advertisement is a waste of time because there aren’t going to read it!

When creating a headline for your ad, it is a good idea to write as many as 20-30 and then choose the best one.

If you’re not sure where to start, just check out some of the magazine ads, some of your junk mail you receive or search the internet for some inspiration. A great strategy that I normally only share with my inner circle members is to have a look on Amazon.com and check out the best selling books relating to your topic, they’re likely to have some very effective headlines or they wouldn’t be best sellers… right?

One to remember when writing a book, the headline sells the book!

Another great resource to help you with creating effective headlines and advertisements is John Caples book - ‘Tested Advertising Methods’. If you don’t own a copy of that I highly recommend you grab yourself one ASAP and devour it.

You may also find some inspiration from the Free members section of my membership site - www.BusinessGrowthGuru.com If you haven’t visited yet, you may want to take a look and take advantage of the Free resources you get just for visiting the Free members section.

I love to hear your comments, what you’re finding most useful and what you’d like to hear more about. Please post your comments below.

Yours in success,

Aaron Parsons.

If we chose not to follow a proven system we are taking the long road, which is like Columbus journeying out to find new undiscovered land. Back then men were guided by impulses, gut instincts, visions and changing breezes. They seldom arrived at their port and when they did it was often by accident after a long roundabout course.

Every early seaman mapped his own separate course. There were no maps to guide them, no buoy showing a reef and no lighthouse showing a harbour. The shipwrecks were not recorded so many ventures came to grief on the same rocks as previous ones before them.

Fortunately business today does not have to be like that. There is assistance available to ensure you don’t fly blind like the early sailors and avoid coming to grief through not having your journey mapped out clearly in advance.

Rather than traveling like the early sailors, hit and miss without a clear plan, it makes good business sense to have a solid strategy mapped out to avoid becoming a shipwreck.

Mapping your journey at the beginning is the first step for success in business, as a successful business starts before there even is a business!

Read more at www.BusinessGrowthGuru.com when you enter the free members area.

1. Big Promise Headline

The headline of your sales copy is the most important part because if you don’t catch the prospects attention with your headline they will not read any further. So first you must craft a compelling headline that grabs people’s attention. Ideally your headline may be a benefit filled headline that spells out specifically why people want to read this now. Put the necessary time in to create a strong headline as it is considered that 80% of the power of your sales copy comes from the headline.

2. Paint the Positive Picture

Spell out to the reader how much better their life will be when they invest in your product. This is your chance to enter the conversation they are already having with themselves by talking about how things are usually done by the majority of people who continue to struggle and present your product as what the future can be like when they own your product that will give them more money, more time with family, less stress, bragging rights or whatever it is that your product can do and what your market actually want. Talk in their terms using the word you throughout your copy and filling it with benefits for the reader. It’s all about getting them to imagine how good things will be when they own your product.

3. Uniqueness

This is where you explain how your product is unique and different. People love rarity so you need to point out to them how unique your product is compared to what else is available in the marketplace. If your product isn’t unique at the moment, then you need to get creative and make it unique so it can’t be compared to competitors. This is where your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) comes into play, which highlights why people should do business with you as opposed to your competitors.

4. Benefit Filled Bullet Points

You need to include an extensive list of bullet points that highlight the benefits for the prospect in investing in your product. When you have a long list of bullets it’s best to bold every second bullet point to make it easier on the eye to read and generally try to break the bullet points up into groups of 7 rather than a very long list. The easier you can make the copy on the eye to read and flow the more likely you will get the person to read the complete sales letter or advertisement.

Put yourself in the prospects shoes to think about what they really want. For example people who are buying a drill, don’t really want a drill they want a hole.

The other important point to note here with regard to bullets is one of the main reasons you want to have an extensive list of bullets is that different benefits will appeal to different people and the more benefits you have listed the more likely you are to hit a hot button with more people, which broadens your market and increases your chances of getting the sale.

5. Outrageous Offer

From the outset I stated the most important part of sales copy is the headline, well not far behind the headline is the offer. The offer is absolutely crucial. You must have an irresistible offer for people to buy NOW! The offer needs to be a ‘no-brainer’ to make your prospects want to pull their wallet out on the spot and buy now. You may offer a free 30 minute consult valued at $297 when people invest in your offering now or they may receive some killer bonuses valued at $797 or whatever you decide. Just ensure it is so irresistible that they must have your product right now. Our online coaching membership site www.BusinessGrowthGuru.com is a good example as business owners and entrepreneurs can own a membership for less than the cost of a cup of coffee per day, plus they receive thousands of dollars worth of killer bonuses and they’re protected by a 12 month Double Money Back Guarantee, that states if they haven’t made at least 10 times their investment from applying the Business Growth Guru strategies, I will personally cut them a cheque for double their money back for wasting their time.

Be bold when you’re creating your irresistible offer, if you’re offering a boring me too type of offer that everyone advertises, you will get the same dismal results. So invest your time and money if need be to get some assistance and develop an outrageous offer people can’t refuse.

6. Proof

So now you’ve made all of these promises and explained how good your product is and what it can do for the prospect, well now it’s time to prove it! You need to present the reader with evidence that you’re a credible person to deliver on what you’ve promised with your bio revealing your background, past success and why they should listen to you. Include a long list of testimonials from past satisfied clients that have achieved great results with your product and case studies work well also of past successes. Just remember the market place is already saturated with marketing materials so you need to prove that you are the real deal. You will want to include at least one or more bullet proof guarantees to remove the risk for people in doing business with you. If you aren’t confident to guarantee what you’re doing, maybe you should be doing something else. At a minimum you should have a 100% guarantee for a set period of time spelling out to your clients that they can essentially try your product risk free and if it doesn’t do exactly what you said it would do for them you will give them their money back.

7. Call-To-Action…

Last but definitely not least is your call to action. You need to finish your copy off strongly, spelling out exactly what the reader must do next to take advantage of this amazing offer. You may finish with something like; to take advantage of this limited time life changing offer that will eliminate your money problems forever then click here right now. Do it right now because if you’re one of the first 27 people you will also receive the killer bonus package valued at $497. When they’re gone, they’re gone. Do it now and get Instant access before you let another life changing opportunity pass you by.

Just remember that you’ve put a lot of hard work into your sales copy and you need to finish off strongly to get the sale.

Systems are the key to making your business work without you and more importantly systems ensure that the business does not rely on any one individual, which significantly enhances the businesses value and is a great form of insurance.

Imagine a business where one employee or maybe even the owner is the only person in the business who knows how to perform a key task. What happens if that key person whom the whole business relies upon has an accident and is laid up in hospital for six months, the business could potentially go broke, resulting in everyone loosing including staff, the owner, suppliers, customers, etc.

This scenario can be avoided through implementing solid systems throughout your business. The other major benefit systems have for business owners is that it opens up the market place when it is time to sell.

In most cases the business may be limited to people who understand that particular industry, where as if the business is fully systemized it allows anyone with the funds or the channels to get the funds to invest, providing a much larger market and more options for the business owner when they want to cash out.

As Michael Gerber said in his awesome book, “The E-Myth Revisited”…

Systems run the business and people run the systems!

For those who haven’t yet read The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, I would highly recommended you do, it would be one of the most important books for anyone in business to read!

Systems allow the business to deliver consistent results to clients, which is of utmost importance as you know yourself that the fastest way to disappoint a client is to deliver good service one time then poor the next.

McDonalds are the best example of the power and value of systems in a business as with McDonalds we have one of the best businesses in the World operated by sixteen year old kids. Good systems allow you to leverage someone of an average skill level into a competent manager as with the McDonalds example.

This is a key for business today as it is hard to find highly skilled staff, so you need to develop solid systems throughout the business that can be operated by people with the lowest level of skill.

I personally remember operating three of my parent’s business units when I was only 12 years old on some weekends. This was all capable due to the systems my parents had in place of course. The businesses were 24 hour heavy rigid towing, tilt tray towing and roadside vehicle breakdown services. The system used in this instance was simply a script stating the key information I needed to gather from customers when they phoned in and the next steps from that, which was to either call or radio the mechanic or tow truck operator and pass on the details for the job. This was in the days of no mobile phones I might add. Our communication whilst the operators were out on the road was through two-way radios.

Systems is where we really start focusing on the high value tasks within the business rather than the low value tasks, there is no use in you doing a $5 an hour task when you can be working on a $100 or even a $1000 an hour task for the business.

Systemizing a business really just comes down to looking at every task performed within the business from the initial enquiry right through to the end process of banking the cheque and breaking each step down into small bite size pieces, allowing you to implement a system so anyone could do the job after some short training.

So if your business is not fully systemized get to it and release those shackles, because if you don’t have solid systems in place you are effectively hand cuffing yourself and making yourself a slave to your business, which seems to be the case I see with most business owners over and over and over again.

There’s some great information covered on systems inside www.BusinessGrowthGuru.com