Posts tagged as:

marketing

How To Automatically Increase Your Closing Rate

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:36 — 4.7MB) | Embed

In this video:

00:24 — Talking with a chiropractor about his marketing
00:33 — What’s been working for him
00:48 — What hasn’t been working so well
01:27 — The big question…
01:36 — The “7 Touches” Rule
02:37 — How we improve our closing rate
02:58 — What we send to patients
05:09 — What you need to do now

Hey, folks! Philipp Lomboy here with Automated Marketing Strategies and I wanted to share with you a conversation I had last night.

Now, if I hadn’t mentioned to you before, I am the Director of Implementation for one of the largest direct response marketing networking groups here in Los Angeles.

Basically, I help people get things done.

I was speaking with one of our group members who’s a chiropractor and it looks like he’s doing lot of great things.

He’s really embraced the lead generation and direct response methods that we teach.

But one of the things he said was like, “You know, it’s great that I’ve got automated leads coming in, but my close ratio is around four out of ten.”

So, out of every ten people that his lead generation processes bring to him, where he actually meets with them face to face, only four say “yes” to his prescribed treatment plan.

As for the other six, he doesn’t really have anything going on with them.

When I asked what he did with the people that don’t accept his offer, he said, “Not much. If I do anything I pick up the phone and call them a few weeks later to see if anything has changed and ask whether they want to come in and talk about a little bit more. Or maybe I send them a direct mail piece or a letter, but that’s it.”

He continued, “Would there be a way that I could automate that? And if I was going to automate it, what would I actually send to them?”

We got talking about the concept that it usually takes seven “touches” before somebody actually decides to say “yes” to you.

So if you only ask him once or twice, that’s not enough.

If that’s the case, what could those touches be?

Well, I shared with him what we set up for one of my clients who’s a dentist.

It similar type of scenario where a patient will come in and the staff may find an opportunity to offer preventative and/or cosmetic treatment.

After the staff presents the treatment plan it’s up to the patient whether they want to go with it or not.

While there’s a small percentage of them that will say “Yes, let’s do it!” right then and there, the many of them will delay their decision and want to “think it over”.

So, rather than rely on the staff to pick up the phone or send a letter to the patient to follow up on their decision, we’ve set up an automated six-week process that will do it the follow-up for us.

For this particular client we use Infusionsoft to do this marketing.

Every time we prescribe a treatment plan, Infusionsoft will send six weeks of follow-up to them – one touch every single week.

Our touch points are based on the biggest objections that we get from patients.

Whether it’s money, or their insurance, or fear, we address all those objections in some part of the follow-up process.

For example, three weeks into our follow-up process, an automated email is send to the patient that says:

A few weeks ago, we had recommended a treatment plan to you.

One of the things that people think about with their prescribed treatment plan is how to pay for it.

Would it help you to talk with someone on our team more specifically about your payment options and how you’d be able to cover the cost of this treatment plan?

Click HERE to request a call directly from our staff…

And people click!

These are thoughts we’ve identified to be knocking around in their head – it’s a conversation in their head.

Since we know they’re thinking about it, we just hit it straight on.

And since our follow-up process spans six weeks, if “payment options” isn’t their main objection, we’ve got five more chances including “insurance coverage” and “fear of pain or discomfort”.

When the patient clicks the link to request a call, our staff gets a notification that specifies which objection they want to talk about.

Those are things that you want to think about putting into your marketing process.

So if your patients/customers/prospects don’t say “yes” the first time, maybe they will after week two, or week three or week six, right?

Or even week twenty-four, if it’s profitable for you to follow-up that far down the line.

But think about that conversation that’s going on in their head.

Why are they putting that decision off?

Why they may have said no to you initially?

Then just hit it straight on in your follow-up process.

And if you can automate that process, more power to you!

It’s going to really help you increase your conversions.

Hope this was helpful to you.

Take care and cheers to your success!

{ 0 comments }

How To NOT Get Arrested With Your Marketing

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:09 — 3.3MB) | Embed

In this video:

00:21 – What my friend sent me
00:55 – The video
03:20 – What does this have to do with marketing?
03:24 – Perception is everything

Hey, folks this is Philipp Lomboy with Automated Marketing Strategies and I want to share with you something really, really, really funny and a lesson with marketing as well.

So I just got a video and I think this video is making its rounds on social media and all the news.

It’s a 3-minute video of Jeff Gordon – the race car driver Jeff Gordon – playing a practical joke on a used car salesman.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you really got to see it.

I’m going to share a few minutes of it with you – just a little bit of it, not the whole thing.

If you want to see the whole thing just CLICK HERE, but I just got to show you that this is the most hilarious thing.

So Jeff Gordon takes somewhat a pretty crazy joyride but to the salesman…

Well, he’s not having a good time.

It’s pretty, pretty cool and he’s like starts cursing at Jeff!

He’s like, “Stop the car, you &@#*!”

And when they finally get back to the used car lot, the guy gets out of the car the guys says, “I’m going to call the police on you!”

He looks really upset!

Then Jeff says, “Whoa, hold on a minute!” and tells him, “Hey, this is a joke. We’ve got a camera here. You see these cameras over here.”

Finally he takes off his disguise and reveals that he’s Jeff Gordon.

And the guy is like, “Oh, my gosh!”

And then he says, “Hey, can we do it again?”

(Sorry to spoil it for you if you haven’t watch the whole thing yet…)

So what is the marketing lesson here?

Well, there is no difference in the joyride, right?

I mean it was just a thrilling ride going all over the place and it was a lot of fun.

So, it’s the exact same ride.

But notice the difference in the guy’s reaction from when Jeff reveals himself at the end and at the beginning when he thought it was just some crazy guy that took him on this ride.

I mean the ride itself was really – at the time it was really harrowing for him, right?

He was thinking, “Oh, my gosh, this is a crazy guy. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m going to die!”

But then after he finds out it’s Jeff Gordon, he says, “Oh, can we do it again?”

So, he would have taken the exact same ride all because he now knows that the guy that’s driving is Jeff Gordon.

So, what is this have to do with you and your marketing?

Well, perception is everything.

Whatever you have – whether it’s your product, service or your marketing, process, your consultation process – all of that could be great, great, great stuff.

But if your prospect, the one that you’re looking to do business with, isn’t convinced or isn’t understanding of who you are, so that they actually put a lot of value in to that product or service or process you’re putting them through, then it’s all for naught.

And they might call the police on you.

So anyway, watch the video. It’s so hilarious.

But that’s my tip for the day. I’m done.

I’ll talk to you next time.

{ 0 comments }

Best Marketing Book Ever?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:20 — 2.7MB) | Embed

In this video:

00:15 – The book revealed
00:38 – A preview of the book (spoilers)
01:29 – How to use it in your business
02:21 – An example

Hey, folks! Philipp Lomboy here and I wanted to take a couple of minutes to share with you the wisdom of one of my favorite books and maybe yours too…

The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Philipp, that’s a children’s book.”

It is but it’s a very, very, very wise book and absolutely related to marketing.

SPOILER ALERT: I am going to be going through this book. So, stop reading if you don’t want to find out what happens at the end.

Let’s go through this and I’ll show you exactly what I mean…

(And by the way, it’s a beautifully illustrated book. I love reading it to my girls – it’s awesome.)

So here is the caterpillar when it first appears. It’s just an egg at first, but eventually it comes out of the egg and starts to grow a bit.
Then it gets hungry and it wants to eat all this food. It goes through all of these different fruits through the week. From the fruit it goes to lollipops and sausages and watermelon.
It keeps eating more and getting bigger and then ultimately, it becomes a cocoon.
After it’s cocoon for a while it finally turns into an awesome, awesome butterfly.

So, what is that have to do with marketing?

Well, I’ll tell you…

You want to think about your prospects like they are “very hungry caterpillars” that you want to turn in to “butterflies”.

In marketing we’re thinking of butterfly as your IDEAL CLIENT/CUSTOMER.

This is somebody that:

Pays you a lot
Pays you often
Refers your services
Loves your services
Loves you too

But in order for that happen – in order for that butterfly to come out from that cocoon and change from being a caterpillar, you got to give it the right “food”.

You got to give it the stuff to actually make that TRANSFORMATION, because ultimately that’s what we’re looking for.

So, what’s the right food?

Well, let’s take one of those criteria like referrals, for example…

You want your ideal customer to refer more of their friends and family and business associates to you.

In that case you’ve got to give them the “food” that makes you referable.

You’ve got to have a great product or service to give them and that really happy with
Great customer service
Give them the opportunity to refer to you… so, ask them for referrals, and ask often. Ask them for referrals in different ways.

You can create your ideal customer, but only through giving your customers the right kind of food – the kinds of things to help them make that transformation.

So, that’s my tip for today.

Again, pick up this book if you don’t have it and think about what are the different ways you can turn your caterpillars in to butterflies.

Cheers to success and I’ll talk to you soon!

Incoming search terms:

{ 0 comments }

Which would you vote for here?

I’m the “Director of Implementation” at my local marketing group.

Month after month I start our meetings the same way…

“I’m not sure if any of you are shutterbugs like myself and really dig photography, but in our world there’s a constant debate about which camera is the best… What would you say?”

Invariably new members will call out their favorite brand…

Nikon, Canon, Sony (I had to raise my eyebrow at that dude)

But they’re all wrong.

I’ve got a tiny point-and-shoot Canon that is perfect for throwing into the glove compartment (do people really put gloves in there?).

I’ve even got a fancy Nikon D80 with multiple lenses – awesome for the occasional date night with my wife at a fancy-schmantzy, multi-course dinner where I can snap tons of “food porn”)

But the BEST camera for me is my iPhone.

Aside from the fact that I ALWAYS have it on me, it’s the one I use most often.

And with some of the software and apps available now, the photos rival the ones I get out of my Nikon.

You know the best camera out there?

It’s the one you actually use.

Same goes for your marketing.

Ideas are important.

Strategic, well-planned ideas are even better.

But no matter how good it is and how in love with it you are, your idea isn’t worth the gum stuck under a schoolhouse desk unless you actually do something with it.

Lots of worthless gum in this room…

So before you click on that link in the next email from your favorite marketing “goo-roo”…

Or crack open this month’s New York Times business bestseller…

Take a look at what you’ve got that’s ALREADY within reach – on the top of your stack of papers, or in your back pocket, or that thing you did 8 months ago – and DO THAT.

Cheers to your success!

Philipp

P.S. Keep an eye out for my next post where I’ll share with you one of the key pieces that most entrepreneurs are missing that keeps them from turning their ideas into action.

{ 0 comments }

The marketing sniper’s road to failure

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of snipers.

A well-trained sniper can pin down an entire division of infantry, or hit a moving target from over a mile’s distance.

Lone gunmen, hidden even from the most trained eyes, striking fear into the gut of even the most hardened soldiers, statesmen, and political radicals alike.

One of the most famous was Vasily Zaytsev, portrayed by Jude Law in the film “Enemy at the Gates”. In a four month period during the Battle of Stalingrad, Zaytsev had 242 confirmed kills against the Nazis.

The mantra that all snipers live by is “one shot, one kill”.

Years of training and practice, honed down to a single perfect moment, with results nothing short of devastating.

Strategically placed snipers perform extremely well both on the open battlefield and in covert operations.

Unfortunately, many businesses try to apply the same approach to their marketing, often resulting in dismal results.

“One pitch, one sale” doesn’t exist.

Every stranger that has become a paying lifetime customer (which is ultimately what we all want, isn’t it) to your business did not become so in one step, one pull of a “sales and marketing trigger”.

A caterpillar doesn’t suddenly, with the snap of your fingers, turn into a butterfly.

There was a sequenced process in place to make that happen.

PROCESS meaning there were multiple steps involved.

And SEQUENCE meaning those steps had to occur in a specific order.

I don’t care what business you’re in or who you’re selling to, there are universal phases that all strangers must experience before they become a customer, let alone a lifetime customer:

They realize there’s a problem
They find possible solutions
They select YOU as the solution provider

And there ain’t no sort of magic caliber bullet, silver or otherwise, that’s gonna do that in one fell swoop.

Do yourself a favor…

Literally DRAW out the steps your customers need to go through as part of their relationship with you.

How did they transform from “stranger” to “paying customer”?

Then figure out how to make it easy for your future customers to go through that process.

Cheers to your success!

Philipp

P.S. Even this exercise is no “sniper” approach. You must CONSTANTLY review and revise your little drawing/process. Maybe you’ll do it once a year, maybe once a week. But for now, just get your feet wet and put it on paper.

{ 0 comments }

A billion-dollar sales secret… in a spray bottle?

In his book “The Power of Habit”, Charles Duhigg recounts a fascinating zero-to-hero story…

When Procter & Gamble released Febreze in 1993, their execs were dreaming of how they would spend their bonuses – exotic sports cars, private jet charters, beachfront homes.

They spent millions of dollars and years of research creating a product that eliminated odors – genius!

Then the sales numbers came in, and brought with it a sad reality.

Febreze fell flat on its face.

No one bought it.

Huh??

A product that actually works, fills a real need, sold through thousands of distribution channels, and it BOMBED??

Yup.

After they licked their wounds, the P&G team took a look at what went wrong.

The people that DID buy it loved it and said that it worked, so the product wasn’t the problem.

If that was the case, then it must have been the way they were selling it.

The initial marketing campaign for Febreze touted it as an odor eliminator, a solution for an acute household problem.

But after more research, they realized that the customers who loved it didn’t use it for that purpose.

Instead, they used it as a way to “finish” their current cleaning routines.

That is, they were already in the habit of cleaning, but just sprayed the Febreze as a way to mark for themselves “this room is done”.

So P&G rolled out a new campaign.

Rather than showing it as a way to remove odors, essentially trying to teach consumers to do something new (eliminate odors with our product), they instead showed Febreze as a way to complete a routine they were ALREADY doing.

The result?

Sales doubled within two months.

Today, along with several spinoff products, the Febreze brand rakes in over $1 billion annually.

And all this success comes not because they had a superior product…

…but because they focused on a smart marketing apprach: piggyback off of what your customer is already doing rather than forcing a new behavior.

That’s one of the reasons I am a fanatic about email marketing.

Some mock and say it’s “soo 2001″, abandoning it for sexy, social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest (yup, another one).

“I’m gonna get my customers to follow me on Facebook!”

Look, I’ve got nothing against tweeting and liking and posting – I do my fair share.

But here’s the thing… there are 1900 times more email accounts as Facebook and Twitter accounts combined.

And daily post totals on Facebook and Twitter add up to only 0.2% of the messages sent and shared via email – a whopping 294 billion, which DOES NOT include spam.

So I’m just following the data and piggybacking on email’s coattails.

If you want to learn to do the same, tune in for my upcoming free training on email marketing.

I’ll have the date squared away shortly, so keep an eye out for the announcement.

And if you’ve got a burning question you’d like me to address on the training, simply go to the survey link below and submit it there.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MC7Y6B6

Cheers to your success!

Philipp

{ 0 comments }

Your flying karate-cam

Many moons ago I was quite the martial arts student.

Over six years I managed to collect enough pancake-sized bruises, bell-ringing whacks to my head, and accidental groin kicks to earn myself a brown belt.

I’m pretty proud of that, but it took me a good 3 years before I could start dishing out more punishment in the sparring ring than I took.

It was around that time that, almost overnight, my fighting style went from resembling two rams smashing their horns together over and over again (where basically they guy with the highest pain tolerance won), to reminiscent of Bruce Lee having his way with a low-level henchman.

Well, at least I felt as nimble and powerful as Bruce Lee – I got hit a lot less, and started landing nearly every punch and kick I threw.

And, in addition to my increased confidence, I limped a whole lot less too.

So what made the difference?

Among the few breakthroughs that turned things around for me was a technique I learned from one of the senior black belts, or sempai, of the dojo, Michael Jai White.

If you’re not familiar with the name, you’d almost certainly recognize his face from movies such as “Spawn”, “The Mike Tyson Story”, and “The Dark Knight”.

Wanna know how I got these scars?” – Not a good day for Michael

Unlike many other Hollywood stars that rely on their stunt doubles and fancy editing to make them look like action icons, Michael is a bonafide butt-kicker, having mastered more martial arts styles that my kids have Dora the Explorer toys (which is a boatload).

He didn’t have a name for the little lesson he shared with us that night, but I call it the “Flying Karate Cam”.

Michael described how inexperienced fighters basically have one strategy: looking directly at their opponent standing in front of them and charging straight ahead, head down, fists-a-blazin’.

This approach, he explained, wasn’t effective because every opponent, from the day they put on their white belt, is trained from day one to block everything that comes straight at them.

“You’ve got to go beyond the 3 or 4 targets your physical eyes can see right in front of you. Imagine that there’s a small camera flying all around your opponent, that transmits everything it sees directly to your brain, allowing you to see all the vulnerable areas that you opponent isn’t thinking about protecting.”

Now, although I wasn’t a big believer of out-of-body experiences, who was I to argue with a guy that’s wiped the mat with virtually everyone he’s fought.

It took me a few days to get used to it, but soon I began to see open spots all over the guys I was fighting – hands too far from the head, elbows hovering just high enough to expose the rib cage, feet spread too wide to respond to a quick kick.

Even better, the more openings I saw, the more my opponent had to worry about defending himself from my punches than throwing his own.

While they probably wouldn’t think of themselves as martial arts masters, the best marketers and copywriters I know have their own version of the Flying Karate Cam.

But rather than searching for the best angle to deliver a roundhouse kick, their cameras are trying to find the best angles to deliver their offer.

You see, the common approach used in most marketing is some head-on variation of “Here’s what I’ve got to sell you, now buy it!”

But prospects have their own natural defenses from such attacks: skepticism, the recycling bin, banner blindness, “skip this commercial” buttons on their remote controls, or just simply ignoring them altogether.

And these defense mechanisms have been conditioned to fire on hair-triggers since people are bombarded with these direct-buy messages thousands of times a day.

Your job is to set your Flying Marketing Cam loose to find creative and effective ways to bypass those defenses and deliver your message.

Take a good look at your current marketing efforts and see if they’re selling straight on, going right for the sale.

How is that approach working out for you as measured by your response rates, closing ratios, retention, and refunds?

What other angles and “less head-on” methods could you use to improve your numbers?

Cheers to your success!

Philipp

P.S. If you’re ready to discover new approaches you can use to bypass your customers’ defenses and massively improve the results of your marketing efforts, you’re in luck. I’m working on a series of trainings that will reveal a handful of strategies that are working today that do exactly that. So keep your eyes peeled for those announcements.

P.P.S. What’s the top defense mechanism that your customers and prospects use to block your marketing messages? Do your email open rates stink? Are you wasting your time on too many tire-kickers?

If you would like some help guiding your Flying Marketing Cam to find solutions simply COMMENT BELOW describing your problem and I’ll be sure to address it on one of the upcoming trainings.

{ 0 comments }

Is Social Media the Answer for Your Business?

If you’re like most people, you’ve put terms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in the “things for kids and passing time” category. If so, you’re missing the boat – a very large boat – for your business. Whether you’re a corner barbershop or international manufacturing company, in order to grow (let alone maintain) your business, you must start paying attention to social media.

Social media is the collection of internet-based technology that allows the widespread creation, distribution, and collaboration of content (e.g., articles, opinions, videos, entertainment). The technology is typically low cost and accessible to anyone with access to the Internet. Contrast this with “industrial” media such as magazines, newspapers, radio, and television, which are expensive to produce and limit content creation and distribution to just a few.

The old world of industrial media allowed businesses to distribute specific messages regarding products and services, while the general public could choose only to accept or deny those messages. Consumers had no other say in the matter and generally they accepted marketing messages in direct proportion to their prominence (i.e., number of times they were seen).

Although this model was the accepted environment for many years, the tide has turned. In fact, the New York Times reported that many top publications like Forbes and Fortune were down over 15%. Thanks to advances in technology and access to high-speed Internet connections, for the first time in history, consumers have their own far-reaching voice, separate from corporate marketing messages.

For businesses this represents both good and bad news. The bad news is that the way people buy has changed. Social media provides such a rich source of information and opinions on any product, business, or service that many can choose to simply ignore advertisements, taglines, and positioning statements. Even the “expert” review has yielded its authority to peer reviews from fellow consumers. Forrester Research found that the people who say companies tell the truth in their advertisements has dropped from 13% to 7%. Today’s consumer is more savvy, research-driven, better educated, and talking to other consumers worldwide to make very informed buying decisions.

The good news is that social media does not discriminate. Businesses have the same access to social media sites, technology, and tactics as the consumer. This is considerably good news for the small business owner that can’t afford traditional industrial media. Like many advances brought by the Internet, social media provides a very level playing field.

As many more businesses now come to this realization, many make the fatal assumption that, “All I’ve got to do is learn how to set up a blog, or Twitter account, or Facebook page, then start posting!” While these are absolutely important steps in the process, businesses must first familiarize themselves with the most critical pieces in social media: strategy and conversation.

A typical approach for businesses new to social media is to start selling by broadcasting their marketing message. Imagine a single male that’s desperate to find a wife, walking into a backyard party and shouting, “Ladies, I’ve arrived! Come over here if you wanna get hitched!” I bet you’d agree that is not the best strategy. A solid strategy requires careful thought and planning in consideration of your overall objective, your audience, your audience’s objective, and the specific actions required to get them from where they are to where they need to be.

Because consumers have so much data available upon which to make their buying decisions, a simple one-liner won’t do the job. Just like making friends at a backyard party, you must master the art of conversation. People buy from people they like, and today’s Internet technology and online culture allow you to create meaningful connections with others you meet at the online party. This is the key to social media – creating and taking part in meaningful conversations with others that will lead them to want to do business with you.

Social media CAN BE the answer for your business, provided you recognize it as another valuable tool in your marketing tool bag, create a solid strategy for its implementation, and respect the new buying landscape.

Incoming search terms:

{ 0 comments }

Hypnotic Video Marketing

If you want quick and efficient growth, you know the importance of getting traffic. The best widget in the world will not create a profitable business if no one knows about it. The rapid growth of online video is our cue to use it as a marketing channel for your business. Rather than pull people away from where they’re going so that they can view your message, simply bring your message to where the people are already going.

With the Internet’s wide reach and the reduction of technology costs, even small businesses are now able to leverage video in their marketing efforts. While the “big boys” can continue to spend millions of dollars producing Super Bowl commercials, many small businesses and people are claiming their piece of the opportunity. The proverbial pie has indeed gotten bigger. In addition, tests have shown that traditional online sales pages convert at 2-3% while those using video convert at 8-11%.

In both offline and online marketing efforts, most businesses focus on persuading their customers by using logic and unique product features. While that can play a role, as you know already, people buy based on emotion and back it up with logic. You probably experience this every day when you watch television commercials. The ones that are most popular and move you to actually buy the product are those that evoked a strong emotion within you.

So how do you begin to leverage emotion through your online videos? The key lies not in WHAT you tell your viewers, it rests in HOW you communicate with them. While some would consider themselves “naturals” in moving people emotionally, it is absolutely a skill that can be acquired by discovering the fundamentals of how the mind works, and applying the proper system.

While Hollywood has distorted the phenomenon of hypnosis to a resemble a form of mind control as a way to create compelling plotlines, the concepts upon which hypnosis is based are very real and useful to the savvy marketer. Simply put, hypnosis is an altered mental state in which one does not use their critical, logical mind to evaluate information before accepting that information and acting on it. By understanding the science behind hypnosis, will allow you to transform your videos from ordinary to powerful tools that will compel your customers to take specific actions like signing up to your email list or even purchasing your product!

Foundations of Hypnotic Communication

There are two parts of your mind: the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious mind is your mind’s “gatekeeper”. It is responsible for logical thinking and reasoning, and the voluntary actions you take such as moving your hand to pick up an object. Your subconscious mind is like a computer, with no reasoning or making value judgments. It’s that part of your mind that controls involuntary actions such as your breathing, blinking, heartbeat, and emotions. It also stores all your memories and experiences.

Dr. Ray Birdwhistell of the University of Pennsylvania studied human non-verbal communication, or kinesics. He understood that a person’s words contributed only a portion of the overall message they were communicating. By filming people in social situations and analyzing their interactions, he discovered that there was much more being conveyed in a conversation that what was being said. His research showed that a person’s words only accounted for 7% of the message being conveyed. Body language accounted for 58% and voice tonality accounted for 35%. Video allows you to use the entire spectrum of communication to deliver your marketing message and more effectively influence your audience.

Everything we as individuals have experienced in our lives is based on the filtered translations of the outside world. The filters and translators we use are our 5 senses: sight, sound, feel, smell, and taste. The more senses we engage in our communication with others, the more likely they will receive our message. We want to engage our audience’s senses directly. The key for more successful delivery is to relate those abstract concepts to tangible, sensory-based experiences. Great communicators (e.g., salespeople, orators, authors, teachers, etc.) throughout history have shared this rare talent.

Hypnotic Techniques for Video

To create more effective and influential marketing videos you must use these psychological foundations as part of your video creation process (i.e., concepts, scripting, post-production, distribution). Here are a few ideas you can begin using immediately.

Build rapport by identifying with their current point of view and where they want to go. This will significantly reduce resistance from the conscious mind.
Tell lots of stories to get people engaged in following your train of thought. In order for them to comprehend and identify with your story their conscious mind must accept what you’re saying as true.
Music is one of the most powerful ways to engage people’s emotions and other subconscious triggers. Using appropriate intro or background music to your message is a key hypnotic influence strategy.
Make sure you (or your spokesperson) use body language and voice tonality to reflect the way you want the customer to feel. For example, if you want them to feel calm and comforted by your message, you may want your voice to be quiter and slower, and your gestures to be slower and more reserved.
Engage your audience’s senses even more by using appropriate visuals (movie clips, photos, props) and audio (sound effects). While these elements can be incorporated directly into the video, eliciting a strong sensory memory can be just as effective (e.g. tell them to remember the smell/taste/touch of their favorite meal).

As more people and businesses use video as a means of online marketing, you’ll want to use these techniques and many more to differentiate your message and ensure your audience gets the greatest impact.

{ 0 comments }

OINK! why you need to be a pig..

While eating Thanksgiving leftovers with my dad this past weekend, I was reminded me of something.

We were talking about relationships and how some people never really make a true commitment.

For example, when it comes to a breakfast of ham and eggs, the chicken is involved – it participated in the process.

But in the pig’s case, he’s COMMITTED!

As you approach the end of 2011, reviewing and renewing your vision for yourself and your business for the New Year, think about commitment in two ways…

First, in different areas of your business (e.g., marketing, educating yourself and your team, innovating), are you committed or just involved?

Look honestly at where you are now as a result.

Do you need to make any decisions so that you can reach your goals and realize your vision?

Second, who are you spending time with?

Whether they’re prospects, vendors, employees…

Are you spending time with the people that are committed or just involved?

No matter how much money we accumulate, no matter how much Hollywood and the beauty industry try to convince you otherwise, TIME is something you’ll ever get back.

Invest it wisely in people that are committed.

Cheers to your success!

Philipp

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries