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You and I spend money on marketing and advertising because we want to connect with our customers, clients, and patients in a way that has them eager to do business with us.  

You want your prospects to see you as an authority in your market or industry—a trusted source that has them driving past your competitors and going out of their way to do business with you.

There are a couple of ways you can do this.

Be in business for forty years or so, and spend that time developing a reputation with your community through various outreach efforts. Sponsor little league teams, join Rotary Clubs, guest lecture at the local community college, and continuously pump money into ad campaigns that let people know you’re in business.

OR

Take a shortcut.   Develop and deliver a well-crafted message with killer content that establishes you as the undisputed authority in your industry by answering your prospect's questions, addressing their concerns, and educating them on—not just your product or service—but why your product or service is precisely what they need to fulfill their needs, put their fears to rest, or help them attain what they desire most.

Hello my friend and fellow entrepreneur. Today, I’d like to discuss one of the most essential strategic approaches you can take to marketing your business—establishing yourself as an authority in your market.

As consumers, we’re all a bit weary. We’ve been inundated with sales pitches online, on TV, and in print for so long that we blow past most of it with little more than a “yeah right” to exaggerate claims and too-good-to-be-true offers.

If you want to reach educated consumers, you have to show up with more than the typical overused sales messages you see a dozen times a day. If you want to earn your prospect's trust, you have to give them a reason to listen to you. When you consistently share valuable insights, expertise, and solutions within your industry, you showcase your dedication to what you do and establish yourself as an authority. Clients and customers are more likely to trust and respect you when they can tell that you know what you're talking about.

I have a question for you.

When you open your email and see messages from half a dozen companies trying to sell you something, do you open and read each one or toss them to the iconic trash can without giving the subject line a backward glance?

I start most mornings with an inbox purge, dumping at least a dozen pitches for cruise vacations, credit card offers, and offers to buy my home from property investors interested. (It’s not for sale, by the way.)

You can probably relate.

And that is why most email marketing campaigns fail miserably—they are overused and mistreated, which gets them mostly ignored. Businesses send out email blasts to anyone and everyone they can because they’re a cheap way of trying to connect with prospects. The ads are not well-targeted and rarely catch more than an accidental click. What’s worse— There’s so much of this nonsense out there that even well-thought-out and well-targeted email campaigns get overlooked amidst the deluge of spam and junk offers.

Fatal Marketing Blunders That Drive Owners Out of

Business and The Steps You Must Take to Avoid Them

As business owners, you and I face decisions every day that have the power to sink or sail our ships. These decisions are ours and ours alone to make. There’s no one there to take on the tough choices for us, no one to hold our hands and tell us what to do. The buck stops with us.

Most of the time, we gladly face these decisions.

Why,

Because, well…I’m guessing you’re a lot like me and don’t particularly like being told what to do—unless it's what you wanted to do in the first place😊. But sometimes, having the weight of decisions on your shoulders and yours alone is challenging. And… unfortunately, when faced with difficult decisions, it’s easy to misstep—make the wrong move.

In the world of direct mail copywriting, a few names stand out like beacons in a fog-filled night. Legends, Titans, if you will, who’ve made their clients fortunes that rival the royals with persuasive messages in the form of direct mail delivered to an expertly chosen list of prospects.  

This list of titans has some names you’ll surely recognize, including Dan Kennedy, Russell Martino, and the subject of today’s blog, the “Michelangelo of direct mail copywriting” himself—Gary Bencivenga.

Gary Bencivenga has a long and illustrious career helping American businesses break sales records faster than a bodybuilder can snap a pencil.   This master of persuasion is semi-retired now but frequently shares his wisdom and insight on the secrets of his success.

Today, I’d like to share a few of my favorites of Gary’s ‘magic marketing bullets’ and how I use these time-tested, proven techniques to help my clients reach more ideal prospects and reap more profits than they dreamed possible.

If you want to design a winning marketing strategy, you must understand your customer’s needs, fears, and desires. You must have a strong online presence that entices them to want to do business with you. And you must reach out to them regularly with a tailored message that has them lining up with fists raised full of cash, eager to hand it to you in trade for your goods or services.

That’s what today’s blog is all about. So, buckle up and get ready to connect with your customers on a whole new level!

Your customer is rarely looking for a specific product or service. They are looking to fulfill a desire or meet a need. If a consumer is looking to buy a vacation, they are not necessarily interested in the physical address of the hotel or the color of the bed sheets, they want the promise of a week of fun and adventure in an awe-inspiring place with their friends and loved ones.

I am a marketing and sales strategist so it’s my job to understand and identify opportunities and constraints for the business owners I work with. Recently, I’ve heard many of my clients complain about how hard it is to find and retain excellent employees in their organization. This has come up so many times in the past year I thought I’d address the subject in today’s blog.

Your employees are a living and valuable resource in your business, one that most businesses cannot do without.   Still many employers hire for key roles in their organization after only a single interview, sighting that they had a good feeling about a person, or just felt they’d work out.   To me, this is like going on a blind date with someone and deciding to let them move in with you the next day.

I have a passion for seeking out business leaders who accomplish amazing things. I search out these individuals, learn as much as I can about their lives and their journey and then absorb as much of their stories and the lessons they have to offer for use in my own life and my own business.

One of the business leaders I’d like to highlight today is Indra Nooyi, former Chairman and CEO of Pepsi Co.   Indra was born in southern India to a conservative Brahmin family. She graduated top of her class in high school and got a BA in math, chemistry, and physics in Madras Christian College. She then came to the USA, went to Yales School of Management, and took a job with a Boston consulting group.