Digital Marketing Insider | August 2013 by ROARlocal.com

August 2013 / £2.00

Digital Marketing Insider

How Life Time Value Helped Costa Coffee to £1 Billion In Sales What Warren Buffett Can Teach You About Digital Marketing Giving Away Your Stuff For Free Is (Usually) Dumb Entrepreneur Insights - Robert Stell

A Note From The Editor

First a warm welcome to the August edition of the Digital Marketing Insider, produced by ROARlocal

If this is the first time you’ve received this a hearty welcome to you! Of course, many business owners are being completely distracted from working on their businesses by the summer sun and sadly for many business owners summer was a bit of a disaster for them sales wise too.. Now, for those businesses with an online presence however (according to Nielson) online sales were 7% higher this year compared to last year BUT overall sales (on and offline added together) were down 5% from last year. That means that the high street had MUCH lower sales than last year BUT online retailers crushed it! Now, more than ever, you must be online. Selling your products on the high street is becoming harder and harder, so this month I’m bringing you some great guides to sell more of your stuff online and to dominate your marketplace online. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this months magazine - it’s jam packed with our usual level of brilliant content and as always if we can help you in any way, please don’t hesitate to make contact. We’ve had some great success with our “outsourced marketing service” client, Kerwin Rae, setting up his online presence for his upcoming seminars and generating hundreds of thousands of $$$ in the process for him!

Finally we have a BRILLIANT interview this week with another Rockstar mentor, Robert Stell, so be sure to check that out. I know you’ll get a ton out of his pearls of wisdom as you will out of the rest of this months’ magazine - it’s jam packed with our usual level of brilliant content and, as always, if we can help you in any way please get in touch. Neil Asher CEO ROARlocal

Contents 01 / A Note From The Editor 02 / 3 Weird Things To Test This Week 03 / How Life Time Value Helped Costa Coffee to £1 Billion In Sales 04 / How To Sell Your Car Online With Google AdWords 05 / What Warren Buffett Can Teach You About Digital Marketing

About Us We create great looking online advertising campaigns that enhance your brand, we use scientifically proven online advertising methods to drive visitors to your website and adverts and then we optimise your site to make sure those visitors become paying customers that tell all their friends and come back for more.

07 / Giving Away Your Stuff For Free Is (Usually) Dumb 09 / 17 Reasons People But Things Online 10 / Entrepreneur Insights

Our team is different, we focus on making you MONEY we couldn’t care less for winning awards for being “creative” our reward is money in your bank. We’re successful online entrepreneurs, world class copywriters, website optimisation specialists, online advertising mavericks and the geekiest SEO people!

3 Weird Things To Test This Week

by Neil Asher

Would you give this man your telephone number? (Don’t let the guitar case influence you.) We test a lot of cool stuff for our clients at ROARlocal. From optimising their check-out process to seeing what ads make the most money, we’re fanatical testers who get a HUGE kick helping our clients make money. I am always studying social psychology and reading the latest research and literature to see what we can learn to apply to our clients’ websites for them. So I thought I’d share 3 weird things I’ve seen this week that would be worth testing online. Would you give this man your telephone number? (Don’t let the guitar case influence you.) In France there’s a psychologist, Professor Nicolas Gueguen, who roams the North-West, asking young women for their telephone numbers—or at least, his research assistants and experimental confederates do. This isn’t just to boost the national stereotype, but all in the name of science.

“Hello. My name’s Antoine. I just want to say that I think you’re really pretty. I have to go to work this afternoon, and I was wondering if you would give me your phone number. I’ll phone you later and we can have a drink together someplace.”

The results they’ve reported over the years confirm some things we think we already know and a few new insights. His experiments often involve approaching random strangers (usually women) in the street and asking them for something (usually their phone number). So far he’s found that:

Then he smiled and gazed into their eyes. The poor chap had to do this in three different conditions while holding either:

Men getting out of expensive versus cheap cars are more likely to get the numbers of passing women.

What happened was that when he wasn’t holding anything he got a number 14% of the time. The sports bag, though, put women off and dropped his average to just 9%.

A firefighter’s uniform makes women more likely to divulge the digits. A touch on the forearm makes a man more likely to get a woman’s number (it also works on men). Now, in his latest experiment, he’s been testing the pulling power of musicians. How much extra sheen does it give a man if he’s carrying a guitar case when he asks a woman for her number? Naturally women are pretty cagey when approached by random strangers in the street, so Gueguen et al. (2013) chose a young man who had been highly rated by a panel of women. He was told to stand in a local shopping centre and approach women aged between 18 and 22, without regard to their appearance, and say to them:

•

a guitar case,

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a sports bag or,

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no bag at all.

It was the guitar case that did the trick, bumping up his chances to 31%. Not bad at all considering he was approaching random strangers in the street. So the mystical, romantic image of the musician had a pretty powerful effect. Well, it will until she discovers the guitar case only has a sports bag inside. (No mention is made of what the young man did with all the telephone numbers, but I’m sure they were dealt with ethically.) So, how to apply this insight into getting phone numbers? Well, first up when you’re asking for the digits (credit card numbers) it’s GOT to be worth testing images; images that make your site look affluent and also images of men staring straight at the camera.

That’s got to be worth a test! Also… I thought that the “touch on the forearm” was interesting, but how to do that online?? How about altering the language you use to be more caring and friendly? That’s a great place to start testing. Finally… The idea of the fireman getting laid was interesting for me. It’s no secret that we respond to uniforms as social clues for compliance, so why not evoke the feeling of a uniform in your web design and layout. And I don’t mean slap pictures of firemen everywhere, although I’m sure my wife would approve! No, what I mean is the uniform is representative of authority and so I’d be looking at the main authority sites online (Google, Amazon, Zappos, Best buys, etc etc) for clues as to how they make their customers feel “safe to shop”. Heck, everyman and his dog now uses the orange amazon button as their add to cart button and with good reason, it converts better than anything else! Want us to get to work on your website and online strategy? Then check out our services here

How Life Time Value Helped Costa Coffee to £1 Billion In Sales

by Neil Asher

Do you drink much coffee? I do. I buy on average 2 lattes a day from my local guy. At $4 a pop that’s $8 a day, BUT I usually get my gorgeous wife Tash a coffee too so that’s $16… a day! Add to that the occasional croissant and grilled sandwich and I’m probably worth $100 a week to my local. That’s $5200 a year. So how much do you think they should spend to get me as a customer?

Which gives us an average visitor value of (4 x $6) $24 per week or $1248 per year.

Well my friend, that’s why life time value is so important to a business. In fact, it’s the No 1 reason why Costa Coffee has grown from 15 stores in 2002 to 1,900 UK stores by 2016 and they’ve just done their first £1 BILLION in sales!

Costa Coffee has said that its customers are very loyal with each anticipated to stay for 20 years!

How on earth does life time value have such a dramatic effect?

Let’s factor in our profit of 20% = $4992

Allow me to show you: First up, let me give you a quick definition of life time value… It’s the average amount of sales and profits a new customer will make for your business over their life time. So for my local coffee guy, I’m worth $5200 a year to him. Say I’ll be in this house for 7 years, that’s $35K in sales. Most coffee shops operate on 15% margins, so my LTV is $5250 (15% of $35,000). Make sense? OK lets move on. Now Costa Coffee operates on better margins due to their increased purchasing power and better skills in negotiating leases etc. So Costa Coffee, according to their financial reports, operates on 20% margins. Let’s assume that each customer on average purchases 1.5 coffees per day (some will do more, others less) so that’s $6 (each coffee is $4). Lets further assume each customer returns 4 times per week (some will go every day, others twice per week).

So let’s factor that in: $1248 x 20 = $24,960.00

Now already you can see that every new customer Costa Coffee gets is worth $4992 to the business. Here’s an interesting question… How much should you spend on marketing to new customers given you know each new customer is worth $4992? Up to $4991! But seriously, I know that for most businesses that’s just not possible, as cash flow forbids it. BUT… If you’re smart, you borrow money against the future value of those customers so you can use it to find the customers. In effect, you borrow money to make the money. This is ONLY smart when you know your LTV. But this little secret has enabled Costa Coffee to grow and grow and grow. Make sure you know your customers LTV so you can out-market your competitors. Want us to help you grow your business? Then check out our services page

by Neil Asher

How To Sell Your Car Online With Google AdWords

Here’s a picture of my beautiful Porsche C2S. I’ve just sold her using online marketing strategies. If you’ve ever sold a car yourself, or plan to, then check out how I applied online marketing techniques to sell my car in record time for top dollar. First up, what I’m about to show you applies to selling ANYTHING online – cars, boats, services, widgets… Anything. The same principles apply. OK with that said, here’s how I did it. 1 / Start With The Right Targeting It is no good trying to sell a Porsche to people who want to buy an Audi or Volvo. I’m wasting my time, and more importantly, theirs. So step 1 is to establish who your market is and how to get in front of them. For me as an online marketer I chose Google AdWords to do that. Simply put, it’s the best for this particular niche. I can place my ad in front of anyone who types in the words; used Porsche for sale, buy a Porsche, second hand Porsche for sale, etc. etc. And that’s what I did!

The customer avatar is a much different thing, I cover how to set up an avatar properly in my traffic bootcamp course. This is an important step in the process as you need to understand how to communicate to your prospect. Without it you may as well be speaking Dutch to an American. 3 / Get Them To Read Now that you have their attention you must use it wisely. That means getting to the point quickly, flagging a benefit for the reader fast, and telling your prospect that you have something to solve a problem of theirs.

Those keywords became my laser targeting tool. So for someone looking to buy a used Porsche, I knew that my ad would be interesting for them to see.

On Google that means writing a good ad.

2 / Attract Attention

39K, FSH, Midnight Blue, Leather

Which brings me very neatly to the next thing you need. Attention.

V High Spec, Immaculate, £29,995

Without it you can have the best products in the world but you’ll quickly go broke. Attention is the thing that us marketers work our butts off to get.

It is relevant as I know that people searching for a used Porsche want a used Porsche, it gives the main info fast and uses language that car buyers use (FSH – full service history – for example)

For me that involves 2 important things. a) Competitive research b) Creating a customer avatar Your competitive research can be as simple as going to Google and seeing who else is advertising to your prospects or as complicated as mining your existing data and other data sources for data that will help you get an edge over your competition. For this endeavour though, I only had to take a quick look online to see that no one else was running any Google ads in my niche

Here’s mine for my Porsche: 07 997 Porsche 911 C2S

4 / Get Them To Take Action Final step is to get them to buy! Now I didn’t own the website so I couldn’t influence this too much. But I did work with Chris to tell him how many clicks the ad was getting, which ad people clicked on (I split tested ads) and I advised on the landing page after reviewing his analytics. The result… I sold my car in 4 weeks In the end we had 10 people esquire about my Porsche. Chris said he’d never had such an incredible response to a car! I’ll miss my Porsche, we had a lot of fun together (I have a tear in my eye), but now I’ve sold her I can get myself a new one! If you want to learn how I’ll buy a brand new Porsche 991 for $25K click here

www.christopherjacksonltd.com

I am a BIG believer in getting the best people to do things you can find, so when it came to selling my car I knew I was NOT the best person to do that! I’m great at selling online – I can sell face to face but I’m not the best – so I chose Chris Jackson to sell my car for me. He’s the best IMHO. Don’t try and do something yourself if there is someone better than you that you can pay to do it for you. It may cost a little more upfront, but in the long run it’s ALWAYS cheaper!

What Warren Buffett Can Teach You About Digital Marketing

One of the most important rules I’ve learnt from Warren Buffet in entering new online markets is to TEST before you INVEST. In basic terms, don’t start investing tons of money and time into an online business until you have sufficient data on the market.

Why’s that?

Week 1, no sales…

For starters, good ideas don’t necessarily equate into viable opportunities. You need to have the ability to gauge market reaction to your idea. All that really matters is the consumer reaction to the offer. Whether it’s a B2B or B2C transaction, the consumer is the high court and their ruling comes in the way of a sale… Or no sale. Hence your opinion of the idea is ultimately judged by the consumer’s purchasing decision.

Week 2, no sales…

Case in point is my dear friend Matt (real name protected out of respect). Matt had an incredible idea to offer a software tool to brick and mortar businesses that would allow them to easily conduct transactions online. The concept seemed feasible and the targeted niche that Matt went after was in dire need of this tool. For close to a year he toiled away at his project. Blood, sweat, and tears went into this project, all with the blind hope that the market would react in a very positive way. When launch day came he had it all figured out. Per his calculations, in a worst case scenario, he would still be able to score millions in revenue from capturing just 5% of the market. After all, it isn’t that hard to capture 5% of the market… Or is it??? With a shoestring budget left over for advertising, he launched his campaign…

Week 3, no sales… Denial sets in, optimisation occurs, back to testing… Week 4, no sales… Week 5, no sales… Week 6, no sales… Further optimisation, back to testing… …… …… no sales. My heart bleeds for entrepreneurs that fall into the “good idea” trap. The brain damage caused by wasting time on a project that is doomed for failure is enough to cause a man to go insane. Matt could have saved himself from the cluster headaches had he spent more time testing & conducting a thorough due diligence of the market. He would have quickly identified that the idea would have no market traction, allowing him to test different ideas… With no money left over and exhausted from the failed venture, the only question that remained was if Matt could bounce back? TBD… BTW – I’ve personally fallen into this trap, and so know from painful and expensive experience! Now I only enter markets that have pavement laid by previous entrepreneurs. Their dollars provide a great litmus test for what works, and what doesn’t. That allows for my team

to come in and add innovative ideas on top of proven business models. Below is a simple 4 step test I created to test different online businesses. I hope it works as well for you as it has for me: The 4 Step Test Before You Invest Step 1 / Run An Affiliate Offer To Test The Market Jump on all of the affiliate networks to pull offers that are in the market you want to enter. Test out different ad campaigns to gauge the consumer response. Pay close attention to the amount of traffic that exists that backs out below your targeted CPA. If the offer pays a $20 CPA and you can back it out south of that, then there’s a good chance that if you created your own offer, you would be profitable. Offers almost always pay out CPAs that are south of their costs. Beware of CPL offers as the traffic is deceptive. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes metrics involved in understanding the true value of a Cohort Group of leads. i.e. I spent $26k on AdWords for 1 campaign last week that generated leads. The revenue generated in that business from month 1 acquisitions was considerably higher than my spend. Did the traffic back out? Answer: I don’t know. The leads that my team converted were not all from the $26k that we spend on AdWords. In order to properly discover whether this campaign makes financial sense, we would

by Neil Asher

have to track the exact amount of money spent on a group of leads, how many of those leads converted, the CLV of those converted leads, operational expenses, etc. Only then would we know whether or not the leads backed out. Step 2 / Split Test Landing Pages to Gauge Market Reaction Once you have data on the traffic channels that work, you need to discover whether you have the ability to compete. You’ll need to go head-to-head with the affiliate offer you tested by running traffic on the same channel. That way you can compare apples to apples. If the offer you’re creating is a credit card submit, simply do not process the cards, just collect then void. The thing that you’re looking for is the ability to competitively convert. If you’re building a lead gen campaign, pick up the phone and call the lead back. Have a series of questions available to measure the likelihood of a response. Then crunch the numbers to determine what it would take to make the campaign successful. The main reason why I got so focused on direct response marketing was because I could not afford anything but a strong direct response. Going up against well capitalised opponents felt like David vs. Goliath. Underdogs win simply by outworking their opponents!

Step 3 / Do Your Due Diligence Once you have intelligible data, conduct a thorough due diligence of the market. Make sure you identify and clearly understand the following: • Competition •

Market Size

•

Stage of Market

•

Capital Requirements

•

Patent Searches

•

Replication Factor

•

Domains Available

•

Opportunity Costs

Step 4 / SWOT Analysis Last but not least, you’ll need to run a SWOT analysis. Taken directly from Wikipedia: SWOT analysis (alternately SWOT Matrix) is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses/Limitations, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieve that objective. The technique is credited to Albert Humphrey, who led a convention at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in the 1960s and 1970s using data from Fortune 500 companies.

Identification of SWOTs is essential because subsequent steps in the process of planning for achievement of the selected objective may be derived from the SWOTs. First, the decision makers have to determine whether the objective is attainable, given the SWOTs. If the objective is NOT attainable a different objective must be selected and the process repeated. Users of SWOT analysis need to ask and answer questions that generate meaningful information for each category (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) in order to maximise the benefits of this evaluation and find their competitive advantage. I sincerely hope that this post sheds some light on how to build an online business without losing your shirt. Calculated risks lead to better decision making. Make sense? Good. Now get to work, or better still… Get Us To Do The Work!

Setting the objective should be done after the SWOT analysis has been performed. This would allow achievable goals or objectives to be set for the organisation. Strengths: characteristics of the business, or project team that give it an advantage over others Weaknesses (or Limitations): are characteristics that place the team at a disadvantage relative to others Opportunities: external chances to improve performance (e.g. make greater profits) in the environment Threats: external elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project

Giving Away Your Stuff For Free Is (Usually) Dumb

Before I dive into the psychology here, I want to define freemium and free trial, and also drop in some cautionary statements. So first, here are the definitions:

Freemium: A free plan (usually limited in how much you can do with a product, whether that’s save pictures, analyse keywords, etc) with premium plan options to upgrade to once you outgrow it. Usually, freemium is feature or usage limited, but unlimited in duration. Free Trial: These can have a few permutations, but I’ll explain the most common one: a “miniplan” that allows you to try all of the aspects of a product or service for a limited amount of time (usually 7 days, 14 day, 30 days, 45 days, or 60 days). Sometimes companies will charge you at the end of the trial, sometimes they won’t take your payment information until after the trial is over. Regardless, the main point is that free trials end at some point. Now, time for my cautionary statements: 1.

I am not a psychologist. I just like psychology, have a degree in it and read about it a lot.

Most of my post here is going to be anecdotal. I can’t share performance numbers. I’m merely explaining the mindset behind the changes we’re making to some of our clients’ business models. Freemium works. Free trials work. Your mileage will vary, of course.

Ok, so let’s get going.

There is a subtle psychological difference between Freemium and Free Trials in the mind of your potential customer When a customer sees that you have a free plan, you’re planting a seed in their brain that your product, in some form, is free. This has a domino-like effect on your customer’s mindset that will affect their purchasing decisions from the moment the seed is planted. What’s happening here is that when a customer gets the idea that your product is free (even if they don’t have all of the features of a premium plan) they immediately start categorising it with all of the other free products and services that they use online. Over time, friction will begin to grow in their minds towards the idea of ever having to pay for this supposedly free service of yours, and your product will need to overcome this friction in order to convert them to a paying customer. Additionally, by offering your product for free, you’re subconsciously telling your customer that “yeah, our service is so cheap to run that we can afford to let you use it for free”. This puts your customer into the mindset of “well if it doesn’t cost them anything for me to use this, why should I pay them for it?” If that thought is running through your customer’s head, you’re dead in the water. Of course, there are thousands of instances where the freemium model works for companies, but the reason it works for these companies is that they have architected the freemium plans very very well to essentially be the equivalent of getting a cheap buffet at a nice restaurant, while all the other patrons are eating their awesome steaks behind glass a few feet above your head.

These freemium customers need to be enticed by all of the cool stuff they *could* have if they just cross that divide and upgrade their account to a premium plan. You’ll notice that companies that employ a freemium plan model are usually companies where the cost of offering what they do for free is extremely cheap (to the point of being negligible in the overall scheme of things). A good example of this is Evernote. The cost of storing all the data you could possibly put into Evernote is ridiculously low. That allows them to offer you the whole product for free, where you can then fall in love with it and start incorporating it in your life. But then one day, all of a sudden, you’re out of space. You can’t bear to part with Evernote at this point – you rely on it every day. So the friction to upgrade your plan is nearly gone and you punch in your credit card info. The main motivating force behind the freemium model is that you can use it to grow a very large userbase and then even with low conversion numbers, you can still become profitable. The risk you run is that even with the cheapest services, there are still costs that can add up (especially when you start getting thousands upon thousands of users) so if you don’t start converting like you thought you would, your growth might actually be the death of your product. Remember, more users does not mean more profit. I can’t stress this enough. You have to monetise effectively to grow a profitable business, otherwise you’re just becoming the popular kid in school (that never gets laid).

The Psychological Impact of Offering a Free Trial The important psychological difference with a Free Trial is that from the moment the potential customer comes in contact with your product (and free trial) they are being reminded that they’re being allowed to TRY your product, and that they have a LIMITED amount of time to try it before they have to BUY it. Free Trial Done Well By The Advanced Child Academy

The advantage you have when offering a free trial versus a freemium plan is that this push to convert your users to paying customers is transparent. They knew when they signed up for your trial that they were doing a digital test drive of your product, and they’ll subconsciously already be in a buying mindset, whether or not they end up buying your product. From day 1, you’re showing the customer that your product costs something to use, and your job is to show them in that trial period that the benefit your product brings to them blows away the cost they’ll incur by signing up. Nothing is hidden from your users in the trial period: they can use your product and its features, and if they want to continue, they need to become a paying customer. They get a taste of everything, which opens the door to your customer growing dependent on your product and the benefits it provides them, which is how you convert customers. You gain control of your funnel and subsequently gain leverage in the sales process.

Your product is in no way free, you’re just reducing the initial signup friction. This is a huge difference from using a freemium plan, where a user signs up under the pretense that as long as they stay within certain limits, they can always have free use of your product. With a free trial, the clock starts ticking the moment a customer registers and they’re completely aware of this.

A perfect example is basecamp (I actually got a trial-ending reminder email while writing this post). I’ve already started using their product, and I like it a lot. And since it’s a time limited free trial, they have me right where they want me. I now need them for my company, so when I get this email:

As I’ve been looking at our freemium option numbers, it just doesn’t seem like the right position for us: customers in this space will gladly use something for free indefinitely if they can. This is a topic I’ve been thinking about A LOT in the last few months. Freemium and Free Trials seem roughly equivalent on first thought, but the subconscious differences can have a massive impact on your bottom line. You have to look at what you’re offering, what your competitors are offering, your costs, and ultimately your growth strategy to determine what is best for you and your company. The bottom line is this: with both freemium and free trials, your job is to convince a potential customer that your product is worth paying for. With a freemium option, you will be creating your own friction by making your customer treat you like all of their other free services they use, making it hard for you to ultimately convert them. With a free trial, you have much more control over the sales process and funnel, and can architect everything around the VALUE of your product and the BENEFITS it will bring to your customers (once they sign up). I plan on covering this topic a few more times from some other angles, so I would love to hear your feedback on this post so I can then use that feedback with future posts.

This opens the door to a very different marketing strategy for the Free Trial companies. Let’s say you’re going to offer a 7-day Free Trial to your product. When your potential customers sign up for your free trial, you need to be doing everything in your power to show the true utility/power/greatness of your product in those 7 days. You need to not only walk them through your product and show them how it all works and make sure their engagement is high, you also need to be emailing them with tips, tutorials, testimonials, videos; anything that will convince them to come back and USE YOUR PRODUCT. You need to force your customer through your product’s entire workflow repeatedly in that 7 day period, so that they can feel what it’s like to actually own your product, and hopefully become dependent on your product to the point where stopping use of it will be a bigger burden than paying for it and signing up.

…my first thought is “OH SHIT, my company is going to go under without this! Of course I’m going to sign up right now!” Boom. They converted me. Now of course, this all will vary widely by niche and market. ROARlocal is in the Internet Marketing and SEO niche, where customers seem to be divided between people who want everything for free or who will pay a premium for a product, with very little left in between for a modestly priced product. So I’m in a position where I have to decide what direction I want to aim in terms of acquiring new customers.

17 Reasons People Buy Things Online

Associative group – to which you SHARE ideals and values.

by Neil Asher

Liking: The Balance Theory. “I like you… take my money!” Attractive people have greater influence. Considered trustworthy and likeable.

Authority: Cracking the code of credibility. Mental shortcut. Man in the “white lab coat”.

Reciprocation: What goes around comes around… profitably! Free samples and giving stuff away creates goodwill and obligation.

Commitment/consistency: The “Four Walls” technique. Box them in. Elicit small actions and “yes” responses that cultivate to a larger request.

Scarcity: Get ‘em while they last! One day sale, limited offer, one while supplies last, first come first served, etc.

Dissociative group – to which you DO NOT WANT to belong. 5 / The Means-End Chain – The Critical Core. “Don’t buy for what it does today – but for what it will do tomorrow!” Future objective. 6 / The Transtheoretical Model – Persuasion Step by Step.

Why do people do what they do?

Stage 1 – Pre-contemplation: ignorant of your product’s existence. Stage 2 – Contemplation: aware and thought about using it.

I’ve studied human behaviour for 14 years now. Ever since my Psychology degree back in 1999 I’ve been fascinated by why people buy or not.

Stage 3 – Preparation: thinking about buying from you, but need information about benefits.

If you’ve ever found yourself people watching then I bet you’re fascinated by social psychology too!

Stage 5 – Maintenance: continue to buy again and again. Part of their daily lives.

Here’s our 17 point checklist we use for our digital agency clients here at ROARlocal. We put all the online marketing we create for our clients through this to make sure we’re getting it right. 1 / The Fear Factor – Selling the Scare. Fear sells. It drives them to spend money. Fear causes stress. Stress causes action. Tap existing fears. Four Ingredient Recipe for Using Fear: 1.

It scares the hell out of people.

It offers a specific recommendation for overcoming the fear-aroused threat.

The recommended action is perceived as effective for reducing the threat.

Stage 4 – Action: “Here’s my credit card.”

Create ads that address all five stages.

Create a series of ads that progress over a period of time from stage one to stage five.

7 / The Inoculation Theory – Make Them Prefer You for Life. Give them arguments against competitors. “Our competitors will tell you…” 8 / Belief Re-Ranking – Change Their Reality. Appeal to either emotions like fear, humour, or guilt – or factual evidence and examples. 9 / The Elaboration Likelihood Model – Adjust Their Attitude. Cues feel good, but Central Processing makes them PREFER you. Two Routes to Change: 1.

Central Route – persuading using logic, reasoning, and deep thinking. AKA, creating Preference

(Fear can also paralyse. Use specific, believable recommendations. Use fears that are specific and widely recognized.)

Peripheral Route – persuading using the association of pleasant thoughts and positive images. AKA, Cues

2 / Ego Morphing – Instant Identification. “By purchasing the ‘right stuff’ we enhance our own egos and rationalise away.” AKA. Retail therapy.

Central Route Processing: pour on the facts, stats, evidence, testimonials, studies, reports, and case histories. Weave an argument.

The message recipient believes that he or she can perform the recommended action.

3 / Transfer – Credibility by Osmosis. Symbols, images, or ideas. Cues. Institutions, celebrities, authorities. Experts i.e. “White lab coats.” 4 / The Bandwagon Effect – Give Them Something To Jump On. “Consensus-ImpliesCorrectness” heuristic. People want to belong. Aspirational group – to which you’d LIKE to belong.

Peripheral Route Processing: load your ads full of colourful, pleasant images, humorous or popular subject matter, or celebrities. Visual anchors. 10 / The 6 Weapons of Influence – Shortcuts to Persuasion. 1.

Comparison: The power of your peers. Bandwagon effect. Social proof. Need to belong. Everybody is doing it.

11) Message Organisation – Attaining Critical Clarity. Ads must be organised and wellstructured. Confusing ads and creatives won’t sell anything. 12) Examples vs. Statistics – And the Winner is… Examples by far. Emotion is the key to sales. Testimonials and endorsements are more engaging. 13) Message Sideness – Dual Role Persuasion. Talk about both you and your competitors. 14) Repetition and Redundancy – The Familiarity Factor. People don’t start seeing your ad until you run it seven times. 15) Rhetorical Questions – Interesting, Aren’t They? “Aren’t you glad you used Dial?” “How do you spell relief?” “What would you do for a Klondike?” 16) Evidence – Quick! Sell Me The Facts! Evidence can be facts, figures, testimonials, endorsements, research, charts, videos. As long as it’s real. 17) Heuristics – Serving Billions of Lazy Brains Daily. “Length implies strength.” Long copy pages, lots of media, testimonials, etc. Long = good. There you go! Next time you’re creating something to sell something else (marketing) then use this handy checklist to make sure you cover the persuasion essentials! Or, why not get us to look after this for you If you’d rather focus on building your business and let the experts look after the online marketing for you then get in touch

Entrepreneur Insights

This month we are interviewing Rockstar mentor Robert Stell Robert qualified as an accountant in 1988 and set up his accountancy business in 2001. He thinks that “to boast…it’s professionally distasteful!” but is pleased with how the company is growing, and despite the recession they have doubled in size over the past six years.

“Robert likes small businesses, has much empathy with them, and firmly believes that there are businesses at this level that benefit the most from mentoring. Recently he decided to summarise all his knowledge in a book aimed at the budding entrepreneur entitled ‘Up is Where We Go From Here’, available from Troubador Books.

3. What would you say was the ONE THING that made the difference in your professional success?

What one thing about your childhood, personality or upbringing do you think had the biggest influence on your becoming an entrepreneur?

Start earlier!! I didn’t set up my business properly until I was 40…seven years later than I ought to.

During my childhood it became increasingly obvious that I had ‘issues’ with authority. From an early age I have always resisted being told what to do. Opportunities to bend and break the rules were usually taken! I could deduce from this behaviour that I was a troublemaker…OR that I had a restless mind and a need to challenge accepted thoughts and practices. Clearly the latter frame of mind is key to the successful entrepreneur. 2. How did you do at school and what did you most love or hate about school?

One thing about me?? Determination…..the will to never, ever, ever give up. 4. What ONE THING would you do differently, knowing what you know now?

5. What really gets you buzzed NOW about being in business? What fulfills you most? I love everything about the process of making money…so as an accountant I LOVE listening to my client’s ideas and schemes. Sometimes I can advise, sometimes I can’t, but to hear someone else’s enthusiasm is a real joy. You can read more about Robert’s entrepreneur’s profile here www. rockstargroup.co.uk/mentors - Robert Stell or get in touch with him through www. bradurystell.co.uk - P: 0208 977 1114

I was good at sport …and gambling…and making people laugh. Sadly, although it was an expensive school, I did not receive a good education. I never really hated any of it, like everyone else at our school, I endured it with grim humour. My well attuned sense of humour developed at that school.

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