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What if a marketing expert who’s made a cool coupla hundred million for large and small businesses
dropped you a line and gave you some free pointers on how to make your business profitable? What would you consider a smart response to be?
At the end of this post I’ll tell you and you gotta promise not to laugh, because it’s not polite to laugh at someone’s impending misfortune.
The Setup
Here’s what happened, as you know I’m interested in how science is proving that consciousness could be determining the external reality we experience.
That’s why I have a weekly series called Heisenberg Fridays. It’s not because it’s a hot topic and gets me oodles of traffic.
So I clicked an ad in a newsletter and was taken to the Subscribe page of a new magazine specializing in something called ”super consciousness.” Ok . . . bit of a grandiose title but I do admire ambition.
But right there was the first Red Flag in best practices — the link sent me to the subscribe page! Not the landing page (apparently they didn’t create one for that promotion), not to a page describing the benefits I would receive for forking over $33 a year for a 6 UNPROVEN issues.
Nope. I was supposed to just take it on faith that they would deliver on their Big Promise.
Plus, they were making and had made a number of other errors I outline in the email below. Look, I like to do good in the universe and 3 years ago a similar-themed glossy magazine went T-U due to poor subscription sales and a cascading series of Worst Practices and hey, if I could take 15-20 minutes out of a busy schedule to help make the world a better place (to say nothing of saving a few jobs) I’m happy to help.
Here’s my helpful (but wasted) email sent to them and the laughable response comes after it. Enjoy. I know I sure did.
=============================================================================================
Hi Folks,
Saw your ad in the [name deleted], clicked on it and was taken with the audacious premise of your magazine. I saw a few things that concerned me and thought I would dash off some ideas to help out. See, there’s an art and science to getting subscriptions online and off, with job #1 being building your in-house list, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
About your homepage - it’s the most valuable real estate of your website, not the subscription page (though ultimately, the idea should be to drive people there).
While the cover of your proposed magazine is good to show there’s a viable product, it would be to your greater advantage to create a smaller pic of the cover, and instead put a benefit-laden headline up there instead, followed by targeted content. Something like this, re-purposed from page 2 of your site, (in 16 point sans-serif type like Verdana or Arial and bolded):
‘Discover Who You REALLY Are.
Realize The Innate, Dormant Potential You Possess.
What Abilities Do You Have That You Never Knew About?
What Others Await Your Discovery?
All Of It Will Be Revealed In Every Issue Of [name removed] . . .’
Plus, a place to opt-in for a free [name removed] newsletter which would give you permission to periodically market to all those who signed up for your premium, but not a subscription. At least not yet. More people will kick the tires on your initial offering than sign up, so it’s best to plan for that and leverage it to your advantage.
It’s similar to how they sell subscriptions to high-end financial newsletters. The same principles that build lists of hundreds of thousands of subscribers, each paying $2,000+/year will apply to your $33/year subscription.
About your ad:
I clicked through because of curiosity. A strong way to get more qualified click-throughs is to offer them something. A way to make this work would be to make your next ad offer some premium that has high perceived value (but low actual cost to you). The content could read something like ‘Click here to unlock your mind and reveal your full potential . . .’
Okay, that was rough, but hopefully you get the idea. I’d urge you to not just take my word for it, you can prove it yourself by split-testing. I’d bet you on which draws the most click-throughs and builds a qualified list the fastest.
In sending this to you, I realize that there’s a cultural stigma that free advice is worth what you pay for it, but I was captivated enough by the idea of your magazine and while I had a few moments, thought I would jot down some suggestions that would help and send them off to you. What I’ve outlined has been successfully implemented by many companies.
Hope it helps and best of luck.
=================================================
What kind of response did I get? Are you sitting down?
Just a standard “Thank you and I’ll present your ideas at our next staff meeting’ from the publisher.” Man, talk about the lights are on but nobody’s home! If someone like that were to offer me powerful free advice and took the time to write, I would have at least asked for an appointment to get more detail. But no, the publisher couldn’t be bothered, apparently.
You know, this only happens when I give valuable information. If they had paid for it, there would have been several people on the call, it would have been recorded . . . sigh, someday I’m gonna learn my lesson about that.
I predict that like many magazines, they’ll last a year or two (maybe) and then go T-U. Saw that one coming and you read it here first.
Moral Of The Story
Look, I’m not celebrating their impending demise. I’m hoping you, dear reader, will take this as a learning opportunity and shore up your best and worst practices so you won’t have to learn these kind of lesson the hard and expensive way.
You see . . . Best practices. Worst practices. The success or failure of any venture is there very early on in the company’s DNA. Though I wish them luck, I’m fairly certain that after the numbers come in from the August launch, they’re going to have a staff ‘come-to-Jesus-meeting.’
Can’t you almost hear Maxwell Smart saying, “Missed it by that much!”
P.S. - I shouldn’t need to say this but I’m going to because I spare you from the blathering negative comments I receive that contribute nothing to the conversation. This was not a troll for business. I’m booked well into the Fall and besides, they’re a start-up and well . . . you know how I feel about that. Shield’s Up! and avoid whenever possible.
Like what you read? Then click here to buy me a coffee.
By Walter |
Topics: Client Top Secret, Marketing Mishaps, Pro Analysis |
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Comments
dropped you a line and gave you some free pointers on how to make your business profitable? What would you consider a smart response to be?