Wizard of Ads Clay Campbell

Sometimes we need a Miracle

I’m taking a break from Waiting for Your Cat To Bark? to write today because I’ve been too busy to read it the past few days.
As I was talking to a client this week I realized they needed a miracle. I told my client of the two boys fishing on the lake in a small boat. A fierce looking storm started brewing and they were afraid. One said, “What will we do?” They other said, “Why don’t we pray?” The first one said, “Why don’t you pray while I row toward shore?”
Some times in life we feel like we need a miracle for our problem. Someone needs to pray and someone needs to row really hard. I was looking through the Monday Morning Memo archives and came across this one that I’d never seen before. I’m passing it along to anyone who may need a miracle today.
May God Bless you
More later,
Clay

Do You Need A Miracle?
Finances. Relationships. Health... the tall monsters we face in life's dark ocean when we awaken underwater, alone in the night, not knowing what to do.

Ever been there?

People respond to deep crisis in different ways. There are:

1. Handwringers who talk about the problem to anyone who will listen. "You just won't believe what I'm going through."
2. Dark worriers who internalize the problem, then grow despondent and depressed. "Life sucks and then you die."
3. Positive thinkers who prop themselves up with platitudes: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." "God helps those who help themselves." "It's not the size of dog in the fight that counts, it's the size of fight in the dog," etc.
4. Analytical planners who gather the data, calculate the odds, do whatever makes the most sense, then resign themselves to the eventual outcome. "I've done all that I can do."
5. People who abandon steps 1 through 4 and run to God like little girls. "Daddy! Daddy! Save me!"

Does it surprise you that I've always been part of the run-to-God crowd?

I'm not trying to be religious here. I'm trying to be helpful.

Many of you will find today's memo completely irrelevant. I realize that. But with 31,000 readers, I've got to believe that at least a few hundred feel they are suffocating in darkness. (If you're in the sunshine-and-song, problem-free majority, you're free to quit reading right now if you like:)

It seems to me that we're reluctant to run to God for different reasons:

1. Doubt. "God doesn't exist and I'll not demean myself by caving in to that Myth after a lifetime of self-sufficiency."
2. Pride. "I ought to be able to handle this on my own."
3. Religiosity. "God is sovereign. If I suffer, it is because He has willed it."
4. Shame. "I haven't earned the right to ask God for anything."

Doubt has never been a problem for me. Maybe someday I'll tell you why.

Pride is one of my less endearing traits. Frankly, I'm as territorial an alpha-male as any redneck bastard that ever drank Budweiser. But I have no pride when I ponder God. I'm arrogant. But I'm not stupid.

Religiosity. I agree with Arthur C. Clarke, who said, "You can't have it both ways. You can't have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself." In other words, I believe a once-sovereign God gave up absolute control of our circumstances on the day he gave us free will and put us in charge of this world. "Religiosity" is also what Tom, a friend of Anne Lamott, was talking about when he said, "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

Shame. Like you, I've never earned the right to run to God like a little girl crying "Daddy, Daddy, Save me." Certainly not. Instead, I take the position, "Jesus, let's not make this about how good I am. Let's make this about how good you are."

Call me crazy. Call me delusional. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I believe in a God who likes me and is on my side. And I am no stranger to miracles.

Do you need a miracle? Like it or not, I've given you what has always worked for me. It's the very best advice I've got: "God, let's not make this about how good I am. Let's make it about how good you are."

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday.

Are there things for which you are thankful?

Roy H. Williams
PS – I wrote this memo fully aware that 4 groups of people will complain:

Frustrated Customers go Somewhere Else

Frustrated Customers go somewhere else.
Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?
How many times have you looked for a product or service and been frustrated that you couldn't find it? Or they didn't give you the info you wanted?
Many. Especially online.
The Eisenberg Bros with Lisa T. Davis make a very good point in chapter eight Maintaining Persuasive Momentum.
The point is when we shop in stores in person or online and we can't seem to get the information we want we go elsewhere. Usually very quickly. In the last ten years the Internet has changed shopping soooooo much. More than in the last 200 or so years combined.

A customer today is more educated, prepared and she also has many more alternatives. The ever-increasing sales objection: “I can get it cheaper on the Internet,” will never go away. The Internet has brought today’s customer immediate access to all of the information she needs to make an intelligent decision, and an intelligent purchase.
Ten years ago the average person shopped at 4.1 dealerships before a purchase. Today because of the Internet, it's 1.7.
Buying a vehicle is very personal and consumers will go online look around, shop, and compare features and pricing. Today’s buyer is less susceptible to the old fashioned “sales pitch,” and sometimes much more informed than most of the salespeople she meets about what she needs or wants. I use the female gender here because my Partner Michele Miller says that 70% of the time a female is either buying the car or is significantly influencing the male if they're buying it together.

Much of the time neither the salesperson nor the website answers our questions before they take us to "check out now".
I'm learning a lot about helping my own customers at the Kentucky Opry Family Music Show better by putting to use things I've learned so far in reading Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?
My Dad always said, "knowledge unapplied is about as usless as tits on a boar" Why learn a bunch of ways you can help your business grow then not go put those ideas to use??
More Later
Clay

Happy father's Day

It's my favorite time of the day. Morning. A new start on life. God has given me another day to be thankful. I'm truly for the opportunity to be a dad. My sweet wife Barbie and I have raised three tremendous boys. Clayton 25, Cody 21, and Casey 18.
I started my Father's day like everyday; in my easy chair with coffee and a book. I read two more chapters in Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?
On page 43 it says, "Selling is persuading someone to do something. Whether your trying to get someone to enter a contest, rinse out a used glass, or click through to the next webpage, you are engaged in sales."
I have certainly been engaged in sales then. It began when I first started to get my 25 year old to go potty in the potty chair.
My life has become more complicated as a Wizard of Ads Partner, and I'm having the time of my life helping businesses to grow through better strategy, above average advertising and raising their rankings in the search engines.
Even though I'm busy, I'm never too busy to stop and be thankful for my family; my top priority.
God has given us good health and a very strong bond of love and trust that has held us together in a world of 50% divorce rates, broken homes and dismantled families.
One of the most graifying things in my life is is doing what I do with my three sons on weekends.

Happy Fathers Day to you,
A Thankful Dad
Clay

Why marketing is simple but hard.

Are you “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?”

I’m on page 42 of the Eisenberg Brothers new book “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?”
In the chapter why marketing is simple but hard, British businessman George Smith is quoted as saying:

“ The cleverest salesman in the world, the best writer of advertising in the world, cannot alone, continue to make sales of anything which has not in itself selling merit; and on the other hand, the worst salesman in the universe, supplemented by the worst copywriter in the universe, cannot avoid making sales of something which has in the selling idea… Real selling begins with the conception of the article, goes through every branch of the business, and the salesman should not be a mere individual but the interpreter to the buyer… Real selling is mutual; it is bringing to a man some thing he needs or wants… Selling is not a separate division of business; it is business… The selling ideas are put in by the factory, and therefore the factory should know the consumer…The best is that which the public determines to be the best.

Well now, that’s a mouthful George. Back in 1917 when George wrote that people were a bit more wordy.

Today, and everyday, I preach this to small business owners who want to get more bang for their marketing buck. I tell them that word of mouth has gone crazy. It’s become your greatest enemy or best friend because of consumer interconnectivity. Today’s consumers can’t be duped or convinced or persueded by overproduced, hyped up, super duper advertising when one of the consumers friends sends them a text message that says “ hey don’t go to restaurant XYZ, it sucks really bad”.
Or: “don’t waste a night on that movie it ain’t worth it.”
Or: “my sister bought a car from them and they never would fix the stuff they said they would fix and she really got ripped off!”
Or the positive side: “That Chiropractor Dr. Jones is the one I go to. He is amazing. My back was killing me and he fixed it. I trust him. I went to a couple others and they did me no good. But Dr Jones fixed me up. Been going there about two years now, and it’s the most awesome thing to be able to walk around with no pain.”
Now folks that’s the way people really are!!
The Eisenberg Brothers point out so well in their book that it’s the consumers experience that’s important. Great advertising will make a business that’s has happy customers grow expotentially. Great advertising will only make what was going to happen anyway happen quicker.
While on the other hand, no brilliant, well laid out, ad campaign will help a business grow when the customers of that business are emailing, blogging and text messaging their friends saying “Don’t go there”
What do you do when you have spent a lot of your hard earned dollars on advertising and the consumers are ignoring it??
You can start by read the Eiesnbrothers new book.

I recommend every business owner who really cares about getting more bang for their marketing buck buy it and read it asap.
More later
Clay

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?

The wait is over... not for your cat but for the book itself. Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?, the new book from Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg (along with the incomparable Lisa Davis) hit the shelves this week. I went in to Books a Million and bought a copy for 20 bucks. Then I read two chapters this morning and I went to Amazon and bought 3 more copies (for $12 each) that I'll be giving to some clients. I can assure you this is one book you're going to want to get your hands on. Plain and simple, it's all about persuading customers to do business with you when they ignore marketing. And this team of authors does a great job. Read an excerpt from the book here. .
In the book, you'll learn:
· How the customer's buying process works in a cross-channel, new media-driven marketplace
· Why customers respond differently today than they used to
· How to use the Web to generate persuasive momentum across multiple channels
· How the various touch-points within a business affect each other
· How to guide prospects through the buying process at every customer touch-points
· How personality traits influence customer behavior online and offline
· How to anticipate the different angles from which customers approach your business
· How to identify and provide meaningful answers to your customers' questions at each stage of their buying process
· How to begin implementing Persuasion Architecture™ techniques for your business
In addition to the book, you also get an 80-minute DVD of a conversation about the book that took place between the Eisenbergs and some of the great marketing minds of the day .

You can also read reviews from folks like Seth Godin, Jeffrey Gitomer and Roy H. Williams.
This is a book everyone in the business world is going to be talking about.

More Later, after I read a few more chapters.
Clay

If I want something I go out and buy it. I don’t want a sales pitch.

My birthday is coming up in a couple months so I wondering what I want because my sweet wife will say to me, “Honey what do you want for your birthday.” She looks at ads, and clips coupons. Then she will go shopping and shopping and shopping.
If I want something I go out and buy it. I don’t want a sales pitch.
My resourceful and accomplished Wizard of Ads Partner Michele Miller says, “ Women in the United States control and spend 85% of the money.” I told Michele, “Yeah, that’s right Michele; and men spend the other 15% buying things for women!” (A little humor there to lighten things up on this serious subject.)
My process for shopping and buying is different than Barbie. (My adorable wife of 26 years)
First I come to realization that I need it or want it. Then I go out and buy it and bring it home.
She can go to the Opry Mills Mall in Nashville and spend all day there. I don’t know how in the world she does it. When I go there I try to park as close to the store as I can, I go in and buy what I’m after and walk straight back to my car and leave. Though I take the occasional detour to include Starbucks. I tend to do the same thing at home in Paducah Ky. Whether I’m going to one of those big box stores or a small owner operator store. Personally I like to go where I know the owner or manager. (Don’t you?)
I tend to be a more of a relational shopper rather than transactional most of the time.

My wife is more cognizant of what’s on sale than me. So she will “shop around” a lot. She pays much more attention to the little shopper paper that comes in the mail each week than me. When I want something, I go buy it. Two guys selling insurance came by yesterday. At the end of their presentation they encouraged us to “go ahead and fill out the paperwork.” To buy it now. He said, “Is there any reason you would want to get the coverage you need today?” I just don’t like being “sold” or urged to buy something “today”. That’s old school selling. I urge you to take a look at new school selling by my Partner Steve Clark.
These urgent, pushy, and over used cliché statements in mass media advertising often have the opposite effect on a consumer than the business owner is hoping for:
XYZ Furniture is having “our big inventory reduction sale”
“Prices will never be this low again”
“We have the best deals in town”
“Free financing for 3 years”
“Tent sale ends Friday!”
“There’s only two of these beauties left”
“It’s our year end 50% off sale”
“This special financing deal ends in three days”
“Hurry, this offer ends this Sunday”
My wife on the other hand loves to go to those places having those kinds of deals and sales. She says you can find all kinds of great bargains. She says we save all kinds of money. She wants to just go and “see what they have”. I never want to do that! I don’t give a rip what they have. If I want something I just go out and buy it. Do you know anybody like that? Just call me weird.
Many times in the last couple years both of us have gone to the Internet with our differing ways of shopping. She likes to shop online. I don’t. I may however do a lot of looking for some particular thing I’m hunting for at the time. Advertising though, that urges me to take advantage of some special offer whether online, on radio, TV, newspaper, or the salesperson in the store, just irritates me. I ignore it. If it happens in person in the store I rarely go back. The newest thing in “get it now sales pitches” happens on the way through the check out lane. It’s the Cashier Con.
Are very many other people like me in their shopping preferences? Yes
Are there many like my wife? Yes
Should your advertising and marketing efforts appeal to both? Yes
The Future Of Ad Writing is about advertising that persuades both.
More later,
Clay

Clay is a writer of ad campaigns, a business owner, and author of two books. His third book is in the works now. The working title is More Bang for your Marketing Buck: How a Small Business Can Get Above Average Results from your Advertising Dollars For more info on Clay go to www.claycampbell.biz