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Lunch & Learn Important Links:
- DEAL OF THE WEEK (LAST DAY!!): Mike Capuzzi’s SMART Ideas newsletter – Only $5 for US subscribers, $10 for International
- Click here to download the transcript from today’s Lunch & Learn
Lunch & Learn Transcript:
Hi everyone! Happy Leap Year. I hope you’re having a fabulous extra day. This week we’re going to be talking about key ways to generate marketing ideas. I feel like I haven’t talked to you guys in so long, because we have our bi-weekly calls now…
A few side notes, if you were on the last Lunch and Learn you will know that I had a lot of trouble recording the GIMP tutorial. And I know that it was very in-depth and a little complicated and I know that a lot of people really wanted to see the replay. So, I’m doing the webinar next week. I’m going to show you how to create a little bit of different pieces as opposed to what we created last time. But if you were on last time, then feel free to join me again. It’d be a great refresher. You know, maybe you can follow along with me this time if you downloaded GIMP. If you weren’t on make sure to attend because GIMP is basically — if you don’t know what it is it’s just like Photoshop, but it’s free. So, you can create some really CopyDoodle pieces, banner ads, buttons for your website, headers, email stuff, really cool stuff in GIMP, so make sure to attend in two weeks.
Today we have our Members Only Lunch and Learn Deal of the Week. So, I want you to leap at the chance to save. You only have two days left in order to get Mike’s Smart Ideas Print Newsletter for only $5. The price is going to go up in two days. And if you checked it out, you probably got the emails on it, so make sure to go back to those emails. I have the link on www.CopyDoodles.com/blog, but it’s a really, really helpful tool, and it’s perfect and it definitely goes along with today’s discussion, which is key ways to generate marketing ideas, because this newsletter will help you generate marketing ideas. You get a template each month, so it basically gives you a done for you marketing idea too, which you can pull. This month I believe it’s St. Patrick’s — really cool stuff that you can use on emails and websites. There’s also a gift certificate template, which has some really exciting different ways you can tweak it and make it look cool — I think that’s what it is.
So, moving on today we’re talking about key ways to generate marketing ideas. Some of these ways you might already be using, and I’m sure and I hope that you already are, but I just wanted to kind of compile different ways that Mike and I come up with marketing ideas and how we do our marketing. If it feels repetitive to you, then I’m sorry, but you should definitely be thinking about these types of things when you’re creating any of your marketing or doing anything in your business.
So, the first thing that we always look at is we look at competitors. We follow them on social media, we get on their mailing lists — not just competitors of CopyDoodles, but other marketers that are out there, other business owners that are out there that are very successful. If you are a brick and mortar store, go into stores not only that you’re your competitors, but stores that are in the same location as you, right down the street from you and see what they’re doing and what they’re doing to bring in business. Also check out pricing because pricing can be a big thing. So, if your competitor’s prices are lower what do you do that is different that gives people reason that your pricing might be higher, but they want to come into your business instead of your competitors?
I’m telling you to steal ideas, at all, like the picture that I have here, but just look at what people are doing. We’re constantly looking at what people are doing.
Also look at people who aren’t in your industry. Look at huge corporations, because they always hit marketing trends right away, like those Old Spice ads that brought in millions of dollars worth of profit for them. What are people doing to get attention and to be different in the marketplace? And a lot of times you can pull ideas from — obviously
Old Spice has millions of dollars to spend on marketing, but you can do this on a smaller scale for your business and you should be thinking about it. So who is forward and innovative? Who has a ton of fans and followers on Facebook, or on Twitter? For example, you might have a company that you admire and really love, but they don’t have a lot of fans and people talking on Facebook, or maybe they’re just not interacting on Facebook, they’re not writing back to people. Maybe they’re not somebody you should be following.
You definitely want to follow someone who has an all around great presence through print media, social media, email, all kinds of things, so make sure you’re following
them — pull phrases, looks at the types of emails that you get from people in your industry and outside of your industry and look at the subject lines and see what subject lines you are more likely to open, think about what subject lines your customers might be more likely to open, then how can you take what another industry is doing and use it in your industry? This is a really great way to get more customers because if you know of an industry that has a younger crowd and you’re trying to attract a younger crowd, what are they doing in order to be successful? And how can you do that and do it in your industry, because your industry might not be doing something like that and you’ll be the one that stands out and looks different, so people are definitely going to be attracted to you, so if you do this before everybody else in your industry, in your niche, then you’re definitely going to stand out.
Definitely look at industries your customers are interested in or potential customers, like I just said, if you’re going for a younger crowd or something like that. But, what are things that your current customers talk about, like, go find your customers on Facebook, see what they’re doing, see what they’re liking, just get a really good idea for what your best customers are interested in and then maybe you can even see the types of industries that they are connected with, the types of businesses that they’re following and you’ll be able to connect with those business in a JV partner-type way in order to grab more attention of those types of customers.
So sometimes it’s more than just marketing, it’s looking outside the box and seeing what your customers, what your potential customers are doing, how people are marketing to them, and then how you can get involved with those companies that might have a larger marketing budget, maybe they put you on their page, maybe you do some cross-promoting, there’s always different avenues that you can turn down.
Junk mail. Definitely save all of your junk mail in a file folder. I don’t care if it’s junk mail that you think is scammy, or if it’s junk mail that you necessarily wouldn’t open, just save it in a file folder, maybe even save it in two file folders — one for junk mail that caught your attention and one for junk mail that didn’t look good, so then when you have to create a direct mail campaign, or even when you’re creating an online campaign or something like that, you can go back to those folders and see what you should do, pull some ideas, pull some layouts from that. Don’t copy it exactly, but kind of pull ideas from it. And then also look at what you shouldn’t do — what didn’t capture your attention? What annoyed you? What didn’t you like? Don’t do that on your mail when you send it out.
You can pull wording, and make sure to look at all of it — lay it all out, see what you like and what you want to do. Sometimes you can pull some really great ideas from this. Mike collects, as you know, if you’ve been following his TV show, he collects swipe file images and things all the time, he’s always collecting different marketing pieces that he receives. So, when he creates a template, maybe like a CopyTemplate or something that you’re using, or even the templates for the Smart Ideas, sometimes those ideas come from a big mass of all of the junk mail that he’s received and he just comes up with different ideas that you can use in order to stand out and be different.
Also look at search engines. Google keywords that your customers may search with. So if you’re selling — let’s say you’re a boutique and you sell clothing, what would your customer search with? Would they search ‘Philadelphia clothing boutique’? So search that and see what companies come up and see why they’re coming up for that and what they’re selling and what their offers are. Also check out the ads that come up on the
right-hand side, because the ads that come up and capture your attention on Google are definitely ads that you should pull words from, pull ideas from, because in Google especially you can only have so many words when you create a Google Ad Words ad, so that could be a perfect subject line for an email, that could be a perfect Facebook ad, if you’re doing any Facebook advertising, or even a Facebook post. Definitely check those out and see what people are doing there.
And also check out your competitors. Google your competitors, see if they have any ads on the sides of the Google that come up that you can tweak. See what your competitors are doing, how their website is laid out, see how they’re emailing people. And then look at it and see how you can be different.
There’s also a really cool tool called the Google Keyword Tool. I just book marked it, but if you just google ‘Google keyword tool’ it will come up. It will be like the first search. And what you do is, if you’ve never used this before, is it will tell you how many people using Google search for certain keywords per month. So, say I was typing in ‘marketing results’ or ‘increase marketing results’. So as you can see nobody is searching for ‘increase marketing results’, that the first item that comes up. But, if I scroll down I can see that people are searching for similar terms. They’re looking for increase in web traffic. They’re looking for direct mail agencies. They’re looking for increases in marketing. So these are just the types of keywords then that you want to take and put into all of your marketing. You definitely want to put these keywords on your website because people are searching for them. But, make sure when you look at this that you’re looking at global monthly searches, because that means that search engine results, 368,000 people are searching for that keyword per month, whereas ‘improving website traffic’ only 1,900 are searching for something like that. So if I click global monthly searches it will actually show me the highest amount of monthly on all of these items and then it will go down to the lowest.
So if you type in keywords for your business, you can pull up keywords that might be a little more relevant, just by how many people are searching for it. It will give you a good idea of what people are thinking when they’re looking for you, looking for your business, and what people are thinking when they receiving marketing from you. So, maybe ‘increase marketing results’ might not be a great thing to put on the outside of an envelope, or it might not be a great subject line, but ‘how to increase sales’ might be a lot better — it’s easier, simpler to read and people are searching for it, it may be that your customers are searching for it too. So you can definitely pull from that.
Then also look in forums. If you google a lot of times different forums will come up. Maybe if you’re in a certain niche or you’re in a certain industry you know of different forums that people will go on, maybe it’s a Yahoo question forum, or it’s just a forum that just pops up out of nowhere that people are on and they’re talking about — even on Amazon you can see reviews of different products and people comment back and forth to each other. Look in all of these places and see what people need help with, what they’re asking questions about. And look at the way they talk and the way that they type, because you want to talk to them exactly like they talk to everybody else in the forums. Obviously, you’re not going to use the slang verbiage that they use. But, if you see what people need help with, maybe you can easily tweak your marketing very slightly to respond to that need.
If a lot of people are really worried and they can’t find your skincare company and they can’t find skincare to help with a certain type of acne and you know that you have this natural skincare that people are looking for that would be perfect, not only, you know, answer in the forum and let people know about it, without being too spammy and scammy, but maybe there’s a really great market for that one product and you should do a small marketing campaign for it, for people in a certain age range, location, whatever it is that are looking the forum, that could be a great way to start a new campaign.
Also watch online TV shows. Online TV shows are a great way to get information, they’re a great way to come up with different marketing ideas. TED TV is really fun if you’ve never been on it, and I hope that you have. If you’ve at least heard of it, if you’re a business owner, it has a lot of really great presentations from successful business people that give you innovation and motivation, and a lot of times they give you really quirky and cool different ways that you can tweak your marketing and different ideas.
Mike Capuzzi’s 3 in 3. He doesn’t do the 3 in 3 shows anymore, but we still have all of the past shows at www.MikeCapuzzi.tv and if you’ve never seen any of the shows, this is a great time to go back and look at it and see the different types of ideas that you can come up with. Also CopyDoodles TV, we do still have some new shows all the time. So, make sure that out regularly, and check out past CopyDoodles TVs, even if you’ve seen them before, you might come up with new ideas and look at them with fresh eyes and you might come up with different ways that you can tweak your marketing.
The Busy Buzz for Women Entrepreneurs — check that out. There’s always some pretty cool marketing ideas.
Marie Forleo also has a really great Q&A TV sessions, mostly geared towards women, but it can definitely help you with some questions you might have about your business.
Andrew Locke has Help My business.
And No BS Live, they don’t produce their TV show anymore either, but definitely check out their past episodes, because there’s a lot of really great marketing ideas that you can pull from, that you can use.
And then finally, I didn’t mean for this to turn out to be kind of salesy at the very end, but if you don’t have the Smart Ideas Print newsletter and you’re looking for some ideas, even if it’s just for March, then pick it up. It’s only $5. Try it out. Check it out. There’s a lot of really great marketing ideas in there that you can pull from, especially if you don’t have the time or you don’t have somebody on your team that has the time, you can definitely pull from there.
I know this week’s webinar was short, but does anybody have an Q&A? Any questions for me, whether it is for this webinar or any CopyDoodles questions?
The next topic in two weeks will be Creating Better Than Ever CopyDoodles Pieces in GIMP, so make sure to join me there. And, then today’s webinar, the replay will be at www.copydoodles.com, as long as it doesn’t delete like last week’s. So, make sure to stayed tuned for it.
Thank you for joining me and I will see you guys in two weeks where we’ll be talking about GIMP. If anybody has any questions afterwards you can find me on live chat. Have a great day.