Author Archives for Igor Belogolovsky

The best marketing messages speak to me like I’m smart.

Big brands create big-budget, head-in-the-clouds taglines and messages. Case in point: AT&T’s tagline is “Your world. Delivered.” What does that mean?

That’s all well and good for big brands — I suppose — but I expect more from your nimble, performance-focused business.

State benefits in simple English. It’s great to have voice, flavor and humor, but let’s not be ridiculous. Consider the Yahoo! Mail marketing message below. Am I to take seriously that an online email solution will “bring my words to life?”

I know what email programs are capable of. One inbox might be better than another, but it’s not likely that one of the benefits will be breathing precious life into my daily compositions.

Now let’s look at Gmail’s message.

I get it. Lots of space, less spam, and mobile access. Take it or leave it. This is a company I believe in, so needless to say, I’m biased. But there are no outrageous promises here about bringing my words to life — only a few benefits very relevant to what I expect of an online email service. These are, for the most part, the things I care about.

Let’s take another example: Mint.com versus Quicken. Yes, they’re both Intuit companies now, so there are similarities, but to make my point, I’ll just look at the biggest words on the homepage of each.

Mint: The best free way to manage your money

Yup. I get it. What is it? An online tool to manage my money. Why should I use it? It’s apparently the best free way to do that.

Quicken: Find balance with Quicken

Punny, yes. But will this personal finance tool really bring “balance” to my life? Unlikely. Why not use the biggest words on the page to tell me what it is and why I should use it?

Your marketing message can be clever without speaking to people like they’re fools. In fact, any message — all marketing aside — is better received when you make people feel smart. That’s one thing about clever marketing: when it hits, you feel no pain.

What are some marketing messages that treat you kind? Can you name some that suck? Tell us in the comments, or better yet, tell us on Twitter.

I have started four companies.  For the first one, I raised over $10 million from venture capitalists.  I also spent over $10 million.  In between, the company generated virtually no revenue.  A year after the raising funds, the company was out of business.

For my last business, I spent about 300 bucks and then got profitable.  The company went on to make millions, and I literally never had a day without profit.

Through all that experience, I learned the difference between shopping and working.

Shopping: Hiring a design agency for $2,500 to create a logo that is recognizable, memorable, brandable, and cute, then spending three months tweaking the logo to make it perfect.

Working: Realizing that the brand makes the logo memorable, not the other way, and then hiring a guy off Craiglist to create a “good enough” logo in two days for $50.

Shopping: Knowing that you need a “web strategy” and allocating $5,000/month to social media.

Working: Knowing that the web strategy is a means to an end (to make money) and tightly controlling your spend while testing and measuring every action you take while eliminating the non-performers.

Shopping: Realizing that you are not at the top of page one for paid search on the keyword “gullible” so you accept Google’s recommended bid of $4.56 per click.

Working: Realizing that the goal is to make money off your clicks even if that means not being able to advertise on every keyword where you desire to see your brand name.

Shopping: Feeling overwhelmed and then hiring someone to help relieve the burden.

Working: Feeling overwhelmed and then taking the time to prioritize your tasks and only focusing on the ones that will bring money in the door while eliminating the others.

Shopping: Haggling with a new employee over his or her salary request of $50,000 per year.

Working: Realizing that the salary request is not the problem; it’s that you don’t need a full time employee.  You can afford to pay a nice hourly wage to this person but to hire him or her for just the ten hours a week of real work that you need taken care of.

This guest post was written by Jason Yelowitz, author of The Bathrobe Millionaire.

There’s a lot of bad Google AdWords ad copy out there. Here’s a brief how-to guide for self-starters cranking away on their first campaign.

1. Lose the brand name

Unless the weight of your brand name can be likened to Coca Cola, or unless the search term in question happens to be your brand name, nobody cares about the name of your company. Instead, focus your ad on convincing the user you’ve got what she’s lookin’ for.

In the example below, I searched for “mugs.” I know it’s hard to resist the urge to plug the name of your store into the ad copy — sorry, Amsterdam Printing — but in the 1.4 seconds I’ve dedicated to scanning your ad, if I don’t see “mugs,” it’s over.

2. Promise instant gratification

Tailor your message to the search term as closely as possible. Your ad for “find good tweezers” should include “Find Good Tweezers” in the copy. Show a different ad when the search is “best tweezers” — that’s right — use the word “best” in the copy.

3. Deliver instant gratification

Whatever your ad promises, that is what you shall deliver. Take the user to a landing page that matches as closely as possible the search term and the ad you’re showing for that term. If your ad is for a free white paper on ad copy tips, there damn well better be a free white paper on that topic close at hand when I click your ad, or I’m leavin’.

4. Test profusely

All kinds of stuff has been purported to get clickthroughs. Here are a few ideas.

• Try capitalizing the first letter of each word. It’s been shown to increase clickthrough rate (CTR).
• Tout the awesome publications that have written about you. Do your customers care about the credibility of your brand?
• Try using the word “free” vs. not using “free” and compare conversion rates.
• Draw up a list of benefits and test an ad that focuses on each one.
• Don’t test too many components at once. Try 2 different headlines with the same description, for example.

5. Use that display URL to your advantage

When the user’s search term is found in your ad, Google makes it bold. The more bold in your ad, the better your CTR. So put the search term in your display URL and measure whether CTR increases. Remember, the only requirement is that your root domain matches the destination URL; what comes after that is 100% up to you.