Liven up your Advertising (The Banshees are Screaming)

I am sure you have all seen the cringe worthy ads where the owner or his/her family do their own ads and they are awful, but make compelling viewing. Why ios this? WEll their amateurish or odd presentation grate on the nerves when one is used to well crafted ads from Madison Avenue. We tend to remember the best and the worst of a category and aggregate all the rest.

I am not encouraging you to write bad ad copy, but have some fun. I got a great response when I turned the photo of myself on my website upside down. Why? becauise it was different and people noticed the change and purchased the product.

The main thing is to get the buyers attention, not an easy feat these days.

Here are some fun ad titles:

Mrs Browns Jam gains a Cosmic audience

Pope Francis sells his donkey

These tires will last 5 miles - fantastic value

Have some fun and break out of the mould.

DK

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Persistent Messaging

One of the tenets of communication is that you need to consistently deliver and repeat your message. A consistent and regular message will get results. I have been advertising Click Track Profit since its inception and I have been using the same message over that time in the safelists I use. When I was told to do this, I was bewildered. Surely I should change meesage content to keep interest up? Well the experts say No, keep your message consistent. This does not work, however, if your message is junk in the first place.

I tried out my message using different headings and content to get the best result. Once I had the formula I kept using it.

So if you see a heading that says WARNING - Highly Addictive!, chances are that it is from me.

On a personal note, I have often taken action on an offer that I have seen hundreds of times. My rationale is that the person believes in their product and doesn't need to sell the next big thing.

So hang in there and be successful.

DK

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The iPad Mini is So Good

Just got my hands on an iPad Mini today to replace my iPad 3. I love it. It is much easier to carry around, is easy to hold and much lighter than the larger iPads.

Email is readable as are Office documents. Plus it has Siri and she understands my New Zealand English!

I am writing this blog while reclining on my bed. It is a very comfortable device to hold in one hand while typing with the other.

I give this little beauty a 5 star plus rating.

Is your Web Presence iPad Friendly?

If you, like me, love to adopt new technology, then you likely have an iPad or android tablet.

So have you noticed that many web pages and sites are not iPad friendly? I have and it annoys me increasingly. My iPad is fast becoming my business tool of choice and when I come across "clumsy" sites I tend to move on. And funnily enough it is some of the big players who are the biggest culprits.

So if you want to carry on your web business then I suggest an iPad friendly makeover. The consequences of not doing this will increase month by month.

Project Management - Be Bold and drop the contingency

I have spent today reviewing a portfolio of projects and was concerned to see that so many of them were bloated with contingent costs. I reminded my clients that such practices can sink a business. Because project work is risky in many cases, especially in my field of healthcare I T, a certain amount of time is added to the estimates to cover unknown events. Typically this is set at around 15% of the effort required.

The use of contingency is a prudent way to mitigate risk but it depends how and where you apply it. My preference is to add contingency over a program of work, containing many projects, rather than at a project or sub project level. However what often happens, and this can kill your business, is that at every line of the project plan people are building in contingent costs.

An example will illustrate the impact of this practice at the sub project, project and program level.

Let's take a 10 step project, which is one of ten similar projects comprising a program.

Costing contingency at step level where each step takes 10 days = 1.5 days contingency per step = 15 days contingency. Then apply 15% overall contingency = 15 days gives a total contingency of 30 days which actually equals 30% of the project days.

Costing contingency at a project level for a 100 day project = 15 days

Costing contingency at a program level for 10 projects of 100 days each using a conservative estimate that 50% of the projects will need to use the contingency and you get = 1000*15%*50%= 75 days. When this is cut back to project level this equals a contingency of 7.5 days.

When putting in a bid for business the difference between a 30 day contingency and a 7.5 day one is material. Say you cost time at $1000 per day then the quotes for the same work will differ by $22,500. This will often be the difference between getting a piece of work or losing it.

I advise my clients who are costing up projects to press staff to give estimates without contingency. Many people are cautious and will say 3 days rather than 2 days for some work, just in case. Reassure such staff that a contingency will be added but that you want a realistic estimation from them, the contingent liability is not their problem, but yours.

You may want to revisit some of your projects to look for unnecessary contingency. Your business may depend upon it.

Safelists for Sales

Safelists are marketing tools that allow you to send messages out to people who have opted in to receive them. Typically you read the mailings and get credits for doing so. You then use these credits to post your own mailings. Sounds simple and it is. But the interesting thing is that this technique works. I have been tracking my results for some time and I consistently get round a 3% response rate.

The secret is to keep posting in a consistent manner. Two big market players have just launched new Safelists. The Timtech guys have launched List Nerd and Matthew Graves, 100% profit mailer. Check them out on my website at http:// drkelp.co.uk by clicking on the respective banners. Good Luck.

Capitalize on the Laziness of Others

Today's take action tip is related to the use of traffic exchanges. Most traffic exchanges have what is called a Downline builder where you enter your referrals for other programs and exchanges. There are two facts about downline builders that you should know:

1. The vast majority of people don't fill in their information.

2. The people who do fill them in tend to join most of the programs on offer.

So what you may say?

Well here is how you can capitalize on these two facts by understanding a third fact:

3. Downline builders pass on referrals up the tree to the first person in the downline tree who has entered their details.

Action Point

Go to the programs you belong to, find the downline builder and enter your referral URLs and join the programs that you don't belong to then enter those referral URL's as well.

Result

You will start getting random referrals as the 5% in any downline who are active join the programs in the downline builder. The deeper the downline the more benefit you get.

My advice is to put all of your referral URLs into a spreadsheet as this makes it easier to fill out downline builders. When you join up any new traffic exchange fill in these details on Day 1.

I took sometime to follow my advice yesterday and got a referral at I Love Hits and Thumbvu for my efforts.

So the moral of the story is be active and you benefit from the laziness of others.

DK

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