Everything you read below is from Dan Kennedy.  If you have no idea who he is (have you been living under a rock).  He is probably the premier copy writers in North America.  The story below is an excellent example.

Create Marketing Fireworks by “SUCKERING EM IN”

“Sex.

Ok, now that I have your attention, let me talk to you about financial planning.”

This is an ad gambit as old as the hills. Call it whatever you like: lying, bait ‘n switch, trickery. You yell out one thing to grab attention, then switch to an entirely different subject once you have eyes and ears. Sometimes it works. More often it backfires because the people instantly feel cheated or conned, and either exit as quickly as they entered, or are loathe to trust you. When it does work, the switch needs to be to something pretty darned interesting itself, and leads to such an appealing offer that people with distrust still in their mouth, respond anyway. So, in the above example, it would at least need to go from the big SEX headline to “Slashing Your Tax Bill By At Least 33% (Guaranteed) Is Even Better Than Sex! – that’s what my top clients say.”

The ad shown below suckered Platinum Member Ron Caruthers in (and yes, that does say something about Ron). He saw it in the Entertainment Section (NOT the ‘churches section’) of an alternative weekly paper, “NewTimes,” in Phoenix. The ad IS for a church. Its “wild girls/ bad boys” referenced are characters in the Bible and, presumably, representative of the reformed sinners you’ll meet there, a more interesting crowd than at most churches. That, however, should have been said, and the ad does fail to capitalize on its very effective opening; after suckering you in with the promise of “wild girls and bad boys”, it fails to convince you that, if that’s you, you will meet kindred spirits at this church, you’ll feel more at home at this church than at traditional churches, that you should check it out even if you don’t like traditional churches. This is all IMPLIED – but that’s just not good enough. It also fails as a direct-response ad: no incentive offered to visit the web site, no free recorded message at an 800#. These things are easily fixed and this could be a really great ad, with “suckering ’em in” working just fine. The added virtue of this “Outrageous Ad Bill Glazer’d Love” is its potential to garner free publicity, by being talked about on radio and TV, written about in newspapers. THE QUESTION FOR YOU is: is “suckering ’em in” a strategy you ought to use? There’s no easy answer. It is best considered when one or more of these conditions exist:

1. Your core product/service/business is instantly rejected by prospects who will want to buy/patronize it if they hear the whole story.

2. There’s enormous competitive clutter in the ad media or marketplace, with many other marketers essentially saying the same things and looking too much alike.

3. You’re “tired” and “known” in your marketplace and people are immunized to your ad messages. You need to shake things up.

4. Your ‘control’ ads, mailings, etc. are wearing out and delivering diminishing results.

5. You want to get a double whammy; not just attract ideal prospects from your advertising, but create buzz, be talked about on a wider scale.

By the way, when he sent this to me, Ron said “I’m not sure what to file this under, except maybe to slap in the face of the next dummy who insists ‘but Dan, MY business is different!'” Yes, it does speak to that, doesn’t it? After all, this is a CHURCH. A lot of people wouldn’t be aware, but I was once a featured presenter at a multi-day “church marketing conference,” have had churches as clients, and we have quite a few church pastors as GKIC Members. This is a very good illustration of the fact that NO business is different; the fundamental needs and objectives to be met by effective advertising and marketing are EXACTLY THE SAME, which is why nearly everything in every Issue of this Letter does apply to every reader’s business – and if you think otherwise, the problem isn’t with the content here, friend, it’s with you!

I took this line from Clayton Makepeace, but we truly believe in his words.  I was taught something similar a long long time ago – STORIES SELL and FACTS TELL.

“Nothing sells better than a GREAT story your customers can share on your behalf. And your job as the marketer is to find a signature story worthy of telling.

The ability to tell a great story is easily learnable, and is something you should consider a must in today’s business environment.”

Just take note the next time you read, listen or watch any online, TV, radio, magazine, newspaper ad. (or maybe just look at your advertising copy….opps did I just right that).  Are you telling YOUR STORY or spurting off facts.

Thanks for the nuggets (and trip down memory lane) Clayton.

Here is just another very cool example of how an Ontario golf course is using social media to create some free press, offer value to potential customers, and maybe just maybe close some business. (there is no maybe here – they are driving in customers to their cash register).

It’s not just small businesses that are trying to wrap their heads around the convergence of offline and online marketing. Even large publicly traded corporations don’t fully understand it yet.

I was driving behind a city bus the other day that had a billboard ad on the back of it for Husky Energy.  The ad said “Win Fuel For Life”. My first thought was that the offer must be like a lottery where they consider life 20 years. So I immediately started looking for the asterisk and fine print, but I couldn’t find it. My next thought was to look for the call-t0-action. Surely I’d be able to follow the call-to-action and then read about the promotion. The only problem was there was no call-to-action. My next thought was to look for the URL of the companies website, but once again no luck.

I must have scanned the ad four or five times trying to find a call-to-action or the companies URL. I started to think I wasn’t seeing straight. A company of this magnitude didn’t even put their website address on a public billboard ad.

This just seems like a waste of money. A potentially great promo with poor execution. Just think of the lost dollars. Because there was no call-to-action, there is no way for them to track who has seen this ad and who has converted from it. Had there been a call-to-action and had I participated in it, they would now have my name and email address, which I gave to them with my permission, which means they could market to me down the road potentially selling me on something else.

Come on guys, closing the loop on your offline marketing isn’t rocket science. But if you need a hand, that’s whey were here. Have you seen any poorly executed offline marketing lately. Chime in and let us know your thoughts.