When Great Copywriting Isn't Enough

Sometimes it takes more than great copywriting. Three common marketing mistakes to learn from.

(Shel Horowitz's Frugal Marketing Tip, February, 2000)

I have been sitting on a bunch of BXI barter credits--BXI is a national barter network. Locally, they've been kind of hard to use. so when I saw a listing in the BXI newsletter that one of the MLM/business opportunity magazines was accepting BXI credits in full payment for advertising, I decided to try it. After all, I know a number of MLMers have used--and been very pleased with--my book, Marketing Without Megabucks: How to Sell Anything on a Shoestring.

Knowing that people who advertise in this magazine are largely dreamers who want a fast, big-bucks return, I thought it might be a good spot to advertise the book.

Here's the ad I wrote:

 G.S. MADE $1,000,000 - Zero Advertising Cost.
 384-Page, $20 Book showed how.
 True story: http://www.frugalfun.com 800-683-WORD. 

G.S. is Georg Schlomka, the fellow in Germany whom I've written about before; he used two chapters of Marketing Without Megabucks to build a million-dollar business in a year and calls the book his very best business investment. His testimonial is easily accessible from my home page.

The ad drew well: probably about 50 calls. But the conversion rate was absolutely dismal. Exactly one person called about the ad and actually ordered the book. Normally, when I advertise, I can expect to convert a much higher percentage of callers. It's true that I have been getting more than the usual number of book orders off the website, but none that I can definitely attribute to the ad (my own fault for not having a separate tracking page).

What went wrong?

Mistake #1: Seeing that there was practically nothing in the Books and Publications section and a number of books were advertised under Business Opportunities, I chose to list my ad as a Business Opportunity. These people are not readers; a number of people didn't realize this ad was for a book.

Mistake #2: Not knowing the audience well enough. I wrote copy that hooked their interest, but as a bunch of pie-in-the-sky dreamers and opportunity chasers, they don't really want to do the work of putting a marketing strategy into place. I even had some callers who said "I don't have $20." So why did they bother answering the ad?

Mistake #3: I should NOT have put my toll-free number in this particular ad. If people had to pay the 20 or 30 cents themselves, they may have read the ad more carefully.

Mistake #4: I was too lazy to put up a special landing page with Georg's story and a clear offer relating to the ad. Instead, I sent them to my home page, where they may not have known what they were supposed to do.

Oh well, chalk it up to research. The ad has one more month to run; maybe it will do better with repetition., In the meantime, at least it didn't cost me anything out-of-pocket (a point I made to several of the callers, incidentally). The magazine keeps sending me notices of its next advertising deadline, and they go right to the recycle bin.

Thank you reading this back issue of Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips, published every month since May, 1997; please click here to view the complete archives, grouped by subject. Shel is an internationally known copywriter and marketing consultant, author of Grassroots Marketing Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and several other books, and creator of the Frugal Marketing web site. Please click here to contact Shel.


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