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Do you sell a product or service that is reassuringly expensive?

Ronny is selling $700 vacuum cleaners through a direct-response television campaign he created after attending, “How to Sell Upscale Products and Services” at Wizard Academy.

That ad campaign began as a $100,000 experiment.

Ronny told me he’s currently spending nearly a million dollars a week on national advertising and making a marvelous return on his investment.

Funny thing: we teach that class under the assumption the techniques will be used by brand builders, not direct response marketers. But Ronny proved those same techniques can also work when you have a short time horizon.

We taught Ronny something.
He taught us something in return.

Direct response marketers usually sell products that have a short purchase cycle. They want us to make an impulse purchase. This is why the return-on-investment for direct response ads can be measured accurately and immediately.

But not everything can be sold that way.

Brand builders are companies whose products or services have a long purchase cycle. The goal of a brand builder is to be the provider you think of immediately and feel the best about when you finally need what they sell. It takes courage, confidence and patience but it works better and better the longer you invest in it.

The essence of brand building is emotional bonding.

Direct response marketing, on the other hand, is typically intellectual. Features and benefits and added value, “But wait! Order now and you’ll also receive…” It is that world of product demonstrations and money-back guarantees, limited-time offers and upsell incentives.

Direct response ads don’t work better and better as time goes by. They work less and less well until you finally have to come up with something altogether new and different.

Right now you’re thinking, “But hey, if I make enough money on my direct response campaign, I’ll just retire and live happily ever after.”

That sounds like a good plan but I’ve never actually seen it work out that way. Most of us have the fundamental inability to quit while we’re ahead.

A glittering city in Nevada is proof of it.

Wizard Academy teaches powerful concepts.
How you use them is entirely up to you.

Ronny is winning and winning big. I like him.

He’s already taught me one lesson.

I’m hoping he will teach me another.

To learn more about how we can help you, book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.

You bought it for 50 cents.
You sold it for a dollar.
You made 50 cents.

What was your percentage of profit?

You could say “100 percent” because the 50-cent profit you made is equal to your original investment of 50 cents.

But if we look at it from the basis of your selling price, you sold it for a dollar and only 50% of that was profit.

So did you make 100% or was it 50%? There is a valid argument for each perspective.

It’s not my intention to lecture you today about the difference between markup and margin or to fill your ears with chatter about inventory turn or the concept of zero marginal cost.

We’re talking about something bigger.
We’re talking about your success.

Profit is easy to identify, but tricky to measure.

Success is like that, too.

Does your pursuit of success ever make you feel like you’re chasing your shadow with the sun at your back; no matter how fast you run, you can never quite grasp it? Is success a forever carrot-on-a-stick, just a little further away than the length of your arm?

Most of us live with the hope of accomplishing a series of goals, but rarely do I meet anyone who can tell me how they plan to measure their progress toward those goals.

How will you measure success?

Before you can answer that question clearly, you have to recognize that success comes in three different colors.

You can make money.
You can make a name.
You can make a difference.

If you make enough money, it will make you something of a name. But whether or not you ever make a difference is an entirely different question. Many successful people keep their money and their name clamped tightly within their fists.

If you make a name for yourself, money will likely follow. But will you then care enough about others to try and make a difference in their lives?

My advice to you is to first make a difference. Do what you do so very well that people take notice of it and speak highly of you. The money will quickly follow.

What are you trying to make happen?
How will you measure progress-to-goal?
In what way will you make a difference?

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads®, and we’ll hook you up.

There are many interesting ways to measure results. Some people like to get unique identifying telephone numbers or create branded URLs that redirect to landing pages or the website. However, much of this is a waste of time and energy as it never tells the true story of the brand journey and how it affected the decision-making process.

Other indicators of brand effectiveness include tracking total lead volume, new customers, reactivated customers, or running a brand equity survey to get a sense of your share of mind. 

Digitally you will see direct search increase, which cannot be affected by anything digital, as well as branded keyword inquiries increase. You’ll, of course, need to get your digital people to add these to your campaigns if you hope to see an increase in conversions. This will translate into lower CPC (especially branded campaigns), higher ROI, and ROAS. 

More cryptic, but equally true measures will show up in increased appointment and sales conversion rates, higher average tickets, and more profitable revenue. This is because the people have already formed at least a partial positive opinion of you leading to a higher value prospect opportunity. 

Wizard of Ads® for Services tracks the simplest of indicators. Top line revenue. When your branding takes effect, and the company responds in kind from the phone call or form fill-on, top-line revenue will increase. As time goes on and all sales and marketing channels continue to align deeper, profitable scale is inevitable. Efficacy is plotted on a T12, and total lead volume from all sources is tracked.

If you’re ready to dominate your marketplace and become the next household name, call Wizard Ryan Chute to see how you can work with Wizard of Ads® for Services.

Your life is a singular journey; a generation is a collective journey.

We’re circling an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through a limitless vacuum at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.

If this dirt-covered rock we occupy was the size of a standard schoolroom globe covered with a coat of varnish, the thickness of that varnish would represent the air we breathe.

Like it or not, we’re all in this together.

All seven and a half billion of us.

When it gets dark tonight, look up at the stars. You’ll be looking out the window of our spaceship.

If we could aim our 11,000-degree fireball at the nearest of its siblings – those things we call the stars – it would take us 63,000 years to get there even though we would be shooting through space at 52 times the speed of an 865 mph bullet.¹

Right now you think I’m going to talk to you about cultural tolerance or global warming or world peace or some other big idea.

But you’re wrong.

My goal today is to teach you how to use metaphors to make your data more interesting so that you can persuade more people.

I borrowed the metaphor of the earth being a spaceship from Buckminster Fuller and the varnish on the globe came from Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth.

A metaphor relates the unfamiliar to the familiar, the unknown to the known, effectively translating your data into a language your listener can understand.

A good metaphor sharpens the point of your data.

Once you’ve chosen your metaphor, your second challenge will be to select nouns and verbs that carry the voltage of mild surprise.

I might have said, “The earth orbits the sun as it moves through space at 0.0004842454 au. (astronomical units).” But I chose instead to say, “We’re circling an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through a limitless vacuum at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.”

“We’re circling” causes you to see yourself in the story. This is the first step toward reader engagement.
“11,000-degree fireball” is more vivid than “the sun,”
“shoots through a limitless vacuum” is more exciting than “moves through space,”
and “52 times the speed of a rifle bullet” packs more of a wallop than “astronomical units.”

Brilliant communication isn’t a product of wit or charm or even talent.

Preparation is what it takes to click the brightness of your message up to high beam so that it pierces the darkness like a lighthouse at midnight. In the words of Alec Nevala-Lee, “A good surprise demands methodical work in advance. Like any form of sleight of hand, it hinges on making the result of careful preparation seem casual, even miraculous.”

“Like a lighthouse at midnight” wasn’t technically a metaphor, by the way. It was a simile. Metaphor: The earth is a spaceship. Simile: The earth is like a spaceship. A simile feels like a metaphor and can be used to accomplish the same effect.

1. Write down what you want to say. Don’t overthink it. Just get some words on paper.
2. Find a metaphor that relates your information to an idea that your audience already understands.
3. Now look at what you wrote and replace the weary, dull words with energetic, bright ones.

Want to know a secret? There’s really no such thing as good writing. There’s only good rewriting.

Ernest Hemingway won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Each time he came to a place where the words weren’t flowing, he would set his work aside and answer some correspondence so that he could take a break from, “the awful responsibility of writing” — or, as he sometimes called it, “the responsibility of awful writing.” ²  In a letter to 22 year-old Arnold Samuelson in 1934, Hemingway advised that after writing something you think is pretty good, you should, “leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work. The next morning, when you’ve had a good sleep and you’re feeling fresh, rewrite what you wrote the day before.”

Having the courage to write badly is the first step toward brilliant communication. The second step is to look at that first draft and say, “How can I make this better?”

One final piece of advice: Read great writing, for “As you read, so will you write.” Gene Fowler said it this way, “The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.”

Brilliant communicators develop stronger relationships, achieve higher goals and make more money.

Why not become one?

If you're struggling to craft killer direct response ads for your business, Ryan Chute from Wizard of Ads® can help. Book a call.  

1. Use Words that have Specific Meanings. “The bug moved along the ground, deciding which way it should go.” The ant crawled between the blades of grass, peeking left and right at every intersection.”

Bug is nonspecific. Ant is specific.“…moved along the ground” is mildly specific, but not vivid.“…crawled between the blades of grass” is specific and vivid.

2. Don’t Tell. Show.“…deciding which way it should go,” tells you what the ant was doing.“…peeking left and right at every intersection,” shows you the ant and leads you to conclude that the ant is deciding which way to go. You are, for a moment, seeing through the eyes of the ant. Giving human motives to inanimate objects is a powerful tool known as personification. “Your Rolex is waiting patiently for you to come and pick it up at Shreve and Company.”
3. Write Tight and Clean. Short Sentences Hit Harder than Long Ones. Adjectives and adverbs don’t accelerate communication. They slow it down. Use them with restraint.

What I’m doing now is giving you an example of a long sentence, (in essence, the kind of sentence often written by persons who are trying to sound educated, although in truth, sentences like this one just make you sound full of yourself,) for the purpose of demonstrating that complex sentences full of commas and parenthetic statements and verbose, multi-word, adjective-stacked descriptions have a much diminished impact and are not nearly so pleasant to read as short, clear statements like the 6-word sentence and the two 4-word sentences that preceded this horrific construction of 135 pompous, tedious and wearisome words that keep going on and on for so very long that by the time you get to the final point, you have forgotten several of the previous ones that were made.

4. Let the Subject of the Sentence Take the Action. Passive Voice is a Bad Choice. You speak in passive voice when the subject of the sentence is acted upon: “Wizard Academy is attended by interesting people.”

You speak in active voice when the subject of the sentence takes the action: “Interesting people attend Wizard Academy.”

Passive voice is noncommittal: “It got lost.” Active voice is confident and clear. “I lost it.”

5. Feed Your Pen Surprising Combinations of Interesting Words If you inform without persuading, you are hearing a newscast when you write. The goal of the journalist is to inform, not to persuade.

If you entertain without persuading, you are hearing creative writing as you write. The goal of the creative writer is to entertain, not to persuade.

The poet leads you to think and feel differently. The goal of the poet is to persuade. And the best ones do it in a brief, tight economy of words.

I’m not talking about rhyming. I beg you not to rhyme.

I’m talking about using surprising combinations of vivid words to trigger assumptions and conclusions in the minds of those who hear you.

Edwin Arlington Robinson wrote Richard Cory in 1897. This was when “clean favored” meant good-looking, and how you were dressed is how you were “arrayed.”

Richard Cory Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, “Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—And admirably schooled in every grace: In short, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Compare the images contained in that 124-word poem to those in the 135-word example in Point 3. – RHW

6. If you would become a better communicator…if you would write better ads, persuade more people and make more money, read Good Poems, curated by Garrison Keillor. You can get the 3 books or visit the online archives.
7. Read a poem a day, every day. It will take you about 60 seconds. Think of your daily poem as a vitamin. Don’t worry about understanding the poem. Just rub the salt of it on your mind. You will soon begin hearing a different voice when you write, and find yourself looking into sparkling eyes when you speak.

Photos that have been black-and-white are about to become full-color.

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.  

I was 16 during the winter of 1974.

Ted was 52.

We worked together in a steel fabrication shop in Oklahoma.

I was known as “Schoolboy.”

Standing near the heat of the coffee pot waiting for the horn to signal the end of our break, Ted would tell stories about World War II. Those stories might as well have been about cave men and dinosaurs because Pearl Harbor had happened 35 years earlier and I was only 16.

The story I’m about to tell you happened 42 years ago.

It seems like yesterday.

Do you remember Bluto from the old Popeye cartoons? In 1974 his name was Harold and he was 32 years old. Muscular and angry, Harold got what he wanted through intimidation.

One day I called his bluff. I told Harold “no.”

But Harold wasn’t bluffing.

I regained consciousness at the base of the storage racks where we kept the 6-foot aluminum fan blades. Ted told me Harold’s lightning blow lifted me off my feet and landed me 2 yards from where I had been standing. When I went home at the end of my shift my neck was so stiff I couldn’t turn my head.

My mother knew immediately what had happened.

When I got out of school the next day, Ted was waiting for me in the parking lot at work. He told me not to go inside. Two policemen had led Harold out in handcuffs earlier and his buddies were planning revenge.

NOTE: Never hit a minor when he’s being raised by a single mother. Angry moms fight differently than men do.

I worked in that steel shop for 2 more years.

One day Ted said, “Schoolboy, every person you meet has something they can teach you. Your job is to figure out what their skill is and then get them to share it with you.”

Ted, as usual, was right. When you assume that everyone you meet has a valuable skill, you begin to look at them differently.

Harold was a different person when he came back to work. Crushing legal bills and the humiliation of jail gave him a beating far worse than he had given me. With Ted’s advice fresh in my mind, I asked Harold the secret of knocking a man off his feet.

Harold’s answer surprised me because his technique had little to do with physical strength.

A few years later I learned that success in business has little to do with intelligence and success in selling has little to do with being talkative and success in advertising has little to do with the product.

Business isn’t about knowing, it’s about doing.
Selling isn’t about talking, it’s about listening.
Advertising isn’t about the product, it’s about the customer.

And knocking a man down isn’t about your fists, it’s about your feet.

If you aren’t a showman or a storyteller, you’re still in good company. Wizard of Ads® can help you create the brand or marketing story you need to drive your user experience. Book a call.