I hope your week’s going well to this point.  I don’t know about the weather where you’re at, but it’s definitely starting to warm up ‘round these parts.  In fact, I saw the first LCO of the year out cutting my neighbor’s lawn today.  Wow how time flies!

At any rate, if you’ll remember from my last message I talked about the importance of including a strong offer in any marketing materials you’re getting ready to send out.  Unless you want to have a dull, boring, and lifeless piece that draws little more than a few flies, you want to put a clear and powerful offer in front of your prospects and customers.  Give them a package of services they can wrap their hands around and tell them why it’s such a great deal.

Here’s another secret that will help bump up the response you’ll get from your marketing efforts this spring:

Don’t be afraid to use lots of text!

Now, that’s not to say you don’t want to have a nice graphic or image of the services you offer or something to help paint a picture about what your prospect will gain by selecting you, but don’t be afraid to spell it out for them either.

And I do mean spell it out literally.  Don’t give them any reason at all to wonder what exactly they’ll be getting by selecting your service.  If you’ll do that, I guarantee you’ll see a significant jump in the results your marketing materials achieve.

Not sure where to start?  No worries because it’s already been done for you!

You see, I’ve put together a spring marketing series that includes everything you’ll need to get a jump start on all your spring marketing efforts.  The only thing you’ll need to do is cut and paste your own companies information as well as the discount or offer you want to make your customers, and you’re ready to roll.

This package will give you everything you need to get a high quality, powerfully magnetic marketing piece out the door that I guarantee will have your phone ringing off the hook.

In fact, I’ve also included several others bonuses and goodies to help you get off to a fast start this spring including a ‘Critique Coupon’.  This is a $150 value that’s good for one thorough analysis and review of any one of your marketing pieces.  Simply fax, email, or snail mail me a copy of a marketing piece you’re doing and I’ll review it and provide you my feedback as to how you can make it stronger.

I’ve also included a few other letters that you can use to help stimulate new business, plus some other unadvertised goodies.  At any rate, from now until this Saturday at 11:59pm you can get your hands on this complete package for just $67.  Remember, this is a professionally designed sales letter package that’s guaranteed to help you jumpstart your Spring marketing efforts.

Again, this special price is only good until this Saturday at 11:59pm and then the price jumps back up to $97 so don’t wait around!

Get it here:

http://www.marketerschoice.com/app/javanof.asp?MerchantID=54451&ProductID=3423601

Today’s message will be short and sweet. With the warmer weather just around the corner, I hope you’re gearing up for your spring marketing blitz. This is the time of year when you’ll have the opportunity pick up lots of new business.

Now, in order to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing this Spring, remember to include this critical element in ANYTHING you send out the door:

Present your prospects with a strong offer.

Sure, there are a number of elements required to create a super-effective marketing piece, but if you can only remember to include one, make sure it’s a strong offer.

Don’t just send out a brochure, letter, flyer, or postcard that has your logo, the services you provide, and a phone number and expect your phone to ring off the hook. In order to build a super-successful business and to grow your customer list this Spring, you MUST present your prospects and customers with a valuable offer.

What do I mean by a ’strong offer’? Put together a special package of services and present it to them with special pricing or some premiums attached. Heck, you don’t even have to create a special package. Just use the service packages you already have and just create some ‘excitement’ around it.

People get so tired of receiving dull, boring, meaningless sales messages so when something arrives that presents them with an opportunity to really get something of value, more times than not you’ll see your prospects jump at the chance.

The rest of this week I’ll share with you some of the other elements you’ll want to be sure to include in your marketing materials you’re getting ready to send out so be sure to stay tuned.

Do you know what the biggest sin is when it comes to sales and marketing today?
Talking too much about you and not enough about your prospects?  Big mistake yes, but not the biggest.

Using your logo as a headline, err, deadline?  Definitely a huge mistake, but certainly not the biggest.

Not differentiating yourself from the competition?  Another biggie, but not the biggest.

Okay, okay, enough suspense.  The biggest mistake when it comes to marketing these days is being boring.  That’s right!  People are pounded each and every day with advertisements for the latest and greatest products and services.  As a result, it’s VITAL that you learn to cut through the clutter.  Sending a boring, plain vanilla sales or marketing message is the akin to marketing suicide in today’s competitive marketplace.

Now, I’m not saying you make a complete fool of yourself.  But, don’t be afraid to do something out of the ordinary.  Don’t be afraid to inject some personality (preferably YOUR personality) into the marketing messages you send.

Next week I’ll share with you some marketing I’ve come across that’s outstanding in the sense that it’s NOT BORING.  The examples I’ll share with you will show you that it’s possible to market your business and have fun doing it.

Juris Pagrabs and his company, Lawn Specialists of Rocky River, recently completed their new website and published it for the world to see.

Lawn-specialists of Rocky River provide full service lawn fertilization and pest control services to the greater Cleveland, OH area.

The new website is located here:

www.lawn-specialists.com

After my rant yesterday about how I think Valentine’s is a ’silly holiday’ made up by some smart marketer to try to get people to purchase their products and services, I thought I should at least offer some type of rebuttal.  Okay, it’s not a total rebuttal, but I thought I should at least offer some positive thoughts about this ever-popular holiday with the ladies.

So, here’s a link to the History channels website that offers some interesting insight into this ’silly’ holiday:

http://www.history.com/minisites/valentine/

First off, don’t shoot me because of the title of this post.  However, as a guy that’s got 2 very special females in my life.  No, one of them is NOT a girlfriend….way too much of a headache for me to want to deal with.   I’ve got my beautiful wife that I’ve been happily married to now for a little over  6 months and my 7 year old daughter.  As much as I’d love to completely forget about Valentine’s Day (which is tomorrow for all you procrastinators!), I’m afraid that if I did I wouldn’t be happily married anymore and my little girl would want to disown me already.  So needless to say, I’ve done my part and have gotten a little something for both of the special ladies in my life.

Now, this post is NOT about what I got my wife and daughter for Valentine’s Day.  Better yet, it’s about YOU taking advantage of all these silly holidays that come up.  You see, the reason Valentine’s Day is such a big holiday is because some smart marketers saw the opportunity to create an event to promote their products and services.  As a result of these years of ‘training’ the marketplace, each February 14th our female counterparts have come to expect the typical ‘expressions of love’.

If you ask me, I think it’s all about smart marketing and not showing your loved one(s) just how much you care.

So, what are you doing with your market to create these ‘events’?  Are you taking advantage of these existing holidays to create offers and packages to present to your customers and prospects?  Are you creating your own holidays or events that you can capitalize on in order to give your customers and prospects even more reason to purchase your services?

If not, you’re really missing the love boat.

I guess if I had to rank the top 5 uses of marketing dollars as it relates to the typical methods most LCO’s use from most effective to least effective, I’d have to rank them as follows:

1. Direct Mail – either sales letters or postcards
   
2. Creating referral systems for existing customers
   
3. Marketing to ‘Center of Influence’ businesses that are non-competing and already servicing your target customer
   
4. Leave behinds – flyers, door hangers, or other sales material left at the prospects door
   
5. Website - 100,000’s of potential lawn care customers are going online looking for their service providers – are you there to be found when they’re looking?
   

Sure, there are lots of other methods you could choose, but those are where I’d concentrate my marketing dollars initially. Of course, you have to take into account things such as budgets, effectiveness, etc., but these 5 methods will typically generate the biggest bang for you marketing buck.