Wizard of Ads Partners

Today’s customer expects easy access to information.
And that information includes the price.

If it is shorter than your product selling cycle prepare to be disappointed.

If people buy your product once a week, don't expect your ads to return a profit during the first week. If people buy once a month, don't expect to break even on your advertising during the first 30 days. If your product selling cycle is longer than two years, you can expect to lose money on your ads--even if they're good--for the first four to six months. You'll start pulling ahead during the second six months. But your real growth won't happen until you begin reaching that same group of people for a second year.

By Tom Walters, Wizard Partner

 
“Somebody shoot me.”
 

How many times has that thought run through your head as you stood trapped against a corner, unable to escape a conversational egomaniac too entrenched in a story to notice your attempts to climb into the wall and bury yourself in the insulation?

You’ve been there, right? And as you look around you see other conversations going on that you’d love to be a part of. Friends and co-workers laughing and having a good time as you stand there getting pelted by the spittle of a close-talking stranger.

Yeah, it’s a pretty miserable experience. One that’s difficult to extract yourself from in person. But it’s much easier when somebody’s babbling on about himself on a homepage. One click of the “Back” button and your free to go surfing for a discussion that revolves around somebody more important …like you.

That’s what happens when your business’ homepage is litteredwith chest-thumping garble like achievements and product and service offerings.Potential customers grab their boards and catch a wave to a competitor’s site. Leaving you with a site conversion rate that starts with a decimal point instead of a number. 

Remember, when people go to a website, they’re looking to satisfy needs. And those needs should be addressed quickly and efficiently within the context of your homepage. They don’t care about you. Not yet, anyway. Their initial concern is all about what you can do for them. Therefore, with few exceptions, the only pronoun that should appear in the copy is Y-O-U. Resist all the “me’s” and “we’s” and put the focus on prospective customers. They came to you for a reason. Anticipate what that reason is and build your copy around it.   

"We have these big brains, and a limited amount of time. So what to do? A lot of people spend their time making money, sometimes with the hope that they'll be able to do what they want after they make it. But you never get that time back. Theoretical physics is the most abstractly beautiful and challenging pursuit there is. It's what I want to spend my time thinking about, so that's what I do. But all thinking and no action would make for a dull life. So I surf."
– Garrett Lisi, theoretical physicist, in an interview with Sabine Hossenfelder, Aug. 5, 2007

by Roy H. Williams 

Regardless of how many people suggest that you start thinking “outside the box,” it cannot, in truth, be done. As long as you are living within your skin, you will always be in a box.

Your box is your perspective, your worldview, your schema - the sum of your life’s experiences – your own personal set of assumptions. Like a seat in a stadium, your “box” determines the angle from which you view every game.

What people call “thinking outside the box” can be accomplished only by getting out of your seat and walking to an unfamiliar part of the stadium to borrow the seat of someone else.

Now you’re seeing things from their point of view. You’re still in a “box,” but it’s not your own. You’ve borrowed a new perspective so that you’re seeing your problem through the eyes of another - according to their values and assumptions.

Do you have the courage to do it?

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Mornington, Australia.  Five-minutes-to-five. 

Three bikinis in hand.  Checkout counter two feet away.

“We close at 5 o’clock.  You’ll have to leave now.”, ambushed the sales woman.

Jaws agape.  Words choking.  Julie and her two daughters calmly place the merchandise back on the shelf and exit the seashore boutique. 

And one-hundred and three dollars walk out with them.

Counter-signaling good service and a pleasant experience, the employees at the boutique failed to invest the time and energy necessary to stay open five minutes longer allowing my partner’s wife and daughters to pay for their swim wear. 

The boutique’s shortsighted policy was to close exactly at five o’clock.

Showroom straight and tidy.
Lights turned off.
Doors bolted shut.

Tragically this counter-signal is all too prevalent in business today.  A common sense hiccup unseating tremendous growth opportunities for business.

Might the actions of your employees be limiting your success? 

Consider the following questions:

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