#72/111: Stumbling on Happiness

What is it about?

If you want to know how we think, feel and experience happiness, Daniel Gilbert is your person. He explores how happiness is influenced and how we make decisions.

What can I learn?

Uncertainty makes you happy: You probably wouldn’t think so. I’m happier if I know that I will have my job tomorrow than being uncertain about. Actually, no. People are happier if they don’t know what will happen. If something haven’t happened yet, we often overestimate it. Therefore we feel more happy because of the opportunities that can be. You could say that we are natural optimists.

Falsification and Approval: That’s an interesting observation which you can observe in nearly every discussion. If you want a theory approved, most time a single piece of evidence is sufficient. However, if something tries to falsify your theory, you will probably demand many pieces of evidence. This is a natural behavior which is quite rational. If you would check every assumption everyday you wouldn’t doing much more.

We are very similar: About 8 of 10 people with lung cancer will die within the next five years. If you have lung cancer, you probably hope that you are in the 20% that won’t die. There are other studies, e.g. one where university professors should rate their teaching skill. About 96% rated it as above average. The worst thing is, we are actually pretty similar. Not everybody is above average. Not everybody belongs to the 20% which won’t die from lung cancer. Not everybody is a great lover and an exceptional businessman.

Conclusion

Stumbling on Happiness is pretty okay. One criticizing point is that Daniel Gilbert tries to cover too much. If you want to read more about happiness I would recommend :59 seconds. If you want to read more about decision making I would recommend reading Predictionably Irrational by Dan Ariely.

#71/111: The Ultimate Sales Letter

What is it about?

Why should you bother learning about sales letters if you have an online business? Because there’s still text to write. Dan S. Kennedy shows the fundamentals about writing a good sales letter.

What can I learn?

Learn about your customer: The first and foremost thing is learning about your customer. You can only address your prospects if you know what they want and what there problems are. An easy way is to read things they read. Ads, websites, magazines, etc.

Use proven swipes: Swipes are text snippets from other ads. Some examples of proven swipes are “How to X in Y days”, “Are you Z?”, etc. They are proven, they work. Use them and save time and money.

Argument against Objections: If you read the last review you’ll know that direct marketing is salesmanship-in-print. Therefore you must address the reader’s objections. Why should I buy your product instead of competitor X’s? Why should I spend $25 dollars on a paid-solution instead of the free one? The best method to discover these questions is to try to sell your product in person.

Conclusion

The Ultimate Sales Letter is a nice book. However, if you compare it to Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing it’s clearly inferior. What’s really bothering me is that Dan Kennedy tries to sell his services and products of other peoples in this book. This is bad, ruins his credibility and worsens the book fundamentally.

#70/111: Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing

What is it about?

What is direct marketing? A adequate description is salesmanship-in-print. Drayton Bird is one of the best salesman-in-print and he shows you how to find appropriate prospects, how to write your copy and how to test your results.

What can I learn?

Sell your product, not your designing skills: One of the biggest mistakes in direct marketing is trying to show off your design skills. Why? You should ask yourself: What is the purpose of marketing? Your answer should be generating sales. It isn’t about showing off your creativity, it isn’t about being über clever. It’s simply about generating sales. Tests showed that simple and honest ads sold better than clever ones.

Long copy works: Today, we want everything fast, we don’t take the time to read something, etc. However, people still read long copy, if they are interested. Which leads to the question? Should you care about the people who don’t even consider trying your product? Not at the cost of your future customers. Bird says that marketeers often don’t understand that $100 sales and $30 costs are better than $140 sales and $90 costs. If you are interested in a product/service, you want to read about it. You want to know more about it. Long copy supplies exactly that. It helps your prospect to learn more about your product, to face their fears and to build trust.

Test and go with the winner: If you do online marketing, testing is pretty easy and you should use it. A simple change of the headline can increase your profit threefold. A other call to action may increase your conversion rate about 50%. You can’t guess these things, you have to test them. Every situation is different and there is always a way to improve your ad. However, sometimes decision makers think that you can’t use this headline, although it triples your profit. Or that the ad doesn’t look great, although it works better than the alternatives. Don’t be fooled by your world-view. Test everything and go with the winner.

Conclusion

Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing is massive. It’s about 420 pages long, covers lots of details of great direct marketing and is written by a real leader in this field. I love how clear Drayton Bird explains the fundamentals and empathizes that the key is in testing and understanding the customer and not in being overly creative. If you want to sell your product/service online, by mail or somehow, you should read this book. Recommendation!

#69/111: Marketing High Technology

What is it about?

We are in 1986. Windows 1.0 will be released in a year and high technology is mostly the semiconductor industry. William H. Davidow worked for Intel and fought several wars. He explains what is important and why marketing is civilized war.

What can I learn?

Go for defensible market segments: Unbelievable important principle which executives/entrepreneurs often don’t get. What does defensible mean? Firstly, just releasing a product isn’t entering the market. You have to gain customers and establishing your product. Davidow estimated that it takes about 0.7 times the sales volume of the market leader to enter a market. Visualize this. If the market leader in your market segment makes $25mio in sales, you will need approx. a $17m investment just to enter the market. Secondly, you have to defend your position. In the mid- to long-term the two or three leaders dominate a market. If you can gather at least 20% of the market, you will probably vanish in the mid- to long-term. In conclusion, look for an appropriate market segment (i.e. which you can enter), gain enough customers and fight the war!

Create great products, not just great devices: Devices are your fundamental offering, e.g. the code for your software. However, a product is your device plus its marketing (positioning, usability, UX, etc.). What does this mean? If you know a techie, you probably had a discussion over the iPhone/iPod. He says that they are inferior to product X because they don’t have feature Y and Z. This is device stuff. Does the mass care about that? No. They care about the product. It is easy to use? It is trendy? Who else uses it? This takes us back to Baked in. You’re device and marketing have to work together and create a whole product.

Install Marketing Quality Management: If you read the previous paragraph you know how important marketing is. Therefore you should assure the quality of it. It begins which checking the positioning of each product to helping internal cooperation. Only if your marketing and device development are working hand in hand, you can create a great product.

Conclusion

Marketing High Technology was written in 1986. Yes, it about 25 years old and kicks ass of most books released today. This book showed how awesome Intel works like in Only the Paranoid Survive. If your business creates product, this is a must read. There is so much insight which is seldom used today. Recommendation!