THE SUCCESSFUL SOLOIST | Marla Tabaka

Simple Trick to Update Your Marketing

Manipulative marketing strategies can leave your savvy customers agitated and confused. Here’s how to create a message with authenticity.

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In this day of digital communication we all experience a regular deluge of unsolicited email; many messages–even from trusted senders–bear promises to solve our most significant problems. Dare you click through, you’re likely to find a lengthy, densely packed website, designed to make you “feel the pain” before making a purchase that’s “certain to change your life.”

But does this common marketing formula designed to identify your problem, agitate you into submission, and make promises, truly resonate with people? Award-winning author, marketing consultant, and copywriting strategist Lisa Manyon doesn’t think so.

“Really: When was the last time you were thoroughly agitated and prompted into buying something?” she questions. “People know if you are being manipulative or authentic–offering something of great value with honest solutions.”

Manyon questions if many of the standard marketing techniques, especially in the copywriting arena, are antiquated and not as effective as they once were. Her list of copywriting don’ts includes: hyped-up claims, overly “sales-y” spiels, hard-sell tactics, broad-based messages, scare tactics, stretching the truth, false claims of scarcity and over-dramatizing pain and problems. These are tactics she says are failing and that turn off consumers–especially women.

With women making or influencing 85% of all purchasing decisions and accounting for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States, it’s time for marketers and advertisers to take notice. But 91% of women believe that advertisers do not understand them. And long-winded copy, intended to manipulate the buyer, doesn’t evoke the trust that female consumers want to experience. Is this the kind of copy that we consider King?

“I’ve found that copy is actually queen and strategy is king, and together they are the key to creating strong and effective results,” she says. “The best copy in the world won’t work if you don’t have a strategy in place. But when a so-called marketing success formula doesn’t feel right to the business owner, it’s very difficult to create an effective message or strategy.”

So how can we bridge this gap between a strategy that draws people in, and, well, authenticity?

In the traditional formula we’re taught to highlight the issue, agitate that issue to focus on the pain points and then solve the problem. Instead of “Problem, Agitate, Solve,” Manyon suggests the challenge-oriented solution that she calls The New Marketing Formula, “Challenge. Solution. Invitation.”

“We don’t need to be agitated to make a decision,” she says. “In fact, when someone acknowledges and understands our challenges, provides a helpful solution and extends a friendly invitation, we’re more likely to take action.  Nothing truly flows when it comes from a place of pain and fear.”

Here’s how Manyon suggests you market effectively and with integrity, using her new marketing model for success.

1) Challenge: Know your ideal clients have challenges. Acknowledge them. Understand them. Don’t dwell on them or try to “agitate” or exaggerate the situation.

2) Solution: Offer a genuine solution to eliminate or alleviate the challenge. Come from a place of service first. Build relationships with your solution.

3) Invitation: Avoid hard sell tactics at all costs. Instead extend a friendly invitation to take the next step and move toward the solution. This is also considered your “call to action.” It’s extended in a way that builds relationships and treats people as people, not numbers.

Manyon says the response to her new copywriting formula of “Challenge. Solution. Invitation.” seems to be garnering a collective sigh of relief for those who have struggled to create marketing messages. As an added bonus, this formula may transform your relationship with marketing. Try this approach on for size–and let us know how it works! For an in-depth interview with Manyon, tune into our recent discussion on The Million Dollar Mindset podcast. 

Marla Tabaka is a life and business coach who helps entrepreneurs and small-business owners grow their companies faster. She coaches for Make Mine a Million and has 25 years of experience in corporate and start-up ventures. @MarlaTabaka

Whoever said ignorance is bliss sure knew what he was talking about, especially when it comes to mortgages. The less I know about my mortgage, the happier I am.

I don’t even open the monthly statement I get. I just pay the same amount every month-on the very last day that I can mail it back without getting my credit dinged. Why would I ruin a perfectly nice day by thinking about how many thousands of dollars we still owe and how old we’re going to be before it’s all paid off?

Except for the statement we get every January that includes our mortgage interest deduction for the year. I always rip that one open as soon as it arrives to find out how much Uncle Sam would like to reward me with a big tax deduction for doing my patriotic duty and buying a home. I think it’s in the Constitution somewhere.

So when I got my MID this year, I was in such a good mood that I lowered by guard and let my eyes wander to the line that said “balance owed.” It was even worse than I thought. I tried to forget it, which usually works because as my wife Felicity can tell you, I’m very good at forgetting things. No such luck.

A few days later, I get an email from one of those Web sites that use a computer to calculate how much your home is worth based on how much the homes around you are selling for. Since I live in Mirage Mills, known everywhere as the Chernobyl of American real estate, every home within three miles of that’s sold in the last two years has been a foreclosure. So I REALLY didn’t want to know how much little my house is worth, but I had no choice.

HOMER GUTHRIE, GREAT NEWS. Prices are rising in Mirage Mills. Your house is now worth only 47% less than you paid for it!

Thanks for nothing, I grumbled to myself. How the hell did that happen? Once again, I turned my forgetter on full power and once again, all I could think about all day was how 47 percent was almost as bad 50 percent. So why didn’t they just round it off and spare me the details? I looked at the email again and discovered that last quarter, our home really HAD lost 50 percent of value. Recouping 3 percent in value was the good news part. Great moments in marketing.

They call it being under water, but it felt more like being cast face down in a burning desert in despair as vultures circled above and waves of stinging red ants swarmed in every orifice. I gazed out at the shuttered casement windows and empty driveways of my cul de sac and realized I had been underwater for a long time and didn’t know it. Ignorance is bliss.

I broke the news to Felicity at breakfast the next morning, after a sleepless night.

“And just what does that mean, dear, being under water?”

“Basically, it means that we can’t sell the house without losing money,” I said.

“Oh, that’s good,” she said.

“Good? How could it possibly be good?”

“Well, I like it here. And you’re a terrible mover.”

The national for-sale inventory of single family homes, condos, townhomes and co-ops fell to the lowest level since 2007 in April, providing further evidence that the inventory draw down is continuing into the spring home buying season.

On a year-over-year basis, the total number of listings on Realtor.com was down by 18.85 percent, declining in all but five of the 146 markets covered by the megasite, a sign that the overall market is in a stronger position than it was one year ago. Since the beginning of the year, the total size of the inventory has ranged from about 1.76 to 1.84 million units, the lowest levels observed since Realtor.com began collecting these data in January 2007.

While Florida markets dominated the list of top ten MSAs with the largest year-over-year declines in their for-sale inventories one year ago, the list now includes major California markets, as well as Phoenix, Seattle and Atlanta-suggesting that these markets, which have been relatively slow to recover, may be beginning to turn around. The five markets registering an increase in their for-sale inventory in April reported very small increases.

The median age of the inventory also fell by 11.5 percent on a year-over-year basis, from 95 days in April 2011 to 84 days in April 2012, while the median list price ($191,211) remained essentially unchanged. Lower inventories, combined with lower shorter time on market and relatively stable listing prices, could be indicative of the kind of balanced housing market that has not seen in many years. The median age of the inventory exceeded 120 days in just 6 markets in April, down from 16 markets in March, 34 markets in February and 46 markets in January. Most of the markets with the oldest inventories are resort communities, particularly in Florida and the Carolinas.

The nationwide median list price for single family homes, condos, townhomes and co-ops was $191,211 in April, up from $188,900 in March and essentially the same as it was one year ago ($191,900). The relative stability in listing prices over the past 12 months stands in stark contrast to the significant declines that occurred in the fall of 2010, when the after effects of the after the tax credit came to a close. While higher list prices do not always translate into higher sales prices, the stability observed in since the beginning of the 2011 home buying season may nevertheless signal a growing optimism on the part of sellers that the market has is beginning to turn around.

For the first time in six years, sellers’ asking prices tracked by the Department of Numbers Website have gone positive on a year-to-year basis, another sign that the housing economy is slowly healing itself.

Sellers’ asking prices nationally first showed a positive year over year gain in December, and increased to 3.9 percent as of March 5.

“I wanted to see January’s data follow suit lest I prematurely announce a sign change only to have it reverse direction the following month. Of course there’s nothing that precludes that even with two months of positive Y/Y numbers, but it does tell me that the housing market is slowly healing itself,” wrote Ben Engebreth, an independent programmer and data analyst who operates the site.

As of March 5, 2012 there were about 858,688 single family and condo homes listed for sale in the 54 metro areas Engebreth tracks. The median asking price of these homes was estimated to be $224,322.2 Since this time last year, the inventory of homes for sale has decreased by 20.5 percent and the median price has increased by 3.9 percent.

“The Y/Y inventory decline of roughly 15 percent (which puts it at an all-time low for the series) offers additional supporting evidence. That’s not to say that we’ll be returning to rapid price appreciation any time soon; I certainly don’t foresee that,” Engebreth wrote.

The median asking price for homes in the US peaked in June 2006 at $319,459 and is now $95,137 (29.8 percent) lower. From a low of $211,844 in January 2011, the median asking price in the US has increased by $12,477 (5.9 percent).

In its January data, Realtor.com, the massive listings site which also tracks asking prices, reported list prices were up 3.69 percent on the year in the 146 metros it covers. The site reported the top four markets in terms of year over year increases were all in Florida: Miami (up 32.75 percent), Fort Myers-Cape Coral (up 21 percent), Punta Gorda (up 19.33 [percent), and West Palm Beach (up 18.60 percent). Inventory was down 23.20 percent on the year.