201 Sales and Marketing Lessons I Have Learnt in 10 Years (THREAD)

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I am doing this thread because the truth is - a lot of small business owners in Nigeria suck badly at sales and marketing.

I see them online all the time

People with great product and business ideas but poor sales and marketing ability

I learnt some of these sales and marketing lessons from others and I discovered some of them myself

I hope they are of help to you...

LESSON 1 - The money isn't in your service or product. It is in the SELLING of your service or product. This is ONE mistake that small business people make.

They put so much focus in their service or product and forget about the selling part.

Your business is not hair dressing, your business is SELLING hair dressing. Your business is not social media consulting, your business is SELLING social media consulting.

Of course, this also means what you are offering has to be top notch for you to be able to sell it

Lesson 2 - Why should people do business with you? Why should they buy your product? Why should they hire you? What makes you or your product special?

This is ONE question you need to answer in a convincing way if you want people to give you their hard earned money

Lesson 3 - Wondering why your marketing is not working? It is usually because of 3 things.

(1) Nobody wants the product you are selling

(2) the audience you are targeting sucks or

(3) your sales message (aka advert) sucks

Lesson 4 - People don't buy from you because they understand what you do. People buy from you because they feel understood

Lesson 5 - People love to be sold but they love to buy

(It means that psychologically, we like to think that the decision to buy was our idea, rather than one planted
in our minds by someone else. We don't like to feel as if we were manipulated into making a certain decision)

Lesson 6 - An educated prospect is more likely to buy than an uneducated prospect.

E.g. If someone struggling to sell human hair 'understands' that well constructed Instagram ads can get them higher sales, that person is most likely to pay for an Instagram advertising class

Lesson 7 - The difference between a N20 note and a N1000 note is the message on the paper. The message is the sales message (aka advert) for your product.

Change the message on the 'paper' and you will dramatically change the response you get.

Lesson 8 - How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie is not a book on sales and marketing.

It is a book on human behavior and reading it will make you understand humans and also make you a better sales person

Lesson 9 - Reading Dan Kennedy's books on sales and marketing is marketing wisdom.

Start with these 3 - The Ultimate Sales Letter, The Ultimate Marketing Plan and Magnetic Marketing. All can be found on Amazon

Lesson 10 - If you have a great product or service that can help people and you are not driving it using the best sales force you can lay your hands on, you are doing yourself and others a great disservice

Lesson 11 - People are not conditioned to price a product or service when it is coming from a respected authority or a celebrity. Your job is to position your brand as such

Lesson 12 - 3 things you need in order to sell - a product/service that has a market, sales pitch, delivery system for the sales pitch

Lesson 13 - Don't worry about offending the dogs when you are trying to attract the foxes. It means you shouldn't write your marketing based on people who might get annoyed by it.

Since they won't be buying anyway, don't focus on them. Focus on your most likely prospects.

Lesson 14 - Don't be afraid to use hype in your marketing as long as it is ethical. Ethical means you should stay away from lying. What you are selling should live up to what you are promising.

Lesson 15 - Almost any problem in the world can be solved with the right sales letter. This is from Gary Halbert and the logic is simple.

The right sales letter (in any format) brings in millions of dollars. Money solves most problems (Not all) hence the word ALMOST

Lesson 16 - The difference between being rich or broke can be one good sales letter.

Sales letter as used here simply means one good advert. One good advert can change your life. It changed mine.

It changed Oloye Akin Alabi's lives and that of others.

Lesson 17 - Playing the price game won't miraculously get people to make a buying decision.

Increase the value or the perceived value instead and people won't have an issue with the pricing.

Lesson 18 - Marketing helps you to remove fear and doubt in the mind of the prospect.

The number one question in the mind of your prospect is - Who can I trust?

Marketing helps you to remove that doubt

Lesson 19 - Marketing is more like seduction. One of the best books I have read about seduction is "the Game" by Neil Strauss.

It will help you with women but majorly, it will help you become better at marketing. You can get it on Amazon

Lesson 20 - What you need most to succeed in your marketing is access to a hungry crowd with money.

A hungry crowd means an audience of people that really want your product because of what it will do for them and are ready to spend money to get it.

REMINDER: I am going to give you the opportunity to get my best sales and marketing materials for an affordable price

These are materials that have taken me 10 years to put together

The offer will be open from August 5 - 9

Don't miss it.

Lesson 21 - When you have to spend your money to do marketing, it makes you think better and come up with better marketing. Try it.

People who are always posting "my customer might be on your timeline" will never understand this

Lesson 22 - Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. Only you know what you are doing, nobody else does. This is what most businesses do. When done well, the money you spend on advertising is an investment, not an expense.

Lesson 23 - If you want to catch big fish, you need to have a big bait. Small baits don't get big fishes. If you want to get big customers, what you are using to attract them matters a lot. It must be suited to get their attention

Lesson 24 - B to B Marketing is a MYTH. Businesses don't buy a single thing. Ever. All buying is done by real people. Not businesses.

When creating marketing to sell to a business, target your marketing to the key decision makers. Not some emotionless company or organization

Lesson 25 - Marketing is all about perception. It’s about how your product is perceived by the marketplace. It’s not about coming out and saying you’ve got the best product.

The product that sells the most is the one perceived by the marketplace to be the best

Lesson 26 - Always enter the conversation already taking place in the customer’s mind...

Here's a very simplified example of what I mean. A man is thinking, "Is my wife cheating?"

Your headline reads: "How to know instantly if your wife is cheating on you"

Lesson 27 - People are always tuned in to WII FM (What is in it for me?) - Make your AD so obviously valuable, that they would feel foolish to ignore it

Lesson 28 - There is hardly no type of customer (in terms of pocket size) you can't find using a combination of Facebook and Instagram if you understand how the algorithm works

Lesson 29 - A lot of responsibility rests on your headline. It’s responsible for stopping people in their tracks and piquing their interest.

A great headline needs to answer 3 questions:

Who Cares? – Why should your reader care?

WII FM – What’s in it for me?

Why should I keep reading?

Lesson 30 - The 3 biggest things that get people to react at their deepest core are:

(1) Fear

(2) Making Babies (aka Sex)

(3) Protecting Babies

If you can figure out a way to use them in your marketing, please do

Lesson 31 - People don't buy products. They buy the feelings and the benefits they will get from using the product.

E.g. A woman does not just buy a low calorie diet to become thin, she is buying a sexy, attractive and younger body.

Always remember this

Lesson 32 - In order to create effective marketing for a product, it is your job to know the market very well.

Lesson 33 - Always remember - A good advertisement is a believable promise to the right audience. If people don't believe your advert. They won't buy. Years ago, a man ran an advert for a book...

The advert talked about making $50,000 a year. People didn't respond to it. He ran the ad again but this time, he changed the $50,000 to $20,000. Sales poured in. People believed the lower figure.

Lesson 34 - Always make it easy for the people reading, viewing or listening to your advert to understand it.

Dump those big words in the bin. You can use them when you meet Wole Soyinka on the plane

Lesson 35 - You don't always have to create marketing from scratch. Someone, somewhere in the world has created awesome marketing for the same product you want to promote.

Use the internet to find them, get ideas from them, model them (not copy)

Lesson 36 - People generally buy things because of feelings. It is either a feeling they want to avoid (PAIN) or a feeling they want to experience (DESIRE)

You should understand what feeling would get people to buy the product you are selling and use it in your marketing.

Here is an example: Why would a woman pay N200,000 for hair? It is because of a feeling (desire) - I will leave you to name this desire.

HINT: It is the same desire that is at work when a man buys a $50,000 wristwatch

Lesson 37 - When creating any piece of marketing, you should always assume that your target prospect is very lazy. So, make your marketing very easy for them to consume and understand

Lesson 38 - Always use 'Money back guarantee' where possible in your marketing. It will drive up your sales

Lesson 39 - Always see your marketing campaigns as a scientific experiment. Don't be satisfied with a particular result. Test to see if you can make it better. Keep testing.

Lesson 40 - In email marketing, the FROM section is the most important factor that will determine if your email is opened or not. Next to it is the subject line.

Lesson 41 - When building an email list, it is always a good idea to sell yourself to the lead before they optin. This will make them more receptive to your future mails

Lesson 42 - Your offer is by far the most important element in your marketing. Think more about how to sweeten your offer than any other aspect of writing copy.

Strong copy will not overcome a weak offer but in many cases, a strong offer will succeed in spite of weak copy written by marketing morons. Your offer is the sum of what you are selling, the price, the payment conditions etc

Lesson 43 - Your offer must be clear. People must be able to understand it instantly. Confused people do not respond.

Lesson 44 - Always Remember the Magic Formula:

Right Audience + Right Promise (Believable) + Right Offer = Money

Lesson 45 - There is just one reason why anyone ever pays attention to your marketing message (advert) regardless of the format. He expects a reward. That is the key to holding his interest.

Lesson 46 - Make your offer so great only a lunatic would refuse to buy - This comes from the baba of advertising, Claude Hopkins

Lesson 47 - If you can create high perceived value about a product and then give it at a discount, you will get tons of sales.

E.g. One of my best selling ads is an ad that says - Which of these N75,000 designer bags do you want for N20,000 each? The ad follows with pictures of excellent, good looking bags for women

Lesson 48 - People don't buy because of 3 Main things:

(1) They don't want what you are selling

(2) They can't afford it

(3) They have doubts/objections about buying it

Lesson 49 - From Lesson 48, you can't do much about reasons 1 and 2. But you can do a lot about reason No. 3. Focus on that

Lesson 50 - People have what is known as hidden addictions. E.g. The need to feel important, the need to be understood. If you understand the hidden addiction of your market, you can easily use that to capture their attention and convert them to customers

UPDATE: I still have 151 sales and marketing lessons to go. What I am going to do is to make all 201 lessons into a PDF. It will be available by next week Thursday.