eBay Selling Secrets by Andrew Lock, the ‘Renegade eBay Auction Seller’

You know as I do that most business owners are lemmings. They have no concept of innovation; they just blindly follow the crowd - who are all starving from a lack of business. Incredibly stupid. It really is the blind leading the blind.

What’s even more stupid is that when a creative thinker comes along and shakes an industry up with their ‘radical’ ideas and approach, instead of duplicating the success, most business owners huddle in a corner and complain with each other about the newcomer who isn’t ‘playing by the rules’! They then focus their energies on trying to make life difficult for the upstart who dared to challenge “the way things are done around here.”

I know I say this a lot, but marketing is all about standing out from the crowd. If you blend in with the crowd you’ll just get lost. Marketing is everything, it’s all that matters.

One of the most challenging businesses to run is a restaurant. Long hours, staffing challenges, and lots of competition mean that most restaurants don’t survive their first year of operation. With that in mind, I just read about a restaurant owner who invited a dozen friends to enjoy a free dinner on opening night. He then advertised it as ‘sold out’, and he asked a favor of his friends – that they return the following day and form a line outside for around 30 minutes. Guess what happened? Passers by noticed the line, concluded that the restaurant must be great (which it was), and it has remained popular ever since!

Now that’s creative thinking. That restaurant owner could have placed an in the newspaper, or implemented any of the ‘standard’ methods of marketing a restaurant that everyone else does.

Instead, he thought creatively and his actions on ONE night ensured the success of the restaurant for years afterwards. Amazing.

If you don’t view yourself as a creative thinker, don’t worry. Nor do I. Seriously, I’m not a creative person. Fortunately, I discovered a shortcut to the process that’s really cool.

Keep alert to clever marketing ideas that you see in ANY industry. Whereas most people dismiss these ideas, the renegade online seller will ADAPT them for his/her own industry. I got this idea from Dan Kennedy, who got it from Mike Vance, who was the creative director for the Walt Disney company, and who personally worked with Walt on the development of EPCOT at Disney World in Florida.

As with most killer breakthroughs, this is a ridiculously simple concept and it’s easy to implement.

Here’s what you need to do now to kick start the process:

Start reading magazines you don’t normally read. Start watching TV channels that you don’t normally watch. Specifically, you’re your mind to clever marketing ideas that are being used in other industries.

You’ll be amazed at the cool discoveries you make. There’s no new ideas, so don’t try and invent them. It’s MUCH easier to ‘boroow’ from another industry than to create something out of thin air, from scratch.

Thinking creatively will explode your income, guaranteed. Have fun with it!

An irritation of mine has always been writers that use complicated terminology or words that few people understand.

Why do they do it?

Probably to stroke their own ego, to try to impress others with their vocabulary, or perhaps they genuinely don’t realize.

Fact is, we don’t speak like the written word, do we? Most writing is MUCH more formal than a typical conversation, isn’t it?

Schools have a lot to answer for. We were taught proper grammar, and that’s fine, but whereas it was once accepted that writing should ALWAYS follow ALL the rules of grammar, times change. These days, most writing seems too formal.

It reminds me of my French classes. The language we learnt in the class was virtually useless in a practical setting. I never once needed to ask a French person, ‘what time does the train leave the station today?’ There’s language that’s taught, and there’s REAL language. The same thing applies in writing. There’s writing by the book, and there’s writing that people understand, relate to, and enjoy.

I’m not sure why it’s changed over the years, and I do believe that there’s a balance to be had – slang and street talk are still out as far as most people are concerned, so don’t go that far.

Interestingly, George Orwell made a couple of observations on this topic that I think were ahead of his time. He said, ‘Never use a scientific word or jargon, if you can think of an everyday equivalent.”

He also said, “Never use a long word when a short one will do”, and “if it’s possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” Interesting, eh?

Well, let’s apply this to your business. In your sales letters, your website copy, your brochures, wherever there’s writing, it matters what you say and how you say it. There should be a logical relationship between the style of your writing and the type of business you’re in. A fun business should have fun writing. When selling to an upper class audience, the writing will be more respectful. Be willing to break the rules you spent so many years at school learning! Often, phrases like ‘do not’ and ‘can not’ sound artificual. In most cases, they should be shortened in line with how we speak: ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t.’

Short sentances help to make the text more punchy and dynamic. Don’t they?

“Never use a scientific word or jargon, if you can think of an everyday equivalent.”

Jargon is an area where you have to be careful. Many industries have jargon that’s virtually universally understood, which is fine, but if you’re looking to attract outsides into that world, you’ll alienate them if you use jargon they don’t understand. People want to belong.

ALWAYS have someone else proof-read your work. ALWAYS. I slip up on this occasionally, especially when I’m rushing to meet a deadline, but really there’s no excuse, especially if the work is being immortalized in print. With web copy at least it can be changed when a mistake is spotted.

Something else that is indicative of a change over the years is that, now, more than ever before, readers want us to get to the point quickly. Waffle and long, drawn out explanations are not tolerated by most people.

Above all, keep it simple. No one is impressed by unnecessarily complicated sounding words or overly formal language. Be approachable, and your buyers will respond well.

YOUR NEXT STEP:
Review all your existing marketing materials / websites and eBay listings, and honestly evaluate whether your writing fits the style of your business and the persona you convey. Make adjustments and conciously think about this topic when you write new marketing materials.

This seller clearly has their act together. They’re selling dog grooming related products, and they’ve racked up around 12,000 positive feedbacks since 2001.

Firstly, every listing follows a well designed template that looks good, with attractive colors and graphics that ADD to the marketing rather than being a distraction. Look at the logo in the top left corner, as well as the blurb in the middle of the page, which search engines love, because it’s viewed as content.

This item makes use of the ‘free shipping’ tag which displays as an orange flash on the top right hand corner of the main image (see below). Free Shipping is a VERY persuasive hook for buyers. For some reason, people hate paying shipping, even at minimal cost, so free shipping is a big benefit.

When you scroll down to the main listing description, the consistency continues, with some nice touches. Notice the paw print bullet point graphics in the second picture below.

The clarity of the layout should not be underestimated. Most listings are a jumble of text and it’s very difficult to wade through it. This listing on the other hand, contains a lot of text but it’s easy to read because of the

layout.

A guarantee is clearly stated near the top of the terms and conditions. It says:

“You can shop with confidence…we guarantee that your purchase will perform as stated.”

Something else to note too is that every listing makes use of the subtitle feature below the main title. Few sellers use this powerful opportunity to add persuasive copy – remember, subtitles show up in the search results, so they give you another opportnity to sell, and hopefully get the buyer to click through to the listing.

Why not review your own eBay listings to see how you can implement some of the tips from this example?

Each month I’m going to review a website or eBay listing from someone in our community. There’s always room for improvement even if your site is already successful, so if you’d like me to take a look and suggest some tweaks for free, send an email to this address: customerservicezone@gmail.com – don’t forget to include your name and the name of your website! This is also a great opportunity to promote your site for free, to others in our community.

Since this is the first month of this new feature, I’ll walk you through one of my websites, www.hdvguides.com – you’ll see that it sells ‘how to’ training videos for some popular semi-professional camcorders.

This is the home page of the site, and you can see that it’s immediately obvious what we’re selling – there’s a picture of a camcorder at the top, then 2 images of the DVD’s below the menu. Visitors should never have to guess what you’re offering, they’ll simply click away from the page. Below the images, the text is very descriptive, with emphasis on the benefits for the buyer, rather than the features of the products.

If you click through to the ‘chapters’ page you’ll see the question and answer format, which I’ve found to work very well because it replicates what’s going on in the readers head. They’re thinking, ‘does this DVD show me how to…’ and the questions and answers follow that same thinking pattern.

If you click on the ‘order now’ button, you’ll see that the buyer is immediately offered a ‘save money’

bundle of my HDV book with the DVD. The fact that this option is presented FIRST is significant. Most people select this option

because psychologically it appears to be the default, the one everyone goes for.

If you have a great product or service, you are guaranteed to make a lot of money, right? Wrong! The reality is that many superb products and services continually die simply because not enough people know they exist, and even if they do know they exist, they are not aware of why they should buy them. Fortunately, there is a solution…

Enter “marketing,” a well known but frequently misunderstood word. It encompasses promotion, advertising, publicizing, and selling – actually, everything in business is marketing (and marketing is everything). Marketing lets potential buyers know that a product or service exists that can benefit them, and it provides powerful reasons why they should spend their money on it.

When carried out properly as part of a well thought out campaign, marketing is highly persuasive—it encourages potential customers to buy something that they probably had not planned to buy. Think about that last statement carefully. The ability to persuade someone to buy something that they had probably not planned to buy is arguably more valuable than 99% of other business skills. Remember, customers are the lifeblood of any business. Without them your business is as good as dead.

It follows that if marketing is ignored, sales will be dramatically reduced compared to what they could and should be. Whereas it is possible to sell a poor product with good marketing, it is far more difficult if not impossible to sell a great product without it. That’s how important marketing is.

In simple terms, trying to run a business without marketing is like trying to drive a car that has no fuel. The car may be equipped in every other way, but without the fuel it will stay motionless forever. Marketing is the fuel of business. It provides the power, the driving force that will enable your company to move forward.

While most business owners realise the need for marketing, that acknowledgment rarely gets translated into an effective marketing strategy. More often that not, many entrepreneurs think that marketing means placing an occasional advert, sending out some sales letters, and spending lots of money on an initial product launch. Much more is needed however, in order to succeed and profit in today’s competitive business climate.

Let’s come back to the popular belief that the product or service in itself is the most important thing, and that sales will follow automatically. This is a misguided view that is held by many small businesses owners. This over confident view is dangerous. Some business owners genuinely believe that because they have a superior product or service, they will automatically blow the competition out of the water. However, even if all the indications are that your product will “fly out the door,” this will not be the case unless you have a well thought out and implemented marketing strategy.

One of the most prominent examples of a marketing disaster was the ill-fated Sony Betamax consumer video format. Launched in 1976, the Betamax video recorders initially sold well. Advertising of the product was drastically cut back within a very short period however, and later in 1976, JVC launched the VHS format with a wellplanned, continuous marketing campaign that literally swamped the market from every conceivable angle. Much of the marketing was very different from anything that had been tried previously, and the bold but structured approach really paid off.

At the time, industry experts generally agreed that the Sony format was technically superior compared to the VHS rival, yet we all know that the VHS format eventually won the day. Why? As noted, it was largely due to a more effective marketing campaign by JVC, the creators of VHS. They literally used every means at their disposal to promote the format, and crucially they appealed directly to the right target audience in a very powerful way.

One example of the creative approach to selling the product was the way that VHS recorders were stocked in supermarkets for the first time, encouraging customers to buy on impulse, along with their regular weekly shopping. Previously, video recorders had only been sold via specialist Audio-Video stores. Of course, we are now used to the concept of supermarkets selling all sorts of non-food products (and services), but at the time the approach was truly innovative, and highly effective.

Sony ultimately relented in the format war, in fact they started producing VHS recorders too (they had little choice considering that VHS players commanded 95% of the market at the time). So although Sony eventually got back on the right track, their early marketing mistakes cost them dearly.

As a postscript to the Sony example, it is interesting to note that when recordable consumer DVD technology first entered onto the scene, another format war seemed inevitable, with two main competing formats, +R and –R.

Both formats worked well, but the two were incompatible with each other. What did Sony do? They designed a recorder that could handle both formats! Now that’s a sensible solution!

Shame the manufacturers didn’t learn the lesson from the Betamax vs VHS battle. The same situation was repeated with the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray war, and a lot of companies lost a LOT of money as a result.

Most companies are stupid. All the time that there were two competing formats, most consumers stayed away. If manufacturers had got their act together and collobarated rather than competed, they could have been profiting from a single format more than 2 years ago. Only now are we seeing growth in the sales of Blu-ray players and discs.

Again, we come back to marketing. Nothing else really matters, marketing is everything.

I sometimes hear people say ‘I’m in the ‘x’ business, which is technically true, but it says a lot about their lack of understanding of how important marketing is. What they should be saying is ‘I’m in the marketing business’ or “I’m a marketer’. The product being sold is incidental because if there’s no marketing, there’s no sales, and no profit.

If you’re focus has drifted onto your product rather than your marketing, view this article as a wake up call. If profits are down, there’s only one thing that’s to blame – your marketing!

As a start, review some of the back issues of this newsletter – it’s packed full every issue with PRACTICAL marketing that you can implement in YOUR business. Let me know how you get on over the next few months, I’d love to hear about it.

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