Issue #2559

• WEALTHY: You can benefit from my contacts (Rick Pendergraft)
• HEALTHY: Don’t let these toxins make you sick (Kelley Herring)
• WISE: Leo Tolstoy on time

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

• A marketing strategy you can use today (John Forde)
• What to look for before you to set up shop (Suzanne Richardson)
• It’s Good to Know… about the chances of being wiped out by an asteroid
• Add “caitiff” to your vocabulary

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A Boon for the Housing Sector

By Rick Pendergraft

I was back in my old stomping grounds of Indiana and Ohio over the weekend. I was there for pleasure, but I ended up with some useful information from a friend. 

My friend Dave owns his own title company. As you can imagine, he has been struggling to stay afloat, with the housing market being so bad over the last two years. But what I learned from him is very encouraging. Dave said his business has increased 300 percent this month over last month and over last December.

It seems the huge drop in mortgage rates is finally creating some activity. The skeptics will say, “Sure. The refi business must be going crazy.” But Dave said his purchase activity has jumped as well. This suggests to me that people who have been interested in buying a home were just holding out until mortgage rates hit new lows. 

I have been bullish on the housing sector since mid-November. On November 10, during an appearance on Fox Business News, I recommended the Spyder Select Homebuilders ETF (XHB) – and hearing Dave’s news makes me even more bullish on the XHB. You might consider it to jumpstart your investments this year. 

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 “There is only one time that is important – NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time we have any power over.”

Leo Tolstoy

Read This Now, or the Puppy Gets It

By John Forde

Years ago, National Lampoon ran a cover showing an adorable – but worried – puppy with a revolver held to its head. The headline next to the image read something like, “If you don’t buy this magazine, the puppy gets it.” 

Depending on how you feel about puppies, that qualifies as an “urgency” pitch. Of course, there are other ways to create urgency.

“Crazy Eddie” yelling on late-night TV about his loony low prices… fire sales and special-edition offers… expiring coupons.

The list goes on. And on. And on.

It’s no accident. Creating urgency is part and parcel of many a winning ad campaign. Maybe that’s why Linda, one of my Copywriter’s Roundtable subscribers, wrote me asking what on earth was going on.

The urgency plea, she says, is both everywhere and far too often just plain baloney. Sales end up lasting longer, last-minute prices seem to last forever, and so on. What gives?

I took a minute to write Linda a reply. Then figured it was good enough to share with you, too. See if you agree.

Yes and yes, I told her.

Linda’s right on two fronts.

First, lots of ads do whatever they can to pound the urgency button. Reason being, all marketing is more or less at war with the onslaught of “other” ads – each of which competes for space in the customer’s mind – and, more important, with the overwhelming forces of inertia.

The customer who reads an ad that encourages him to put it down for later consideration is generally a customer lost in the long run. Put more simply, those who don’t “act now” tend not to act at all.

For a brilliant explanation of how this works, beyond the obvious, check out the much-recommended book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini. Especially what he has to say about the pulling power of scarcity. People really do want to snap up the “last” of anything, rather than miss out.

That said, the other thing Linda is right about is that when every single ad is saying you’re going to miss out, the message starts to get diluted. Everyone starts to sound the same. And in selling, sounding the same as everybody else is slow poison to your business.

When that happens, what happens next?

The clever sellers will come up with other ways to express urgency, other than “limited supply” pitches.

They’ll have deadlines before price increases, limited-time offers on extras thrown into a deal, special bonuses limited to the first few respondents, etc.

Among the group of info publishers I work closely with, one of the most powerful innovations of the last two years – literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars in sales (and counting) – has been to create online “countdown” offers with time deadlines tracked right down to the hour and minute on which the deal is available.

I keep thinking they’ll stop working. Yet they keep working, just the same.

But to really work, the limits need to be real. Even if they’re created just to increase the urgency, they have to be enforced. Otherwise, the customers get wise to the ruse. Not only does the seller sacrifice trust in his claims, he also sacrifices the power of the technique.

As a marketer, I would second-guess those businesses that don’t make good on their “last chance” offers. And not only for the reasons cited above.

For instance, I know that with the marketers I work with, legal teams actually scan the offers and make sure that if there’s a deadline mentioned, the offer gets pulled the minute the deadline passes.

And if there’s a “limited low price” offered, the legal eagles make sure it never gets offered again. Price hikes are made to happen. Limited bonuses get retired according to the restrictions printed on the reply card.

This keeps the marketers honest.

But it also preserves the power of the technique for the rest of us, when we want to try it elsewhere to the same audience.

Long story short…

As a consumer, you – like Linda – are right to question the “urgency” pitch. But both good and bad marketers use it. And, likely, will use it forever.

Likewise, if you find yourself on the marketing side of the fence, it’s something you don’t want to rule out too quickly.

[Ed. Note: Copywriting is just one skill you can master to help your business grow. Learn the ins and outs of copywriting, marketing, search engine optimization, and more from some of the best experts in the business (including John Forde, Bob Bly, and Charlie Byrne) with a membership in ETR's Internet Money Club. Learn the details here.

And to get John's wisdom and insights into copywriting (and much more), sign up for his free e-letter, Copywriter's Roundtable, at copywritersroundtable.com. Or send an e-mail to signup@jackforde.com. Get a free report about 15 deadly copy mistakes and how to avoid them when you sign up today.]

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The Absolute Worst Place for Your Business

By Suzanne Richardson

The 113 miles of Highway 87 between Great Falls and Havre in Montana is desolate. A half-dozen or so tiny towns have cropped up in places. But mostly there’s just the two-lane road, vast expanses of prairie, and the enormous canopy of sky.

Nineteen miles south of Havre – smack in the middle of nowhere – is the Northern Winz Casino. The 20,000-square-foot monstrosity of a building boasts 350 slot machines and a huge parking lot.

Now, I’m not privy to how well the casino is doing. But rarely have I driven past and seen more than 20 cars in the lot. And I’m guessing that, even on Highway 87’s busiest days, no more than a thousand cars pass the Northern Winz. (And how many of those are going to stop their purposeful drive to the airport or Canada to play the slots?)

This casino breaks one of Michael Masterson’s core business principles: Make sure there’s a market for your product or service before you set up shop.

One way to know whether there’s a market? If someone else is there before you. The Northern Winz is operating under the “Build It and They Will Come” theory – establishing itself on an otherwise bare stretch of land and hoping to attract customers. A better plan of action would have been to open up next to an already-successful casino.

This business-building “law” is true whether you’re a brick-and-mortar operation or an information-publishing start-up. Take a look around. If someone else is doing what you want to do… and succeeding… you have a good chance of making it work for you. If all you can see is empty prairie, you need to go back to the drawing board.

[Ed. Note: Master a few simple secrets of classic marketing, and you can sell snow to a polar bear. Discover 12 of the most effective marketing strategies around in Changing the Channel, the Amazon.com best-seller by marketing masters Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby. Pick up your copy today.]

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Reduce AGEs With This B Vitamin

By Kelley Herring

I’ve written before about AGEs (Advanced Glycation End products) – a class of toxins linked with inflammation, insulin resistance, diabetes, vascular and kidney disease, and Alzheimer’s. One way you can protect against them is by being mindful of the way you cook your food.

Today, I have another way to reduce the effects of these dangerous substances: Take benfotiamine.

Benfotiamine is the lipid-soluble version of thiamine – a water-soluble B vitamin. Because benfotiamine is fat-soluble, it is metabolized by cells more effectively than its water-soluble cousin.

In a recent study, diabetics were given an AGE-rich meal both before and after they supplemented with 1,050 mg/day of benfotiamine for three days.

The high-AGE meal before the benfotiamine supplementation caused the diabetics’ capillary blood flow to be reduced by 60 percent, and the ability of their larger blood vessels to dilate was diminished by 35 percent. These dangerous changes are typical in people with early atherosclerosis, which can lead to heart attack or stroke.

Remarkably, when researchers evaluated the subjects after the supplementation, they found benfotiamine completely prevented the detrimental effects on their blood vessels. Markers of oxidative stress were also reduced.

Research shows benfotiamine is safe, effective, and has no known side effects or drug interactions. Recommended use ranges from 150-1,000 mg/day, divided into two or three doses. You can find benfotiamine online for under $10. As always, check with your physician before adding any new supplements to your diet.

[Ed. Note: You can get expert insights into the best supplements for living a healthy life - for free. Just sign up for ETR's natural health newsletter, and you'll get twice-weekly updates on the latest health breakthroughs, healthful recipes, fat-burning strategies, and more.

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It’s Good to Know: “Oh no! It’s coming straight at us!”

I hope you’re sitting down for this. Currently, there is no plan in place to deal with the possibility of an asteroid hurtling toward Earth. (Where are our tax dollars going anyway?) The impact could kill millions – or even wipe out the human race. And don’t think it couldn’t happen. An asteroid hit Siberia in 1908 with the force of a nuclear explosion. And many believe a similar event killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Of course, the odds are… well, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning while buying a winning lottery ticket.

Nevertheless, a group of scientists – the International Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation – is worrying about these sorts of things so you don’t have to. They’re lobbying the United Nations to coordinate asteroid emergency plans. This could mean sending spacecraft to knock an asteroid off course (a la the action movies Armageddon Or, if necessary, evacuating millions in the impact zone.

 (Source: Associated Press)

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Word to the Wise: Caitiff

A “caitiff” (KAY-tif) – from the Latin for “captive” – is a mean, cowardly person.

Example (as used by Charles Reade in The Atlantic): “[The] towering threat and the flaming eye and the swift rush buffeted the caitiff away: He recoiled three steps, and nearly fell down.”

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Copyright ETR, LLC, 2009

Similar Articles:

• Caitiff
• Oh no! It’s coming straight at us!
• Read This Now, or the Puppy Gets It
• Reduce AGEs With This B Vitamin
• The Importance of Being Urgent