On October 29, 2016 we purchased Samsung TV from the Best Buy in Riverdale, NJ, to be used for both cable TV and X-Box.

The salesman, Sam Giro, discouraged us from hiring the Geek Squad as we intended, saying it would be a snap for us to set up the TV and connect it to both cable and the game system ourselves.

I expressed concern because I am a technical idiot and said, “What if I can’t do it?”

Sam said, “Just call the store and we will send someone to take care of it for only $50.”

Well, we couldn’t do it. As Sam had suggested, we called back to set up Geek Squad service.

But instead of scheduling a service call over the phone as promised, Sam now he told me we had to drive back the 40 minutes to schedule the appointment in person.

When we got there, Manager Richard Parra said it would cost $100, not $50, for the service call, because there were 2 connections – cable and X-Box.

I said, “Richard, Sam told me Geek Squad would do the whole thing for $50 and we could just schedule it with a call to the store. Instead, he forced us to come back, wasting, between driving and dealing with you, over an hour of our time – and then you refused to honor your quote of $50 and charged us double.”

Richard shrugged, made no apology, and in essence told us, “Too bad for you; this is our policy.”

Are Best Buy store managers so little empowered that they cannot make things right with an unhappy customer who has been deceived by a dishonest salesman?

Do yourself a favor and avoid Best Buy.

I got a personal e-mail from www.rushessay.com, a service that writes essays for students, asking me to help them remove some blacklist comments posted by others on my site. I have always found term paper and essay ghostwriting services for students reprehensible. Students are there to learn, and you do not learn by having someone else write your papers and essays for you. I will do nothing to help this company and hope they go out of business soon. Do you agree with me on this one?

That’s the opinion of superstar marketer Perry Marshall, and here’s how he calculated that number:

Start with about 300 million people in the United States.

Consider that half of them are retired or in school or on welfare, a fourth are taking care of the retired ones and the ones in school, you’ve got 75 million left.

But 29 million work for the federal government which means there’s only 46 million left to bring home the bacon.

Then there’s the 15 million who work for the local government, so they’re only marginally more worthwhile than the feds.

We’re down to 31 million now.

80% of the 31 million are either lazy, apathetic, and mostly unproductive, or they’re busy undoing the damage done by the incompetents every day.

So in fact there’s only six million people doing real, actual, productive, innovative hard work

Do you know the “50/50 rule” of content marketing?

How about the “99:1 rule” of affiliate marketing?

Or the “25-50-25 rule” of time management for entrepreneurs?

Or Fred Gleeck’s “10X rule” of information product pricing?

My new infographic shows you in a concise, graphic format the 12
important marketing rules of thumb every marketer should know.

You can view it for free by clicking here now:

www.bly.com/newsite/Pages/PDFs/marketing-rules-of-thumb.pdf

“Above the line” (ATL) means marketing that focuses on branding and image, not response and sales.

There are 3 significant differences between a direct response copywriter like me and the ATL copywriters who serve Madison Avenue ad agencies and big consumer brands:

1—The direct response copywriter focuses on sales.

Everything we do is designed to get the cash register to ring – to bring in either an order or a sales lead.

The direct response copywriter has an advantage – namely, the sales results of most of what we write can be measured down to the penny.

Above the line copywriters often have no idea whether their ad moved the sales needle one iota, and so they are operating largely in the dark.

2—Branding people are obsessed with creativity.

Most ATL copywriters I know create advertising that is fun, creative, offbeat, humorous, entertaining, and beautifully designed.

The reason is that their clients, consumer brand managers, like those characteristics in their ads.

The direct response copywriter, as I have said, focuses on results, not aesthetics.

We don’t care whether the consumer likes our ad. We only care that she buys the product.

And long experience shows there is little or no correlation between people liking your ad and buying your product.

3—Branding people are obsessed with originality.

To them the goal is to be creative and original – to come up with a completely new idea or selling approach.

The direct response copywriter takes a different approach: We study what has worked exceptionally well in the past and then model our new promotions after these proven winners.

Most direct response copywriters keep “swipe files” which are collections of ads known to be proven winners.

We know they are proven winners because we see them run again and again. If a promotion bombs, marketers don’t tend to repeat it.

If it pulls like gangbusters, they do.

Regardless of what your marketing objectives are, your marketing efforts must achieve two results. Think of it like a prize-fighter’s one-two punch. Marketing must get attention and communicate value.

One of the best ways to communicate value is to share information. The value of infographics is their ability to communicate information concisely. When it comes to effective communication, an image will trump a paragraph or even a page every time. Why? Because it grabs your attention.

Here’s why infographics work so well.

Attention Grabbing
A colorful infographic with a powerful headline is impossible to ignore.

Quickly Scannable
The strength of infographics is that large amounts of often diverse information can be presented quickly and organized for scanning. Rather than expecting your audience to take the time to read through an article sentence by sentence, they can scan an infographic in seconds and quickly find interesting bits of information that cause them to linger longer.

Broad Appeal
Infographics appeal to different learning styles. There are lots of learning styles out there, but it is widely accepted that images communicate information more effectively than words alone.

Emotion
Color and image have more emotional appeal than black-and-white verbiage. Marketers know that emotion is what causes people to take action. When you want your audience to act, use an infographic

Variety
Infographics can add variety to your messaging. Not every message is suitable for an infographic, and using them judiciously is important. But, when you want a particular message to really stand out from the rest of you content, an infographic is likely to do the trick for you.

What are you waiting for? Put on your gloves and land your next knockout blow with an infographic.

This article appears courtesy of Ivan Serrano,

http://ivanserrano217.jux.com

In a recent essay, I complained about an association that asked
me to speak for free. They would not cover my expenses. And the
worst offense: they even wanted me to pay to attend my own talk!

Although most of my subscribers agreed that this was a raw
deal, a couple of you suggested I could make it pay off by
selling my services, my books, or both during my talk.

Well, this doesn’t work for me, because I will not, under any
circumstances, pitch my products or services from the platform.

Yes, I am aware many speakers make a lot of money selling their
books, CDs, and coaching programs from the platform or “BOR” —
back of the room.

I do not condemn them or say it is wrong. Indeed, BOR selling
is a time-honored method of income generation for professional
speakers. There are books and training on how to do it. But it
is not for me and never will be.

There are a few reasons. The first is that, for me, it has a
sleazy feel. I know it is a legitimate method of revenue
generation for speakers. But to me personally, it is distasteful
… and in 35 years of speaking I have never done it, not even
once.

Second, and worse, your audience has paid to be there. So they
have a right to expect that if they paid to attend your hour
session, every one of the 60 minutes is dedicated to you
delivering the content you promised — and plenty of it.

You are there to educate the audience on how to do a task or
improve their mastery of a skill — and not convince them to hire
you for consulting or coaching or to buy your tapes.

The only “selling” takes place when the meeting coordinator
reads your 1-minute bio right before you go on stage. The bio
explains why you are a credible speaker on the topic, and by
extension, makes the audience want to know more about what you
can do for them.

I intensely dislike it when speakers take 5 or 10 minutes out of
their hour talk to deliver a rehearsed, canned pitch on buying their
products, with special offer packages that are good only that
day.

My informal surveys show that half the audience is OK with this.
But to the other half, it demeans you and causes them to lose
respect for you. Who wants that?

The worst offenders are “pitch fests” — events where sponsors
actually take a cut of the speaker’s product sales from the day.

To maximize their profits, these event producers pressure
speakers (it has happened to me, and of course I refused to
participate) to sell expensive packages of books, info products,
coaching, and other services while on stage … and to push them
hard.

As a result, many speakers push the product throughout the talk,
and in doing so hold back valuable tips, telling the audience
instead “this is in my book.” In some of these events, virtually
the entire presentation is a thinly disguised sales pitch.

This is the cesspool of professional speaking. To be fair, many
embrace and profit from it. And to them I say: You can have it.
But if you are a meeting planner, please let me know in advance
so I neither speak at nor attend your event.

The notion of posting online customer reviews of products and
services — such as is done on Angie’s List and Amazon — has some
troubling flaws.

I will focus here on Amazon since I have never used Angie’s
list … and as an author, I have a lot of exposure to the reviews
posted on Amazon.

The first problem is what book marketing guru John Kremer,
author of the classic “1,001 Ways to Market Your Book,” calls
“agenda-driven reviews.”

One example is when I am looking at the page on Amazon for some
marketing guru’s new book and I see immediately two dozen
five-star reviews and nothing lower.

I can’t help notice that virtually all the reviewers are the
author’s friends, associates, joint venture partners, and
affiliates.

The reviewers’ agenda is clear: to help the author hype his
book. The motive? To have the author reciprocate and do the same
for them.

The opposite situation is when the reviewer clearly has a grudge
either against the author or his philosophy or ideas — and posts
a one-star review for what any sensible person would agree is a
solid, good book on the topic.

The second problem with the Amazon review system is that,
incredibly, I have seen a number of reviews where the reviewer
says she has not read the book yet but will get to it soon — and
amazingly, Amazon has let the review stand.

Can you imagine a book reviewer for the New York Times Book
Review writing in his review that he has not yet read the book
in question?

The third problem, which brings up a broader issue I will
address in a minute, is reviews written by reviewers who are
unqualified to evaluate the book in question. A related problem
is when the reviewer’s comments are just plain stupid or
trivial.

I subscribe to the New York Review of books, and if they are
running a review of a new biography of Abraham Lincoln, the
reviewer they hire will most certainly be a historian or
presidential biographer or Lincoln scholar.

But on Amazon, you can post a review of a book on woodworking
even if you have never in your life driven a nail into a 2X4.

And in your Amazon review, you can blatantly say things that are
wrong, because Amazon doesn’t seem to check it or prevent it
from being published.

As for stupid or trivial comments: one of my books got a
one-star review because the reader did not like the paper it was
printed on.

The reason I like traditional print media like newspapers,
magazines, and published books is that the authors and their
writings are vetted by editors and publishers.

A columnist for PC Magazine once wisely observed: “The worst
thing about the Internet is that anyone and everyone can publish
anything to it.”

The Internet in general and social media in particular
encourages the belief that everyone is entitled to their
opinion. And it has given those people a vehicle for easily
publishing those views, no matter how wrong or inane.

Writer Harlan Ellison correctly states: “Everyone is not
entitled to their opinion. They are entitled to their informed
opinion.”

“Informed opinion” means you have some experience, knowledge,
qualifications, or credentials in the subject you are writing
about.

For instance, is it OK for me to write a negative review of a
book on home schooling if I have never tried the author’s
methods or worse, never home-schooled my kids — or even worse,
don’t even have kids? I think not. But I can do it on Amazon all
day long. And so can you and everyone else reading this e-mail.

If the NY Times Book Review hired me to review a book on home
schooling, you can bet I would have to be a parent and probably
a pediatrician or parenting writer to get the gig.

Another example: I once was hired to write a direct mail package
being mailed to engineers selling them a membership in a
professional society.

The client gave it to a dozen people to review. Many of them
suggested changes that made no sense to me, mainly based on the
fact that they did not understand some of the technical topics
discussed in the letter — for instance, why chemical engineers
want to increase process yields.

It turned out that none of the reviewers was an engineer. As
such, I considered their opinion as to what would or would not
engage engineers to be extremely uninformed.

The only one involved in the creation of the DM package who was
in fact an engineer was the copywriter — me.