Be Like Burger King
There’s an old story about how McDonald’s spends millions of dollars every year on research to determine where they should build a new restaurant. Meanwhile, Burger King just builds restaurants down the street from wherever McDonald’s decides.
I’m not sure if this is true, but the point is made clear even if it isn’t: don’t spend money/time doing something that people have already done for you.
How does this apply to online marketing? Well, how much time do you spend agonizing over sales copy or writing your Adwords ads? The answer should be next to none. As a society we are exposed to an ever increasing amount of advertising. For the most part, these advertisements were studied for weeks or months by several different people who have been in the business for years before the public gets to see them.
Why are you wasting time trying to recreate what’s thrown in your face everyday?
The next time you are up late, turn on the television and watch an infomercial. The company who put that together spent tens of thousands of dollars producing that content, and will spend tens of thousands of dollars to put it in front of as many people as possible.
Don’t you think they took some time to think about what they were going to say?
Take notes the next time you see one of these infomercials or even the advertisements during prime time television. Most of the ads today try to be funny, so don’t pay too much attention to what the actors are saying. Instead, write down what the voice over is saying, in particular when the product is shown.
Now, take some of the words you wrote down and incorporate them into your sales copy or your PPC advertising. I’m willing to bet 90% of the time your new copy will outperform the one you came up with on your own.
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Move Over Content! Value Is The New King.
This is very smart. I agree completely. I used to use Amazon.com as this best example, but now there are so many best of breeds to follow. Nice post.
[…] blog is called Wagerank, and in particular, this post caught my eye. It talks about how it’s ok to follow the leader. There’s an old story about […]
Great point.
Investing in real estate? Find out where Starbucks is getting ready to build and buy some land around there. They’re done the research and found that it’s an up-and-coming area.