Michael Wilding

Tag: copywriting

  • The Art Of Using Storytelling To Sell

    The Art Of Using Storytelling To Sell

    For the last few days I’ve been writing the August edition of Business Ignition, and it’s all about using the art of storytelling in your marketing.

    And I’m so friggin excited by it I could cry.

    You see if you want to sell anything, and I literally mean anything, then you need to be able to tell stories.

    I don’t care if you sell mud, you’\ll be able to sell whole lot more of it if you do it using storytelling!

    Inside the magazine I will be sharing:

    * How to find endless content ideas
    * How to master the art of storytelling
    * The essential elements of a story
    * How to keep your readers beggin for more
    * When to sell your product
    * Making sure you don’t over-complicate things

    Because here’s the trooth… selling is easy, but everybody tries to make it hard.

    Why do they try to make it hard?

    Because there’s a whole billion dollar industry out there which is based around teaching folk how to sell.

    If everybody realised how easy it actually was to sell, then whole buncha people wouldn’t be making any money.

    But I like to say things as they are.

    And the trooth is… it’s pretty damn easy to sell.

    Here are the steps:

    1) Get an audience
    2) Ask the audience what causes them the most pain
    3) Make a product that solves that pain
    4) Write them great stories every day
    5) Sell your product in every story

    Full stop.

    The first three steps are as easy as they sound. Build an audience and ask them the question.

    People don’t like asking their audience questions. It’s weird. Don’t freak out about it, just do it. It brings you closer to them and you can get the answers you need to make your product.

    Master the art of storytelling.

    Which is what I’m teaching in this month’s Business Ignition. It’s closed to new members, but I will be opening up 11 spaces at the beginning of August.\

    Here’s where you need to put your name down if you want a chance of being one of the eleven.

    https://michaelwilding.com/business-ignition

    Then tell stories to your audience every day.

    Have a great weekend.

    Michael

  • K.I.S.S. (an example)

    K.I.S.S. (an example)

    You’ll know the problem I’ve been having with Porcelanosa. Thank you for all your support sharing my tweets, this seems to be the only way to get them to respond seriously.

    You can still share them here if you like, they’re coming back to site at 10am this morning.

    Going through everything with the kitchen fitters, one of the biggest problems is they’ve tried to be too damn clever.

    And it just doesn’t work.

    Yup, the principle sounds good.

    Yup, the design looks good (if it was all one colour, didn’t have chips, and was actually made properly).

    But… if the functionality is bad, then it’s a bad design. Full stop.

    It’s one of the reasons that I always tell people to stop over-complicating things in their marketing.

    Marketing isn’t rocket science.

    Heck, marketing is pretty damn simple.

    It works like this:

    1) Build an audience
    2) Interact with your audience regularly on a personal level
    3) Sell things to your audience

    Much as the gurus will try and tell you, there’s no wizardry behind any of it. It’s direct response marketing pure and simple.

    Yes, you can learn nice tips and tricks, you can get better at copywriting, you can buy fancy website plugins or software.

    But the bottom line is, they’re all additions. You don’t NEED them to make money online.

    All you need is an email newsletter, an optin form, traffic and some honesty.

    Which is exactly what I teach in my Business Ignition. It’s closed to new members at the moment, but you can put your name on the waiting list here and be the first to know when there are some spaces.

    Michael

  • The super un-sexy saga continues…

    The super un-sexy saga continues…

    Last week was a bad week, to put it mildly.

    It seems that getting hundreds of re-tweets and shares on Twitter finally kicked Porcelanosa into action.

    You’d probably think it would make them think twice about their service, and provide an incredible finish.

    But alas no….

    The regional manager turned up and… was mainly interested in the fact that I’d been posting on Twitter about how shite their service is.

    Urrrm.

    Aren’t you meant to be here to fix the major problems we’re having?!

    Luckily I wasn’t there, I was where I needed to be, in hospital with Max.

    But my mum, their customer, was there, and she wasn’t best happy.

    It started by our contractors being accused of damaging the pallet taking it off the truck, the guy had barely walked through the gates when that happened.

    Win-a-goal, great way to smooth over a bad situation.

    The trucks, which apparently ALL come with cranes to remove the goods, didn’t have a crane to remove the goods. This statement was later changed to they all come with a tail lift and pallet mover.

    Funnily enough our builders weren’t going to touch anything, and there was no way one driver was able to off-load everything.

    (apparently it’s illegal for them to send one drive on a truck with this kinda sized load anyway, but that’s second-hand information and I don’t know whether it’s true or not)

    So.. the regional manager said they didn’t have to deliver to site, they could leave it on the road.

    WTF?!

    Leave it on the road!

    We’d invited them to unload on the drive, so they’re allowed to, our builders just wouldn’t do it for them after an immediate accusation.

    It was only when they were told we’d call the Highways Agency if they left it on the road that they decided it wasn’t such a good idea.

    But… they still had no way to unload it.

    In the end our builders agreed they would unload after a written and signed agreement saying they took no responsibility for unloading or any damage that may occur during it.

    And finally… the bathrooms came off the truck.

    Waht a friggin nightmare!

    And it didn’t end there.

    But to be fair, the bathrooms were delivered, all parts were there, except for one shower tray and one cracked tile which could happen in any delivery.

    But when it came to the kitchen… it just got worse.

    Here’s the summary of what happened since Wednesday last week, and what’s currently being done to resolve it.

    * The high gloss white cabinets are all different shades of white. They have to be fitted, then my mum chooses the white she likes the most, the rest of the doors all come off and have to be re-made to match.

    * The counter-top and splash backs can’t be fitted until two months after the kitchen is fitted (I know right!). Nobody told us this during order, they’re being refunded in full.

    * The counter top white doesn’t match the cabinet whites, it’s not meant to, the kitchen designer didn’t actually bother to help my mum in her design to let her know this would look awful.

    * The new granite worktops (instead of Porcelanosa’s composite) will look better, will be ready and fitted in two weeks, and are less than half the price.

    * Porcelaonsa are contributing towards the kitchen fitting as our kitchen fitters left and they couldn’t provide a kitchen fitter until September!

    * Missing bathroom shower tray being deliver by the regional manager, who comes back today to shwo the kitchen fitters how to fit the kitchen as we are taking no responsibilty for it.

    In fact, the regional manager arrrvied about half an hour ago as I am writing this email, so I will head out to meet him and see how they’re getting on.

    For those entrepreneuers among you, this is not the way to run a business.

    You should check out my blog posts on customer service here:

    https://michaelwilding.com/why-customer-support-is-so-important/

    https://michaelwilding.com/how-to-keep-your-customers-happy/

    Michael

  • Brick scraped balls

    Brick scraped balls

    As you know we’ve got some building work going on at the moment, in fact the first house will be finished in a little over four weeks!

    I can’t believe we’re nearing the end of part one now, part two is only a month or so behind it.

    They’re looking great, and my bank balance is looking low.

    But I’ve become good friends with the owner of the building company we’re using, and he gave me a lift to pick up our car from the garage today.

    On the way we went via the builders merchants to pick up some large specialist bricks.

    I stood one foot either side, bent at the knees (as is proper), grabbed this large brick in both hands, lifted it up and…

    …completely forgot the height of it as it grazed my balls.

    I’m not gonna lie, it hurt.

    What hurt even more was the group of people laughing at me as I did it. It turns out that everyone does this the first time they lift up one of these bricks, and they’d simply been waiting for it to happen to me.

    Bastards.

    Anyhoo, I’m used to a little bit of pain.

    Because that’s what you get when you start a business.

    It may be something that you’re feeling right now if things aren’t going your way.

    But here’s what I’ve learned…

    You don’t make the same mistake twice. I may have scraped my balls once, but I won’t do it again.

    You may make a mistake with traffic, copywriting, outsourcing or another element of your business. But once you’ve made it once, you won’t do it again and that’s how you get better!

    Michael

  • Ooops!

    Ooops!

    From time to time we all struggle with inspiration.

    When you’re writing one or more emails every day, it can be hard to find something to write about.

    I get that.

    What do we do in those difficult times?

    We look around at newspapers, gossip websites and try and find inspiration.

    But if we’re really struggling then most of us will eventually resort to a swipe file.

    And there’s nothing wrong with using a swipe file for inspiration.

    Unless you do this…

    Logitravel is a major German travel company.

    Clearly someone in their marketing department was struggling with inspiration and decided to use a swipe file.

    But they forgot to change the subject line.

    Whooops!

    This is a prime example of someone not doing what you must do before you schedule any email…

    Send yourself a test!

    Never skip this step however quickly you are trying to get the email out. It only takes a few seconds, and prevents you from looking stoopid.

    Michael

    P.S. Heading back to writing this months Business Ignition. I’m pretty damn excited by what’s inside it 😉