MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Get­ting atten­tion means you are speak­ing to prospects’ needs, to their wants and desires, and to their present and cur­rent frame of mind.

Often, what is at the top of their minds is cov­ered in news media. I learned this from Paul Hartunian:

First, you go to USA Today.com, espe­cially if most of your tar­get audi­ence is pre­dom­i­nantly in the United States and other west­ern coun­tries. USAToday.com sum­ma­rizes what is at the top of people’s minds — be it a school shoot­ing, a politician’s sex scan­dal or a foot­ball team vic­tory — in the fol­low­ing categories:

• Most read
• Most com­mented
• Most rec­om­mended
• Most e-mailed

When you look at the Top 10 news sto­ries on USAToday.com, you know what is influ­enc­ing people’s feel­ings at this point:

…it’s about Gen­eral David Petraeus’ testimonial

…it’s about the fall in sales of exist­ing homes

…it’s about the baby born with two faces in north India

…it’s about the Women’s NCAA Tournament

This is what’s going on in their minds, and your role is to bridge the gap by speak­ing to them at their point of need.

Our role as mar­keters is to find a hot story – it doesn’t even need to be that rel­e­vant – and con­nect the prod­uct to the story. How­ever, this tech­nique can only be used on the day or the day after the news is released because that’s when it’s still hot in the minds of the prospects.

One of the best exam­ples I’ve seen was when Shame­less Shamus Brown, a sales guru who does really good email mar­ket­ing, used this tech­nique after Eliot Spitzer’s pros­ti­tu­tion scan­dal was cov­ered by the press.

The day after Eliot Spitzer’s story was out, the sub­ject line of his email read:

‘Did Eliot Spitzer ask for a dis­count?’

Any­body would click on that imme­di­ately. You see, I believe that the open rate for that email really shot up that day. Why? Because it was con­nected to a cur­rent event.

In that email,  he talked about sales tech­nique; he explained that there are some clients who are not price sen­si­tive at all, and Eliot Spitzer could be one of them.

The pros­ti­tute charged $5,000.00 dol­lars an hour…did Eliot Spitzer ask for a dis­count? Maybe a 20% 30% dis­count? No, he didn’t. The high price… the price insen­si­tiv­ity… the high pre­mium gives these kinds of clients a sense of power and worth.

The same goes for press releases. As Paul Har­tun­ian says, there’s a dif­fer­ence between ‘hot’ sto­ries and ‘non-hot’ sto­ries. A hot story means that it is urgent at that point in time. And the only way to ensure that your story is urgent at that point in time is to be in sync with cur­rent affairs of that time.

If there’s a new tax law com­ing up, you come up with a new Inter­net mar­ket­ing prod­uct or press release that says, ‘if you buy my prod­uct you can beat the tax law’, or ‘this tax law will not affect you much if you buy my new prod­uct’. Chances are, peo­ple will lis­ten to what you have to say because that’s what’s in the prospect’s mind at that point in time. 

If you run a multi­na­tional com­pany, try to cater to other hot loca­tions them as well, although most impor­tantly, look at your key demo­graph­ics and key geo­graphic space. More often than not, how­ever, US news is world news.

This secret, when imple­mented at the right time, will get more of your emails opened, your sales let­ters read, and your press releases quickly picked up by the press. This is only a small frac­tion of what this secret can do for you.

Last 5 posts by

• Are You a Direct Response Gazillionaire-In-Waiting? — Octo­ber 28th, 2008
• 3 For­bid­den Twit­ter Mind Con­trol Tricks to Explode Your Mar­ket­ing — Octo­ber 1st, 2008
• Email Mar­ket­ing Demys­ti­fied — July 24th, 2008
• An Intro­duc­tion to Tro­jan Horse Mar­ket­ing — July 2nd, 2008
• The Paprika Effect: The Brain-dead Sim­ple For­mula to Instant Cus­tomer Delight — June 25th, 2008

About the Author

Kenneth Yu is a tormented artist, but he was determined not to be a starving one. This is the primary reason why this D&AD award-winning advertising creative has plunged into the world of Internet entrepreneurship, and the rest -- as they say -- is history. Straddling both the creative and business realm, Kenneth combines bullet-fast ideation and his vast experience working with the big brands to alchemize marketing gold as the Head Copywriter and Marketing Strategist in MindValley. He shares more out-of-the-box marketing and copywriting tips (plus cool irreverent stuff) on his Twitter

Check out other posts by Kenneth

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