Q: PowerSelling. What is it?
A: PowerSelling is an advertising technique that makes your name the one people think of first – and feel the best about – when they need what you sell.
Q: Does it work for B2B? (Business to Business)
A: Not really. B2B requires tight targeting and significantly more logic than what is required to win the hearts of the public.
Q: Does it work for Direct Response offers?
A: No. Direct Response offers are built almost entirely on features and benefits, the so-called “value proposition,” enhanced by an urgent call-to-action, usually with a final bit of “added value” if you ACT NOW.
Q: So what’s it good for?
A: PowerSelling is for products and services that have a long purchase cycle and a relatively high price tag; things like diamond engagement rings, legal services, medical services, and home services like plumbing, air conditioning, roofing, and electrical. PowerSelling is strictly B2C (Business to Consumer) and it almost always employs mass media; television or radio, with billboards added if the budget permits.
Q: But don’t you agree that the secret of marketing is to reach the right people with the right offer at the right time?
A: No, we don’t agree with that at all. PowerSellers know that no business has ever failed because they were “reaching the wrong people.” When you sell a product or service that will someday be purchased by a high percentage of the public, the key to success is to become the company they think of first – and feel the best about – when they need what you sell.
Q: But how can you measure that?
A: By monitoring the public’s increased use of your branded keywords.
When a person types an unbranded keyword into a search engine, such as “diamond engagement rings,” or “air conditioning repair,” they are sending a clear signal that they have no preferred provider in that category.
This is why unbranded keywords are always a “Low CAP” investment; low Conversion, low Average sale, low Profit margin. The customer who types an unbranded keyword into the search block will click lots of ads in search of the lowest price because they assume everyone in your category is equal.
Your principal branded keyword is the name of your company, but we will also generate signature phrases that are yours alone. These signature phrases become additional “High CAP” branded keywords.
You will enjoy ongoing reductions in your pay-per-click investment as an increasing number of customers type your name and other low-cost branded keywords into the search block. When a customer types your name into the search block, they are looking for you. They have already chosen you. No one else even gets a shot at them.
High Conversion, high Average sale, high Profit margin.
That’s how you measure PowerSelling, although your top line sales volume is also an extremely good indicator.
The results below were pulled from Service Titan for a home services company operating in 3 different cities during the 3rd year of their PowerSelling campaign. These numbers do not include the large volume of sales that were made to customers who used direct navigation to visit the website of that company. Those direct navigation customers skipped the search engine altogether.
Q: What is the downside of PowerSelling?
A: It delivers very poor short-term results. If you are not prepared for this, you will abandon PowerSelling in about 90 to 150 days.
1. Anything that works well in the short term will work less-and-less well the longer you keep doing it.
2. Anything that works better-and-better the longer you keep doing it – like diet and exercise – will perform very poorly at the start.
PowerSelling takes patience and commitment because it is impossible to measure in the short term.
This is why no one ever accidentally stumbles into it. But if you look closely, you will see that PowerSelling is common among highly dominant brands.
In year one, you will see encouraging results in the second half of the year.
Year two is always a happy year.
Year three is when you start to become famous.
Year four is when we learn if you are tall enough to ride this ride.
That’s when your limiting factor will shift from customer acquisition to the ongoing recruitment, training, and management of your ever-growing operational team.
I know this sounds hard to believe so I say it with some hesitation, but my 80 partners and I have learned during the past few decades that if we do not choose our clients wisely, we can create a bigger company than our client can manage.
This is when we grimace and say, “The company has become bigger than the length of its owner’s shadow.”
We grimace become we don’t work by the hour. We get a 1-time upfront fee followed by a flat salary every month. We make no money in commissions or referral fees. Our monthly salary is increased once a year by the same percentage your top line grew during the previous twelve months. If you grew 68 percent, we get a 68 percent raise the following year.
What can’t win unless you win. Our salary is tied directly to your top line.
What could possibly be more fair than that?
One last thing: we are the most highly-paid ad writers on earth; not because we charge a lot at first, but because we grow very small companies into very big ones. Many of our clients have been with us 15 years, 20 years, 30 years.
You can fire us at any time.
But you won’t.
– Roy H. Williams
Author of the 1998, 1999, and 2001
New York Times and Wall Street Journal
bestselling “Wizard of Ads” trilogy.
