Do You Really Need To Write Articles?

When I was a kid, I watched my dad sketching out ads every week. Every week, 52 of ’em in a year, the family store would run an ad in the Washington Post. Long lists of names and numbers.

It was only after I was an adult that my dad let me know those ads cost $100,000 a year to run. Holy macaroni, a hundred thou?

In the late 1990’s my dad stopped running those ads and replaced them with something that cost $29.95/month. The other $99,640.60 went to boost the profit figures.

That $29.95 was for an AOL account. He faithfully used that AOL account even after his email list reached 10,000 people. He had to bend the ear of a favored customer who worked at AOL to get an exception since he was sending it all from his personal address book.

Eventually he gave in to my pleading and signed up with an autoresponder service. I’m pretty sure he did it just because he couldn’t stand to watch his grown son cry.

Other statistics? Fewer customers came in, but each one spent more. They made the same annual revenue but kept more of it as profit. When he stopped advertising lists of low prices, those whose only loyalty was to the lowest price stopped coming in.

The difference wasn’t email versus advertising. The impact changed because he was telling stories about the wine and the winemakers, instead of just listing names and numbers.

Advertising That Does Work

My grandfather “Doc” Eisenberg founded the store in 1933 right after Prohibition. And when he died, God rest his soul, the Washington Post ran advertising in his obituary. His own advertising from the 1950s and 1960s.

When Washington, D.C. burned in the 1960s, Doc ran a series of ads “Is This My City?” in which he called for peace and understanding between people. When competitors started running price wars, he ran the “The Mystery Men” ads, with noirish drawings of men in fedoras and sharp suits who surreptitiously slipped in and out of competing wine shops taking note of the prices.

These types of ads made an impact and created loyalty that allowed the store to flourish for over seven decades. Because they told stories.

You Don’t Even Have a Bottle To Sell

My dad at least had bottles with pretty pictures on the labels to sell, and salesman on the floor offering little sippy cups of what was inside. If you’re a service provider, you don’t have bottles.

When you talk to potential clients, what pulls ’em in? Do you read the ingredient label on the back of the bottle, and tell them all about the arcane intricacies of how you do what you do?

You already know their eyes just glaze over when you try that.

The ingredients don’t sell. You don’t have bottles with pretty labels. All you’ve got left are the stories.

Does Every Massage Therapist Need a Blog?

At first glance it seems completely gonzo that every acupuncturist, every consultant, every landscaper, every service professional needs to publish content to a blog, an email list, and Facebook to be successful.

I know you don’t have to blog to be successful. But you do need stories.

How Do You Consistently Writing Compelling Content?

Most people approach the blank page and try to just write an article. Did you know, however, that great articles are made out of ingredients, just like a recipe? If you first assemble all the ingredients, putting them together is relatively easy.

What’s more, each individual ingredient isn’t so hard to put together. This is how you can make writing content MUCH easier and much more fun on an ongoing basis.

Our next course is Heart-Centered Article Writing, starting August 1 and running five weeks. It breaks article writing down into the five components, a step-by-step process that makes it MUCH easier.

I think you’ll enjoy the heck out of it. Take a look and join us:

Heart-Centered Article Writing