I wrote this arti­cle way back in 1998. It seems to have made a resur­gence, espe­cially with today’s econ­omy. So I said to myself, “Why not repub­lish it?” So here it is. Enjoy!

If there is some­thing about which I’m pretty adamant, it’s the idea of attract­ing qual­i­fied prospects who are will­ing to do busi­ness with you. And this involves many dif­fer­ent things.

Posi­tion­ing is one of them. In fact, it has been one of my favorite mar­ket­ing con­cepts for this very reason.

How­ever, this fun­da­men­tal mag­net­ism is not only based on pure mar­ket­ing prac­tices or strate­gies. It also involves some­thing at a much deeper level that is far more effec­tive than any other mar­ket­ing tool or process in existence.

This “thing” to which I am refer­ring is, I believe, the most impor­tant mar­ket­ing secret I can ever teach you — and it’s far from being a secret at all. It is con­sid­ered as one sim­ply because it is often neglected or ignored by many mar­keters and businesspeople.

What is this “secret” that’s so elusive?

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A recent coach­ing ses­sion touched upon the grow­ing trend that some mar­keters have adopted to squeeze out sales from exit­ing traffic.

In other words, you visit a web­site and read the saleslet­ter. You decide it’s not for you, so you leave. But when you try leave (either as you close your browser or sim­ply hover your mouse out­side of it), the web­site attempts to make a last-​​ditch offer.

The com­mon prac­tice is to offer a dis­count, and a recent trend is to make it through vir­tual sales assis­tant just before the prospect clicks away from the screen.

(Vir­tual assis­tant or not, it is no dif­fer­ent than a one-​​time offer appear­ing in an exit pop-​​up or spawned browser win­dow once the vis­i­tor leaves.)

Not only is the prac­tice annoy­ing, it can be detri­men­tal to your sales efforts.

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Recently, a coach­ing client asked me about deal­ing with prospec­tive clients over the phone.

This copy­writer under­stood the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with prospects and answer­ing their pre-​​sale ques­tions. How­ever, like me, he pre­ferred to avoid the tele­phone and asked me if his strat­egy was sound.

Free con­sul­ta­tions are often a nec­es­sary step in secur­ing clients in your early days as a copy­writer before you’ve estab­lished your exper­tise and devel­oped a reputation.

It’s nat­ural that poten­tial clients want to get a feel for your style and stan­dards with a “get­ting to know you ses­sion.” Quite often, they will want to do this via a phone con­sul­ta­tion with you.

I’m a big believer in open­ing the lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and I also like to pick up the phone to speak with a client when writ­ing copy.

But before a client hires me, I pre­fer to remain off the phone. Why? Because the tele­phone can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and even hurt your business.

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“There are many who are liv­ing far below their pos­si­bil­i­ties because they are con­tin­u­ally hand­ing over their indi­vid­u­al­i­ties to oth­ers. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be your­self. Be true to the high­est within your soul and allow your­self to be gov­erned by no cus­toms or con­ven­tion­al­i­ties or arbi­trary man-​​made rules that are not founded on prin­ci­ple.“
– Ralph Waldo Trine

“Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.“
– Miguel de Cervantes

In every­thing you do or want to do in life, you are always gov­erned by law and not by chance. Nat­ural laws are prin­ci­ples or expla­na­tions of why things are the way they are. Prin­ci­ples defined by Web­ster are “fun­da­men­tal laws or facts of nature.” Out of the many you have read or will read about in this book, there is one, how­ever, that is the foun­da­tional prin­ci­ple to all success.

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Part of my job as a copy­writer includes, from time to time, cre­at­ing names for busi­nesses, prod­ucts, and ser­vices. Choos­ing a name may be the sin­gle, most impor­tant busi­ness deci­sion you will ever make.

We are con­stantly bom­barded with mar­ket­ing mes­sages. Lim­ited by people’s very short atten­tion span, your mar­ket­ing mes­sage has to be effec­tive to the degree that it must com­mu­ni­cate its essence and cre­ate top-​​of-​​mind aware­ness within an extremely short amount of time.

Names are often the best tools — and some­times the only ones — for accom­plish­ing this efficiently.

In the game of posi­tion­ing, your name has to stick firmly in the mind of the mar­ket­place and must do so instantly. While unique­ness is an impor­tant fac­tor, there are many other ele­ments that can help the anchor­ing process — ele­ments that help a name become mem­o­rable as well as cho­sen when a cus­tomer expe­ri­ences a spe­cific need or desire.

So, here are some sim­ple rules to fol­low when choos­ing a name for your com­pany or product.

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A fair warn­ing: this post delves into some­thing I’m pas­sion­ate about, which is some­what philo­soph­i­cal in nature. So if you’re of a cer­tain reli­gious per­sua­sion and eas­ily offended by oth­ers, then please skip over this blog post. If not, read on…

“The Secret” is tak­ing the entire world by storm. It deals with the “Law of Attrac­tion,” in that we attract to our­selves what we think and feel, and that our per­cep­tions mold our reality.

As Earl Nightin­gale pro­claimed in “The Strangest Secret,” one of the first self-​​help pro­grams I’ve ever bought: “We become what we think about.”

You may have seen it talked about on Larry King, Oprah, and many other talk shows. It’s the most suc­cess­ful Inter­net launch of any prod­uct. It hit Alexa #1 soon after its launch, and pro­pelled to the Amazon.com’s #1 best sell­ing book and DVD within a few months.

It appeared in The Wall Street Jour­nal, New York Times, and Time Mag­a­zine, and even on the cover of Newsweek, which came shortly thereafter.

But is “The Secret” truly worth the buzz? Or is it just an old-​​world phi­los­o­phy pack­aged in some new­fan­gled mar­ket­ing? The answer to the for­mer is def­i­nitely “yes.” But for the lat­ter, it’s “yes” and “no.” Let me explain…

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With “user-​​driven copy,” the fact is, peo­ple can choose what they want, how they want it and when they want it. And that is what’s work­ing really well right now, not because it’s new but because it’s natural.

The pro­gres­sion of the web (regard­less if you call it Web 2.0 or not) is sim­ply an exten­sion of how peo­ple behave. Busi­nesses and web­sites are finally wak­ing up. And they’re giv­ing their users what they want, ask for and prefer.

Here’s an example.

In Web 1.0, we were lim­ited by text, graph­ics and links. When cook­ies came along, they helped to cus­tomize the user’s expe­ri­ence to a degree. But cook­ies are still lim­it­ing. They are sta­tic in nature, require more pageviews to make them use­ful if at all, and as we all know carry risks such as pri­vacy and secu­rity issues.

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