If your car needed repair work, would you go to a garage that offers free esti­mates? You likely would. Today, most garages offer them.

Not only has it become a cus­tom­ary prac­tice, but also every­one expects a free esti­mate from mechanics.

How­ever, here’s an inter­est­ing sce­nario. Let’s say your car broke down at the worst pos­si­ble time, and you are in a ter­ri­ble hurry. (If you’re like most peo­ple these days, you are.) Plus, you specif­i­cally wanted a free estimate.

If you had to choose a garage quickly, which garage would you choose? Would you go to the one you only think that offers free esti­mates? Or would you go to the one you know for sure that does? Espe­cially if you don’t have much time?

As sim­ple as it may sound, by com­mu­ni­cat­ing some­thing that’s usu­ally taken for granted by your tar­get mar­ket, you will be cho­sen more often. Rather than claim­ing supe­ri­or­ity, like “we’re #1,” you’re imply­ing it by demon­strat­ing what makes you superior.

A men­tor once told me, “Impli­ca­tion is more pow­er­ful than spec­i­fi­ca­tion.” In mar­ket­ing, it means that you should imply your supe­ri­or­ity rather than claim it outright.

If you claim supe­ri­or­ity, your claim appears self-​​serving and what­ever you do say is sus­pect at best. But if you imply supe­ri­or­ity, your claim, although not directly stated, is accepted as more cred­i­ble, gen­uine, and, para­dox­i­cally, concrete.

Peo­ple will uncon­sciously assume that you are supe­rior. You are com­mu­ni­cat­ing your supe­ri­or­ity, not in some mar­ket­ing piece you wrote or paid for, but in that most elu­sive yet vital of places in all of marketing…

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I love social media. And I love try­ing and test­ing new stuff. If there’s some new social media tool, web­site, or com­mu­nity, I’ll be one of the first ones to try it out.

But there is a limit. And I think we need to be care­ful. Because social media is like a drug. It can become dan­ger­ously addic­tive. It can even kill your business.

Social media seems to be the cur­rent fad. Everybody’s in on it like it’s one big cock­tail party you just don’t want to leave.

But the way social media is cur­rently being touted, hyped up, and used (or should I say, abused), is rem­i­nis­cent of some­thing that hap­pened way back in the 90s.

(I’ll come back to this in a moment.)

Yes­ter­day, I watched a bril­liant video by Loren Feld­man. Feld­man has a tell-​​it-​​like-​​it-​​is style. While he may be blunt and use strong lan­guage to voice his opin­ion, he is never afraid to voice it. Regard­less of what I think of his style, his video res­onated with me.

In it, he drove home an impor­tant point. I believe what he talked about is not only right, but also some­thing we need to real­ize and become wise about before we need­lessly kill our busi­nesses. And that’s ignor­ing the most impor­tant place on the web…

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If you’ve been a stu­dent of mar­ket­ing for some time, then I’m sure you’ve heard of the say­ing: “Peo­ple don’t want to buy a quarter-​​inch drill, they want a quarter-​​inch hole.”

That quote by Theodore Levitt is prob­a­bly one of the most quoted pas­sages in mar­ket­ing in try­ing to explain the dif­fer­ence between fea­tures and benefits.

How­ever, I believe the quote is incom­plete and leav­ing out some­thing that, to me, is far more impor­tant. And that is, what’s the pur­pose of this quarter-​​inch hole? What does the reader plan on doing with it? Even bet­ter, what’s the end-​​result the reader wants to achieve with it?

The answer to that ques­tion is, in my esti­ma­tion, the real ben­e­fit. The ulti­mate benefit.

Not the hole. And cer­tainly not the drill that cre­ated it.

Sure, it is a ben­e­fit to some degree. But “ben­e­fit,” defined in the dic­tio­nary, is “some­thing that improves, enhances, or pro­motes well-​​being.” So let me ask you, how is one or one’s well-​​being enhanced by a quarter-​​inch hole?

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Part of my job as a copy­writer is com­ing up with names. A while ago, I wrote a blog post on the power of names. I won’t repeat it here, except to reit­er­ate that brand­ing, albeit not a pri­or­ity for most, is still incred­i­bly important.

And it’s some­thing you mustn’t ignore.

Why? Because choos­ing a name for your busi­ness or prod­uct, even your domain name, is often the sin­gle, most impor­tant busi­ness deci­sion you’ll ever make.

To that end, let me share with you some nam­ing tips. In my expe­ri­ence, I have five char­ac­ter­is­tics of great brand names, which I call the five “S’s.” I encour­age you to fol­low when try­ing to come up with a solid, long-​​lasting, and highly prof­itable name.

For starters, let me point out that the best names are rel­a­tively short, easy to pro­nounce, and easy to remem­ber. They have con­sid­er­able mnemonic value.

And mnemonic value often trans­lates into finan­cial value.

A mnemonic is a device — such as a word, sym­bol, or sound — intended to assist in recall. If a name car­ries some mnemonic value, it will increase traf­fic, sales, and value to your busi­ness on its own. The more mnemonic a name is, the more valu­able it is.

There are var­i­ous rea­sons for this.

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Last week I told you about Robert Plank’s prod­uct, Speed​Copy​Se​crets​.com, which I highly recommend.

While noth­ing beats learn­ing great copy­writ­ing, this prod­uct is fan­tas­tic for any­one who wants to know how to come up with copy really fast that’s good enough to start sell­ing with.

It’s also really good for non-​​copywriters and mar­keters who don’t want to take the time to learn how to write copy or pay an expen­sive copy­writer to have it writ­ten for them.

So I’ve decided to record a quick review of Robert Plank’s Speed​Copy​Se​crets​.com. To watch, sim­ply click on “play” below. It’s very brief (just a few min­utes), but in it I go through the prod­uct and tell you what I like best about it…

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Why is it that suc­cess­ful mar­keters and online entre­pre­neurs seem to have this vir­tual “6th sense” when it comes to pin­point­ing hot, hun­gry, and highly prof­itable mar­kets they can sell prod­ucts to?

We see this again and again and again.

They seem to have this “Midas touch” when it comes to sell­ing online. Any prod­uct they launch sells like gang­busters. Every pro­mo­tion they do bal­loons their bank accounts. Every new mar­ket they enter becomes a sure­fire winner.

But ask them how they tap these hid­den gold­mines with an almost impec­ca­ble accu­racy, and the likely response you will get is, “I don’t know, it just feels right.”

There’s a reason.

(Stay with me, because in a moment I’m going to show you how you can do this your­self, and you don’t have to be psy­chic or shell out a lot of money!)

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I have been crazy-​​busy get­ting our newest prod­uct ready. It’s an all-​​in-​​one mem­ber­ship site that shows you how to cre­ate a mon­ey­mak­ing busi­ness online in just four steps.

We call it “Suc­cess Chef University.”

It cov­ers every­thing. Every busi­ness model, traf­fic type, and mar­ket­ing strat­egy. But do you know which ones you really need and why? What about out­sourc­ing any of it?

Like fol­low­ing a recipe, you need to use the right ingre­di­ents in the right order. Suc­cess Chef sim­pli­fies it all for you with step-​​by-​​step video tutorials.

Suc­cess Chef is still in the pre-​​launch phase. How­ever, we decided to invite you to join right now — long before we do launch — with a mas­sive dis­count.

Lim­ited to the next 50 indi­vid­u­als only.

The saleslet­ter is also inter­ac­tive, too. We’ve also recorded a spe­cial hour-​​long video to help you. That video is an edu­ca­tion in itself! In it, we share those four sim­ple steps to gen­er­at­ing income on the Internet.

Check it out if just for the learn­ing experience.