ROI is easy to measure if you track every interaction from your prospects and customers. For example, sending someone to a landing page from an ad using tags in the link is simple (use Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics 4 to track ROI and there’s zero tracking cost as well).
The fastest way to high ROI hell is to do what the direct-response industry has done for a hundred years, oversell everything, promise the world, upsell, down-sell, cross-sell, create an affiliate army, and make sure you’re impossible to contact.
The quickest way to high ROI heaven is to think long term. It has so many benefits over short term thinking it puts any other method to shame.
I work for a billion dollar healthcare corporation. Everything we do is long term. It’s not just our patients we care about, it’s our employees too. A happy employee makes for an even happier patient.
Top 10 factors for long term ROI
- Treat your customers and prospects with the utmost respect
- Never force a sale, the use of force is always temporary and usually backfires
- Never promise more than you can deliver
- Always deliver more than you promise
- Help your customers and prospects whenever they ask for it
- Give your customers and prospects unexpected treats from time to time (make them feel loved)
- Always be positive and motivational
- Dwell on the future, not the past
- Never assume, blame, complain, or defend
- Work to a plan to keep you moving forward (set deadlines)
To understand why the above works, try reversing the meaning of each point. How would that make you (or your customers and prospects) feel?
All campaigns benefit when we put customers first. Jeff Bezos of Amazon knew this well when he introduced his ‘Day One’ business strategy (make every day feel like the first day we started the business – exciting, caring, and committed to service).
The best investments are always long term (the shorter any investment is, the more it feels like a risky gamble). When we invest long term we show commitment to the cause. We know we have to take every aspect seriously.
How this approach affects the copywriting industry
Our copy can push or pull. When it pushes, it creates resistance. When it pulls it encourages the opposite. We pull by leading: “over here lies the promised land, want to see it?”.
When we push we create enemies. No one likes pushy (we all had enough when we were growing up, many of whom still feel it at work).
Copy that shows how a new future can be constructed and how easy it is to do, pulls the reader into the kind of world they’ve been looking for all their lives.
A world where they can escape whatever it is that has been holding them to ransom. As long as the promise is fulfilled beyond their wildest dreams, they will follow along to the end of their lives.
You cannot get a higher ROI than that.
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