But there was a game here in Madison, WI last Saturday that was so big, with so much hype surrounding it, that even I started paying attention.

I even found myself reading articles about the Nebraska Cornhuskers. What?

So I figured if even I was noticing the game, then there must be a marketing lesson or two in it.

Sure enough there is.

The Nebraska Cornhuskers had been in the Big 12 conference for 100 years and then joined the Big 10 (Wisconsin’s conference) this year.

This was Nebraska’s first game against Wisconsin since 1974 and their first game with Nebraska as part of the Big 10.

Both teams wear red and white so it was Big Red vs. Big Red. It was billed as the biggest Wisconsin game ever and 81,000 fans crammed into the stadium.

Wisconsin has been to the Rose Bowl and has had its share of important games, so why was this such a big fat hairy deal?

Well, Nebraska doesn’t have a pro football team, so the Cornhuskers are the main attraction for football fans in Nebraska.

Also, even though the college football season is fairly short, there’s at least one article in the Nebraska newspapers every day of the year about the Cornhuskers. (Hint: that’s marketing lesson #1: consistency in telling your story).

Madison was overrun with Nebraska fans last Friday and Saturday and the energy of that was fun. I’ve never seen so many fans from the opposing team strolling the streets and stores of Madison. Apparently not even a recession can stop Cornhusker fans from spending lots of money on tickets and travel.

All of this piqued my curiosity and made me tune into the game and watch almost three full quarters of it (I shut it off after Wisconsin’s lead became insurmountable).

Which brings us to marketing lesson #2: In marketing and sales, curiosity draws people in even more than desire does.

Here we had a “product “that was more than 100 years old, predictable as can be, and yet a new story gave a freshness to it and made even non-fans who have no desire for college football curious and interested in it.

By the way, just so you know, curiosity… stories… freshness… these are all things that email copy can deliver day after day.

Here are four ways to write believable copy (quotes below are from Bernice):

1. Love people.

2. “Sharpen your powers of observation. Learn to look at a thing as if you’ve never really seen it before in your life.”

3. Be inquisitive and acquisitive. Good copywriters are “curious about people, curious about new products, curious about everything.”

4. Write what you hear. This means writing the way people in your market talk.

It’s been said Hemingway looked at everything around him as if it was his last day of being alive. A copywriter – especially an email copywriter who has to come up with multiple stories for email copy on a regular basis – should do the same.

I drew WTF looks from drivers but I didn’t care.

There was a cockatiel in a tree and I was determined to rescue it.

I knew I had my work cut out for me, however, because I was a stranger to the bird and didn’t know his name.

Cockatiels are friendly birds but won’t fly to the shoulder of just anyone.

He was cheeping the way cockatiels cheep when they are anxious or calling out to a cockatiel buddy.

I imitated that cheep as best as I could and made eye contact with him. He calmed down.

He wasn’t budging, though, so I walked to the other side of the tree and started whistling songs cockatiels usually know: the wolf whistle, the Adams Family and Andy Griffith theme songs.

He kept staring at me and gradually felt safe enough to fly to a lower branch.

I wanted to close the deal, however, especially when the waiter at a nearby Mexican restaurant… the guy who made me aware of the cockatiel’s presence in the first place… said sadly, “If you don’t rescue him, he’ll die, won’t he.”

Pressure.

Stress.

Plus, cockatiels are nomadic creatures when in the wild, so I knew I had to close the deal now or never.

This anxiety was making it hard for me to continue to whistle, so I switched tactics and started saying words a cockatiel might know:

“Food.” “Water.” “Step up.” “Pretty bird.”

I used a sing song-y voice in a higher register than my normal speaking voice because cockatiels like higher pitches.

Those words really got his attention and he kept dropping down to lower branches one at a time until he was on the lowest branch.

Suddenly there was a flurry of feathers but I remained still.

He landed on my head.

I ever so carefully walked to my car and slid into the front seat.

He insisted on remaining on my shoulder so I let him stay there during the drive home so as to maintain my bond of trust with him.

Sometimes he hopped onto my head, which probably drew more WTF looks from drivers, but I didn’t care.

The moment I put him into the bird cage at home (we have a small aviary of parakeets and cockatiels at home) he wagged his tail from side to side vigorously, the way cockatiels do when they are happy.

Then he ate and drank for 30 minutes straight.

Which brings us to the “La-Di-Frickin’-Da, what does this have to do with my business” part of the post.

First, there isn’t any one thing that closes the deal when selling to a customer.

Sure, I could conclude that my using words like “food” were what closed the deal, and that I should just launch straight into that if I ever happen upon a cockatiel in the wild again.

Just like some marketers think their fancy-pants sales page is what closes the deal and they fixate on that and neglect their email list.

But it was a large sales funnel, so to speak, beginning with his previous owner, who, based on what I now know of his temperament, clearly had a loving bond with this bird, enabling him to give me the time of day in the first place.

She probably cried and kicked herself for days afterwards when he escaped during a half second of inattention, but her care for him the years beforehand played a huge role in my being able to save him.

The other parts of the funnel:

I spoke/whistled in his language.

I very clearly communicated I had something he desperately needed – food.

I focused completely on him and drew upon the very specific knowledge I have about cockatiels so I could build trust. I didn’t focus on myself at all.

I didn’t rush or push for the sale.

See?

Marketing really is for the birds.

Talk soon.

P. S.  Bottom line: send out a variety of emails to your list. Use a combination of stories and how-to info to gradually build trust.

Eventually one of those emails will finally hit the right hot button and snag the sale, thanks to the funnel that came before it.

It’s a tough thing to do on your own, however, so have a copywriter do it for you.

If you’re wondering what to actually write about in the beginning, middle and end, this post by Nick Usbourne outlines the three elements:

1. The challenge.

2. The struggle.

3. The resolution.

If, for example, you sell a weight loss product, the challenge is losing a certain number of pounds. The struggle would be the difficulties you faced in losing weight and finding an effective weight loss method. The resolution would be the solution that finally worked.

Quite often a story will be missing one of these three elements. Usually it’s the case where the story is all middle and missing a beginning or ending.

Be sure to use recent stories too. People long for authenticity and respond better if they know you’re a real human being. If you’re a size two with a successful weight loss product, don’t be afraid to write the occasional story that talks about a current struggle. Don’t always rehash the story about how you lost 50 pounds five years ago and kept it off.

Keep in mind a good ending/resolution will cause a beginning in the reader. You’ve done your work in delivering your story. Now it’s up to the reader to take the message and run with it, and, in the case of a selling story, purchase your product. Your story will create a new story within the reader.

I’m not going to go into the politics of it in this email, but I want to point out a couple of principles that are also pertinent to marketing and copywriting (from Neighbor Against Neighbor in Wisconsin in Books & Culture):

In 21st-century America, 70,000 people do not hit the streets in sub-freezing temperatures for political strategy. Policy does not motivate like that anymore. What does motivate is emotion: anger, joy, fear, loathing, celebration, and so on.

I’ve been a copywriter for almost four years and find I have to regularly remind myself and my clients that what matters most is how you make your clients and prospects feel.  It might seem shallow, but providing how-to content and information, although important, isn’t fully motivating unless the emotions are also engaged.

From the article again:

…this conflict remains at heart a local story. It is about the culture of public spaces and public works in a quirky state. It is about who we are, and who we are becoming.

Most of us in Wisconsin feel part of this larger narrative and have felt compelled to spend some time at the capitol building or other venues to participate in the expression of this story. We sense this is history in the making and being part of it in some tangible way like that is important.

Your business has a story, too, and the more your clients and prospects can be a tangible part of it, even in small ways, such as through Facebook fan pages and writing a customer review of your product, the more they will trust you and become a repeat customer.

Emotions. Story. No good protest or marketing campaign can do without them.

An email list or blog becomes one-dimensional so quickly when there are no stories.

Here’s an example of someone who gets it right, in a niche you might not expect:

Cellist Zoe Keating has prospered online selling 35,000 of her self-produced albums through her website and iTunes.

She says telling stories and divulging personal information is a key to her success. ““They want to buy my records five times just to support me because of that.”

“It’s important for me to always be authentic. It’s me on those websites. If I were to use my Twitter account just to publicize things, it wouldn’t be authentic.”

By the way, she has 1.3 million followers on Twitter.  She didn’t build those followers by giving cello tips (unlike the many marketers who think they have to tweet endless marketing tips – ZZZZZ) but simply by being real. The world doesn’t need another tip, but it can always use another story.

So when you write an email or blog post, ask yourself if there’s a detail you could add to make it more real, more personal…more bloody, if you will.

As sportswriter Red Smith once said, “Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out drop by drop.”

When I was a kid I LOVED playing Monopoly.

There was a strategy I would use that would completely demoralize my opponents – usually my brother and neighborhood boys – but always resulted in my win.

And the occasional overturned table (my wins didn’t always go over well).

Throughout the game, when nobody was looking, I would stash some of my money in my socks (fortunately tube socks were “in” back then).

Then, late in the game, when I would have to pay rent on a high end property, and my opponent started rubbing his hands together with excitement because it looked like I was too low in funds to pay, I would nonchalantly whip out a stash of $500s and $100s.

This was very satisfying to me, of course.

I didn’t use this strategy every game because I wanted the boys to be on their toes.

Besides, I had other Monopoly strategies I used as well (maybe I’ll share those in upcoming posts, as they are applicable to business too).

What are the “money in your socks” aspects of your business?

I’m not necessarily talking about literal money (although that helps too)… or things that make competitors overturn their tables (although that could be fun too)… but things like:

* Colleagues you know you can call on at a moment’s notice to get help with a problem.

* Authors, speakers, bloggers who, when you take a break and spend some time with their material, leave you inspired and energized.

* A key piece of software or a never-fail strategy that will help your website rise in the rankings past your competitors.

* An email copywriter on hand who can quick write up some awesome emails for you.

If you have anything to add to that list, let me know.

Wishing you many “money in the socks” moments in your business and the satisfied feelings that come with them.

Those of us who are parents have even more opportunities to have to use persuasion.

Last week I had to take all four of my daughters in for blood draws at the clinic’s lab.

As you might imagine, they weren’t excited about this, and neither was I. The youngest two (ages 6 and 8 ) had never had a blood draw before so they were even more anxious.

At first I tried to use hype to lower their resistance.

“We’ll make it a blood draw party! Treats afterwards!”

Of course they didn’t fall for that. And you’d think I would’ve known better, being a copywriter.

Next I decided to tell them a story about how their six-year-old cousin had several vials of blood taken from him last summer and he handled it like a champ, no tears.

That didn’t lower their resistance either. I guess hearing a story secondhand about someone else’s success isn’t all that interesting. Again, you’d think I would’ve known better.

I realized I needed to dig deeper and tell a personal story and show them I know what the fear of blood draws is like.

So I told them about when I was six weeks pregnant with their 14-year-old sister. I had unexpected bleeding and went to the doctor. I marinated in anxiety in the examination room chair, afraid I was having a miscarriage.

The doctor patted me on the knee and told me he wasn’t going to do an ultrasound because he thought it would be too emotional for me if we couldn’t hear a heartbeat.  He sent me to the lab instead to get a blood draw that would determine whether or not I was still pregnant.

“How do you think I felt while I was getting a blood draw that would tell me whether or not your sister was still alive?” I asked the girls.

Their eyes got big as saucers and they hung on every word.

Then I told them how powerful blood is and how it can tell us so many things about what’s going on inside our bodies.

They literally started tugging on my arm and begged me to take them to the lab immediately for their blood draws.

They did this even though I also told them a story about how I once had a blood draw that ultimately gave me bad news. I felt it was important that they know the full score in the event this blood draw, or one in the future, gives them news they’d rather not hear.

As it turns out, they were very brave during their blood draws. The youngest cried with empathy during her 8-year-old sister’s blood draw but remained stoic during her own.

Few things are as powerful as a story. This applies to your business as well.

Many of my clients are unsure of their stories at first or think their stories are too boring. Sometimes I have to really work at pulling their stories out of them.

If you need help discovering..and telling…the selling stories in your business, drop me an email. You should also check out my post about how to uncover your story.

When putting together a sales page, the story ranks right up there with the marketing research information in importance.

Sometimes it’s difficult to uncover your story because it’s so easy to overlook the details in your life that make for a good story. If you write copy for clients it can also be a challenge to pry a story out of your client.

This is why it’s helpful to ask questions and play story detective. I start out by scouring the client’s blog, Twitter page and other materials, looking for any details I can use for a story.

Here are 5 questions I sometimes ask clients if they don’t already have a story for me to write about:

1. Here was where I was at before I discovered my magic solution:

2. Here are all the bad things that happened to me before I found the magic solution:

3. My desperate attempt to find a solution led me down this path:

4. Here’s how I finally found the solution:

5. And here is the reason I am now going to share that solution with you:

If you still don’t get a good story even after asking questions, as a last resort you can write a fictitious one or show a story example from another website. Sometimes this will help remind the client of a story of their own. It’s worth the extra effort it takes to find the selling story beneath the product.

He sang the entire time while carrying his supplies and putting things in order. He’s an older guy so his songs were from a different era and far more pleasant than the usual Top 40 hits piped through speakers.

We entered the same elevator and he paused to chat with a woman who was exiting the elevator.

During our elevator ride he spent the entire time telling me what a wonderful woman she is and how he wished he could chat with her in Spanish, her native language. He was generous with his praise even though I didn’t know the woman.

As we left the elevator he immediately started singing again as he set about his cleaning tasks.

I was only with him for about 30 seconds so there was no chance to ask him how long he’s worked there or get any details about his life.

Even though he didn’t say a word about himself,  those 30 seconds in his presence told me volumes about him.

Normally when passing people in a hallway at a medical clinic you usually don’t give them more than a moment’s attention and you certainly don’t remember them two months later. The same is true of most websites.

When people drop by your website you probably have no longer than 30 seconds to make an impression before they move in.

Are you like the singing janitor and stand out from the crowd by being different and by NOT blabbing endlessly about yourself or your product?

Do you leave them with the desire to learn more about you and your story?