Here's where you can see some
real life examples of The Art Of
Common Sense Marketing in action...

Note:  Some of the following examples are former clients where we actually created the marketing, and some of them are seminar attendees, newsletter subscribers, and telephone clients who created the marketing based on our suggestions.  

Case Study No.1  --  Now Hear This...

Main Concept -- Risk-Reversal

When customers are contemplating doing business with you the first time, they perceive a certain amount of risk in the transaction.  And the risk is all on their shoulders.

If you can find a way to reverse this risk and show prospects how you're willing to take all the risk, they'll feel a lot more comfortable in giving you a tray.  It's a powerful concept which can have a dramatic impact on your entire business.

In this case, of one of our old newsletter subscribers used what he learned from the Antin Marketing Letter (the complete set is available in "Your Arsenal Of Common Sense Marketing Products" -- you can click here to jump over), and what he picked up by attending one of our Double Your Business In Six Months seminars to create two killer ads.

These two ads (and some variations) became the backbone of his marketing and increased his business by several hundred percent.

The powerful common sense marketing concept he used was risk-reversal.

He was a major hearing aid dealer.  And the state where he did business had an interesting law regarding refunds on hearing aid purchases.  You see, there are several fees involved with getting a hearing aid.  You have your hearing test, fitting fee, and a few others (I don't remember specifically what they were).  Anyway, the state law said that hearing aid dealers could keep some of those fees to offset their costs -- even when the patient decided to return the hearing aid.

I don't remember the exact amount, but I think it was a couple of hundred dollars or more.

Anyway, our common sense marketing client realized that the vast majority of the people to whom he sold hearing aids were extremely pleased with the product and service.  So his return rate was pretty low.

So, even though virtually every other hearing aid dealer around took advantage of the state law and retained the allowable fees even when the customer returned the hearing aid, our hero decided to do something different.

He designed an ad blasting his new 100% risk-free guarantee!

He explained how the law allowed dealers to keep certain fees, and justified it such that most people would think it was reasonable.  Then he told potential customers about the amazing level of skill and caring he and his staff dedicate to his patients and customers, and that he didn't want anyone to suffer with bad hearing because of the risk of losing a couple of hundred dollars in non-refundable fees.  Therefore, he decided that every single dime a customer paid would be cheerfully refunded if the customer decided he didn't want to keep his or her new hearing aid.

This completely eliminated any real (and perceived) risk potential customers would feel about trying a new hearing aid.  And, it resulted in our hero making a boatload more money than any other dealer.

Nearly all of our products mention the concepts of risk-reversal because it's so important.  But the following products teach risk-reversal in more depth (Click below to learn more):

The Entrepreneur's Guide To Common Sense Marketing

The Antin Marketing Letter Collection

Your Marketing MBA On A Silver Platter 

Case Study No.2  --  "You" Are So Beautiful...

Main Concept -- "You" Orientation In Copywriting (WII-FM)

This concepts deals with my favorite radio station, WII-FM.  Actually it's not a real radio station, just an easy way to remember an extremely important marketing concept.  Your prospects and customers care about one thing -- What's In It For Me (WII-FM)?  They don't care about how long you've been in business, how many awards you've one, or anything else about you -- other than how it relates to them deriving some benefit from doing business with you.

An important way of dealing with this is by always keeping the focus of your copy (and all marketing) squarely on the bull's-eye.  Everything you talk about should be explaining or supporting a benefit to the prospect.  And when you do this, write to and about the prospect.  Your copy should have lots of "you," "your," and "you'll, " and "you're" type words, and fewer, "I," "me," "we," "we'll," "we're," and "Our" type words.  

Years ago, we ran a special promotion whereby anyone who subscribed to The Antin Marketing Letter would receive a certificate for a free ad or sales letter critique.

Well, one of our subscribers sold various youth oriented motivational products (caps, T-shirts, posters, etc.).  If I recall correctly, it was a non-profit youth service organization.

Anyway, he used his free critique to have us look at a short letter he had been using to sell his products.  The letter had been working quite well, but he suspected it could do better.  He was right.

When we got the copy of the letter, we actually found it to be pretty darn good, but with one glaring mistake running throughout the entire letter.  It was "I" oriented rather than "you" oriented.

So, we simply highlighted all the "I," "me," "we," type words in red and all the "you," "your," "you'll," type words in blue.

Then we sent the letter back to him with a short note telling him to change all the words highlighted in red into words that could be highlighted in blue.

He made the changes, and a couple of weeks later, sent us a wonderful "thank-you" note.

It turned out that just by making those small changes, his mailing of the "you" version of the letter brought in over $50,000 more than the "I" version.

The following products teach copywriting and "WII-FM"  in more depth (Click below to learn more):

The Marketing & Advertising Analyzer And Checklist

The Entrepreneur's Guide To Common Sense Marketing

The Antin Marketing Letter Collection

Your Marketing MBA On A Silver Platter 

Case Study No.3  --  Here's the reason why...

Main Concept -- Tell 'em "Why," and then they'll buy & The non-fatal flaw

This is one of my favorite marketing concepts.  It's a case where simply being completely open and honest actually makes you a bunch of money.  The basic concept is simple.  The most powerful offers you can make are those which are nearly irresistible.  But, when you come up with a nearly irresistible offer, people often feel it's too good to be true. 

The remedy is simple.  First make the offer, and then explain to them exactly why you can make such an unbelievable offer.  Tell them the "reason why."

And, one of the best "reasons why" is the non-fatal flaw.  Read on...

My brother and I used to be partners.  And one of the businesses we owned was a small local chain of electronics stores.  I say small, but we had five stores and did about $10,000,000 a year in sales.

Anyway, here’s a perfect example of a case where the true reason why (although slightly embarrassing), allowed us to turn a potentially devastating situation into an incredibly profitable one.

Each of our five video stores had a huge movie rental club. And part of the movie club was a section of adult movies.

At the beginning of the video age, a large segment of the market wanted the ability to rent these tapes and watch them in the privacy of their own homes.

We carefully and discreetly met this "want" without offending those who did not wish to see these tapes.

Anyway, this part of our business started to decline as more and more family fare became available on video tape. Also, at about the same time, quite a stir was building about pornography, and a "grass roots" movement against adult video rentals was gaining momentum.

A few Congressmen had even introduced some

quite restrictive legislation to help curtail it.

We felt that the "handwriting was on the wall," and decided that we should get out of that part of the business.

The problem was that we had about 8,000 adult tapes in our inventory. This represented a significant investment (each tape cost us between $30-$70 and retailed for $60-$120).

We decided to run a full page ad explaining our situation and offering the tapes at a deep discount.

Take a look at the headline and some excerpts from that ad...

Why Would Antin’s Sell

$100 Movies For Only $14.99?

Dear Friend:

I’m writing to alert you to an embarrassing situation, but first you must agree not to laugh or be offended by the subject matter because frankly, it’s a little bit unusual and a little bit of a "Hot Potato."

It’s adult movies,
now don’t laugh;
you promised!

My brother and I have an embarrassing and frustrating problem we would like to share with you both in confidence and in the form of an opportunity.

First, the problem: There are people in Congress who are hell bent on doing away with your rights as they affect things like Adult Movies and magazines.

I’m not saying adult movies are good or bad, only that people should have the right to make their own choices.

That notwithstanding, the truth of the matter is some heavyweights in Congress have introduced legislation that’s going to...

Make it illegal to
rent adult movies.

That really ticks me off, not so much about not being able to rent adult tapes, because frankly, that’s a matter of personal preference, but with all the scandals in Washington, they should get their own house in order before they mess with yours!

Nevertheless, we
have a real problem.

Besides taking away some of your rights, they’re going to take away about 8,000 of our movies! We’ve got to decide what to do before that occurs...

We could sell our entire adult library to the greedy, unscrupulous exporters who, like vultures flying over an opportunity, are trying to get tapes that sell for $60-$120 for only $15 or $20.

This is horrifying to us because these tapes are in great condition and are worth a lot more than that.

Besides, they include
some of the best
adult tapes ever made.

Before I go any further, I’d like to say that over the last couple of months, Alan and I have talked a lot about a way to better acknowledge you, our valued customers, and convey to you how much we truly appreciate all of the business you’ve done with us... and the purchases you’ve made... and all of the friends you’ve referred to us.

We thought about a charming little card, and almost had one written, or giving you a discount coupon, but maybe a better way to do it is to pass on a savings to you of a very unusual sort where you could save up to seventy dollars on a hundred dollar value; and even find a way to give you a FREE adult movie because...

If we must suffer the indignation of losing $70 per tape on our entire adult inventory, it’s far better to lose it in the form of a special consideration to you, our valued customer than to some vulturous exporter whom we’ll probably never deal with again.

We feel the good will we’ll accrue if we sell a million dollars worth of tapes to you for 15 or 20 cents on the dollar will help lessen the loss.

So for the next three days, the people who we really cherish; who have contributed the most to our success; and to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude will be afforded the opportunity to buy any of the adult tapes in our library for...

Not the seventy dollars we paid for many of them...

Not for half... or even half again...

But for only $14.99 each!

And as a special bonus inducement to help us take the pain as quickly as possible so we can move on with our lives, we’ll even give you one tape of your choice absolutely free for every five adult tapes you buy.

The ad went on about the incredible selection, mentioned some of the titles, reemphasized that we hoped that the nature of the ad didn’t offend them, and apologized if it did, and included a coupon that the customer could redeem to get the special offer of buy 5, get 1 FREE.

Did you notice how we truthfully explained our problem in such a way as to tell the reader exactly why we were making such an incredible offer?

By the way, at the very same time that we ran that ad, another dealer was trying to sell his adult tapes. He ran an ad too. But his ad simply listed a bunch of the titles of his tapes with their prices.

Here’s the amazing part...
His prices were even lower than ours!

Why is that amazing?

Well, merely by explaining our problem and the reason for the sale in that one ad, we sold all of our adult tapes in just a few days. That one ad generated over a hundred thousand dollars practically overnight.

But the real kicker was that the other dealer (in spite of his lower prices), was having trouble moving his tapes. In fact, he asked us if we would sell his tapes to our customers on consignment. He said he would bring them over to our stores, and that we could keep half of everything we got for them.

That ad turned out to be one of the single most responsive promotions in the history of our electronics stores. And since all of our adult tapes had been in the rental library, they had already been written off on our taxes. This meant that we had no current cost of goods in the promotion. The revenue it generated was pure profit. So, not only was the promotion responsive, it was also quite profitable.

All because we told the reason why!

When you don’t tell the reason why, your prospects will be more concerned with trying to figure out your ulterior motive than with honestly considering the purchase.

The following products teach copywriting and "WII-FM"  in more depth (Click below to learn more):

The Marketing & Advertising Analyzer And Checklist

The Entrepreneur's Guide To Common Sense Marketing

The Antin Marketing Letter Collection

Your Marketing MBA On A Silver Platter 

These are just a few examples of
common sense marketing in action.

I could fill volumes with additional cases (in fact, I have).  I'll add to (or change) these examples periodically, so bookmark this site and come by often.

Surely, by now you realize that no matter what business you're in (or want to be in), you'll make a whole lot more money by mastering the art of common sense marketing.

So what are you waiting for?  Click on over to Your Arsenal Of Common Sense Marketing Products right now.  Everyday day you wait to put the art of common sense marketing to work for you is costing you hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars.

Every product and service I sell is
guaranteed, and 100% risk-free to you.

Frankly, if you can dream up any valid excuse why any entrepreneur can justify not taking advantage of this powerful information, I'd love to hear it.  Simply drop me an email by clicking here.  I may be able to help.

Otherwise, whip out your credit card and head on over the Your Arsenal Of Common Sense Marketing Products right now.  You'll be glad you did!