Products: The 'Believability' Factor

Products: The 'Believability' Factor


Subtitle: Why some products cannot be given away successfully (especially behind the word 'FREE')

There are many elements discussed in marketing articles regarding how best to garner sales success for products or services. However, one element I have rarely found discussed, if ever, is the factor of 'believability'. Here is a case in point:

A while back, I discovered a unique angle being marketed to the public regarding a certain product that I was certain would be incredibly successful since the product is one that, virtually, everyone already uses, regardless of their financial status or position in life.

And, with a price range that expands from $0 to as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on your choice and what you can afford, the version being marketed by this company is FREE to the public.

And, I'm not speaking of a product that attempts to please all the people all the time, so to speak, but a product that almost falls into the realm of being a 'vital necessity' for just about everyone, and on a worldwide basis. This product is one that, if it was not what it was, the 'believability' factor would be so incredibly high that virtually everyone would rush out to get one, especially since it will be FREE.

And, I would also lay 10 to 1 odds that you currently own, at least, one of these products right now.

So, what is this product? Is your curiosity up yet?

Well, I'm not going to disclose the product for several reasons, and because my own personal jury is still out with the verdict on it (sorry, no tease intended). But, I will say that if the verdict is returned favorably, there will be no side of earth that you will not learn about it.

So, what is my own reluctance with this particular product?

Well, my answer is found no farther than the title of this article...the 'believability' factor and it being made available for FREE. Not because this particular product isn't as it is presented, but because people are simply not accustomed to being able to obtain this product freely.

And, when (and if) this product is, indeed, released to the general public, even though it already affects most of the people in the world who are already utilizing it, I can guarantee that it will also come with a 'Catch-22' factor for its distributors and sales persons.

People are simply going to have an extremely difficult time believing that it will be available with 'no strings attached'. Many people have been jaded in all kinds of shady deals, both offline and online, with many ending up having spent thousands of dollars with nothing to show for it.

And, even when an offer that is possibly legitimate comes along, it is suspect, to say the least. Perfect examples are the 2-minute-long commercials often seen on the independent stations, i.e., TNT, USA Network whereby the product is being promoted by a 90-mile-per-hour speaking voiceover announcer.

At the end of the commercial, the announcer states that if you call right now (or within the next 15 or 30 minutes), you will not only receive the product at the unheard of low price, but you will also receive a second of the same product absolutely free. In respect to this type of television commercial, this is the point at which my own wheels start to turn, usually wondering about the quality of the product, and if it is as great as the fast talker has presented.

Also, most of these commercials, along with their infomercial counterparts, air in the early mornings, generally, around 2:00 a.m. - 3:00 a.m., and on, which also makes other wheels of wonderment turn in my head. I'm wondering:

1. Is the commercial airing in this time slot because this is a special short-lived promotion and the company does not wish to be overrun with orders at the low price and risk running out of product while losing on the profit end?

2. Is this a discontinued item that I will not be able to easily obtain parts for if it happens to break?

3. Is the commercial airing in this time slot because the advertiser cannot afford prime time slots?

4. If the product is so great, why does the company give away another complete version of the same product, instead of a lesser-priced item?

5. If there is a P. O. Box, how do I know this isn't a fly-by-night rip-off operation?

See how the 'believability' factor has quietly arisen and crept into play here?

So, aside from the fact that you might have a great product, service or information take a good look at your own marketing, promotion and advertising copy before presenting such to general or specific publics, asking yourself:

1. Are people going to believe this item will do what my copy says that it will?

2. If I place myself in my intended customer's spot, would I believe this?

3. What can I do to make my offer sound more credible, thus, warding off any possible doubt from prospects?

4. Will my price for this product be perceived by prospects as too low (or too high)?

5. Am I easing the emotional pains of prospects by offering a strong and solid guarantee?

By the way, it is generally accepted in the business arena that, the longer the guarantee for your offer, the better overall sales will be, with fewer returns. I suppose that longer guarantees, i.e., 6 months or 1-year, appeal to the prospect who reasons that if the product was not everything as presented, the shorter the guarantee would be in the interest of the advertiser escaping liability a lot sooner.

So, after your great headline has been punched out, the great ad copy as been written and the appropriate media have been selected for your product, service or information, take one last moment to review what you now have before you, completely addressing the 'believability' factor. Now, upon your completion of doing so, would you buy this item from you?

Copyright 2002 Kenny Love Enterprises All Rights Reserved




Subtitle: Why some products cannot be given away successfully (especially behind the word 'FREE')

There are many elements discussed in marketing articles regarding how best to garner sales success for products or services. However, one element I have rarely found discussed, if ever, is the factor of 'believability'. Here is a case in point:

A while back, I discovered a unique angle being marketed to the public regarding a certain product that I was certain would be incredibly successful since the product is one that, virtually, everyone already uses, regardless of their financial status or position in life.

And, with a price range that expands from $0 to as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on your choice and what you can afford, the version being marketed by this company is FREE to the public.

And, I'm not speaking of a product that attempts to please all the people all the time, so to speak, but a product that almost falls into the realm of being a 'vital necessity' for just about everyone, and on a worldwide basis. This product is one that, if it was not what it was, the 'believability' factor would be so incredibly high that virtually everyone would rush out to get one, especially since it will be FREE.

And, I would also lay 10 to 1 odds that you currently own, at least, one of these products right now.

So, what is this product? Is your curiosity up yet?

Well, I'm not going to disclose the product for several reasons, and because my own personal jury is still out with the verdict on it (sorry, no tease intended). But, I will say that if the verdict is returned favorably, there will be no side of earth that you will not learn about it.

So, what is my own reluctance with this particular product?

Well, my answer is found no farther than the title of this article...the 'believability' factor and it being made available for FREE. Not because this particular product isn't as it is presented, but because people are simply not accustomed to being able to obtain this product freely.

And, when (and if) this product is, indeed, released to the general public, even though it already affects most of the people in the world who are already utilizing it, I can guarantee that it will also come with a 'Catch-22' factor for its distributors and sales persons.

People are simply going to have an extremely difficult time believing that it will be available with 'no strings attached'. Many people have been jaded in all kinds of shady deals, both offline and online, with many ending up having spent thousands of dollars with nothing to show for it.

And, even when an offer that is possibly legitimate comes along, it is suspect, to say the least. Perfect examples are the 2-minute-long commercials often seen on the independent stations, i.e., TNT, USA Network whereby the product is being promoted by a 90-mile-per-hour speaking voiceover announcer.

At the end of the commercial, the announcer states that if you call right now (or within the next 15 or 30 minutes), you will not only receive the product at the unheard of low price, but you will also receive a second of the same product absolutely free. In respect to this type of television commercial, this is the point at which my own wheels start to turn, usually wondering about the quality of the product, and if it is as great as the fast talker has presented.

Also, most of these commercials, along with their infomercial counterparts, air in the early mornings, generally, around 2:00 a.m. - 3:00 a.m., and on, which also makes other wheels of wonderment turn in my head. I'm wondering:

1. Is the commercial airing in this time slot because this is a special short-lived promotion and the company does not wish to be overrun with orders at the low price and risk running out of product while losing on the profit end?

2. Is this a discontinued item that I will not be able to easily obtain parts for if it happens to break?

3. Is the commercial airing in this time slot because the advertiser cannot afford prime time slots?

4. If the product is so great, why does the company give away another complete version of the same product, instead of a lesser-priced item?

5. If there is a P. O. Box, how do I know this isn't a fly-by-night rip-off operation?

See how the 'believability' factor has quietly arisen and crept into play here?

So, aside from the fact that you might have a great product, service or information take a good look at your own marketing, promotion and advertising copy before presenting such to general or specific publics, asking yourself:

1. Are people going to believe this item will do what my copy says that it will?

2. If I place myself in my intended customer's spot, would I believe this?

3. What can I do to make my offer sound more credible, thus, warding off any possible doubt from prospects?

4. Will my price for this product be perceived by prospects as too low (or too high)?

5. Am I easing the emotional pains of prospects by offering a strong and solid guarantee?

By the way, it is generally accepted in the business arena that, the longer the guarantee for your offer, the better overall sales will be, with fewer returns. I suppose that longer guarantees, i.e., 6 months or 1-year, appeal to the prospect who reasons that if the product was not everything as presented, the shorter the guarantee would be in the interest of the advertiser escaping liability a lot sooner.

So, after your great headline has been punched out, the great ad copy as been written and the appropriate media have been selected for your product, service or information, take one last moment to review what you now have before you, completely addressing the 'believability' factor. Now, upon your completion of doing so, would you buy this item from you?

Copyright 2002 Kenny Love Enterprises All Rights Reserved

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kenny Love owns and manages Kenny Love Enterprises, a self-improvement cybercenter. He also publishes The Tipster, a unique proactive self-improvement newsletter. Read the premier issue at http://www.kennylove.net/march02.html. Also, get 2 FREE informational gifts, just for subscribing.

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Tree Capital Of Pennsylvania is Doylestown

Highland Hill Farm farm is located 1 mile west of Doylestown in Central Bucks County, Pennsylvania,( at 5275 W. Swamp Rd.) whose name is not at all derived from the many deer to be found (that would be too easy), was established, wa-a-a-y back in 1681 when the king of England, Charles II, owed one of his old admirals 16,000 pounds Sterling. (That's about 4 million of our 2006 dollars.) For payment of the debt, it became the admiral's son who was given a ract (a parcel, a piece) of land in he New World, on the northern continent of the western hemisphere before it got the name America.

When William Penn saw just the eastern edge of the 40,000 square miles he had gotten he was most pleased, understandably so, with a forest that seemed to never end. Dad's woods, he thought, deciding to name the place where he would start a democratic sort of Quaker colony, Pennsylvania, Penn, -sylv (a Latin word root meaning woods), -ania (Latin suffix for land). So that's why our home sounds like Count Dracula's (Tran -sylv -ania, tran for etween, as in, between the Carpathian Mountains and the old Principality of Wallachia in what is today's Romania, there's a land which is woods. Maybe Newfoundland should have been named Newfoundania? Naah.

William Penn established just three counties at first, all in the southeastern corner of his wooded land, all with names from mother England. Philadelphia County surrounded the original village there, Chester County was to the south, and Bucks County to the north.

In England, Buckinghamshire was, and still is, a county just northwest of London that forms an irregular rectangle running from the southeast at the edge of London, northwesterly. BUCKinghamShire, was shortened to Bucks in conversation. So William Penn named his land's similarly sized, irregular rectangle county, which ran northwesterly from Philadelphia's edge, Bucks county. Of course when you come to our farm be prepared to visit our county and experience its diverse culture and history.

When you come to visit us at Highland Hill Farm in Fountainville, an interesting place to visit is Haycock Mountain. It is a cooled 130-million year old almost a volcano that didn't get to come out of the ground. It stayed below, but made the ground bulge upward, and the hot, liquid magma cooled to form coarse-grained diabase rock. Ayres' Rock in Australia and Wyoming's Devil's Tower are world-famous examples of what is called a laccolith. Milk is lacco in Latin and lith means stone. Haycock Mountain is a laccolith, Buck's County's highest point at 959 feet above sea level.

Haycock Township surrounds the mountain. Haycock Elementary School is having their annual band concert at the nearby high school in the town of McLean on Tuesday, December 20, this year. You don't think that Bucks County has a town named McLean? You're absolutely right! Although there's the Haycock Elementary School we know on Old Bethlehem Road (Route 212), there's another one at the intersection of Haycock Road (Route 703) and Westmoreland Street, in McLean, Virginia just a few miles across the Potomac River west of Washington, D.C. Then, there's Haycock Mountain, in the southwestern part of the state of Utah, not to be confused with Haystack Mountain, Utah. Haycock Mountain, Alaska deserves mention, as well as Haycock Mound in Kansas. What's in a name?, Shakespeare observed over 400 years ago.

So you get the point; haycock is a common word, but just what is a haycock? Before the days of baling machines, cut grasses for haying were spread out in the sun to dry (gotta make hay while the sun shines) and then collected to be taken to where it would be stored. That dome-shaped mound, that pile, that heap, that stack of hay, will have a rounded top exactly like our Haycock Mountain in Bucks County.

If there's no barn with a mow (pronounce it like Chairman Mao) to store the hay out of the rain and snow, an extra large haycock can be piled up and this hayrick will have a protective outer layer of hay that will be used for bedding the farm animals, or for composting, etc. If a roof set on poles can be created to cover the hayrick, much less of the hay will have to get wet and subsequently rot... So there's a Hayrick Mountain in Texas and another Hayrick Mountain in Oregon. What's in a name? Try, Highland Hill Farm? And guess what we Raise? Highland Cattle and Nursery stock. Our most popular tree is the Green Giant arborvitae. Here is why:

The hardiness zone the Green Giant Arborvita tolerates is from zone 5 to zone 8. That's where extreme cold temperatures get down to a temperate level of about 15 or 20 degrees in the winter (Zone 8), but also as low as a frigid level of 15 or 20 degrees BELOW zero (zone 5). Green giants are evergreens, being cedars. Their rapid growth rates can in ideal conditions reach 3 feet per year. Site requirements for the Green Giant Arborvita are sun to partial shade, moist well drained soil preferred (but still does well in clay), and protection from wind, at lest when young.

The Green Giant is a beautiful tree. It has an aesthetically fine form. It's conical, being narrow to broadly pyramidal, reaching from 50 feet to 80 feet in height in southeastyern Pennsylvania. The width at the base of the cone is usually about 15 feet to 20 feet. The leaves are rich green making graceful foliage.

Green Giants make a superb privacy screen and living fences. They keep their foliage color year 'round, great for brightening bleak gray winter days with snow on the ground. The cinnamon bright red bark when young turn rich russet brown with time crating a strong contrast with the needle leaves.

Green Giants' flowers, their fruit are pretty little light brown half-inch female cones. (Just so you know, Green giants are females, so its okay to call the cones pretty.) The Green Giant is also a wonderful shade tree, casting a dark, dense shade. The wood is strong too, once the tree is beyond its youth.

This is an arborvita that should outlive even your grandchildren. There are Green Giants out west documented to be over 300 years old. Just don't plant these too close to the ocean, or roads in areas where there's a lot of salt used for snow removal. If you get over 100 inches of snowfall and more per year, no roadside Arborvita planting where salt is used, PLEASE. The greatest soldier of ancient Greece in the Trojan war had his one little weak spot, what proved to be a fatal flaw, and the Achilles Heel for Green Giant Arborvitas is hypersensitivity to salt. If you plants this Arborvitas just keep away from the splash of road salt and it will make a great living fence.

So when are you coming to visit Bucks County?

http://www.zone5trees.com , http://www.highlandhillfarm and http://www.seedlingsrus.com and http://www.greengiantarbs.com

About the Author

James Ryan has a large nursery in Bucks County Pa near Doylestown. He has thousands of Green Giants and writes about there uses. His web sites include http://www.seedlingsrus.com and http://www.digatree.com/Living Fences

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Moving Tips Help the Stressed Buyer

Moving is a horrible thing to go through after all the stress of buying a home. I absolutely hate to move. This is partly due to the fact that we've never been able to work out the move out of the home we sold right into the new home scenario. We've always had to move twice with each purchase of a new home. From old home to rental, from rental to new home. It really doesn't make for a happy family.

There are some ways to help with the move. And they aren't the traditional, call the moving company. Here are my top tips for eliminating stress from your move.

First, start with getting rid of stuff. We always laugh and say that we get rid of half and move half. There is no reason to hang onto things that you will never ever unpack. Have a yard sale and get rid of it. Plus, you might make enough money to treat your family to something special -- like a day at the zoo. Or don't mess with the stress of a yard sale and give it all to charity. That's a tax deductable gift, if you get a receipt.

Getting rid of extra stuff not only saves you money in moving, but saves you a lot of time in packing and rearranging stuff. I go through everything as I pack it. Clothes, dishes, toys and papers are all purged. It really feels good -- you know you are starting off more organized and with less clutter.

Move room by room if possible. Don't try to tackle everything at once. If you and your friends are moving you, have them take items by room. This is a great way to move. It is also quite faster. There is no confusion and no moving of boxes into the correct room.

Don't forget to take care of a few things before you even start packing. Arrange for the utilities to be transfered. You don't want to get to your new home and have no water or lights. You should make sure that your insurance coverage will cover your belongings and both properties for the adequate amount of time. Don't cut off the insurance for the home you are leaving until you are actually gone. This is especially important if you have people helping you to move.

And finally, if you are moving a distance -- make sure you know where you are going. Have a map and a route planned. Plan where and when you will stop and how long it will take you to get to your new home. If it is a long trip, make it fun. Stop and see things along the way. Take the time to enjoy the country. Make it an adventure -- not just a move.

Martin Lukac represents http://www.RateEmpire.com and http://www.1AmericanFinancial.com, a finance web-company specializing in real estate and mortgage rates. We specialize in daily updates, mortgage news, rate predictions, mortgage rates and more. Find low home loan mortgage interest rates from hundreds of mortgage companies!

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