Walt Disney Knew How To Get The Word Out By Stephen Schochet orgofhlly@aol.com COPYRIGHT: ©2004 by Hollywood Stories. All rights reserved

You need to get word out about your products but your economic resources are limited. That was often dilemma that faced Walt Disney. Often burdened with heavy debt, he found many creative ways to let public in on what he was doing. His innovative marketing ideas could be used by businesses seeking publicity today.

1) Capitalize on current events: In 1930 Walt felt that Mickey Mouse who was constantly surrounded by barnyard animals should get a dog. He vividly described to his artists a funny mutt that his family kept on their farm when he grew up in Marceline Missouri, to point of getting down on all fours, sniffing around and making barking noises. Animator Norman Ferguson transformed Walt's great acting performance into a cartoon canine named Rover . . . for five months. Then Disney read that an amateur astronomer named Clyde Tombaugh had discovered a ninth planet in our solar system called Pluto and Walt cashed in on resulting publicity by giving Mickey's pet a new name.

2) Get your employees behind your product: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937) took three long years to complete and Walt suffered through many doubts about film's marketing direction. He worried when press called it "Disney's Folly" , then realized it was good to have people talk about it. He rejected a salesman's idea that he should eliminate dwarfs from advertising, pushing love story between Snow White and Prince instead. But throughout stressful production his cartoonists stayed loyal and enthusiastic, often using their free time to run around Los Angeles to tack up advertising posters. Snow White was a world wide success but perhaps artists got a little too excited. After money rolled in Walt threw his animators a party in gratitude. He later regretted it when his some of more bohemian members of his staff chose occasion to let their hair down, and family event turned into a wild orgy. Any rift that outrageous behavior caused with boss was forgotten by 1953 when many of his employees came to Walt's aid to financially back Disneyland.

A Step-By-Step Guide for creating imaginative order pulling adverts for both on and offline marketing

OK, let’s get started!

Rule One - The Headline The headline is without doubt most important part of your advert, that big chunky text at top of your ad, if this doesn’t grab their attention then you’ve lost a potential customer/sale.

The sole function of your headline is to get readers attention so that they will read rest offer your offer, right? That’s obvious, but pick up any newspaper and take a look at classified section and look at all those lousy headlines :-

Increase Your Sales Today Beat Inflation

The above headlines hardly make you want to read on, do they? In fact they’d be lucky to get a second glance.

Let’s say, for example, you was trying to promote a book about working from home on Internet, what would be a good imaginative headline?

Learn How To Work From Home On The Internet

Yawn!...Boring! Not exactly imaginative is it?

Or

Go To Work In Your UNDERPANTS!

Hhmm....No prizes for guessing which headline would get their attention!

Rule Two - The Sub-heading With sub-heading you should just give reader a couple of lines of text to draw them into main body of your advert, such as:-

Millions of people all over world are making a fortune working in their underpants! Discover how YOU can do it too.

Now they’ve just got to read on, I haven’t even mentioned Internet yet, I’m pretty sure they’ll want to know what I’m talking about.

Rule Three - The Body Text The body text of your advert is where you have chance to ‘sell’ reader your product, it’s time to make that sale!

This is where a lot of people blow it, instead of concentrating on what benefits customer can gain from their product or service they just ramble on how good their company or product is.

For example, for Internet book I could write:-

"I’ve been marketing on Internet for over 20 years, last year alone I made over £250,000 from selling just one product..."

So what? Big deal! I’m not interested in how good you are, what can you do for ME, customer?

Make a list of all benefits people will get by buying your product and work them into your body text keeping focus on your reader.

So, for Internet book we could have:-

Discover free way to get thousands of people advertising your product and YOU keep all profit!

Learn how to start your own Internet business for less than price of a pizza.

How to get your hands on top selling Internet products free.

Get a systematic marketing system that works while you sleep.

Insider secrets to e-mail marketing revealed.

How to TRIPLE your sales using one simple technique that doesn't cost a dime!

How to advertise your product just once and keep on selling it for years to come automatically.

How to build websites which really pull in money and that take less than an hour to build. etc. etc.

That’s better, now we’ve got their interest peaked, they are surely intrigued by now, we still need some more body copy to go along with these bullet points, such as:-

Discover how you can earn what you want, when you want without leaving home!

For first time ever a top Internet marketer teaches you how to stake your claim on Internet spending little to no money. You don’t need any Internet knowledge, business premises or employees, just a home computer and this powerful book. This step-by-step book will teach you how to....

Rule Four - The Coupon / Order Form The coupon or order form should ALWAYS restate price and briefly describe what you are selling.

If price is right for them, they will then read your entire advert before making a buying decision.

Keeping this in mind, it would be WRONG to have coupon or order form say:-

"Please send me a copy of How To Work In Your Underpants, I enclose a cheque for £14.99 made payable to Joe Bloggs...."

This is wrong because you haven’t resold product, it should look something like this:-

"Yes, I would like secret inside information on how to make money on Internet, please send me a copy of book How To Work In Your Underpants. I enclose a cheque/P.O. (Includes postage and packing) for £14.99 made payable to Joe Bloggs.....etc"