Persuasion

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How to Persuade — Without Being a Manipulative Scumbag

By Tom Ruwitch

I’m about to board a Southwest Airlines flight to Florida to spend a few days at a small-group mastermind meeting run by Dave Dee. Dave is an A+ marketer who recently hosted a workshop called “Present, Persuade, & Profit.” He likes to teach by doing. Dave told us he would break down the workshop we…

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How Persuasive Marketers Choose The Right Words

By Tom Ruwitch

A peek behind the curtain into my email laboratory… Yesterday, I broke down some of my emails for VIP members of my Content Transformation Academy… …to reveal a few of my content creation strategies and tactics… …to help them become email marketing masters. One of the emails: The Dirty Little Secret Newspaper Publishers Don’t Want You to…

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Why I Called B.S. on my Friend Who Said All Marketers are Liars

By Tom Ruwitch

I met yesterday with a friend who’s feeling down in the dumps. His business is struggling and so is he.  And even though he’s a brilliant mindset coach, he now questions everything he’s doing – including all things marketing.  “I don’t like marketing,” he told me. “It’s the use of psychology to deceive people into…

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Why The Wrong Way is Often The Right Way to Persuade and Teach

By Tom Ruwitch

Once in a while, I share with you stories about the wrong way to market your business. Like this story about a marketer who pretended she’d sent me a personal note when it was, actually, a message sent to everyone on her list.  Or this story about a marketer who sent me a sales pitch disguised as a…

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The One Word That Can Make You More Persuasive

By Tom Ruwitch

Here’s a quick story that reveals how a single word can make you more persuasive. That word: Because A Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer sent researchers to a copy store near campus to study how powerful that word can be.  Researchers, posing as customers, visited the store multiple times and asked if they could skip…

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Why I Should Have Dumped That Rotten Client Sooner…

By Tom Ruwitch

I fired a client last month. It felt great.  I should have done it several months ago, but I balked.  This client didn’t return emails, voicemails or texts. Didn’t complete work they promised. Didn’t meet deadlines for work they delivered.  Then, they would pop up out of the blue and bark some command at me,…

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The One Word That Can be The Difference Between Success and Failure

By Tom Ruwitch

I nearly no-showed for a meeting with a new LinkedIn connection last week. The connection, Terri, sent me a message to tell me she was waiting in the Zoom room. I had forgotten our meeting. I was eating lunch, oblivious, when Terri’s message arrived. I joined the Zoom room, tail between my legs, apologizing, embarrassed.…

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Priceless Marketing Lessons Courtesy of President Trump

By Tom Ruwitch

I gotta hand it to President Donald J. Trump.  Love him or hate him, El Presidente just did many of us a favor. He shut up the “TikTok-is-the-Next-Big-Marketing-Thing” crowd.  (Search for “tiktok marketing next big thing,” and you’ll find them).  On Friday, he issued an executive order banning TikTok in the USA, effective next month. …

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I Reveal This Mistake So You Don’t Repeat It

By Tom Ruwitch

I got some great advice from a marketing expert last week after he read one of my emails. If you’ve read my emails lately, you’ve noticed that I offer a free Story Assessment. I’ll review your website, social media or any other channel where you tell your story. Then I’ll reveal ways to power up your…

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Top Marketers Say This is More Important Than Anything

By Tom Ruwitch

I recently heard this story about the great copywriter Gary Halbert… Near the end of his career he was quizzing a protege and said, “The best way to get a prospect’s attention is to appeal to their sense of ___________.” The protege replied, “Their sense of self-interest?” Halbert said, “No…their sense of curiosity.” That’s great…

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