A chicken egg is a chicken egg and all chicken eggs of the world are the same, right? If that’s true, then how do you go about marketing YOUR eggs as being better or different than those other guys’ eggs?

For one thing, there is some differentiation between factory eggs, organic eggs, free range eggs, pasture-raised eggs and more. Personally, I like the pasture-raised eggs. It means the chickens get to roam outside like they’re supposed to, unlike “free range” which just means they’re free to walk around inside an overcrowded building full of chickens.

In my grocery store I have several options for pasture-raised eggs, and yet I always choose the same brand without even considering the rest. Is it because these eggs are cheaper? Nope. Is the egg carton better looking? Maybe, but that’s not why…

Marketers, this is where you might want to pay close attention…

The one and only reason I choose this particular brand of pasture-raised eggs over all the others is because in each carton they enclose a tiny 2 page newsletter. This is a single piece of paper approximately 4.25” x 3” or 10.5cm x 8cm. This miniature newsletter is called the “Vital Times” complete with Volume # and Issue #.

The headline on the issue I’m looking at right now reads, “Girls on Grass – and Gratitude.” The article is about ‘the girls’, with girls being chickens, and how they get to spend their day. Here are excerpts…

For Vital Farms hens, this year has been awesome. Sunshine? Check. Pastures? Check. Dust bathing with friends? Check, check, check. Our girls wake up ready to explore… What are we thankful for in this crazy, crazy year? It’s pretty simple. You.

You wrote thank yous – more than 5,000! – to celebrate the work of farmers and crew. You invested in our company and our vision. You inspired our front line to keep working through the long days and nights…

The newsletter goes on to praise their customers for the many things they are doing during the pandemic and then brings it back to how the customers make it possible for the ‘girls’ (chickens) to enjoy the simple pleasures.

Finally, it closes with a brief message of home and gratitude along with a photo of several chickens against a blue sky with green grass and the words “thank you”.

On the opposite side of the newsletter are…

•     A chicken cartoon in which one chicken is painting the barn wall and a second chicken asks, “Is that beige?” To which the first chicken replies, “Don’t be silly, it’s eggshell.”

Ugghh.

The lesson here is humor doesn’t have to be stellar to still be appreciated, since finding almost any chicken cartoon in your carton of eggs is better than finding none.

•     A bird of the month complete with photo and caption. This month showcases “Tiffany,” a beautiful red chicken with the caption, “Talented Tiffany dances in the shade, making the most of a beautiful day.”

Corny? Maybe.

Cute? Yes.

Fun? Absolutely.

•     100 words on why gratitude is healthy and how to start a gratitude practice. This is bringing honest to goodness real value to the customer.

•     The company’s mission statement is in a box with the first words in red all caps, “OUR MISSION is to bring ethically produced food to the table by coordinating a collection of family farms to operate with a well-defined set of agricultural practices that accentuates the humane treatment of farm animals as the central tenet.”

Too long perhaps, but it does give the customer a real sense of what this company stands for. Customers believing you share the same values they share can earn you a customer for life.

Just be sure to never do anything to go against these values, because these are also the customers who will tear you limb from limb on social media if you let them down.

Think of someone who just learned their mate is cheating on them – customers who love your brand will want a swift divorce if you’re ‘cheating’ on them by going against what you stand for.

•     And finally there is an invitation to show off your egg cooking skills while tagging the company on social media. This is an extremely ‘non-pushy’ way to bring people to social media and get some good mentions.

Now in case you’ve forgotten why I brought up this tiny little egg newsletter in the first place, it’s for these 3 marketing lessons:

1. People love marketing they can touch. When you see something online, it’s there and then it’s gone and usually forgotten in less than a minute.

But something they can hold in their hand? It’s right there in their home or office. It’s real. In this case it’s sitting on their kitchen counter while they make breakfast, carried to the table with the coffee and read while eating. Or at least that’s how it works for me.

2. People love things that are out of the ordinary. Is any other egg producer putting newsletters in their egg cartons? I don’t think so.

3. People love companies that align with their values. When you read the mission statement above, you either agreed with it or you didn’t. If you didn’t agree, then it might not matter to you how your eggs are produced, in which case you’re likely not the right fit for a company that goes out of their way to be humane to their animals.

And if you did agree with the mission statement, you’re much more likely to reach for that same egg brand when you go back to the store because it aligns with your beliefs and values. It says something about who you are, who you want to be and the legacy you want to leave behind for this planet.

Not bad for a tiny little newsletter. Does this inspire any ideas for your own business?

Thanks to Covid-19, businesses have been pushed from the offline to the online world at record speed, making digital marketing more competitive than ever. How can you compete in 2021?

1: If you haven’t already, it’s time to get serious about putting out plenty of great content. Whether it’s one sentence on social media or an entire white paper, you need lots of content continually flooding the internet on a daily basis.

2: Change the size of your content. Instead of making super long authority-type posts of maybe 3,000 words that comprehensively cover a topic, consider going smaller. Short articles that cover just one thing well are ranking high these days, perhaps because of people’s shorter attention spans and less time to read a long article.

Consider breaking up an authority post into small ones, each with a title matching what people are searching for. For example, instead of an article that outlines in detail all the steps to take when starting an online business, break it up into a series of short articles, one on each aspect of the topic (niche selection, branding, game plan, website creation, etc.)

3: While your written content should probably be shorter, your video and audio content needs to be longer. 10-minute videos are performing better than 2, 3 or 5 minute videos in the search results.

If you think about it, it makes sense that if someone is searching for answers, they’re more likely to click on the 10-minute video than the 2-minute video. But expanding your video or audio lengths only work to a point. Videos of 20 and 30 minutes are not doing as well as the 10-minute versions. People want the whole story but they want it quickly.

4: Speed up your pages. It’s more important than ever to have pages that load quickly. When you improve your page speed you’ll also increase your rankings and traffic. There are multiple methods and tricks to decreasing page loading times. Research what’s right for your site or hire someone to do it for you.

5: It’s more important than ever to rank high on page one. Google is going to be looking for additional ways to increase their income, which will likely mean increased paid ads, changes to algorithms and who knows what else. If you rely on free traffic from Google then don’t get lazy or you’ll lose it.

6: Repurpose your content. Turn that article into a video and a podcast. Take several small articles and make them into one big one and take a big one and turn it into several small ones. Remove the best bits and use it on social media, and then package it all up for a whopping comprehensive lead magnet.

7: Update your content. Take that blog post from 6 months ago or even 6 years ago, make it fresh and republish it.

8: Do some podcasting. If the time is right, start your own. If not, be a guest on other people’s podcasts. Compared to blogging, podcasting is still wide open and far less competitive. Plus, you can convey things like emotion and passion via voice that sometimes get lost with writing.

9: Backlinks probably aren’t going to matter as much. Focus on great content built on what people are searching for. Relevancy is king.

10: You better be branding. Brands are already dominating the internet because people know them and TRUST them. It’s easier to get followers, to reach people and get sales when you have an established brand.

Conversely, people out to make a quick buck and run don’t have a brand – they’re just somebody making promises into the void.

10.5: And this is a big one: Forget the, “HELLO – BUY – GOODBYE” of yesterday where you tried to sell someone the first time they saw your offer, and if they didn’t buy, you gave up.

Instead, find ways to interact with people at least 7 times. It might be through email, push notifications, messenger bots, social media, etc. I once knew a guy who was launching a brand new business. He guest posted on a hundred blogs and appeared on 30 podcasts all in the space of 6 weeks. While no one had heard of him in the beginning, by the sixth week everyone in the niche felt like they’d known him for years. His list exploded, he got JV offers daily, bloggers and podcasters asked him back repeatedly and promoted him for free… in the online world, that’s about as close as you’ll get to overnight success.

It may sound like a lot of work, but it can really pay off big if you apply yourself. Aren’t you and your business worth it?

You already know that the better your funnel converts, the more money you can make. You can spend more on advertising or pay more in affiliate commissions and still make tons of money. The trick, of course, is getting your sales funnel to convert well. And to do that, you need to test… well… everything.

You need to test the sales copy that brings someone to your squeeze page, the copy on the page, the look of the page, the title of the freebie you’re giving away, the cover of that freebie, the offer they see when they subscribe, the upsell offer after that (if there is one) and so forth.

You. Must. Test. Everything.

Which is time consuming and costly. Because it could be days or weeks before you even manage to break even, much less start earning a profit – if you ever do at all.

But there is a massive shortcut that some people are taking, and I would be remiss if I didn’t at least tell you about it.

We could debate the ethics on this but we won’t. I leave that up to you. The fact is, people do this sort of thing in every single industry all the time, so it is nothing new. What is new is that the average Joe or Jane marketer doesn’t think to do this.

And if you haven’t guessed yet, I’m talking about modeling another marketer’s business. That is, replicating someone else’s sales techniques and processes. You’d be surprised how many people already do this in one form or another.

I’ve even seen marketers take pride when their own funnels have been modeled. And no, it’s not copying. At least, not if it’s done correctly.

The idea isn’t to copy the text or even use the same products. Rather, it’s to model in terms of design, options presented, layout, pricing, number of upsells and downsells and so forth.

Your headlines might be the same color, size and font. But it’s YOUR headline. Your video might be in the same location on the page, but it’s YOUR video. You’re selling your own products, not theirs.

Your sales copy will be different. Your bullet points will be different. Your key benefits and so forth will be different. But things like the layout of sales pages, colors, fonts, and so forth aren’t copyrighted.

Does a green ‘buy now’ button work better than a red one?

Does a centered black headline in Verdana that asks a provocative question do better than a red headline on the right in Tacoma that makes a bold statement?

Does having the opt in box above the fold convert better than having a long list of bullets and the opt in box beneath the fold?

There are 1,001 decisions to be made when creating a new sales funnel. But emulating a funnel that is already proven to work can make the process a whole lot easier. And faster, too.

Big time marketers can literally spend tens of thousands of dollars on traffic to test what converts best. But by emulating their funnels (not copying) you can get a leg up on what’s working.

How do you know which funnels are working the best in your niche? If you’re in the IM field, you can check their stats in JVZoo, Warrior Plus and ClickBank. In other niches, ClickBank can be a reliable indicator, as well as paying attention to which products you see promoted via paid ads time and time again. If they weren’t making sales, they wouldn’t be paying to promote these products.

One last thing… this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still test. Since this is your own funnel with your own copy and your own products, testing will give you a ton of info on how to raise your conversions as much as possible. But by emulating a proven funnel as the foundation to your system, you get to take a massive shortcut that will have you in profit that much faster.