Thanks for getting your feet wet with our two FREE chapter offer!

We wrote “A REASON TO CHANT” – Jewelry Trade Edition for brick and mortar business jewelry store owners who want an inexpensive, easy to use program that drives a full range of traffic to their doorstep.  Guaranteed.

If you’re not getting the results your business needs from your advertising dollar, then you owe it to yourself to read these first two chapters and change that today.

Enjoy!

“A REASON TO CHANT” – Jewelry Trade Edition

How to Take Control of Your Marketing to Earn Trust, Devotion, and Traffic for Your Brand Forever

By Rod Worley, CEO of Four Grainer LLC & Host of “Inside the Jewelry Trade” Radio Show

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

How To Read This Book

“One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

This book is a step by step guide of how to take control of your marketing to earn trust, devotion, and traffic to your brand forever.

It’s not a book of esoteric marketing theories, high brow advertising musings, or fancy charts in multiple colors.

It’s written so you can hand this book to your summer intern in the morning and by that afternoon they’ve read it, have a clear understanding of the program, and know how to get it set up and running.

This book delivers the proven results of the Four Grainer “Actively Involved Marketing” (A.I.M.) program in the following areas:

• First and foremost, this program drives traffic to your brick and mortar store.
• It brings in people who’ve never visited your store.
• Compels former clients and your current customer base to revisit your store.
• Grants you complete control over every aspect of this marketing program.
• Ensures that costs, results, and profit are 100% measurable.
• Delivers your brand message to the community the right way.
• Provides the name, address, telephone number and email address of everyone this program brings to your store.
• Creates content that engages and grows your social media platforms organically.
• Costs less than $20 to set up and only pennies every year to maintain.
• Gives the local community a real reason to chant your business’s name!

The results I’m going to share are the culmination of two years of actually running the Four Grainer program in a brick and mortar store.

We’ve witnessed first hand increased profitability, seen how it’s transformed the client’s image of the store, seen authentic one-on-one bonds created and seen how it’s positively impacted every aspect of our marketing.

These proven results will work in ANY business wishing to increase the number of clients walking through the door.

Accounting firms, car dealerships, dentists, law firms, jewelry stores, restaurants—any business, no matter how large or small—can benefit from using these proven strategies.

Enjoy!

Chapter One—A Frozen Stadium Seat In Cleveland.

“ It was so bitterly cold outside that by the time I walked back to the car, the footlong sandwich I got at Subway shrunk to a 6 inch” – A Modern Witticism

To say it was cold that day would be an understatement.

It was the kind of cold that settles down deep inside your body and stays with you hours after you finally find warmth.

The kind of cold that robs you of precious body heat with every single breath.

You seriously wonder why anyone in their right mind would be sitting on frozen plastic stadium seats, surrounded by a foot of hard packed snow. But there you sat with your Pittsburgh friends in an open-air NFL football stadium in Cleveland, Ohio in January.

In the end, win or lose it’s just one of the perks of being a lifelong Pittsburgh Steeler fan.

You’ve lost track of the hundreds of dollars you’ve paid for tickets, transportation, and the many Steelers products you wear with pride. All this for the privilege to visit exotic, far-flung tourist destinations such as Cleveland and Cincinnati in the dead of a face-freezing January winter.

Honestly, in spite of this, you wouldn’t miss a game for the world because there’s a visceral feeling of belonging, of being a part of the cause—a Steeler Nation if you will—that feeds something primordial inside of you.

You’re there to experience the moment, to cheer as the team takes the field, and when it’s all on the line in a game, the crowd collectively rises to their feet.

Nothing quite like it, thousands of people on their feet, so passionate about the outcome that their greatest outpouring of genuine support and solidarity is to chant, “Dee—fence” or “Here we go Steelers, here we go!”

That’s when it hits you.

The Pittsburgh Steelers are a brand, a business striving to establish their brand identity just like every other business.

A successful brand for sure—their six Super Bowl trophies are evidence of that—but still just another business.

Genuine fan fanaticism aside, they provide goods and services just like your business does, except for one significant difference.

They give their fans a reason to chant!

***

We know what you’re thinking, and you’re right.

This book is about how to earn trust and devotion to your small business and not about freezing your backside off at an NFL football game. The reason for the NFL example is because they’ve made a genuine multi-generational connection which resonates with their fans, or for the purposes of this discussion, their “clients.”

They’ve found the touch points that move their fans to purchase goods and services at the rate of $12 billion a year.

This book is going to reveal how to make a connection in your local community, how to make your clients more passionate and more deeply-rooted, just as you see displayed for the NFL on Sunday.

In today’s business environment it isn’t enough that everyone knows your company’s name.

To grow your market share today, you have to stand out in a virtual sea of advertising.

To truly be elite, you have to have to give your clients a reason to chant your name.

***

So how do we get your brick and mortar business from where you are now, to where you know you really should be?

First, we’re going to pull back the curtain and expose the dirty little secrets about the ineffectiveness of your current marketing efforts.

Next, we’ll take you step-by-step through a proven clean-sheet “disruptive” approach to marketing which finally puts you in total control of your marketing success.

Here are the results we’re going to deliver:

• First and foremost, drive foot traffic to your store.
• Get your real brand message out to the community.
• Give you a marketing program where the cost, results, and profit is 100% measurable.
• Hand you the name, address, telephone number, and email address of everyone the program brings to your store.
• Provide content that engages and grows your social media platforms organically.
• Cost less than $20 initially to set up and only pennies every year to maintain.
• Build trust, loyalty, and devotion to your brand.

***

We know it’s a lot to promise and to be quite honest, we live in an age where so many over promise and woefully under deliver. Fortunately, that’s not the case here.

This book details two years of using the Four Grainer “Actively Involved Marketing” program in a small business and seeing the actual results first hand.

The marketing program was born out of the necessity to reach the full range of consumers.

We define a full range of consumers as:

• Potential new clients who’ve never been to your store.
• Former customers who haven’t been to your store in over a year.
• Clients who’ve shopped in your store within the current year.

We can all agree that your business needs fans as passionate as NFL fans but …

Here’s the first problem: you’re not the multi-billion dollar NFL, but you need a devoted fan base, and you need to have your brand message clearly heard and understood.

You need to differentiate your brand from your competitors, but you don’t have a billion dollar marketing budget like the NFL to throw at the problem, nor do you have a team of elite marketers handling every nuance of your advertising message on a 24/7 basis.

In many small businesses, it’s typically the owner, or at most a team of two or three that handle everything.

Unfortunately, there’s an even bigger problem: your marketing efforts are facing shortcomings and limitations, and you probably don’t know what they are.

These deficiencies are often actually costing you tens of thousands of valuable marketing dollars while giving you a false sense of hope that you’re reaching your local community.

Let’s be honest, the people in your local community are the very ones you MUST reach for your business to thrive and grow.

Nobody wants to talk about it, and certainly, nobody wants to take the time to research the formidable marketing challenges facing small businesses in today’s hyper-crowded rich-media world.

John Wanamaker famously said in the early 1900s, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Instinctively John Wanamaker was right back then, and deep inside you feel the same way about your advertising today.

After this next chapter, you’re going to have a clear view of which half of your marketing dollars you are throwing out the window.

We’ve done the research and we’ll share it with you, so you can drill down and get the documented facts that the sellers of advertising don’t want you to know.

They say that knowledge is power, so get ready to become very powerful indeed!

Chapter Two—Can You Hear Me Now?

“The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place” – James Bernard Shaw

You may not know his name, but Paul Marcarelli has summed up your business marketing problems in these five words, “Can You Hear Me Now?”

You’d certainly recognize Paul Marcarelli if you saw his face. From 2002 to 2011 he was the American actor who played the ubiquitous “Test Man” character in the commercial series (“Can you hear me now?”) for Verizon Wireless. He appeared in all of his Verizon advertisements wearing a gray Verizon jacket and his horn-rimmed glasses.

Paul tells you it’s never been easier to communicate your thoughts and ideas with others around the planet than it is right now, and he is 100% correct. The problem is everyone’s talking at once, and no one is listening.

A single voice.

Your business voice.

Is never getting heard.

Surprisingly it’s the same challenges facing Fox News, Apple, the American Red Cross, and the local accountant down the street.

And that is?

Your business, every news outlet, entertainment platform, and cute cat video on YouTube are fighting it out every day for attention in a very crowded space.

How crowded?

On average, people spend more than 490 minutes of their day (8.16 hours) with some form of media, this according to a new report by ZenithOptimedia published on May 31st, 2015 in an article titled, “Internet use to drive 1.4% increase in media consumption in 2015.”

Television remains dominant, accounting for three hours of daily use—which is an hour more than the second place Internet browsing.

The report measured the media consumed in its traditional form—for example, a broadcast viewed on television (cable, satellite) or printed newspapers being physically read.

Watching videos on the web or reading a newspaper’s website counts as Internet consumption.

By the way, good luck with the advertisement you placed in the local print newspaper.

When compared to 2010, here’s the change in daily media consumption by the medium as reported by ZenithOptimedia:

• Internet—Consumption up by 105% since 2010
• Outdoor signage—Up 3%
• Television—Down 8%
• Cinema—Down 11%
• Radio—Down 15%
• Magazines—Down 23%
• Newspapers—Down 31%

***

By 2017, studies have estimated we’ll find even more time in our day to take in media. Apparently, half of our waking life is not enough.

According to ZenithOptimedia, the average global consumption is expected to rise to 506 minutes per day (8.43 hours).

In the Media Dynamic article titled, “Adults Spend Almost 10 Hours Per Day With The Media, But Note Only 150 Ads” dated September 9th, 2014, they showed commercial clutter on TV has increased steadily.

However, viewers, today have options to avoid commercials. Remote controls, DVR’s and a wider variety of channels to choose from enable viewers to skip commercials. Many households are “cutting the cord” and switching to alternative ways of viewing programs commercial free.

Nevertheless, the average person, the study points out, is bombarded by the cumulative effect of 360 ads per day across five different media sources: TV, radio, internet, newspapers, and magazines.

Of these 360, only 150 to 155 are even consciously noted. When you dig deeper, you’ll find that out of the 150 to 155 ads noticed in a single day that few have a strong enough impact to be recalled later.

If you can’t remember the ad, how can it make an impression that ultimately leads to a sale?

Apparently, we’re consuming more media than ever which makes it much tougher for your ads to make an impact with your audience.

Fortunately, we still have the tried and true, print newspaper to fall back on. The newspaper has always been the Rock of Gibraltar for brick and mortar stores. Since time immemorial, print and its ever growing subscriber base have always been consistent.

So how is the tried and true printed newspaper holding up in today’s digital age? Well, not so good, it seems. The U.S. print newspaper business is on life support.

Let’s start with these numbers from the Newspaper Association of America as reported in the “State of the News Media 2015,” published on April 29th, 2015 by the Pew Research Center. According to the report, print ad revenues have fallen from $44.9 billion in 2003 to just $16.4 billion in 2014. Conversely, digital ad revenues have been steady at $3.5 billion since 2006.

Circulation for the print newspaper is falling like a rock.

The major print newspapers took a deep plunge in subscribers between 2013 and 2015. Consider the circulation numbers for these major print platforms.

• The Wall Street Journal is down 400,000 subscribers.
• NY Times has dropped 200,000 subscribers.
• The Washington Post is down 100,000.
• The Los Angeles Times has lost 100,000 in annual subscribers.

The fact is, according to Dan Kennedy in his article “Print Is Dying, and Digital Is No Savior: The Long, Ugly Decline Of The Newspaper Business Continues Apace” (dated January 2016), the Internet option certainly isn’t saving those print newspapers. The article ends with this summary, “For the beleaguered newspaper business, the walls are closing in, and the oxygen is being pumped out of the room.”

Well, at least we still have television to get the word out, or do we?

Tough Times For TV Advertisers

Since 1941, televisions been used as an advertising medium. With all of its distinct advantages, several recent studies have concluded that the amount of time watching traditional TV is dropping for every adult age group.

Not surprisingly an eMarketer study dated April 14, 2016, stated, “Americans between the ages 18 to 24 watch the least amount of traditional TV.” This age group also dropped the fastest when compared to the other age groups, and they are clearly going elsewhere for their content. This year, the 18 to 24 age group will consume just over 2 hours and 22 minutes of traditional TV. That’s in sharp contrast to the 6 hours and 3 minutes of viewing for those 65 and over.

Let’s not kid ourselves either. In today’s world, the financial cost to run the sheer number of TV ads needed to drive people into your store is out of the reach of most brick and mortar businesses.

Here are just a few of the expenses.

Five Financial Concerns with an Ad Campaign on TV:

• Point One—Total overall cost. When you consider the cost of production and distribution, few advertising mediums can eat up your budget as quickly at TV.
• Point Two—Production cost. The higher the production quality, the more it will cost for the various factors such as hiring script writers, producers, actors, film editors. You get what you pay for, and it shows.
• Point Three—Getting seen. After the commercial is ready, you’ll still have to pay for air time. Since studies have shown that TV ads are the most effective with repetition, you’ll need to purchase entire blocks of air time.
• Point Four—Change costs. It’s costly to make changes because it means updating your script and reshooting the entire ad in many cases.
• Point Five—Hitting a moving target. With all of the research on viewership at your fingertips, it can still be tough to target your core audience effectively.

Remember that it isn’t enough for people to simply see your ad, they have to take action because of it.

In a report published by Rutgers Business School, “11 Studies Prove Digital Marketing ROI” dated Friday, December 19th, 2014, showed that according to Nielsen, traditional advertisers in the fast moving consumer goods section (F.M.C.G.) of business face a problem.

While the companies are allocating 60% of their media budget to television, the study showed only 18% of TV advertising campaigns generate a positive ROI (Return On Investment).

So what’s the answer?

Where’s everyone headed to get their message heard since traditional marketing is dropping in readership, viewership, and prominence?

The Internet Will Save Advertising!

I remember the articles like it was yesterday. The splashy banner style headlines like, “Print is Dead, Long Live The Internet!” or the numerous articles over the past few years about the potential for explosive advertising growth on mobile devices.

There’s something inside our optimistic human nature which leads us to believe technology will somehow come to our aid on how to get our message out to the masses.

So much so that an article dated March 11th, 2016 in MediaLife titled, “As Digital Advertising Grows, So Do Questions,” by Bill Cromwell posed the question “Does online advertising work?” It went on to ask, “Does it work so well that it deserves to siphon off large portions of your ad dollars from your other media?”

Many businesses are embracing the digital option for spreading their brand message because they see their costs rise and the effectiveness diminished in traditional marketing (TV, radio, magazine, and newspaper).

However, digital marketing, for all of its inherent advantages, has some real problems itself. At the top of the list has to be click fraud.

What’s click fraud you ask?

Click fraud is an illegal practice happening when individuals or automated computer programs called “bots” (short for robot) click on a website’s click-through advertisements.

This click-through can either be banner ads or paid text links to increase the numbers of clicks payable to the advertiser.

These automated computer “bot” programs are designed to seek out and interact with your particular display ads. Bot creators have monetized the process to bring them a sizable profit at the expense of advertisers. Marketers are then left paying for thousands of impression that were never actually seen by real people.

The bill stacks up to a staggering amount across the globe, this according to Marketing Land in their January 19th, 2016 article by Greg Sterling titled, “Study: Sophisticated Bots Outwitting Marketers, Will Cost $7.2 Billion In 2016.”

Online marketers have an easy time selling ad space by saying, “We can track your advertising investment.” Here’s the problem, though: few people understand the true definition of an “impression” in the digital world.

Most small businesses think that it refers to one “human being” seeing your ad once. Au contraire.

The truth is, and what sellers of online advertising never get around to telling you is that it just means one web browser is making a single digital request for an advertisement from your ad network.

Even though a human never saw your ad, even though a programmed computer bot has accessed it, you still pay.

Why should you care?

Multiple studies have shown that 60% of Internet traffic is computer bot traffic. Each time a malicious bot loads a web page, the browser makes a request to your ad network to load your advertisement. That action by the bot counts as a paid-for impression, even though no human being will see it.

Hold on. It gets much worse.

In the article titled, “The Definition Of An Ad Impression” by Reid Tatoris, February 18, 2014, in the Marketing Daily, “Only 8% of impressions have the opportunity to be seen by a real person.” Reid went on to say, “Let me clarify: that does not mean that 8% of impressions are seen. That means only 8% have the chance to be seen.”

Not good odds, not even by Las Vegas standards.

What good are the numbers if they are entirely skewed—made worthless—by click fraud, and you’re left paying the bill?

What about mobile digital ads?

The news isn’t good there either.

Author Kevin Lee in his article titled “Measurement and Attribution Top Challenges for Getting Mobile Right” published on December 2nd, 2015 in ClickZ wrote, that overwhelmingly, the largest problem they had with mobile display advertising is determining if it was effective in bringing in business.

The ironic fact in all of this is these are the same people who are considered experts in mobile marketing and even they can’t figure out if it is effective!

Wait, did someone mention ad blockers?

Ad blocking is a problem that none of the sellers of online advertisement want to talk about with prospective clients.

The March 11th, 2016 Smashing Magazine article by Vitaly Friedman titled, “A Never-Ending Story On Ad-Blockers” stated that “ad-blocker usage has grown from 12% in 2012 to 55% today.”

For many online users, banner ads are mechanically blocked by a user installed program, or we’ve just tuned them out because we know they’re just advertising.

According to a Goo study titled: “Most of Us Ignore Online Ads” dated February 2014, four out of five American consumers ignore online ads.

The result of these research points is a legitimate concern for advertisers today.

The problem is online ads have become so pervasive that many say they are now tuning them out altogether. In fact, a recent study by Google itself showed that 69% of web users left a site when an interruptive display ad popped up.

Any other ways clients block your advertisements?

For that answer, we turn to Mimi An in her article titled, “Native Advertising Rises As Consumers Opt Out” published on February 8th, 2016 for HubSpot.

According to the HubSpot’s Global Interruptive Ads Survey:

• 94% of all consumers skip television ads entirely.
• 94% unsubscribe from email.
• 27% toss out direct mail before reading it.
• 50% of all shoppers are on the national “Do Not Call” registry.

What is the average brick and mortar business to do?

Where can they turn?

Is there anything that technology can give us to spread our message across the globe for free?

Social Media To The Rescue!

We’ve basked in the soft glow and hype about social media for the past ten years or so. The success stories can quickly fill you with wide-eyed wonder at the possibilities. Unlike other marketing platforms, social media is a two-edged sword.

There are some tremendous upsides to putting together a coordinated social media marketing initiative with your traditional marketing: it can reach an incredibly huge audience, it’s a fast way to get your message out, and when done right, can nurture brand loyalty. Another real upside is that the major social media platforms are free to join.

The downside is that you quickly incur charges both in sponsored posts, content creation, and a paid community manager if you intend to make a real impact.

The dark side of social media marketing is that if you have a bad reputation for inferior products or services, the only thing these various free platforms will do is get that message out to the public faster and further. Social media has other limitations as well.

The Four Biggest Pitfalls of Social Media

Pitfall #1: Time-consuming.

64% of digital marketers spend six hours or more on these sites.

Do you have that much extra time in your already busy day?

Pitfall #2: Generates negative troll users.

Some people just want to cause problems from the deep, dark safety of their Mother’s basement. These social trolls seem bent on causing as much havoc as possible with their vile, hateful postings. Eventually, every online brand must face them, the more popular you are, the more you’ll probably have.

Pitfall #3: Your content being “scraped.”

Once you post content, you run the risk of it being copied and used by others for their purposes. It’s called “scraping,” and it uses Internet bots to gather data from your site to post on their website and their other online platforms. They also use it to undercut your promotional pricing, steal leads, and hijack marketing campaigns.

Pitfall #4: Social media marketing ROI is hard to define.

As you read the various articles, white papers, and conference recaps, most digital marketers seem to have the same burning question you do. “How can you accurately measure the return on investment of their social media efforts?”

It’s true. Most sellers of social media cannot give you a hard and fast ROI for their “must-have” apps and programs. The best they can usually do, when pressed on the topic, is to roll out one of these Mark Twain-like sayings such as, “The ROI of social media is that your business will still be around in five years,” or, “Saying Hello to your clients doesn’t have an ROI. It’s about building relationships.”

This next one is easily one of our personal favorites when these vendors call us: “What’s the ROI of putting your pants on every day? It’s hard to measure, but there are adverse consequences for not doing it.”

Seriously? That’s the best answer the “experts” can come up with to your question?

Bottom line here is that if you can’t determine the return on investment of social media, how does your business gauge if you should spend more on a platform or cut it out altogether? All of that leads us to our favorite myths about the various social platforms. Are you sitting down?

According to a Custora research report conducted during the first quarter of 2014, “Social tactics are not meaningful sales drivers.” The results appeared in an article on Media Post dated May 20th, 2014 by Erik Sass with the ominous title, “Social Media Accounts For Only 1% Of Online Retail Sales.”

Custora looked at purchases from retail websites in the first quarter of the year to determine where the orders originated. And yes, the title of the article said it all. Less than 1% of those purchases originated from social media.

When it comes to social media being a driver of sales, most businesses clearly have the wrong impression. Most are convinced the number of “Followers” of your brand page equals the number of potential sales. The truth is social media does assist in the selling process, but seldom does it translate directly into a sale.

What usually happens instead is that social media assists conversions through helping people find out about your brand, and building trust and engagement before the consumer makes the actual purchase. It may take days, even weeks, before your customer returns to your website or physical store to make a purchase. Many brick and mortar stores, meanwhile, lose interest in managing their social platforms within three months. Abandoned social media sites, from every corner of the business world, litter the Internet.

Before we move on, we’ve got one more point to make on this subject.

Last Word On Social Media For Your Business

Social media started out as an innovative way to easily connect with family and friends while living a hectic lifestyle.

By its very name, it was created to be social in nature.

When social media exploded in popularity around 2010, businesses saw a free, easy way to blast their message into the stratosphere.

Looking back, you honestly couldn’t help but stare in wide-eyed amazement at the potential to reach billions of people around the world with your brand message.

Business took what had worked for 100 years in traditional print marketing and tried to force it to work in social media.

Yes, there were some early successes, stories that have now risen to the level of urban legends where neighborhood brick and mortar stores were selling big ticket items to a client halfway around the world.

Somewhere along the way, though, businesses forgot that social media platforms were created originally to be social, not business related. People were there to socialize, not to be fed a steady stream of banner ads and interrupted at every turn with brand messages.

Today consumers primarily use social media for connection and entertainment. If your message doesn’t fulfill one of those two requirements, chances are you’re wasting your time, money and finger strength.

It’s all right. Digital marketing isn’t what you got into business to do.

The truth is you don’t have enough time in the day, nor the inclination to stay on top of the latest emerging digital trends.

We could go on.

The problem is you’ve spent about half an hour reading over 5,000 words, and all we’ve done is either further enlightened you, or deeply depressed you about the uphill battle your brand marketing is facing today.

Honestly, we could go on to talk in depth about the latest Google algorithm updates, search engine optimization, inbound content marketing, and the fact that less than 15% of the followers of your free Facebook business page see your daily posts.

To continue would seriously leave you screaming, yelling and throwing your hands up in utter frustration at your plight. We know what you’re up against on a daily basis.

Do you know the sad reality of all of this?

Most brick and mortar businesses cannot come anywhere near their marketing objectives due to limited budgets, lack of knowledge of how to coordinate the tools at their disposal, and the nature of the rapidly evolving marketing landscape. So where does that leave you?

You’re Exactly Where You Need To Be!

You should have a real hunger to take back the control of your marketing.

You should be able to resist falling for every new and shiny marketing ploy that comes down the road.

You shouldn’t be held emotionally hostage to the latest fads that you hear about in the news.

In short, what follows will give you a chance to open your eyes to the one-on-one marketing strategies that should be the cornerstone of your business. Get ready to learn from your mistakes. Many may have cost you thousands of dollars, untold hours of aggravation, and robbed your business of real growth over past years.

The struggle you face is real.

The future success of your business is on the line.

Let’s seize this opportunity for change right now!

• END OF CHAPTER TWO

Thanks for reading the first two chapters of “A REASON TO CHANT”

Would you like to read the rest of the book to learn the easy, two-year tested solution right now?

Do you want to spend less time worrying about your marketing and more time actually running your business?

Do you want to see your marketing actually drive traffic and increase your market share?

Simply click on the Amazon.com logo below.