Successful Marketing Tools Blog

Small Business Advertising

Quick Review Outline of a Great Ad Formula

We have spent a lot of time reviewing advertising issues and ways to make your advertising more effective. Here’s a quick outline version to use in creating a great ad.

 What buying preferences are important to your customers?

 What awareness do your customers have about your product?

 How do your customers want to buy?

 Create an attention grabbing headline

 Write a simple one sentence offer with benefits

 Why should the prospect believe you?

 What do you want the customer to do?

 Test your ad

Conclusion

Have fun making great ads! Happy Independence Day for all of you who celebrate this wonderful holiday!

Small Business Advertising

Call to Action

The final ingredient in your powerful ad will be “Your Call to Action”. What do you want the prospect to do? Should they come into your store? Should they pick up the phone and call you? Do you want them to go to your website and do what? Don’t make the prospect guess what they should do when they finish with your ad. Make it very explicit what you want them to do.

For example. "Cut out this coupon and bring it into the store between 8:00-8:00. Give it to the sales person and they will give you 20% off the purchase of a new suit".

Your call to actions should also contain a sense of urgency. Left on their own, even if they have interest in your product or service, prospects procrastinate. Your call to action should also give the prospect a reason for immediate action. “This coupon is good only during our 3 day sale.”

To be continued, your comments are welcomed...

Small Business Advertising

In the last few blogs on small business advertising, I want to complete some earlier thoughts I made on the key ingredients to a powerful ad. We have already discussed in an earlier blogs Headlines, Credibility and your need to Test your ads. In the next couple of blogs, I will talk about the other two key ingredients, Your Offer and Your Call To Action.

Your Offer

A good headline gets the attention of your prospect and plunges them deeper into your ad. The purpose of business is to make an offer the prospect wants to hear. You offer the prospect something. They give you something in return. This is called the “Quid pro Quo”. I give you something. You give me something—the heart of business.

Your prospect must clearly understand what you are offering and the benefits they will receive from it. Confused customers never buy. Do you see why knowing your customer’s preferences identified earlier in this blogs are so important? Your offer could be a perfect offering but if it doesn’t address what your customer wants, it will fall on deft ears.

If you are not clear, your ad will fail. Super bowl ads are cute. They don’t sell. Advertising experts tell story about the pink bunny that keeps on ticking and ticking. It’s cute! Do you know what company uses this bunny? Probably not. Did you know that a competitive brand of battery has never used national advertising and still is number one in the market place?

Your offering is not about a process. The buyer is not buying a process—how you do something. They buy results. What can your product can do for them, solve a problem, or fulfill a dream?

For your offering to be successful, the reader must instantly recognize that you are speaking to them—not hundreds of others in the market place. If you were walking down a crowded street and someone yelled out your first name, you would turn around and look, even if they were calling to another person. You want your prospect to get the same feeling from your ad—you are talking directly to them.

Your offering needs a logical reason especially if you are offering a discount or a coupon. Without an explanation, even a simple one, customers are skeptical and suspicious. Everyone knows that some deals are too good to be true. You need to explain why you are offering a special deal.

Here’s a simple exercise you can use to help sharpen your offering. Focus on one particular person in your mind and write a draft of your offering to get into one sentence what the prospect will get and the benefits they will receive. Keep writing drafts until you have it down in one simple sentence. You can use it to create your ad. When it positively, absolutely has to be there over night, FED_EX.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed...

Small Business Advertising

Successful Offers

In your previous Success Marketing Strategy I revealed to you the real secret to creating a successful offer which is... don't create the offer until you have found out as much as possible about the people who will be receiving the offer.

So let's consider a couple simple examples to give you an idea of how this might apply to you.

You operate some dry cleaning stores. You are going to advertise in two community weekly newspapers. One goes to a high income neighborhood. The other goes to a more middle class neighborhood. Will you run the same ad in both papers?

Most merchants would and they're wrong to do so. These two different groups of people have different needs and interest. They deserve different offers. To the high income neighborhood I might write an ad that stressed the importance of looking your best for upward mobility in your career, convenience and quality. Then I might offer one suit cleaned and pressed free with another suit at full price or one tie done free with each jacket or suit.

But in the middle class market I might write an ad that stressed quality cleaning at modest affordable prices. How dry cleaning can help certain clothes last longer and offer an across the board introductory discount.

Let's try another example. I operate two restaurants and bars. One is just north of downtown on the main traffic pattern people travel from the downtown offices to their homes in the suburbs. The other is in that same middle class residential area. I'm going to do direct mail. Do I mail the same offer for both restaurants?

The mistake most restaurant owners would make is to decide on an offer first, then decide who to mail it to, then mail the same offer to everybody for both places.

Here's what I would do:

For my downtown restaurant I'd get a list of the executives and managers who worked in the office buildings downtown. I'd send them a package consisting of a brief cover letter, a brochure stressing that my restaurant was the perfect place to stop after work for happy hour, a place to meet, greet, network and relax.

I'd enclose coupons for free hors d'oeuvre' trays for one, two, three or four people and for a two for one executive lunch. I'd also enclose a sealed envelope maybe printed in pink to give to the secretary. Inside would be a different cover letter, different brochure and half price lunch coupon.

For my neighborhood restaurant I'd get a list of area homeowners with families. I'd mail them a letter, a completely different brochure and a little booklet of coupons, maybe one for half price, early bird dinners for two or one for an all-you-can-eat family fish fry on Friday night, one for a Saturday afternoon baseball party with free hot dogs with beer and one for a ladies day luncheon special. That's how you tailor your offers to your specified market and I promise you much better results than with general offers.

Beyond that here are some additional tips to help your offer which I will reveal in your next Success Marketing Strategy in just a couple of days

Dedicated To Multiplying Your Income, Dan Kennedy www.dankennedy.com

To be continued, your comments are welcomed...

Small Business Advertising

How Your Customers Want to Buy

Once you have identified what is important to your customers when they buy your product or service, you also need to know how they like to make their purchases. Do your customers prefer to come into a store to see and touch the product? Do they prefer to get recommendations from others—like a referral to a good restaurant? Do they prefer to get their information on line or buy on line? When you know how your customers want to buy, then you know which media are the best sources for your advertising.

Do you see how starting with a customer focus shifts your advertising questions from advertising media to what works for your customers? Knowing the above information about your customers gives you the answers about how to get the right message to the right customer in the right way.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed...

Small Business Advertising

Five Customer Buying Criteria

1. Information. Customers need information about the product. Depending upon the type of product, they may need more or less details about the product. Some products like a computer purchase will need more technical information. Others like a lottery ticket will require less information.

2. Trust. A consumer wants to know if they can trust the advertising about the product. Will it do what it says it will do? Endorsements by celebrities, comparison studies, third party testimonials, and independent studies like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval can be used to support and help a consumer with believability about the product and the business.

3. Price. How much does it cost? The customer’s main cost consideration will be the dollar cost. Convenience and ease of use are other customer costs. “You can assemble our product in 20 minutes.” There is also the cost of not doing anything about the current problem area. Costs can be addressed by comparison to other options. “Our home study course cost $200.00. Compare this cost to a weekend seminar away from your family, hotel expenses, travel expenses, etc.”

4. Quality. How does this product or service compare in quality to other buying options? You need to say more than “we’re the best!” You can use rankings, awards, independent studies, testimonials to help support your quality claims.

5. Experience with the product. What have others found when they used the product? Look for testimonials from people just like your prospects and tell them what their experience has been with the product. “We’ve delivered our product to thousands of homeowners.”

What is most important to your customers? Price, quality, information, trust? Knowing this about your customer will shape your advertising message to speak directly to their preferences.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed,,,

Small Business Advertising

Key Advertising Question

The key advertising question is this: How can I get the right message to the right customer in the right way? Most business advertising fails in today’s crowded market place because they start their advertising efforts from their business perspective rather than a customer perspective. Let me explain this in the next several blog entries.

Selling has shifter to customer focus selling from product selling. Marketing has shifted to what’s in it for the customer from telling customers the greatness of your business. Advertising needs to make the same shift to a focus on customer preferences from a the current focus on advertising media. Effective advertising starts with your customer.

Before you spend one dollar on advertising or create one advertising message, answer the following questions about your customer. Studies show that customers bring together five elements as part of their buying process. One or more of these elements may be more important to one type of business and less important to another type of business. Yet all five elements are found in the customer’s buying process. For your advertising to be effective you need to know which of the five elements are most important to your customers.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed...

Small Business Advertising

What You Need To Do To Avoid Burning Money On Advertising.
Copyright (c) 2007 Mark Silver
Heart Of Business
http://www.heartofbusiness.com/

Advertising. Curse? Money hole? Or powerful venue?

It seems so obvious: where else, for a few hundred dollars, could
you get in front of thousands of people? And it's true that many
of them are really wanting what you're offering.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of advertising ends up being
good to wrap fish in, and not much else. People cry up "But
it's getting me exposure," and that's true, to a point.
However, is it really increasing sales? Is it really getting
people the help they need?

Every time I look through a newspaper, especially the alternative
papers, I see so many ads, and my heart feels a little sad.
Because I know behind most of those ads there is a jewel of a
human being, really wanting to help. But the ad isn't making the
connection at all.

Let's think about it for a minute before you rush to get your
hard-earned money in before the publication deadline. What's
going on for the person reading the newspaper?

First: they've seen it all before. Second: your offer is
probably between the 100th and 1000th (literally) that they've
seen today. Third: even if they are an ideal prospect for you,
they are probably thinking about something other than your
business.

Because of this overwhelm, most advertisers try to keep turning
the volume up higher and higher. I just opened up an alternative
magazine randomly to a two page spread of ads. Out of 16 ads, 12
of them have some "special offer" of one sort or another. And
14 of them are making a direct pitch to have you "schedule an
appointment" or otherwise buy something now. Of the other two,
one is a restaurant, and the other doesn't make any kind of
offer at all.

Does it work? No, it doesn't work. I've called people to find
out how their ads were working for them, and they told me: "I
get a couple of calls from it, maybe."

Remember that people only buy when they feel safe enough- when
the relationship has built to the point where they can trust
their initial attraction.

Here's the foundation you need to make your ad effective:

* Know the Three Journeys. The First Journey is when a stranger
becomes interested in your business, and chooses to become a
prospect. A prospect who is looking for gold in your business.

The Second Journey is when that prospect spends time in direct
relationship with your business, and when they see enough gold,
they become a customer.

The Third Journey is when they've had an ecstatic experience as
a customer, and want to help other people find the gold, so they
become a raving fan.

Advertising is First Journey marketing. Your only goal in
advertising should be to show enough gold to get them to want to
be a prospect. Forget about selling them anything.

How do you show them the gold? Read below in Keys to Effective
Advertising

Keys to Effective Advertising

* Talk to one person, and call their name.

On a crowded Manhattan street, elbow-to-elbow with a sea of
people, I still heard someone speak in a conversational voice-
"Mark." I turned my head around. Of course they were talking to
someone else, but it still caught my attention.

Your ad needs to speak to one person, and call their name. In
marketing, the next best thing to a personal name is your Who and
What. "Golfers"=who "is knee pain affecting your swing?"=
what.

* Educate them in a helpful way.

If you have room, take the time to maybe explain one point that
will be helpful for them in the problem they are facing. For
smaller ads you can just point them towards a web page where you
want to educate them about something helpful.

For instance: "Most pain is actually caused by stress. Stopping
the stress means decreasing or stopping the pain. Right now, just
notice your knee pain. See if you can notice where your legs and
hips feel tense, and breathe into the tension. As it relaxes, see
how the pain feels." If you have more space, you can go into
more detail.

* Offer a trade: their contact information for something
valuable.

"Of course, your knee pain isn't gone completely. This is just
a clue. If you'd like a free article, with illustrations, on how
to decrease knee pain and help your swing, just go to
http://www.golfkneepain.com. And, we'll give you an additional
golf swing tip every week."

* Finally, don't ignore design.

Keep it simple. In a loud, overcrowded world, simplicity and
straightforwardness have the best chance of being noticed. Use
plenty of white space. Easy-to-read fonts, avoid cursive or fancy
fonts, and avoid complicated patterns. Try Robin Williams (not
THAT Robin Williams) book, The Non-Designer's Design Book.

Have fun with your advertising.

The best to you and your business,

Mark Silver

----------------------------------------------------------
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your
Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your
Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line.
He has helped hundreds of small business owners around
the globe succeed in business without losing their
hearts. Get three free chapters of the book online:
http://www.heartofbusiness.com

To be continued, your comments are welcomed...

Small Business Advertising

Here's an article by Mark Hunter about five different types of shoppers. How can you apply this to your advertising efforts?

The Five Types of Shoppers
by Mark Hunter

In the retail industry, it seems as though we are constantly faced with the issue of trying to find new customers. Most of us are obsessed with making sure our advertising, displays, and pricing all "scream out" to attract new customers. This focus on pursuing new customers is certainly prudent and necessary, but, at the same time, it can wind up hurting us. Therefore, our focus really should be on the 20% of our clients who currently are our best customers.

This idea of focusing on the best current customers should be seen as an on-going opportunity. To better understand the rationale behind this theory and to face the challenge, we need to break down shoppers into five main types:
• Loyal Customers: They represent no more than 20% of our customer base, but make up more than 50% of our sales.
• Discount Customers: They shop our stores frequently, but make their decisions based on the size of our markdowns.
• Impulse Customers: They do not have buying a particular item at the top of their "To Do" list, but come into the store on a whim. They will purchase what seems good at the time.
• Need-Based Customers: They have a specific intention to buy a particular type of item.
• Wandering Customers: They have no specific need or desire in mind when they come into the store. Rather, they want a sense of experience and/or community.

If we are serious about growing our business, we need to focus our effort on the Loyal customers, and merchandise our store to leverage the Impulse shoppers. The other three types of customers do represent a segment of our business, but they can also cause us to misdirect our resources if we put too much emphasis on them.

Let me further explain the five types of customers and elaborate on what we should be doing with them.
Loyal Customers: Naturally, we need to be communicating with these customers on a regular basis by telephone, mail, email, etc. These people are the ones who can and should influence our buying and merchandising decisions. Nothing will make a Loyal customer feel better than soliciting their input and showing them how much you value it. In my mind, you can never do enough for them. Many times, the more you do for them, the more they will recommend you to others.

Discount Customers: This category helps ensure your inventory is turning over and, as a result, it is a key contributor to cash flow. This same group, however, can often wind up costing you money because they are more inclined to return product.

Impulse Customers: Clearly, this is the segment of our clientele that we all like to serve. There is nothing more exciting than assisting an Impulse shopper and having them respond favorably to our recommendations. We want to target our displays towards this group because they will provide us with a significant amount of customer insight and knowledge.

Need-Based Customers: People in this category are driven by a specific need. When they enter the store, they will look to see if they can have that need filled quickly. If not, they will leave right away. They buy for a variety of reasons such as a specific occasion, a specific need, or an absolute price point. As difficult as it can be to satisfy these people, they can also become Loyal customers if they are well taken care of.

Salespeople may not find them to be a lot of fun to serve, but, in the end, they can often represent your greatest source of long-term growth. It is important to remember that Need-Based customers can easily be lost to Internet sales or a different retailer. To overcome this threat, positive personal interaction is required, usually from one of your top salespeople. If they are treated to a level of service not available from the web or another retail location there is a very strong chance of making them Loyal customers. For this reason, Need-Based customers offer the greatest long-term potential, surpassing even the Impulse segment.

Wandering Customers: For many stores, this is the largest segment in terms of traffic, while, at the same time, they make up the smallest percentage of sales. There is not a whole lot you can do about this group because the number of Wanderers you have is driven more by your store location than anything else. Keep in mind, however, that although they may not represent a large percentage of your immediate sales, they are a real voice for you in the community. Many Wanderers shop merely for the interaction and experience it provides them. Shopping is no different to them than it is for another person to go to the gym on a regular basis. Since they are merely looking for interaction, they are also very likely to communicate to others the experience they had in the store. Therefore, although Wandering customers cannot be ignored, the time spent with them needs to be minimized.

Retail is an art, backed up by science. The science is the information we have from financials to research data (the "backroom stuff"). The art is in how we operate on the floor: our merchandising, our people, and, ultimately, our customers. For all of us, the competitive pressure has never been greater and it is only going to become more difficult. To be successful, it will require patience and understanding in knowing our customers and the behavior patterns that drive their decision-making process. Using this understanding to help turn Discount, Impulse, Need-Based, and even Wandering Customers into Loyal ones will help grow our business. At the same time, ensuring that our Loyal Customers have a positive experience each time they enter our store will only serve to increase our bottom-line profits.
________________________________________
Mark Hunter, "The Sales Hunter", is a sales expert who speaks to thousands each year on how to increase their sales profitability. For more information or to receive a free weekly sales tip via email, contact "The Sales Hunter" at http://www.TheSalesHunter.com

To be continued, your comments are welcomed...

Small Business Advertising

Networking Advertising

For years I was part of a weekly networking group that met to pass business referrals among ourselves. We don’t usually think about advertising and networking. Here are some insights about what you can do at a networking meeting to attract attention and have people remember you—advertising!

Did you know that studies show that only 7% of communications is accomplished by words? The other 93% is done by visual and non-verbal communications.

It starts with a smile. Everyone responds well to a smile. A smile encourages other to open up to you. A non-smile encourages them to move away from you.

Making good eye contact with another person shows respect and good manners. The eyes have been called the window of the soul. Have you even been in a conversation with someone and they keep looking over your shoulder trying to see someone else? How did it make you feel?

Remembering a person’s name is important. Dale Carnegies said that a person’s name is the sweetest and most important sound in any language. Repeat the name several times in the conversation.

How you shake someone’s had tells a lot about you. The hand cannot conceal messages like people’s words.

Good posture, standing tall reflects confidence.

Dress appropriately. A causal networking meeting is one thing. A formal networking event is another type of networking. I use this as a rule of thumb. Dress for your profession. The other person is trying to determine if they should buy from you or recommend you to their friends. Do you look professional? How you are dressed will help with their decision?

Honor other people’s space is also important. 18 inches is an acceptable norm for most Americans. Other cultures have different notions of personal space.

Why are these items important? Because perceptions play a huge role in how people buy and from what businesses they buy. In today’s competitive market place, you cannot afford to let any perception cast a negative pall on you or your business. Improving these skills can add to your bottom line and it will not cost you one dime to make the changes and make your network advertising more successful.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed...