The Circle Of Marketing— Advertising & Direct Marketing

“Only for a limited time!”

“While supplies last!”

“A tradition of excellence.”

“Helping you succeed!”

These are the staples of the old advertising model. Platitudes. Platitudes no longer work with the majority of your customers! The new model you should consider when developing your advertising is to make sure your customers remember you and like you! Nothing less than this should be your advertising goal, unless of course, you want to discount your wares to sell them. That conversation is for another day….

Most advertising is aimed at new customers. But studies show this is far too expensive for small businesses who have limited budgets. You have only a 5%-10% chance of ever doing business with a non-customer-1.

This isn’t a good use of your marketing dollars. If you have been following these posts over the last several months you will remember that the circle of marketing consists of:
1) Hiring
2) Employee Training
3) Customer Experience Management
4) Internal Marketing Strategies
5) Advertising/Direct Marketing
6) Relationship Building

Taken as a hole, when you have prepared your staff to meet, greet and sell to your customers your advertising works much harder.

Some things to consider when creating your advertising.
1) Use a headline.
Have a headline that clearly says the one message you are trying to convey to your customers. And use the rest of the ad to show proof that you will deliver on that promise.
2) Use callouts
Callouts - burst of information to build desire, inform and educate your customers. Callouts are the best way to quickly build creditability. Read more about callouts here.
3) Create a distinct offer.
If you are trying to drive traffic the only way to do it is to have a specific offer. Something your customers can say “Yes, I need that,” to. If you do not include a specific offer your customers will most likely ignore what you say.
4) Provide proof.
You must back-up the claims you make in your advertising. Be specific and show your customers how they can get the facts.
5) Provide more content.
Many advertisers believe that a beautiful piece is more important than the content. I do not agree in most cases. If your objective is to sell you need to apply proven selling techniques. Such as:
• writing from the “you” perspective
• using longer copy
• including testimonials,
• including a call to action
• including power words
• using emphasis tools
• making it easy to respond
• sweetening the offer whenever you can.

Remember—stories sell, facts only tell.

There are many other ways that you can improve your marketing materials and/or advertisements. Email me if you’d like to read more on this topic. But this is a good list to start with. Remember, there are many talented designers, marketers and sell reps out there that don’t have much selling experience. Find someone to consult with who has direct marketing selling experience to make your piece as effective as possible. When sales increase you will be glad you did.

Next post we’ll talk about relationship building …


1 Steven Yanovsky
2 Mike Heberling