Your Personal Outlook
Let’s look at your overall business outlook. Would you say it is optimistic or pessimistic? In other words, when the economy tightens up do you tend to tighten marketing costs and cut back OR do you maintain the current level of marketing costs?
Many business owners tend to cut back on marketing and advertising during recessions. This decision may seem like a good idea at first but will hurt you in the long run. Why? It is a simple law of cause and effect. If you trim back on getting the word out, you are not going to receive as much fruit during harvest time. Keep in mind I am not suggesting you go “hog wild” and spend money foolishly, rather examine what’s working well and put your dollars in that basket instead of the marketing activities that are working say “ok.”
Now that we have cleared up the fact you definitely need to key your level of marketing activities at least the same dollar-wise, let us look at specific ways to make your marketing both fool-proof and profitable.
I have identified eight methods you can use to ensure you marketing dollars are well spent. These are:
- Testing
- Develop a USP
- Use direct response advertising
- Make it easy to purchase your products
- Develop back end products
- Get to know your customers
- Let’s make a deal
- Lower buying risk
Let’s look at how each of these areas can boost your bottom line.
Testing
Working with many different businesses over the years, I have learned many businesses do not bother to test their marketing and advertising. I am not sure why this is but to receive maximum marketing leverage start testing your marketing. Think about this for just a moment. How are you possibly going to know what works and what don’t work unless you constantly test your marketing?
Testing, you say? YES! Your marketing either passes or fails the test. So, what’s the test? It is very simple. Your marketing is either producing profitable results or not! Now, that wasn’t too bad, was it?
But go a bit deeper and examine each element of all your marketing communication For example, select one of your ads and test different headlines. Headlines are extremely important. If you don’t believe me, then read what David Ogilvy says about headlines, “On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that, unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90% of your money.” John Caples gave us this wisdom, “If you have a good headline, you have a good ad. Any competent writer can write the copy. If you have a poor headline, you are licked before you start. Your copy will not be read...Spend hours writing headlines - or days if necessary.” As you can see many these advertising legends place a high value of headlines.
I submit unto you that your sales letters too should contain headlines. All truly successful sales letters contain a powerful headline. So be sure to test different headlines in your sales letters too!
Next test the advertising copy. Examine and analyze the copy to determine the various “hot buttons” or appeals you customers may or may not be responding to. The same process goes with the price, offer, advertising media, and so on. You will find that by carefully tabulating the results of your test, one will pull stronger than another.
Keep in mind, testing in not relegated to print ads only. Rather testing applies to all of your marketing. Carry the testing into the sales field by finding a sales pitch your sales people can use to increase both the amount of orders and help them close twice as many sales for the same amount of effort.
Salaried sales people cost you the same amount regardless of how many sales they make a day. So wouldn’t it make sense (and dollars) to test various sales pitches or scripts to see what is more profitable? I thought so. Again, the same testing concepts would apply to your sales people as it would to your print marketing. Test different scripts, hot buttons, prices, offers, follow up offers, and sales incentives.
Think of your marketing department as a sort of lab where you are constantly testing all possible variables of all your marketing. Test every single aspect of your marketing and record this data. Tabulate you efforts by comparing cost-per-sale, cost-per-prospect, average sale-per-prospect, average conversion-per-prospect, average profit-per-sale against your control ad or pitch. Now you know the winning ad, device, sales pitch and receive maximum leverage from this activity.
Develop a USP
What is a USP? USP is Unique Selling Proposition. In a nutshell, it's what makes you different from your competitors. So, how is your business different from the rest of the pack? Do you offer faster delivery? Are your prices better? Do you offer a better guarantee? Again, What makes you different?
Here's a great way to develop a USP. Ask yourself this question:
"Why should I do business with you verses every other option, including doing nothing?"
BAM. Come up with a good answer and see how your business begins to flourish.
Use direct response advertising
While this article is not meant to be a copywriting primer, I would like to point out a few elements your copy should contain. First you must realize advertising is nothing more than salesmanship in print. Every sales letter, post card, print ad, direct mail package should make an excellent case for your product or service. When writing your ad, keep the age old AIDA formula in mind as you write. AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.
You gain the readers’ attention by using a great headline. The main (only) purpose of the headline is to grab your prospects attention and entice her to read further until she takes action (order, call, write, visit store, etc.) Notice I used the word prospects. Write the headline so it speaks directly to your prospect. For example say you are targeting golfers, put the “golfers” in your headline.
Put the biggest promise or benefit right there in your headline. Think of your headline as a mini-ad. You want the prospect to read the headline and know exactly how your offer will solve their problems or how the product will benefit them, right away!
In addition to gaining attention, your ad should hold the prospect’s interest. The way to create interest in the ad copy is to spell out the benefits clearly and in simple terms. Remember people buy benefits—what the product or service will do for them. Use simple words to describe the benefits of your offer. Big words will confuse many of your prospects. A confused mind always says no. Many people read at a sixth grade level. When you use simple, concise words everyone will understand what you are saying.
Increase your prospect’s desire by identifying the specific needs and problems they may have. List these needs in simple language and how your product or service will solve those needs. When writing you ad use picture words to describe what you are offering. I call “picture words” words that stir both the imagination and senses. For example, let’s say you own a fine restaurant. First of all can you think of words likely to stir the imagination and senses? How about this: Enjoy today’s dessert, Grandma’s favorite recipe. Homemade hot apple pie, just like Gram used to make. Made with just ripen hand picked apples right from our orchard, home made piecrust, and fresh spices. This mouth-watering treat is fresh baked, right from the oven with a light flaky crust lightly sprinkled with hand ground cinnamon and sugar. Can’t you just picture this pie steaming as it cools on the table? I know you can smell the aroma of fresh apples, cinnamon, and sugar? Mouthwatering, isn’t it?
I couldn’t tell you how many ads I critique that have no offer and no call for action. These advertisers should get 40 lashes with a wet noodle! Sham, sham on you if you don’t include some type of response device in all your advertising!
Make it easy to purchase your products
How many times have you been a store that products were arranged in a haphazard fashion? You wanted hiking boots found them but had to look hard to find the water proofing paste. Why not group related items together? Put boots, shoestrings, shoe polish, and socks together. The more you make people work for a purchase, the more money you will lose from that customer. People will shop there maybe once or twice but if the shopping experience is unpleasant, the customer will not return.
Develop back end products
Back end products significantly add to your bottom line, oftentimes without additionally selling costs. In case you're not sure what a "back end" product is marketing slang for "something else to sell." Genius, right?
And by the way, it will be the most profitable part of any sale. So the moral of this story is NEVER base your biz on having just one product or service to offer. Think, "Would you like fries with your burger?" Or how about, "Want two of these babies?"
A great example of this are those Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Mark Victor Hansen went on to create some two dozen variations of the book. They sold a slew of these books and are still selling the last time I checked.
You get the idea, right? Your goal is to create additional related products or services to offer your customers. Think about this: Your customer has pledged his faith and trust in you by by voting on your business with her hard earned money. And you'll never know just how eager she is to buy more from you unless you ask. So ask. Just make damn sure you have a great product or service (one that solves her most pressing problems) first.
This is technically called an "up-sell." And the time of make your "up-sell" aka "back end product" is when your customer is buying your stuff. Again, all you've got to do is ask.
Get to know your customers
Selling is soooo much easier when you know who you are selling to. Makes sense, right? Try and get as much information on your target market as you can; i.e. male, female, age, race, country, etc.
Find out where your market hangs out is fairly simple. Selling fishing lures, then go to the outdoor magazines and read the articles there. Contact mailing list brokers and see what lists are available that connects with your target. Do google searches on related topics and see what comes up. Visit your pubic or school library and speak with one of the reference librarians and tell them what your after. These folks are especially helpful and will point you to the resources that you need.
Next, find out about their needs and problems. Where does it hurt? What makes them feel good about buying from you (or your competitors). Once you've gotten the info you need about your prospect, then and only then can you be in a good position to offer a solution to fix their problems.
Let’s make a deal
You should be creating deals and offers all the time to send to your prospects and customers. Become the "go-to guy" in your marketplace. Develop a salesmanship mentality. Even though you have a great product, it ain't gonna sell itself. So, go after it and make offers to get prospects into your funnel.
Lower buying risk
Reverse all risk. Put the risk on you not your customer. You know that buyers are skeptical and have been burnt before so use this tool as a way to overcome last minute reservations and objections. Know the objections you're overcoming; i.e. fear of getting burnt, of being a fool, facing your neighbors, spouse or in-laws, etc.
So there you have it, eight ways of fool-proofing your marketing.
Now, go sell something.