A client, whom I shall call “Emma” here called round this morning and returned a copy of Paul Gorman’s book “How to out-sell, out market, out promote, out advertise everyone else you compete against before they even know what hit them” that I lent to her some months ago.

“I don’t see how most of the stuff in this book is relevant to my business” she told me as she handed over the book.  Emma owns a franchise locally providing pre-school activities for young children.  The franchise dictates that only  official marketing materials and flyers can be used, although Emma can personalize these a little with her own details and strap lines.

“I can’t come up with any unique head/strap lines for these flyers” she told me.  “I don’t have the brain for it although I can see they may help if could thing of any”.  “I don’t see how the letters would work though, with all the bold bits and the PS’ at the bottom - I ignore these when I receive them - doesn’t everyone else?”

The discussion wasn’t really about Paul’s book.  It was about a decision that Emma knows she is facing but is trying to avoid.  Every single marketing tactic can be applied to any business at all.  The slant may be different, the target audience will certainly be different, but essentially, the same things work whether you are selling 1p paperclips or £10 million aircraft.

I could see I was in for a difficult time to persuade Emma of the importance of promoting her business in all manner of ways, yes, including letters.  The thing is, she totally loves the work she does with the children and will enthuse about the benefits of what she offers all day long, but she doesn’t want the bother of the office work.  She just wants to be with the kids, doing what she loves.

This doesn’t sound like a problem to most people but to me it shows the turmoil that goes on inside lot’s of people that find themselves running businesses.  Emma got into this franchise because she loves children and believes that the franchise model and facilities are of immense benefit to the development of small children.  However, the only way to do the work she loves was to buy the franchise for her local area.  I don’t believe she actually wanted to run a business, she just wanted to to run the classes.

The problem is the franchise model is working against her.  If she wants to make money from her business, she has to step out of what she loves to do and become a business woman that she doesn’t want to be.  Just running her own classes though doesn’t give her enough turnover to live on.

Emma’s comments about Paul Gorman’s brilliant book are coming from the position that she knows she has to grow the business to improve her income, but she simply doesn’t want to because of all the marketing, admin, bookkeeping, payroll, finding venues, organizing classes and 101 other things that go into running a larger business.

I do see quite a few people with Emma’s predicament.  The simple truth is they have to make a choice.  They can go one of two ways.  Firstly, they can choose just to do as much as they can themselves and earn a small income which barely justifies the cost and ongoing commitment to the franchiser; Secondly, they can expand the business dramatically within their geographic area, take on people to run the classes, become a manager instead of a worker and direct operations from above without much day to day involvement with the children.

A business person in Emma’s shoes that settles for option 1 has to accept that they “own” their job.  But that’s basically all it is.  The franchiser still gets their cut from Emma so they are happy, but Emma, apart from job satisfaction, will never make a decent living.

If however, Emma embraces the idea that she can run her business as a manager, starts taking Paul Gorman’s advice about marketing tactics to grow her business; takes massive action to generate more classes; finds suitable people to run those classes along the lines Emma dictates; she will start to make some serious money from her franchise.  There is nothing written that says Emma is prohibited from running any classes ever again.  She can fill in, or set up a couple of special classes just for her to run.  But her success will be guaranteed.

She just needs to decide which way she wants to jump.

Emma knows I will help her to the best of my ability, but the main decision, whatever it is, is hers and hers alone.   Job or business Emma - it’s up to you!

~Ray

It is absolutely vital that you know who your Target Audience is.

Why? Because if you send out marketing materials to people that are not likely to need your products/services – you are wasting your time and valuable resources.

How do you know who your Target Audience is?

Your TA is simply the people that you would like to do business with. In essence you need to know who your ideal clients/customers are. Once you know this, you will know how and where to look for these people/businesses.

For example, if you are a hairdresser, would you be looking for clients by advertising in a national fishing magazine, or would you be better focusing on people within a 5 mile radius of your salon?

If you are a plumber, would you find many customers by advertising in a national computer magazine, or would a more local approach work better?

If you are a mail-order bookseller, would you put leaflets through 5,000 doors in your local area, or would you have more success with an advert in a national publication?

I know these are slightly extreme examples, but I hope you can start to see the point in trying your best to put your offer in front of the people who are most likely to respond.

Recently I was talking with a coach business who wanted to start running coach based tours for older folks from the Midlands to various seaside resorts for one and two week holidays. They were talking about an advert in “Yellow Pages” for next year. I asked them how many of their target audience would look through that publication if they wanted a holiday. As we started brainstorming, excellent ideas such as Post Offices, Supermarkets, Church Halls, where lunch clubs and tea dances are held, hairdressers and cafes locally would be good places for posters. All places where their Target Audience would be much more likely to see the tour posters and respond to them.

It is the same for any business. Spend some time really thinking about the people most likely to benefit from what you are offering and where to focus your marketing efforts to ensure they see your offer and it is compelling enough to trigger a response.

Are you doing this kind of laser focused marketing at the moment? If so, revisit your original findings and make sure they are still 100% valid. If not, start today.

~Ray

Good Ideas Urgently Required!

I am about to take out an advert that has become an annual event for me.  A client once asked me to support the local scout group by having an advert in their Christmas post directory to raise funds for them.  Being an old scout myself I didn’t hesitate and I have done it each year since.  The problem is that the directory goes to some 5,000 homes in the area but isn’t a publication that I would normally use as relevant to my prospective target clients.  This is proven by the lack of substantial response from my advert each year.

I am always telling you here to make sure that every £1 you spend on marketing earns a profit so… the challenge this year is to formulate an advert that will have such an irresistable call to action that someone receiving this directory in their home around Christmas will be motivated to respond.

This brings me to where I will really appreciate some feedback from you.

I have so many things in my head after all these years as an Accountant, having lived and worked through many ups and downs in our ever changing economy, that I simply can’t decide which aspect of business to focus the advert on to help the most people.  I have so many possibilities they are blowing my mind.  I will really value your opinion as to which area of accountancy, bookkeeping, business, marketing, tax, cash flow or even tips on business survival in a recession might be of real interest to a householder/business person over the Christmas period.  Compelling enough to get them to visit the web page I am setting up and ask for the report I am going to write specially for the advert.

I am sure you will appreciate that I cannot write the report until I know which area the ad will focus on… a real conundrum!  I have a really talented young designer waiting to put the advert together, I have the website registered, I have the ideas… I just need your help with the focus!!

The list above isn’t all the possibilities, you may have a totally different area or topic that you feel will be of interest to the most people that isn’t mentioned so please let me know.

I am really looking forward to hearing from you about this.  I will give a very public thankyou and a small prize for the best suggestion that becomes the one I use… as well as making sure that each of you get a copy of the report when it is written of course!

~Ray

Getting Your Message Across!!

During my mini-series of 3 articles on how to write well performing adverts, I focused on the the headline, the body copy and finally, the call to action.  Essential ingredients for every advert and sales letter.

In this conclusion, I wanted to make sure that you understand they are not the only elements that can raise the success of a campaign.

For example.  You need to know how each advert is performing so that you know whether to increase it’s size and frequency, or if it flops and you need to ditch it and try another.  The easiest way to do this is to log each enquiry that you receive.  Ask your callers where they saw the advert, include a code if your advert sent people to a website to order something and track the results.  This is vital so that you do not waste any more money on adverts or letters that don’t perform well.

Try including some testimonials if you have enough space.  Make it company policy that every time a customer or client says something good about your business/service, you thank them for the compliment and ask if you can use it on your website.  Do it as soon as they say it so you can also capture their excitement and wonder.  If you leave it a few days, they may still agree but it will not be as strong as it was.  Make it easy for people to give you a testimonial.  Immediately ask them if you can put their comment into an email and send it to them for checking.  All they need to do is reply to the email and say yes.

Make the testimonials real by including the person’s name, their job title and general location.  If you ask this immediately they are unlikely to say no because you are responding to their flattering comment with one of your own, asking if you can use their name on your website for the whole world to see.

Testimonials can boost the effectiveness of an advert or sales letter by many times because people can see that others have tried and tested you and your service out and it worked well.  They can ask to see the original testimonials as well to give even more credence.  It helps to remove any doubts the reader may have about trusting you.

Lastly, include a strong, and real, 100% money back guarantee in your literature.  This has the effect of lifting the last remaining risk from the new customer.  If they are not totally blown away by your product/service, if they are not astounded by your customer service, if they are not 110% happy with everything, they will not owe you a penny.  Any money already paid will be immediately and fully refunded with no inquisition and no hassle.  There will always be a few who exercise this refund option, but it is only a small minority of people and will be far outweighed by the extra customers having that guarantee will bring.

I trust you have found this mini-series of articles on adverts useful.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments - both good and bad.  I will answer them all.

~Ray

Advertising

This is the last in a series of 3 articles about making an advert as effective as possible.  Many marketing adverts suggest a mnemonic to make sure each advertisement and each marketing letter contains all the essential ingredients for success.

A I D A is a mnemonic for adverts.

A stands for Attention.  This is the headline that I discussed in the first article.  Your headline has to reach out and grab the reader’s attention and entice them to read your advert.  This is the sole job of a headline and is why you need to practice writing them constantly.

I stands for Interest.  Once your headline has done it’s job, the body of your advert has to be interesting, persuasive and informative enough to retain the reader’s interest and start building the next stage of AIDA.  I discussed this in the second article.

D stands for Desire.  If the body of your advert has done it’s job, the reader should have their interest heightened to a point where they really want your product/service.  This is the level necessary to provoke the last part of AIDA.  You bring the reader to a point of being informed about your product/service and demonstrated that it is necessary for them to have what you are offering so….

A stands for Action.  Your advert’s final, essential ingredient is a call to action.  You need to tell the person reading it what they need to do next.  Either ring your telephone number, go onto a website, call into your shop - whatever you want them to do to convert their interest into a sale.

In all your advertising, in all your marketing activities, you are being a salesman in print.  If you are having trouble writing effective copy for your marketing, try recording some conversations that you have with some customers that result in a successful sale.  All you need is a small dictaphone or microphone on your computer.  Once recorded, have it typed out and you will be able to pick out the golden nuggets of the conversation that were the truely effective persuaders.  You can then use these nuggets again and again knowing that you are being the most effective in print that you can be.

In the next article, I will explain how important testimonials are in your marketing effort and how their use can transform the effectiveness of your campaign.

~Ray

Writing

In the first article I looked at headlines and how easy it really is to come up with 100 or so, enabling the best ones to be drawn out of your brain!

This time I will look at the body of the advert.

Having captured your readers attention, the main part of the advert must explain what your offer is in clear, unequivocal terms.  Remember when you are writing it that you are not selling a product or service, but the solution to a problem.

Make sure that you write the advert to one person.  It’s best if you write it to your Mum or your best friend.  This is vital because it draws out a much more natural way of writing.  It makes your reader feel as if you are talking to them, and to them alone, it engenders a feeling of believability and trust.

If you don’t agree with this immediately, try writing an advert firstly in your own traditional style, and then do it again describing your offer to your Mum or your best friend.  You really will find your language is different!  Write as if you are talking directly to them across the kitchen table because this ensures you get the attitude right.  You will then naturally write using terms like you will, you can, can you imagine, if you take this opportunity etc.  It keeps the focus completely on your Mum/best friend which is absolutely how your advert should come across.

It goes without saying that your headline and the body copy should be about the same offer.  The headline is there to draw people’s eye to your advert and the body copy explains the headline in more detail.  There is nothing more likely to stop someone reading your advert when the headline turns out to have nothing whatever to do with the offer.

I hope this little article helps you write better adverts.  Please contact me if you would like any explicit help with a project.  I would love to help.

The final mini article will be on what most people consider the most important part of the advert - the call to action.

Don’t miss it!

~Ray

Shout Your Message From The Rooftops!

This is a guest article…

by Aaron Boyce

1. Have a website. There is virtually no business, no industry that can not benefit from being on line. Now more than ever, people are relying on the Internet to shop, read, communicate, play, etc. Remember the old days when you had to rely on telephone books and 411 to find about an Italian restaurant in Chicago. Now we simply go online. After we find your listing we look for your website. If you don’t have one and your competition does, guess who gets my money.

2. Determine the message you want to present to your visitors. The three common themes are Transaction based (Buy this book…), Information based (the 9 reasons why…), and Advertising based (we are the largest…). Your website should be designed with this in mind since the flavor and content will differ between the three.

3. Do include photos and pictures and do not worry about the size of the photo. A common misconception is that you can’t have large photos or a lot of photos on your site. In reality, it is not the size of the photo nor the amount that is the concern but instead it is the resolution that drags down your website. There fore, keep your resolution below 100dpi and you will have crisp clean pictures that upload quickly.

4. Give your visitors a reason to return to your site. In order to do this your site, must be dynamic in content. You should include articles relating to your website and change them monthly. Include a calendar of local events. Tell success stories. Keep your visitors informed (even if your site is primarily to sell or advertise).

5. Help the search Engines search for you. When someone types the name of your business or the name of your industry, your site should come up in the first 3- 5 pages. If not, it’s as if you don’t exist online. The sad reality is that the major search engines only find 15% of the websites online. You can help them by manually including your site on their site. Most search engines (Yahoo, Google, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, Bomis) have a link where you can submit your information. You can also use the services of the sites that promise to send your info to hundreds of search engines. Do not pay these sites any money but do take advantage of whatever freebies they offer.

6. Form reciprocal link partnerships with as many worthwhile websites as possible. Wouldn’t it be nice for Macys if they could place an ad on the walls at Nordstroms. You can do this simply by asking permission to place their link (even your competition) on your site and asking them to include your link on theirs.

7. Pay attention to the local information sites available to web surfers. LocalView, Blackplanet, and SacDirectory are examples of sites that speak about the many opportunities in a particular city or concern. Get your website listed with these guys. There will probably be a nominal fee for this service.

8. Use the message boards and email to promote your website. But please – no spam. Collect email addresses of your clients and prospects and send them messages that lead them to your site. In the subject box, be sure to include your name so that they will know it is from you. As for message boards, there are many that pertain to your business or information. Find them and start messaging.

9. Always remember to not forget the “brick and mortar” community. The real world still exists so include your website and email on all your marketing materials including business cards, brochures, flyers, media advertising, yellow pages, etc. This will always lead them to your internet website.

Newspaper Editors Are Experts At Headlines!

This is the first in a series of 3 short articles about building an advert.

The first element of an advert is the headline so I will start with that…

Headlines are really important parts of our adverts.  If you send out a letter, a website, an advertisement, a blog post and the headline is a good one, the subsequent text will be more likely to be read and acted on.  However, if the headline is weak, then the chances are slim that anyone will be bothered to read on or act, no matter how good the rest of the item is.

So…what makes a good headline?

Marketing experts have puzzled over this for many years, trying to figure out why one headline produces excellent results and yet others flop.  Why some words just work and yet others don’t.

Newspaper editors are experts at headlines.  They have to be, to continually come up with lots that compel people to buy the paper each and every day.  A really good exercise to scan a newspaper and look at each of the article headlines.  Why do particular ones catch your eye?  How does your brain seem to be attracted to some enough to start reading the text of the article?  What words are they using?  Are they large, or small?  Are they long, or short?

I have read books by many martketing experts over recent years and most of them contain a list of words that have been proven to spark or increase interest and response to adverts.  Words such as Free, You, Exclusive, Amazing, Valuable are known “triggers”.  When these, and many others like them, are used in headlines, responses increase over adverts whose headlines that don’t contain a trigger word.

If you are like me and you struggle to come up with more than 3 or 4 headline choices for your advert, I strongly suggest you buy one of the books I have recommended on this blog, find out a list of these trigger words, and then look at writing at least one headline containing each of the trigger words.  That isn’t a difficult job when you have the list in front of you and suddenly you will have the choice of up to 100 or more headlines to use.  Some of these will seem much more usable than others and you will probably find the last few you write are the best as your brain is really getting into the idea of writing compelling headlines.

So now you have a much longer list of possible headlines, what do you do?  You can’t afford to use them all.  I would think it is time to test them out a few on people around you.  Watch for their reactions - do their eyes glass over? do they laugh? do they ask what article the headline relates to as it has stimulated their interest? do they go down the list and say “sorry, but they are all rubbish - they wouldn’t compel me to even read to the end of the headline”.

When you have narrowed your potential good headlines down to 3 or 4, you must test them on your target audience.  You will very quickly find out which ones work.  This is where the internet is so powerful.  You can put some software on your website that will alternate various versions of your website, different headlines in this case, so you can see exactly how people react.

Even if you think you are convinced you have a really strong headline, and it is out their working for you, you should still test changing a word or two, just to see if you can improve on it further.

There are no rules about the length of a headline.  A newspaper will use as few words as possible due to space, but look at Paul Gorman’s book on my recommended reading page - his book title is “How To Outsell, Out Market, Out Promote, Out Advertise Everyone Else You Compete Against Before They Even Know What Hit Them!“  What a headline - and what a book.  Everyone considering advertising their business should read this book - and take action before competitors do.

In the next article, I will look at the body of an advert - how to write content that will compel the reader to take action once your headline has done it’s job and attracted their attention.

~Ray

This is a guest post…

Giving out promotional items can be very expensive, so why not get the recipients to pay? Better still, why not get them wanting to come back for more and really increase your sales?

Rather than distributing inexpensive promotional items that your recipients don’t really want and aren’t likely to keep, why not add some perceived value to the item?

Better still, why not use the promotional item to encourage them back in the future to buy more?

Sounds too good to be true? Have you ever noticed fast food chains entice children back into their restaurants by offering a different toy each week? Come back next week and you get another new toy. Maybe not a huge branding, but you know by looking at them where they are from.

What can we learn from this clever marketing strategy? Well, if you are a shop, put a little thought into some promotional items. Select items with a theme that can be developed over weeks. Maybe a different coloured item each week, a different variety or a series of characters.

Get posters printed and advertise the arrival of this new promotional item. It doesn’t matter too much what it is. Then sell it to the customers (or their children) for a small amount. Be sneaky even - ‘Get this wonderful toy for just ?1 when you spend ?10 in store today.’ Give them something the kids might want, but make sure they have to be buying from you before they get it for free - or even pay for it!

Show on the poster the full range of toys and when the next ones are available. Learn from the fast food chains. Put a cheap leaflet in with each toy that also shows what’s coming up in future weeks. Do whatever you can to make them certain when the next item is in stock and make customers want to come back for another.

So, what benefit is this to you, the business owner? Well, first, the customer has to come back and spend again in store. You could be encouraging them back sooner than they otherwise would have been. Second, the item is branded with your logo, so they remember your campaign into the future. And third, there’s a chance that they will show them to their friends, who, if you have chosen well, might just agree that it’s worth popping in to your shop on their way past. Or the kids’ friends might see it and pester their parents to pay you a visit. Finally, the customers are paying for the promotional items. Maybe not enough to cover the costs, but if they can cover the majority of the costs, that’s an excellent campaign.

With just a little imagination you will protect your bank balance! Read more about Internet marketing promotion here.

Shout Your Message From The Rooftops!

Every single business alive has to do marketing on a continuous basis to keep a flow of new customers and service the existing ones.

Every thing you do in marketing is a test.   It is essential that you also track everything in detail. Every £1 you spend on marketing has to produce a positive result. If it doesn’t, move on. I am not only talking about different methods of marketing, but about every little detail. Even the change of a word or 2 in a headline can give a dramatic change in response.

We should all be testing constantly. Just because you might have found something that “works” it doesn’t mean you leave it. It could work even better if you tweak it, but unless you test and track, you will have no idea how your marketing £1’s are doing.

No business will succeed if it does a few marketing activities and sits back waiting for responses. You need to be pro-active all the time. Try something, if you get little or no response you haven’t failed, you just found something that didn’t work and you move on. You know to steer clear of that in the future.

Being an entrepreneur is all about thinking outside the box. Being innovative, knowing your target market and pursuing it by as many different means as possible, constantly and vigorously. Promoting your business by demonstrating how you ease the pain of your target audience. By showing the world how you do things differently, better, more efficiently, more professionally that any other business in your area. You have to prove to your target audience that they cannot possibly move forward another day without your service. You have to prove that it is better to outsource to you than do it themselves.

But the most important thing is - test, track, change, test, track, change…. and in the words of the late, great Winston Churchill “never, never, Never, NEVer, NEVER give up!”.

~Ray