The Most Incredible Marketing Letter to Supercharge Sales

In the last column I shared with you an Ingenious Sales Technique to reach an extremely difficult contact, those captains of industry who are senior executives of giant corporations. This column I want to describe a way to take your sales letter and make it the most powerful tool you can by adding a couple things to it.

Make it Short and Sweet

Personally, I favor a short sales letter. I do my best to hook them with the benefit at the beginning, then add a statement why they'll find my offering valuable expressed in terms relevant to them (time or cost saved, income gained, convenience achieved, et al.) Lastly, I add a guarantee or some type of language offering them peace of mind when they deal with me.

Marketers base direct mail on the premise that their readers have the attention span of a gnat, and you can assume a busy executive is no exception. You can be a superb writer. But unless you use an exceptional marketing message to pique the recipient's interest, your letter will occupy their attention for the time it takes to drop it into the trash. I want to grab my prospect's attention as soon as they open the envelope. So I put the marketing message as near the top as I can. That way there's a better chance I'll hook them and they'll read the rest of the letter.

There are a few things you can do to pique your prospect's curiosity and extend that time period.

By doing so, you'll have a greater chance of gaining the attention of your prospect. Better still, you'll gain the attention of the assistant which we shall see is often better.

Coax the Secretary

In Selling To VITO (Very Important Top Officer), the author asserts it's a good idea to cultivate a relationship with the assistant. This technique goes even further: it enlists the assistant to help.

By enlists, I mean you will encourage them to set an appointment with his or her boss. Using this concept will increase your chance of getting on their boss's calendar greatly.

You've written your polished custom-tailored sales letter and you're ready to send it along. First step: find out the first name of the assistant. The name of the assistant is much easier to get than the name of the executive in most cases.

Second step: add a handwritten P.S. at the end of the letter. You want this to stand out so use an appropriate ink depending on the letterhead. I use a red felt tip pen.

The Most Powerful Postscript

The postscript should read: "I shall call you at 2pm on Wed, Sep 23rd. If this time is inconvenient, please have Linda call me at 555-2121 to reschedule." Linda is the assistant's name and the time and date are a few days after you expect the boss to receive the letter.

Call at 2pm sharp (or whenever you indicate) and be amazed at how often the assistant puts you right through to the boss. I've had CEOs answer the phone themselves when I did this. One notoriously difficult to reach CEO of a large financial services institution told me upon answering the phone that I normally wouldn't reach him. He said I provoked his curiosity and that he had to know who had used such a novel approach. He didn't buy from me but he then offered me a position training his sales department.

Why does this technique work? First of all, Linda probably opens her boss's mail. Seeing one's own name is flattering; if you see your name on correspondence, wouldn't you be more likely to forward it? Given the assumptive tone, Linda may presume you've already discussed the matter with her boss. Whatever reason, this technique will open many more doors for you.

Don't be surprised if you get a call from Linda rescheduling your phone call. Also, I've had a VP I tried to reach call me out of the blue before the due date. All kinds of things can happen with this technique.

Use it in conjunction with the previous Ingenious Sales Technique to create a devastatingly effective method to reach a decision maker over the telephone.

Do you feel this combination would work for your business? Write a comment letting me know your thoughts.

In a later column I'll introduce additional concepts that you can incorporate along with these techniques into a mailing campaign. This will multiply the effectiveness of your acceptance. And later I'll share with you a bulletproof method of sales management. If you're a new or struggling sales manager, you'll want to read this. Stay tuned. Until then,

profitable business All!

Politically Connect and Intrigue Impossible-to-reach Prospects

Last week we explored how to get past the receptionist to reach your prospect. But how do you reach decision makers who are almost impossible to get ahold of?

You know who I'm talking about: these are the captains of industry whose office is a fortress, their schedule a closely guarded secret by their minions, and they're almost always out of town. Senior executives of Fortune 100 companies usually fall into this category. How do you reach the likes of Ballmer, Otellini, Buffet, Price?

Build up Buzz

There's a technique I learned years ago that I'll share here. This way of generating buzz is solid gold by itself.  Grouping it with last week's technique and another concept that I'll share next week will enable you to deliver a powerhouse effect. This will increase your ability to reach those truly impossible to reach people... you'll find it a useful tool even if your role isn't direct sales.

The concept goes like this: you send a professionally written sales letter to your intended prospect.  Then send similar but different letters to several other people within the organization. To learn how to write a sales letter, check out How to Write Sales Letters That Sell or The Robert Collier Letter Book.

Now here's the key: In each letter you send, make sure you mention that you're also sending letters to others in the organization and name them. This will impress upon the recipient that you do your homework and that you are committed to achieving your goal. Send one to the person's boss and one each to several peers within the organization. You want to get them all talking to each other about you.

Let's say, for instance, you're trying to reach the CIO of XYZ Company. You'd send her a letter and also letters to her CEO and several other department heads. Maybe you'd select the Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Financial Officer.

Tell them each that you're mailing the others, and relay that your goal is to obtain a presentation, visit, demonstration, or whatever your objective.

Make Politics Work for You

This approach works because of the politics of an organization: your prospect can't simply ignore your letter because he or she knows you've mailed their boss as well. One of her peers may bring up the subject out of curiosity or even competition. Since you've informed your prospect you've made their peers aware, s/he'll know that your name might come up and they'll have to be ready.

One or more of them might mention they received a letter and conversation will ensue.   Questions will arise: why didn't this dept head get one while that one did? What is the purpose of all these letters?

At the very least, your name and company will be discussed at the highest levels. And at the best, you may earn an advocate from one of the other dept heads where you might have previously been ignored.

I encourage you to try this. It vaults your response rate and has gotten me into many meetings with hard-to-reach people. Often you'll receive a warm welcome as the executive will appreciate the novel approach. And occasionally the peers you mailed will sit in as well since they feel involved. It greases the skids nicely.

Incidentally, if you know of the source from which I'm taking this technique, please write and let me know so I can credit the author and make the book available in our recommended resources section. I remember he lives in Minneapolis and he was an aspiring performer. He developed the concept to reach music executives to get auditions.

Next week I'll add a second component to this concept that brings synergy to this approach. I'd estimate using this technique alone will increase your acceptance rate three to five times.  When you combine them, you can expect even better returns. Together they provided me a tremendous synergy that allowed me to contact and close more business. Stay tuned. Until then,

profitable business All!

Simple Marketing, pt VI: Test Marketing

Earlier this week we explored how to formalize training within your organization to empower your key employees to become strong leaders inducing them to stay with your company as long as you wish. After you implement last week's Ingenious TechniqueTM, you may find that your attrition decreases significantly.

This is the last of a six-part series on developing an advertising campaign. In this column we'll test market your ad so you can improve results and ultimately develop an extremely effective advertisement.

In the first four articles of this six-part series, you answered four questions - 1) Who is your ideal client; 2) where do you find more of 'em; 3) what do you tell 'em to lure them to your offering; and 4) what are they worth to the company. In the last post we calculated your most cost-effective advertising medium.

You have developed a basic design for your ad. From Part 3 of this series, you decided what your message should be and from Part 4 you determined what medium to use. This determined what and how you wrote your advertising copy. You engaged a skilled marketing specialist to help you write it. If you were unable to find help, you can review some of the Guerilla Marketing books by Levinson for assistance. If you prefer to work with someone directly, contact me and I'll provide a referral to a reputable marketing specialist.

If it's a written ad you're using a coupon or some form of discount code that you're tracking. If you're running an incoming telephone campaign, you are using a special number that you're tracking as well. You've been determining the effectiveness of the number of people who've responded to your offer, and you've determined how much net profit each run of your ad is generating. Now we'll begin tweaking the ad.

How to Test Market

After running it, change one aspect of it just a little bit. See whether it does better or worse than before. If it pulls better, try tweaking whatever aspect you changed a little more. If it pulls worse, return that variable to the last configuration and tweak some other variable. Change one variable at a time and keep doing this increasing the effectiveness until you're satisfied.

There are many aspects of an advertisement you can change. If it's a print advertisement, for instance, you can change the message, layout, paper type, font, size, color, location, frequency, and a number of other attributes. Try playing with each one until you get a bulletproof ad. Then run it until it no longer pulls effectively.

Congratulations! You now have the most cost-effective advertising campaign your could devise. Write in and tell me: what is your best advertising method and medium?

In the next column I'll share how to add productivity to your organization while saving money, and giving leadership training to your line employees. It's the final of a four-part series on Developing a Turnkey Organization. You will definitely want to catch it. And if you haven't yet checked out the podcast, feel free to download it. More exciting stuff coming up. Stay tuned! Until then,

profitable business All! 

Simple Marketing, pt V: Designing your Ad Campaign

Developing a Media Ad Budget

In our last article we calculated how much profit your ideal client brought into the business.  Multiplying this figure by the number of clients you expect each advertising medium to pull, you can calculate your budget for a given ad campaign.

Perform this calculation to calculate your cost-effectiveness for each medium.  You will initially test market the most cost-effective one, or the one with the highest client value per dollar spent.

Continuing with our previous example from the last column, your calculations reveal that your most cost-effective medium is a monthly print advertisement in a specialty publication read by many of your ideal clients.  Based on your estimate and rough surveying of a few of your ideal clients, you expect this ad will attract several prospective clients each run, two of whom will be an ideal client.  From our earlier calculations, we know that an ideal client is worth $500 to us.

The maximum you can afford to spend on any medium is the profit (not income) you expect to earn from new acquisitions of your ideal client type.  In this case, the value of each client ($500) multiplied by the number of clients expected per ad run (2) is $1000. Thus your ad budget for this campaign that you expect to bring in one new ideal client is $1000.  How does this information help us?

Selecting your Media

It's important to realize that all media are not equal.  First estimate the pull rate on each medium you can select.  Then by dividing the ad cost by the number of new clients expected, calculate your cost per acquisition for each medium.  The lowest one will be the one you choose as your first test medium..  For now, ignore scale: an ad that costs $50 and pulls only 1 client is twice as cost-effective as one that costs $500 and pulls 5 clients.  Why choose the smaller?  Because running the first ad brings you new clients at $50 each; the second costs $100.  Don't concern yourself with how many people are pulled by an advertisement; you only care about per client costs.  Later you can run as many ads as you like to vary scale.  But first you want to select the most cost-effective medium.

If several media tie for acquisition cost or if you're completely unsure about your estimates, choose the one with the greatest audience that make up your ideal clients.  You will exhaust a smaller pool more quickly and have to start over in your testing.  As long as you are acquiring ideal clients, pick the medium with the largest readership you can find.  You can sometimes get better pricing on media if you go through an agency, especially if you're buying a lot.

Test Marketing Your Ad

I encourage you to engage a professional copywriter.  Designing a winning ad is a specialized skill, and writing marketing copy belies the 80/20 rule.  You with your 80% of general marketing knowledge will likely get nowhere near the response than will a true marketing pro with her remaining 20% of specialized marketing knowledge.  I once had a potential client refuse copywriting assistance because she had enjoyed her marketing class in college.  Don't be that client.

To test an ad you must track it.  There are two ways I like to track an advertisement inexpensively, one for print ads and the other for call centers.  If you're running a print ad, make it a coupon or include a special offer.  To redeem this offer the buyer must provide the code or coupon on your advertisement.  Each time the discount is redeemed, you know it's as a result of that advertisement.  At the end of the campaign you add up the coupons or count the codes to track effectiveness.

If your ad urges people to call, use a separate telephone number issued by a telephone marketing service agency.  The service provider logs each call and forwards it to your normal business line.  Then at the end of the promotion they provide you a log of incoming calls.  A little research will help you find a call center marketing service provider.

Tracking Your Ad Campaign

You'll track the advertisement using a matrix chart.  You can download a call sheet template or use your Customer Relationship Management software or you can get a simple piece of graph paper and draw columns and rows.  Your objective is to keep track of the activity and its results.  Each business will use a slightly different format but basically you need to add up how much profit each ad campaign brings in.  Count your net profit before taxes, not gross sales.

Once you have a baseline then fine-tune your ad campaign budget.  If an ad pulls only half as well as you had expected and your max buy is now lower than what you're paying, revise your cost per acquisition for that medium.  If an ad turns out to cost more than it's bringing in, abandon it and try a different medium.

Only retry an abandoned medium after having exhausted every other avenue.  Your goal is to determine the best raw statistics for an unrefined advertisement.  If you try every medium you can think of and none of them pull very well, then choose the one with the lowest ad cost per client acquired and start refining it.  An advertising agency can advise you.  In this case it might be best if you contracted with one for a few hours of consulting time.  You're probably in a very challenging environment and may need specialized guidance.
The rest of us hopefully have our selected medium.  Next week we'll explore how to fine-tune your campaign and gradually improve results to ultimately develop a top drawer ad.  And in a later column we'll talk about how to formalize training within your organization so your key employees become strong empowered leaders who will stay with your company as long as you want.  After practicing this Ingenious Business Technique your attrition will decrease significantly.  And if you haven't yet checked out the podcast, feel free to download it.  More exciting stuff coming up.  Stay tuned!  Until then,

profitable business All!

Simple Marketing, pt iv: How Valuable is Your Best Client?

How Valuable is Your Best Client?

Why is it important to know this figure in your marketing plan?  Because the value of a customer give you your break-even cost for an ad campaign based on how many clients your ad will bring in.  The research we've done so far gives us our optimal client's value.  Then we can start to test market our ads with an eye on calculating where you can get the biggest bang for your advertising buck.  Once you determine that, then you will use that medium exclusively.

I see you shaking your head.  You're thinking that you need to be in different media to get the widest exposure.  But why?  Why do you care how much exposure you get as long as prospective clients are beating down your doors even if you're running a single advertisement?  Eventually you'll either max out your capacity or have so many clients that word of mouth will achieve visibility for you. Or more likely, your ad will stop pulling as well and you'll tweak it.

Most businesspeople think the objective of advertising is to increase visibility, that it’s critical to have ads in as many different places at once so eventually everybody will recognize their brand.  But with a small ad budget, that's unnecessarily complicated and spreads your resources too thin. The path of shotgun advertisement leads to high marketing expense, inconsistent placement, failed tracking, and poor results.  You don’t care how many people see your ad or how many shop your offerings as a result of seeing it.  You should care only how much income the ad pulls.  One does not always follow the other.  What good does an expensive advertisement do for you if it brings in the wrong kind of customers?  Or if it has people thinking about your offering but encourages nobody to purchase?

Let the large companies worry about sophisticated branding with a variety of media.  You want to concentrate on growing your business profitably.  Concentrate on getting your message to the right customers through a single ad source.  Ensure the cash register rings each time you run your ad.  Then refine your message over time so your advertising become ultra-effective.

Calculating Advertising Effectiveness
In a previous column, we calculated your optimum segment value, the amount of annual profit a top client adds.  Now using that set of customers find the average profit from that group.  This will tell you the most you can spend on your test advertisement.  Pick a medium that has been - or if you're new at this - that you feel will be effective for your offering. 

You want to determine how many new optimum clients will a single ad run bring in?  If you’ve been advertising, you have prior data that you can use for calculations.  If not, you'll have to estimate.  You’ll refine this figure over time with live data so it isn't critical if your guess is off.

To determine your absolute maximum cost for this advertisement, multiply the average profit brought in by your ideal client by the number of new clients you expect your ad to bring in.  For example, assume your target client segment spends $5000 with you in a year and that results in $500 profit after expenses and taxes.  Because you conducted personal research, for instance, you discovered what your best clients read.  So you believe running an ad in a particular specialty magazine will result in a single optimum customer for each run.

According to this rule, the most you should spend on that ad campaign without losing money is $500.  If you haven’t been running advertising and don’t have a stream of data, you might want to figure on less per customer so as to provide a margin of error.  Realize the first few times you run a new ad you may not get any additional income!

Test run the ad knowing you may not see results for awhile.  Spend only enough that you can afford to lose without being upset if you realize poor results.  Good marketing is a calculated investment, but it doesn't need to be a risky gamble.  Be aware that every time you test a new ad campaign you risk throwing money away.  But you won't do this long term.  If you systematically track results, you'll only risk until you discover a mix that works.  Then you'll continually tweak it until you hone it so it becomes very effective for you.  That's the payoff because then you can run the ad anytime you wish and each time the cash register should ring.

So far in your marketing plan you’ve answered the four questions: you've determined your optimum client type, you know where to find them, how much they add to the bottom line, and now you know how much you can reasonably expect to afford on a single ad run.  Next week we’ll continue to explore developing an effective ad campaign.  We’ll discuss how to test your ad effectively, and how to tweak it to realize maximum effectiveness.  Later we’ll discuss how you can word it to maximize retention by enabling screening on your advertising.

In future posts I'll be offering some more innovative sales techniques.  And I’ll also be sharing ingenious sales management.  You'll be able to hand the column to your sales manager and watch company sales and morale soar.  And we'll talk more about how to lead your customers, key managers, and subordinate employees. 

If you find the content valuable and you haven't already done so, I invite you to subscribe by entering your email in the box at the top right of the site.  We'll deliver the blog right to your inbox as soon as each column is published.  And the first podcast is almost ready.  It should be available next week.

Thank you all for your patience as I respond to comments and answering questions as quickly as I can.  The volume has become overwhelming so please bear with me.  I'll do my best.  Please continue to leave comments and tell me what areas of business you want me to cover.  Until then,
profitable business All!

Simple Marketing, pt iii

What Is My Customer Buying?

From this earlier post you now know who your customer is and where to find more of them.  The next question to answer is why do they buy from you.  So you have to determine what benefit your customers pay for.  To get best results, employ a skilled marketing consultant to guide you in this exercise.  But if you're determined to go it alone, you can get great mileage performing a thought experiment to uncover the true benefit your client realizes buying from you.

I explained in a previous column that people buy emotionally, not logically.  Our consumer culture so artfully manipulates us that we are often unaware of our own motivation.  For instance, examine the process of buying a new car.  Why does someone buy a new car?  What wants or needs does it satisfy?

Initially one might think a person buys a new car for transportation.  But wouldn't that be the last reason anyone would buy a new car?  Sit quietly and think about owning a new car.  What is it that one really wants out of the experience?  The new car smell?  The shiny object itself?  The lower mileage?  The monthly payments?  ("Hey, wait a minute...!")

If you sift through all the rationalizations you will uncover your emotional motives… you want it because it's exciting.  You can't wait to sit behind the wheel and drive something so sleek and elegant.

But we still haven't drilled down to the base reason.  You want the car because it's elegant?  What need does that satisfy?  So return to the thought experiment and imagine yourself behind the wheel of that car.  What thoughts and feelings are you experiencing?  Are you visualizing taking your sweetheart out in the car?  Or your friends?  Is it going to keep your kids safe or serve as a chick magnet?

If you sit long enough, you’ll sift through all the rationalizations and arrive at the fundamental emotional needs that buying that new automobile will supposedly satisfy.  Now do this for your product or service from a prospective client's point of view.

Once you've determined the emotional reasons your customers buy, couch your presentation to appeal to those emotions.  In your ads explain the benefit you can provide in a way that excites their senses.  Your objective is to make them want your offering more than their money.  The more time and energy you put into this exercise, the greater the return you'll realize.  We'll be honing your copy during the testing phase so we just need a good starting point.  If you don't get the marketing message perfect the first time, it'll improve over time.

Next week we’ll continue to develop your marketing plan.  We'll calculate your customer’s value to the company so you can determine what return each advertisement will produce.  That will define the cost per customer for your various advertising media which will allow you to plan your optimum advertising mix.

In one of the next few columns I'll discuss a proven easy method to ramp up new employees and get managers more invested rapidly.  This will greatly reduce turnover and build company morale.  I'll also be sharing a fantastic way to get your salespeople talking to more decision makers or what sales calls bypassing the gatekeeper.  It's a common problem among sales staff and this is a really cool original method to build instant credibility while getting the gatekeeper to put you right through to the right person.  There's lots more coming so stay reading.  If you haven't already subscribed, you can get this column delivered into your inbox as soon as its published by entering your email address on the upper right above the subscribe boxes.  Until then,

profitable business All!

Simple Marketing, pt ii

Where Do I Find More Clients?



In the last post we discussed a cost-effective way to identify your ideal customer.

Large concerns spend huge sums of money and take years to conduct this area of marketing, and you've accomplished a scaled down version for free in a few minutes.

Now that you've identified your most valuable type of customer, how do you attract more of 'em?One way to determine this is to ask your control group to describe themselves.  Large companies do this by sending out surveys.  You can do this yourself by asking them.  Find out their preferred magazines and newspapers, websites, stores, etc.  You may uncover areas of similarity within the group that point to a target-rich environment for your product or service.

The objective of targeting your advertising is to lower the cost per view or impression of your ad from qualified prospects.  By advertising in niche publications you may reach a higher percentage of qualified prospective buyers than in general periodicals.  For instance, maybe your ideal client skims the local Pennysaver.  Advertising in this publication will undoubtedly cost less than running an ad in the main town newspaper, and you'll reach a higher proportion of prospective customers.

Case Study: Athletic Club
Sometimes you'll discover sources you would never guess.  In one company, a martial arts dojo, we discovered that the ideal client was a grad student from the local university.  As a result, we discovered their best advertising medium was a handwritten flier with tear-off tabs posted on a local bulletin board.

It turned out the bargain basement look appealed to the price-sensitive student.  As a result, we reduced the yellow pages, newspaper, and coupon ad expense, and blanketed the bulletin boards with handmade posters.  Our ad cost to reach this segment dropped which proved a windfall.

In the next post I'll explain how to determine what you want to tell your reader and then we'll look at how to calculate the true value of a customer and see why that's important.  And later on I'll explain some potentially disastrous pitfalls of using Paypal to accept credit cards.  If you have a Paypal or other consumer merchant account, you definitely want to read about these scary possibilities.  Until then,

profitable business All!

P.S. if you like this blog, please feel free to subscribe at http://bizdoc.us.

Simple Marketing, pt 1

In a previous post I discussed how to eliminate typos in printed material.  And in the last one I explained how to save money in your advertising budget.  A few subscribers have asked me how they should advertise.  To answer this, we're going to develop an easy yet powerful marketing strategy for your business.

Developing Effective Marketing Strategy
Before your eyes glaze over at the phrase marketing strategy, let me reassure you this doesn't need to be complicated.  Your marketing describes who buys what from you and how they get it.  Many small businesses and even some larger ones often launch a product without a solid market strategy and make corrections after the fact.  But that's like aiming after shooting.  You can hit the target more often and eliminate many costly pitfalls if you do a little prep work.

Everyone knows that companies need to advertise to get clients. But many view the concept of advertising as a black box with an indeterminate benefit.

The reason a business advertises is to be visible so potential customers can find it.  But arbitrarily spending money to shotgun your name in front of an untargeted group of people may or may not attract an audience.  And they may not buy unless you're attracting the right audience.  For your advertising to be effective, you must know who you are trying to reach and how to find them.  Until you have a marketing plan, any advertising is just a gamble.  You might as well throw darts at a board to choose your media and hope for the best.

A marketing plan will reveal where you should apportion your advertising budget, and that's why we're going to create one in the next few posts.  By the end of the fourth column, you'll have gained a better understanding of your customer so you create ads and select media that broadcast the right message and attract the right people.

How do we create this plan?  Initially, we want to answer four questions:

• Who is your ideal customer?
• How to best reach them?
• What do you tell them?
• What is their value?

We'll take the first one in this post.  We'll answer the last three in the next few columns by applying a thought experiment and some common sense.


Who is your Ideal Customer?
Determining one's ideal client can be as simple or as complex as you choose.  Large companies use vast computing power and sophisticated techniques to mine huge customer databases and group similarities.  You can achieve a rough estimate with just a little time and effort.

To answer this question we need to use your accounting software, a program like Quickbooks.  You want to determine who among your customers annually brings in the most profit.  Run a profitability summary report that lists each customer and the profit they made the firm.  If you don’t use software, we're calculating profit by subtracting cost of goods and labor from the sales price.  As long as your margins are fairly uniform, you can be inexact.

List the characteristics of your most profitable clients and look for commonalities.  Group any facts, the hard data that describe this segment.  If you target consumers, look for similar locations, income levels, ages, occupations, and the like.  If you cater to businesses, look for common industries, company size, type of company.  Then consider the feelings and attitudes that influence thoughts and buying behavior.  Practice empathy and get a good picture of why this segment buys from you.

Ask a few of your customers to corroborate your results.  Ask why they sought you out, and also why they stay.  Then ask them who else could use your offering and why those customers specifically would find your offering valuable.  Sometimes your presumptions will have been right.  Often they'll be wrong.  This exercise will confirm concrete reasons or show that you need to do more research.

Once you've determined some commonalities of your most valuable clients, we need to find you more of 'em.  We'll do that next week.

Please continue to ask questions in the comment section.  Tell me what you want me to address in future posts.  Thank you for all the support!  Until next time,

profitable business All!

These Ads Work Amazingly Well

Last week we discussed why sales should not handle billing. I also touched on an inexpensive method to eliminate typos in expensive handouts and advertisements. I'd like to discuss another area of marketing – advertising - and how you can get the greatest return on your investment.

Create your own “Golden Oldies”

When you watch TV, which commercials in particular do you rush to mute?  Not because they're offensive, but because you just don't want to suffer through watching them again?

Guess what?  That means they're working.  When you need that merchant's product in the future, you’ll remember 'em, won't you?

Many companies stopped airing commercials we enjoyed years ago that could still work today to pull in new customers.  Managers get tired of their own ads long before they lose their appeal for prospective customers.

How many "golden oldies" advertisements can you recall?  I remember a jewelry store radio spot years ago that ran so often every time I heard it I cringed.  I knew it so well I could hum the jingle.  I got so sick of it that whenever it played I desperately looked for another station to listen to.

Business owners and marketing managers become bored from their ads more quickly than their audience.  Often they’ll make the mistake to change them prematurely.  While an ad still pulls customers, allow yourself to get good and sick of it.  In most cases you'll get bored long before it stops being effective.

Large advertisers often switch media frequently so you may think that's the rule.   But a small business has different advertising needs than a giant. As a manager, I’d rather get sick of an ad that my customers adore than the other way around.  Don’t we still use clichés in conversations?

Don’t presume distribution = exposure = increased sales

These days too many managers advertise for the wrong reasons.  You run an ad to increase sales by urging your targeted audience to buy, not so your ad will go viral on YouTube.  It's fine if that happens, but keep in mind that your advertising is a means to greater profit, not an end in itself.  Creativity for creativity's sake is pointless unless you specifically sell that type of creativity.  Focus on the end – sales - not the means.

Change an advertisement only after it stops attracting more customers.  Most ad campaigns are costly and time-consuming.  Whenever you produce an ad - whether it be a homemade flyer or an elaborate commercial - use it until it's no longer effective.  Remember your goal: maximizing the return on your campaign and thereby increasing net profit.

Later this week I'll explain the four questions you must answer to begin targeting your market strategy to achieve the best returns.  And next week I'll discuss an easy way you can design your ad campaign that'll make a huge impact.  Until then,

profitable business All!