By Brett Curry
www.currymarketing.com
“If you want to be wildly successful you must first change your thinking.”
I remember the first time I walked into Gold’s Gym. I was a junior in High School and I thought I was pretty strong.
Little did I know that I was about to taste a very large piece of “humble pie.”
It took all of about 30 seconds for the crowd of beefed-up, barrel-chested, broad-shouldered behemoths to make me feel like a total wimp.
I felt like Steve Urkel at a steroid convention. That’s not to imply that they were all using illegal substances (although some made me wonder) but these guys and gals were HUGE.
In a moment’s time I had a complete (and very drastic) paradigm shift in what I thought was “buff”. These guys were now my new definition of “strong”.
For most people a complete paradigm shift is necessary to start down the path of big results in marketing.
So what kind of paradigm shift am I referring to here? Quite simply it’s a change in philosophy from what we call “Institutional” advertising to “Direct response” advertising.
You, as a consumer, have been inundated with a flood of bad marketing. Institutional Advertising.
What is an institutional ad? Simply put, institutional ads are cute, funny, catchy, or entertaining for the sole purpose of building an “image” or an “identity”. (But, most of the time, they don’t even accomplish that!)
Good institutional ads may make you laugh, smile, or even say, “wow that was a good commercial.”
But all institutional ads fail to accomplish the only REAL objective of an ad, and that is – to SPARK SALES.
An ad should never make you say, “wow that was a good ad.” It should make you say “wow I need to check out that product,” or “wow, maybe I should look into that service.”
If you want to successfully market your business you have to trash the notion that your ad should be funny, cute, catchy, or entertaining. I’m not saying that funny, cute, and catchy ads CAN’T work, I’m just saying that it must sell and be funny at the same time in order for it to work (most funny ads DON’T sell).
Here’s an example. How many times have you been at the water cooler or in the break room with a co-worker and said, “hey did you see that ad, the one where the guy and the horse, and blah, blah, blah….man that was funny!” Then your co-worker will say, “oh yeah that was good. What company was that for?” And neither one of you were able to remember. Or even worse you’ll throw out some guesses of completely unrelated companies. “I think it was FedEX.” “No, I think it was an online company.”
Do you see something wrong with this picture?
The principle of Transparency.
Your ad copy should be transparent. What I mean by that is your copy shouldn’t draw attention to itself; it should draw attention to your product or service. It should communicate the benefits of your product or service so clearly and convincingly that prospects say to themselves, “man, how have I lived without that?” or “maybe that is what I’ve been looking for.”
Understand that your success should be measured by the quality and the quantity of the response your marketing generates. Period.
Direct Response Marketing
So what is Direct Response Marketing? Well, the name gives it away. Direct Response marketing is marketing that generates an immediate and measurable response.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that it generates an immediate sale, but it does generate some kind of action. The ad could encourage a prospect can call and request a free report, brochure, or video. They could call to request a free offer, or to start a trial period, or they could call for a free consultation or to talk to a sales rep.
When you run direct response advertising you can almost know immediately if you have a good ad or not, based on the amount of response you get.
When you run institutional ads you have no idea what kind of impact the message is having.....But, in all likelihood you can be sure that they are having NO positive impact.
So start to beat this into your mind. Good advertising is supposed to Spark Sales. If it doesn’t, it’s not working. Also good ad copy is transparent. It shows how your product or service will make your prospects life better, how it will save them money, or time, how it will make them look beautiful, or how it will give them good health, or whatever. It highlights the main benefit or benefits of your product or service – it doesn’t make people say, “ooooh that was a good ad!”
What kind of response is your marketing generating?