The 7 Marketing Strategies That Make All The Difference – Part II

Regardless of whether you sell products or services, offline, online, or a combination of both, there are seven strategies which could substantially increase your results providing you apply them to your business!

 

The first strategy was sent out last week if you missed it just click here to read it

 

Here’s the 2nd strategy ……

 

Get Your Prospects
To Take Some Action

 

Just imagine for a moment that you we’re looking to employ a new sales person to join your team…

 

Could you afford to take on someone who, whilst they do a great job of creating rapport with your prospects, and presenting your products or service, never actually asks for the order, or gets any kind of commitment to talk further?

 

No, of course you wouldn’t!

 

The point is, it’s no different in your other marketing activities, whether it’s on your web site, in your adverts, emails or sales letters. You must ask the prospect to take some form of action in every piece of marketing you put out there. Whether that’s to click on a link, fill in a form, pick up the telephone, send you an email, ‘like you’ on Facebook, or whatever. Most forms of promotion, both online and offline, still follow the basic format of what I call institutional or image-based advertising. It’s simply consists of “name, rank and serial number’ i.e. they have a big company logo, a list of bullet points or some clever copy about what they do, and then a simple telephone number or web address.

 

But there’s absolutely no attempt to persuade me as to why I should pick up the telephone or visit their web site. It’s simply saying ‘here it is, now come and get it!”. If you don’t design your message to make some kind of compelling offer, and then clearly ask for some kind of specific direct response in your marketing pieces, you are simply wasting the majority of your time, money and effort.

 

Now some people will respond by saying “Ah, but we are simply trying to build awareness of our brand, (or a presence in the market-place) so that when someone needs our type of product or service they’ll remember us”.

 

NO they won’t! There’s literally dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of sales messages bombarding each and every one of us on a daily basis. Unless you have very deep pockets, and budgets the size of a Vodafone, or Tesco, or BT, there’s virtually zero chance that your marketing piece will be remembered even 7 hours later, let alone 7 days, or 7 weeks, or 7 months later!

 

To check whether you are following the institutional or image-based approach to your marketing (and consequently receiving only a small fraction of the returns that are perfectly possible for your business), take a look at the 6-point check-list below.

 

Your Direct Response Marketing 6 Point Check-list:

 

1) HEADLINES

Do you begin with a headline that’s all about the reader? Does your headline focus on the benefits you are offering, or is it all about you?

 

Think about why the prospect would stop long enough to be drawn into reading your message.

 

2) CONTENT

Does the content of your marketing explain how you are solving a problem that the reader already has? Or does it simply tell them what you do?

 

3) EVIDENCE

Do you illustrate or demonstrate the results that your reader will enjoy by using your service or product?

 

Have you provided sufficient evidence so that I will definitely believe the promises or claims you are making?

 

4) OFFER

Have you included a specific, motivating offer that will prompt your ideal prospects to take some form of action, e.g. to buy your product, or at least ask for more information?

 

5) A SPECIFIC ‘CALL-TO-ACTION’

You must make it easy and straight-forward for your reader to respond to your communication.

 

If your reader has to search around to take action, or think too hard — even for a fraction of a second — it’s pretty likely that they will not follow through.

 

6) INCLUDE TRACKING MECHANISMS

If you do not track the responses to your Marketing efforts, then you will have no real or accurate idea if the money you are spending is generating a positive return, or has simply gone down the drain.

 

You must build-in specific methods of measuring the response to each and every individual piece of marketing you do.

 

Ask yourself whether you’re guilty of following ‘institutional’ or image-based marketing, rather than strategies focused on generating enquiries, hot-leads, and new sales for your business.

 

If you suspect that the answer is ‘Yes’ then now is the time to start learning and applying the far more profitable methods and strategies of Common-Sense Marketing.

 

Next time we’ll be looking at Marketing Strategy #3 which is all about how to get your prospects to trust you.

 

Look out for it in your inbox next week.