Here’s a powerful way to make your marketing stronger.
Write out an offer that your dream clients would love and be hard for them to say no to. Then see how close you can get to creating it. Once you do launch and promote it everywhere.
This sounds simple but so many sales are lost due to weak offers. Note when I say offer I do not mean price discounting. I mean a real sales offer.
Do you know what the only asset that matters in your business is?
- It isn’t your Facebook page.
- It isn’t your Instagram followers.
- It is not your people
- It isn’t any of your physical machinery or facilities.
So what is it?
It’s your client database and the relationship you have with them.
When businesses are sold this is ‘really’ what the purchaser is buying.
Clients pay for everything and you must treat them as gold. If you don’t have your own client database set up and actively market to it the best time to fix that is right now!
“I’ve always been intrigued by the reality where some clients are happy to pay more for essentially the same thing. The reason is because of how the value is positioned in the service. I always ask this question.
Have you taken time to look at all potential clients for what you sell?
Have you identified those who can:
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Benefit the most
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Benefit the fastest
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Pay the most
One of the easiest ways to grow sales and reduce headaches is to sell to the best clients you can. If you will do the research now your future self will thank you for it.”
Help Your Clients Discover Their USP
A USP is short for Unique Selling Position. This is a great way to identify the why and how the business is better than its competitors. An example may be that store A& B can deliver in 14 days but store C can deliver in 7 days that is a USP for store C.
Do your clients know the answer to this question?
Why should I buy from you over anyone else AND instead of buying something else with my money?
It’s a profound question and your answer must contain one key thing.
That thing is something they can only get from your company. Now this requires some digging and work but the rewards are there for you if you do it.
Once you can say you are the only one with X you immediately separate yourself from the competition and become THE choice for the clients you want.
So take 15 minutes right now and come up with your list of what clients get only from you.
Then review it and see what would be most powerful from a client perspective. Most importantly start using it in your marketing NOW.
18 Techniques That Improve Advertising Efforts
The purpose of all advertising is to take people’s existing desires and direct them towards your product or service. The old problem and solution pairing is a great way to start running ads with copy that calls out pain and provides the segway to the solution.
If you want to make your ads better you need to understand psychology and copy writing. But I know not everyone has time so to save you time here are some of my favourite advertising approaches. All have been used effectively over many years. choose what you believe will work best with your clients.
Don’t be afraid to experiment and test different appeals.
Here are 18 Quick Fire Tips
1. News. If you have something genuinely new and different then use a news angle in your ads. Words like announcing, introducing or finally now you can XYZ.
2. Arouse curiosity. Once a curiosity loop opens in someones mind most people feel the need to close it. I had a great example recently a Facebook ad asked me if I knew the one question to get more sales. I didn’t but was curious and clicked the ad to find out.
3. Tell a story. It seems widely known now that stories sell. So use them in your message. Especially if it’s a story of success for someone just like the person you are aiming the ad at.
4. Add scarcity but make it true. A risk something will end or run out triggers fear of missing out and makes us take action.
5. Sell it well and then take it away. If you can get people wanting what you have and then say who it’s not for this adds more motivation to purchase.
6.Create a common enemy. You can bring people across to your site by sharing a common enemy. A few examples that people use are ‘big business’, ‘the banks’, ‘big pharma’ etc. Notice how the labels predetermine you viewing them as bad.
7. Take a contrarian position. A simple example of this could be telling people not to use Facebook ads whilst everyone else seems to be telling them to use them. You can go really strong on this one if you’re comfortable with it. Be aware though you will get some flack so you need to be able to deal with that.
8. Create controversy. This is a strategy that has been used in Public Relations a lot. Brands like American Apparel have also used it to gain greater exposure. It’s not for everyone and again has risks of flack you need to be aware of.
9. It’s not your fault. If you can absolve potential clients of any responsibility for making mistakes in the past then they can embrace your solution. If they feel as though it was their fault it can be hard for them to move to something new.
10. Social proof. The more people who testify to the fantastic results they get with your business the better. It’s far more credible than anything you can ever say. Aim for video testimonials if you can with specific results they got from your business.
11. Risk reversal. In any purchase there is a perceived risk of making a mistake and this fear reduces sales. You can limit this ‘perceived risk’ with a powerful risk reversal guarantee.
12. Small yeses. If you can get someone to say yes to something in your ad and keep them agreeing along the way it makes it easier for get the main yes to your product or service.
12. Offer a magic pill. People want the magic pill. As much as I hate this it’s the reality of the market. You need to present your offer like a magic pill to get the most people saying yes.
13. Sell to their want not need. It’s amazing how there is always money for what people want. Even if you know what they need sell to their want first or you won’t get the chance to help solve their true need.
14. Offer a sense of community. We are all looking to belong in some way if you can add community to your ads and offers it can bring more people in.
Creating a community around product, problem, or technique is the nest step. Most popular places are Facebook groups, Reddit threads, Substack style lists and so on.
15.Use the Zeigarnik Effect. In psychology, the Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. This can be really powerful when used at the right time and right place.
The easiest way to use is to give part of the information and then the rest can only be gained by clicking to another page or opting in for something. Don’t make it too hard though.
17. Enter the conversation. You must be entering the conversation already going on in their mind. If you can write your ad to what they are thinking about right now then they will click your ads in big numbers. But you need to dig in and really understand your market to do this.
18. Ask a compelling question. It’s really hard for us to ignore questions especially if they are on a topic we are interest in. So you could ask a question like ‘Do you know the one question all clients want answered?”. If they don’t they will very likely act to get the answer.
In summing up all of the above we are always communicating to the ad viewer self-interest.
If you keep even that in mind at all times you’re on the way to creating better ads and growing your business faster.
Bonus Tip For Clear Messaging
Are your words easy to understand?
The words you use to promote your business matter. If you use big words you lose people. If you use regular words then almost anyone can read your message.
The more people who read or hear your message the more clients you can get.
There is a simple set of tests you can use to make sure your message is well understood.
Yesterday I ran the profile a popular marketer in LinkedIn through these tests.
This person failed the tests.
In fact the writing requires a post-graduate education to understand it.
This is not an unusual case.
If you try and read it you know immediately it makes no sense.
So the solution is to get a Flesch Kincaid grade for all your writing.
You want a grade level of 7.5 or under and a reading ease of at least 60.
For the record this post has a grade level of 4.5 and reading ease of 84.9.
Read how to craft crystal clear marketing messages that cut through the noise.
Keeping Your Marketing Message Clear
Your marketing message will be ignored unless…
The very first line contains one of the big 3 elements that grab attention.
Here they are in reverse order of power (my ranking):
Coming in 3rd is curiosity. You see this with click bait headlines if you’re curious enough you click. But what you click to can often be disappointing.
If you use it make sure you genuinely reward the persons curiosity.
Coming in 2nd is news. Especially anything to do with threats to our survival and loved ones. We are hard wired to tune in to any potential threats.
Coming in 1st is self-interest.
That is something that is relevant to what I most want right now.
It’s been said that we need to enter the conversation going on in the minds of our potential clients.
I’ve never seen better advice than this.
All three work and you should test them all in your market.
But if you choose one might as well start with the most power self-interest.
If your marketing messages, websites and social media profiles aren’t already applying these then the time to fix it is right now.
