Friday, September 23, 2011

Writing Great Advertising Copy

This week I thought I would steal a page from www.marketingandsalesuniversity.com and talk about writing good ad copy. I have seen it over the years that companies spend lots of money on marketing only to wonder why their advertising is having little or no impact. Its important for advertisers to consider how to write good ad copy.

With the advent of social media, a lot of people don't think they need to know the basics of writing good copy. For those who still want to know, here are five essential components to writing great advertising copy.

There are 5 major components to good advertising copy: (The order of these is essential to success)
• Command Attention
• Showcase Benefits of Products/Services
• Prove the Benefits
• Persuade People to Embrace the Benefits
• Call to Action

Advertising is sales in print. So, you need to think about the unique benefits your products/services offer and showcase that in a persuasive way. You need to emphasize results, not features.

Let’s take a minute to talk about each of these components:
1. Command Attention: This is usually accomplished with the headline. You need an attention-getter that makes people want to know more about your products/services. The best headlines give a vivid portrayal of the benefits or show how a problem can be avoided with your products/services. The headline is the advertisement for the advertisement.

2. Showcase Benefits: You have to showcase the benefits of your products and services and, more importantly, show how they will solve or prevent a problem. They need to know what’s in it for them. Include useful, factual and clear information to show precisely what the benefits are and how they are going to help the customer.

3. Offer Proof: This is where you prove what the advertisement is offering. You need to establish you have a method to deliver. Consider information that establishes credibility and past performance.

4. Persuade: You need to add compelling reasons for your potential customers to purchase your products/services. Use a hard sell approach and create scarcity. This will enact your potential customers to feel like they have to act now. Which leads into the last component.

5. Call to Action: You need to compel your potential customers to DO something. They need to check out your site, sign up for your newsletter, purchase your products, contact you about services…something. Offer a freebie-a booklet, sample, product, bonus, demo, consult, limited time price…the list goes on. There are lots of ways to get potential customers excited about ordering and help them feel like they are getting an amazing deal.

Good advertisements include all of these components and are not complete without any of them. You can sit down and think through any one of these components, then figure out how to best place them together for the most effectiveness. We can help you with this too.

For more information on this and to get more marketing advice than you ever wanted to know, check out www.marketingandsalesuniversity.com. or contact me at the email address below.

Kensel Tracy is the Marketing Coach at The Corporate Coachworkz Inc. located in Chelsea, Quebec. If you are interested in getting more marketing advice or just need a coach to help build your business contact Kensel today at kenselt@sympatico.ca

Do You Have A Unique Selling Proposition?



If I were your prospective customer, why should I do business with you above any and all other options? Why would I be an absolute fool to buy what you sell from anyone else but you? That answer should be clearly articulated in the form of your USP.

What you need to know…

A USP is the single, most distinct and important benefit a business owner provides to their clients that's different from their competition. It's absolutely critical to not only create an effective and highly compelling USP, but to use it in every piece of marketing you develop, and in every form of communication you use with your clients and prospects.

Why you need to know this…

Your USP, working in tandem with your elevator pitch, creates a huge competitive edge for your business. Developed properly, it will separate your business from your competition, eliminate them in the minds of your prospects and have them saying to themselves that they would be fools to do business with anyone else but you.

For example, most business owners place the name of their business at the top of their business card. That's the worst thing you can put there. No one cares who you are or what you do. They only care about the benefits your product or service offers to them.

Instead of a jeweler's business card saying "John's Jewelers," what if it said this…

Discounted Diamonds - Unmatched Quality, Untouchable Price, Unbeatable Guarantee

In just a few words, would you feel like an absolute fool if you bought a diamond from anyone else but this jeweler? That's the power of a well-designed USP.

The cost to you if you fail to act…

Do you have a Unique Selling Proposition?

Do you use it in every piece of marketing you create?

Do you have it prominently displayed on your business card?

If you don't, you're losing market share, a massive amount of potential revenue and the opportunity to dominate your market.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Anti-Socia Media Looks Like Its Arrived and Here to Stay

A couple of days ago a number of things happened to me that has led me to believe that the new social media revolution should actually be called the anti-social media revolution and here's why.

As I walk down any street, I see almost every second person plugged in, buds in their ears and cell phone cranking out emails oblivious to the world around them,the weather or the people next to them. I see people on bicycles with buds in, cutting in and out of traffic and not paying attention to anything.

I sit in a restaurant and hear people talking on the phone, like they are the only one in restaurant, so much so that I actually have to lean over and say, please shut up we are tying to have a conversation here.

I see people communicating on their Facebook page, just talking about them. What about everyone else. I hear from the plugged in generation that if your not on Gmail you out of touch and Twitter is something you need to do if you want to build your personal profile. The issue is what is behind the profile.

I have had discussions with many opinionated, self absorbed and selfish individuals who do not know how to communicate and get frustrated when they need to sit still for a few minutes in a meeting without the habit of picking up their phone or sending an email.

I have had breakfast meetings where the person I am talking with has had to be told to turn that " thing " off so we can chat. I have seen people ignore their work, deadlines and everything else so that they can up date their profile, send Twitter messages and everything else but ignore what is important.

I see stressed out, arrogant, uncommunicative people walking through me in airports, retail stores and shopping centres glued to their phone and nothing else. I see people on the street corner on sunny day glued to their phone as they barge through others who are just in the way. So this is the new social media huh!

In reality, social media may be about getting online and yes texting your friends, emails and phone calls, however in my mind, the world on a common level is getting less friendly,less engaged and less social and on a personal level people pretty much send emails to break relationships dates or ignore paying bills.

I call this new trend " anti-social media", Anti-social media is where the real world does not matter. All that matters is being online. I recently played golf with a couple that could not wait til the game was over on a Sunday morning so they could both check their Blackberry's and took ten minutes to answer emails and such before we could have breakfast.

Social media may be a good thing, however this anti social media thing its going to get worse and the anti-social behaviour will also come with it. I am pretty tired of have a face to face meeting with someone who answers his mobile and talks for 10 minutes about B.S. while I am waiting for an answer or in the middle of an important discussion. I am tired of presenting information at meeting while staring at some fool who is sitting there checking or sending email and not listening to a word I am saying. A a recent breakfast meeting one persons phone rang four times and each time she picked it up for conversation. I finally had to say shut that thing off so we can finish our meeting. She squirmed and shook and twisted and turned for the next half an hour because she had to talk with someone without being armed with a cell phone.

So the next time you hear somebody yelling at someone on their cell phone or being ignored in retail store by someone just checking their email take stock, it could be you.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Referral Marketing and Online Marketing are Growing Leaps and Bounds

As a business and marketing coach you are always reinventing the way you do business. Such is the case with my new website www.marketingandsalesuniversity.com and Stratejis Marketing Solutions.

As a marketing coach clients were always asking for more of something. More business, more time, more revenues. Its important for business owners to continue to reinvent their business even if they think they are on the right track.

Today's consumer has no brand loyalty and its important for a biz owner to understand what it takes to continue to build and market. The younger generation thinks that social media is going to be the next big saving grace for marketing. However its important to consider some of the traditional things you once did in marketing to continue move projects forward.

For example networking is all about building relationships. That's why we are rolling Business Over Breakfast clubs out all across Canada and the United States, to build relationships.

www.marketingandsalesuniversity.com was set up as a simple way for small business owners to get more information for less than $1200 per year. A simple process with a wealth of knowledge. Gives the small business owner an opportunity to grow and prosper on their own terms as well as pick up pointers that they can discuss with their coach or internally to get the ball rolling. Nobody wants to pay huge marketing fees just to get an education in marketing with limited returns.

Stratejis Marketing Solutions is my pet project. Having run a marketing company for a number of years I wanted to get back in the war and develop a few projects as a creative outlet for me personally and my clients. Nothing I like better than discussing creative concepts, graphic design, advertising and marketing and then implementing programs like having a marketing company now provides services to clients that want more. They want to design the ultimate ad, direct mail, website, learn more about social marketing and then having a dedicated approach to executing a program or a strategy.

On many of these projects I have partnered with my good friend Jason Harper his up and coming visual communications shop called Strongevine Visual Communications located in Ottawa. Jason's view is that marketing is a visual medium and that websites, brochures, logo designs and great business cards are still the basis of every company's marketing strategy and I agree with him.

So remember, when someone comes up to you and your company and thinks that you should have a new Twitter Account and Facebook page yada yada, you need more social media, agree with them and add it to your marketing inventory.

Get online and get social, but also insure that your image and what you are saying to customers is also up date and as matter fact focus in more on knowing who your customers are. Make sure all your marketing and communications tools are all up to date and all are entirely flexible so that you gather all the customers you need.

Remember customers are still about having relationships and getting referrals from people that know, trust and believe in you.

A business club like www.bobclubs.com, marketing efforts and social media combined will help you grow your business and will help it grow and prosper over time all the time.