Is your marketing focused on branding or lead generation?
The objective of your marketing is to organize the buying and selling processes to present compelling information that persuades your prospects to take a specific action. Your marketing should inform and persuade your prospects, address the wants and needs of prospects so that they continue to move through their various decision-making stages. Your marketing message must do 3 things:
- Grab the prospects attention
- Facilitate the prospect’s information gathering & decision making process
- Provide a specific, low risk, easy to take action that helps them make a good decision
All your marketing must follow this equation:
Interrupt… You must interrupt your prospects so that they’ll notice and pay attention to your message This is done with an attention-grabbing headline.
STOP putting the name of your business as well as your picture at the top of your ad or website. Your Prospects ONLY care about themselves.
The headline must resonate with the hot button issues faced by your specific prospect in your specific niche market. Every marketing piece MUST start with a headline that must grab the prospect’s attention in an emotionally compelling way. The headline serves a second crucial function - It immediately qualifies your target customer and disqualifies those prospects who aren’t your target customer. A well-written headline will only grab the attention of those prospects who genuinely want your product or services.
Engage… Now that you have the attention of your prospect you must quickly engage them by persuasively promising to provide them with vital decision-making information that will solve their major problem, frustration, fear or concern. This is done using a sub-headline which builds on the impact of the headline and makes it intriguing.
The headline and sub-headline work together to Interrupt and Engage your target customer by promising to provide them with vital, decision making information that will solve their major concern or frustration. For example, if you target customer’s major concern with your services is data security, you can use a combination of the headline-subheadline example below to get their attention:
Worried About Using Cloud Services As Security Of
Your Valuable Business Data Could be Compromised?
Ask Any Cloud Service Provider These Three Incriminating Questions
Writing headlines and sub-headlines takes practice, patience and a great “swipe file”. A swipe file is a collection of previously used, tested and proven headlines and sub-headlines that can be used as examples to help you get started developing yours. If you would like to get access to our Swipe File that gives you a jump start, just email me at [email protected] with subject: swipe file
Educate… Educate prospects with significant information about how your business delivers on the promise of the headline and sub-headline. This is the task of the body copy. Body copy must convince prospects that you’re the best. Telling them isn’t enough—you have to prove it. In your body copy, emphasize benefits prospects want. Follow these guidelines for your body copy:
- The biggest mistake is to focus on business’s features.
- Body copy must inform your prospects about the extraordinary value you offer with crystal clarity.
- Resist the temptation to throw in every bit of juicy information, and focus on only one hot button at a time
- Give enough info to entice them to want to know more
- Always highlight the benefits of your innovations
Remember - One ad, one hot button only.
Offer… Always end your marketing message with a compelling Offer. Prospect won’t take action unless you ask them to do so, and give them a good reason why they should. Offers have one purpose… get prospects to take action. Offers need to be a low- or better yet… no-risk way to lead your prospect to take the next step in your sales process
If you sell a low- or moderately-priced product or service, the next step might be to buy. But an expensive item might require additional information. An excellent way is to offer a free informational report. If your business requires educating your prospects on the benefits of doing business with you, your compelling offer should revolve around a free informational report.
This free report should be available upon request - use a landing page to instantly download the report. When prospects call or go online to request the report, you should capture their contact information If they don’t buy immediately, begin a “drip campaign”.
A drip campaign educates prospects on your innovations and the benefits those innovations provide to them. You should NEVER attempt to sell them your services. Educate them so they conclude they would be an absolute fool to do business with any other business but yours.
The “Marketing Equation” of Interrupt, Engage, Educate and Offer should be used in EVERY marketing piece you create and for every marketing tactic you use. It’s a process… NOT an event. There’s more to marketing than “getting your name out”. You now know the process, and you have the marketing equation to guide you through it. If you act on this information, you should see a dramatic increase in the number of leads you begin to generate… the number of customers you begin to attract… and a significant increase to your bottom line.
If this is making sense, but you would like some help implementing these, schedule your FREE Boost Your Sales Strategy Session.