Why 80 Percent of Advertising is Wasted

Think of the last time you were flipping through a magazine and you suddenly decided to stop and read an advertisement.

What made you stop?

It was probably a headline that caught your attention!

It’s been shown time and again that people read a headline 5 times more often than they do the copy of an ad. That means the advertiser has invested about 80% of their advertising budget in the headline. So you can see the headline is the most important part of your advertisement. Yet most advertising is a wasted effort due to the lack of an effective headline, or no headline at all!

The first thing the reader of your ad, letter, or postcard sees is the headline. People make the decision whether to read, or not read, the main message of your advertisement in a bout three seconds.

So your advertisement must have a headline that gets and keeps your reader’s attention. If your message doesn’t do this they won’t read your whole message.

Creating compelling headlines is hard work, but you can do it by following some simple guidelines.

1. Use a couple of well chosen words to create urgency and compel your reader to stop and read you message right away instead of waiting until they get back to it.
2. The reader has to be able to justify taking the time to read the whole message. Therefore, you have to communicate something they think is valuable.
3. Your headline needs to shout out how your offer is unique.
4. Point out something specific to your reader using facts or how-to information.

By using these guidelines you can create headlines that quickly captures reader, gives them reason to continue reading, and offers benefits they want.

Avoid conventional, overused, or boring expressions and never trick your reader into continuing on or you will lose their trust.

Power words for attention getting headlines

Many of the powerful headlines you see use one or more of these words that sell:

You can begin by creating some headlines that clearly convey your commitment, benefits, or “unique selling proposition”. After you have made some draft headlines, look for ways to add power words from the list above AND three or four of the simple guidelines presented earlier.

10 Tips For Effective Advertising

Writing powerful classified ads doesn’t have to be hard, if you invest some time researching effective copywriting.

 10 Tips For Effective Advertising

1. Don’t try to sell expensive products from a classified ad. Incorporate a two step process. As the reader to visit your web site or email an auto responder for more information. Then send the reader more detailed information about your product or service.
2. Examine how the other marketers compose their sales message. It’s a no brainer, just study ads in the materials you are already reading. Or browse some of the free online classified ad sites. There’s not point in copying other ads, just use them as a guide to effective design for your own ads.
3. Advertise in the right place. Yep, it’s a basic idea. Don’t put a cooking ad in the sports equipment section.
4. Advertise in multiple locations that are appropriate for what you are selling. After you find several advertising venues, read their writing guidelines and practice.
5. Advertise in more than one location at a time to attract as many potential buyers as possible.
6. When people read the same ad over and over, every month, they will likely start to ignore your ad. So freshen up you ads by changing the headlines, use new wording, try different lengths of copy, insert some humor, add more details or interesting facts, include a testimonial.
7. Put a key in your ads so you will know which ads are working. Or use different email address or links in place of a key to see which ads pull the most responses.
8. Build your list by keeping a record of every response you get. Then follow up appropriately with information about your product or service.
9. Use the free classified ad sites to test your ad writing skills before committing to a paid ad in a print publication. Study the ads other marketers have placed at the free sites too. Create a free email account and respond to a few of their ads and see how they market their products and services.
10. Study publications and advertisements you receive offline through regular mail to help you better your ad writing skills.

Resources

• My Instant Swipe File
• Sales Copy Master Class
• Copywriting
• Advertising

How To Handle Prospects Who Give You The Silent Treatment

If you have been in sales and marketing for any length of time you have most likely had a prospect or two drop off your radar and give you the silent treatment.

One of my colleagues described this prospect behavior very well:

I just don’t know what to do whe I get the silent treatment, like, when I have spent a lot of time working with a prospect, with productive conversations and everything, and they say they’re interest in our solution and look like they’re ready to commit. Then, Bam! Suddenly everything comes to a halt.

I’ll try to call them a couple of times, and send a followup email to two, but they don’t respond. It’s like they just disappeared. I just assume I lost the sale without knowing what went wrong, or how to proceed. This kind of thing makes sales feel like an grueling and painful process.

You might feel confused and a little anxious when this happens to you. You might feel like it’s not you who did anything wrong, that you put a lot into the relationship. Then you’ll wonder how in the world are you going to save the sale if the prospect isn’t even talking to you.

Hopeium trap

There is a low pressure way to reconnect with your prospect after the become silent. However, you need to understand how this situation came to be to begin with.

Most salespeople get caught up in hopeium, an expression meaning we focus our hopes on closing the sale. Unfortunately, hopeium can become a trap. Because when you’re under the influence of hopeium it becomes impossible to stay focused on the most important goal, that is to know your prospect’s truth.

Once we set our minds on the outcome of closing the sale, we start to anticipate how the sales process will go, then we start to expect things to happen the way we think they will. And we do this automatically without even thinking about it.

What happens if we are under the influence of hopeium, and are focused on closing the sale when the prospect abruptly ceases all communications. Typically, we will feel a combination of anxiety, frustration, a sense of loss, discouragement, and confusion. We get preoccupied with what went wrong.

There may even be feelings of betrayal.

How to clear up the mystery

By letting go of your agenda and taking the time to learn where you really stand with you prospect, and accepting whatever that truth may be.

If you try to reconnect with the prospect while you are still hoping to close the sale you are going to unnecessarily introduce sales pressure to the relationship. Pushing you prospect away and ruining any trust you may have established. Eliminate that sales pressure by letting your prospect know you are okay with their decision to not move forward.

Put another way, take a step back and don’t try to chase the sale or do follow up calls because you are still focused on getting to yes.

Bottom line

If your getting the silent treatment from one of your prospects, it only means you don’t know their truth yet. It does not necessarily mean you have lost the sale.

Four reasons the truth is important

1. You will regain your confidence is selling. Without the truth we start to blame ourselves. We become unsure of where we are with the prospect. We begin to think negatively about ourselves and lay on the self-blame. We get overly anxious wondering it the sale will close somehow.
2. Your sales efficiency will increase and your level of stress will decrease. After you figure out the truth about your prospect you will be able to make an informed decision about staying involved with them or moving on. Often a “no” is nearly as valuable as a “yes” because a “no” can free up your time to find prospects who are a better fit for you. This increases you efficiency by cutting out prospects that you cannot close on. You can walk away without the guilt.
3. Prospects are pushed away by sales pressure. Responding to the silent treatment with calls or email is telling them you are determined to close the sale. That means you are looking out for yourself not your prospect’s. Leading them to mistrust you.
4. Completely breaking off all communication, the silent treatment, is the prospect’s way of protecting themselves from sales pressure when they are not comfortable revealing their truth. The harder we press, the more the clam up and avoid us.  The opposite is also true. The more relaxed we are and inviting of the truth, the more upfront the prospect will be with us. They will feel alright sharing their information with us when they know we are open to hearing it.

How to restart communications

After my colleague and I talked over these issues he said, “This makes sense, but I don’t know what to say when I call them”.

It might be simpler than you think.

• First, just call your prospect. Voicemail and email are not very personal and should only be used after several attempts to connect with a phone call.
• Second, take ownership and apologize for causing the situation in the first place.

Your conversation could go something like this:

Hi, Sam, this is Ben. First off, I just wanted to apologize that we ended up not being able to connect. I feel like I dropped the ball, or failed to give you the information you need. I’m not calling to keep things moving. I assume you went ahead with different company, and that’s alright. But I am interested in getting some feedback so I can improve for next time.

The results for responding this way will probably surprise you. Your prospect may have a legitimate reason for not getting back to you.

Just remember, you didn’t lose the sale, you just don’t know your prospects truth yet.

Further reading

• Relationship Selling
• Customer Prospecting
• Difficult Customer Behaviors