Not all small business advertising efforts are intended to make a sale immediately. There are advertisements and other promotional strategies which are designed to build or enhance brand image, raise or maintain consumer awareness of a given company, product or service as well as marketing materials which are intended to elicit an immediate response and hopefully, generate sales – and that’s what we’re going to be addressing here.
Direct response marketing takes on many forms, such as short-form advertising copy (such as print ads, radio spots, TV commercials, contextual PPC advertising, etc.) to longer, full page, text-heavy ads, advertorials and the Dale Carnegie-style sales letter marketing messages. All are valid and which medium you use to get your message across depends on what you’re selling and who you’re trying to sell it to; that much you probably know if you’ve spent more than ten minutes in marketing – also the timing that your message meets your audience is just as important.
The Right Message To The Right Market In The Right Media At The Right Time
All four of these factors are important to the success of any direct response advertising campaign – and we’ll briefly cover all four below:
Message: If you’re unable to effectively tell your audience about the advantages of your product or service over your competition’s, then it doesn’t matter how awesome your product or service really is. – you won’t get many, if any sales. Having your message appeal to an emotional level, as well as many other levels, can cause them to take immediate action. We’ll go over this a bit more later, and I’ll show you how to create an attention grabbing message that seals the deal.
Market: As I wrote earlier, even if you offer a great product or service, and even if you have a great message, it really doesn’t matter if you’re targeting the wrong audience. Don’t bring coal to Newcastle. Before producing a direct response marketing campaign, you need to know who your target audience is – and if you don’t already then you need to back up to the beginning of how your business does it’s marketing research. You’ll never be able to create a working direct response message unless you know who you’re selling to.
Media: The media you choose to convey your message to your target audience depends a great deal on the demographics of this group; and again, this is where market research comes into play. Depending on who your target market is, different media channels will be more – or less effective in reaching them. Some groups will be more receptive to direct mail, others to print advertising and still others to email marketing, banner ads and other online marketing strategies. Just as if you were preparing to give a speech, you have to know your audience in order to create a message and a method which will allow you to make the greatest possible impact.
Moment: Timing is just as important as targeting the right audience with the proper message using the correct form of media. So what’s the correct time? When they want to buy, not when you want to sell. You’re always in sell mode, but even after choosing the proper demographics your customers may not always be ready to buy.
Making sure that your message reaches the right people – people who are ready and willing to do business with you right now – involves a combination of the other factors; message, market, media and moment are all important parts of a direct response campaign that genuinely produces results and provides you with a good return on investment.
There are a few ways of doing this. Email and auto-responder software can be used to stay in touch constantly with possible clients. If your target audience is better persuaded through offline methods, then by targeting the media that best draws their attention is a good way to ensure that your marketing message is heard.
But any way you look at it, these are the 4 componenets of successful small business advertising…
You’ve just read a small segment of the free guide titled “How to Use Direct Response Small Business Advertising to Grow Your Sales and Profits.” The guide is available for free – along with several other resources for small business owners – when you sign up for small business advertising e-course…
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