Simply put, its marketing that provides you with direct and measurable results. And both of those points are important…

First of all, if you are not measuring all of your marketing activity, whether its your website’s effectiveness, emails, direct mail, referrals, etc., then HOW do you REALLY know what’s working?

And if you know you’re investing in activity that is NOT working, you stop, right?

And direct simply means you get your prospect to take some sort of action. Its not about a HARD sell, not at all. But about moving them further up the ladder, so you’ve not wasted your money.

What Many Businesses Are Doing Instead

I won’t ramble on too much about this, but there is a popular form of marketing called ‘Image’ or ‘Brand’ marketing.

This often involves witty strap lines or ‘clever’ images, like a row of pencils where they’re all black except one that’s red. Unfortunately witty does not sell or educate your prospects.

And sadly, while this type of marketing may appear visually appealing and might win the designer an award, it won’t actually make you any money.

Isn’t that THE aim of marketing or advertising?

But to many, marketing that is proven, predictable and systematic is boring – even though it produces positive results that you can measure, test and improve.

Ok, it may not win me any awards, but then that’s not why I do what I do. Its to make you more profitable and grow.
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Well first off, I’m hoping you gave this some thought before the end of last year.

If you didn’t, well you need to get thinking… and fast.

But to kick off 2011 I thought that a word of cautionary advice would interest you. It emphasises that knowing what NOT to do is just as important as knowing what you should be doing.

And whilst you may read the next couple of paragraphs and think it is not relevant to you, it IS. Do not think it is not, as this lesson applies to ALL businesses, large and small.

And this example comes from of all sources, the mighty corporation that is McDonalds…

So here goes …

Facebook has a game as part of its site called “Farmville” – basically where real people spend real money buying and running fake farms, looking after fake livestock and meeting at fake farm markets.

You get the picture.

Well, an agency called Appsavvy was employed by McDonalds to work with the creators of Farmville, which incidentally has 18 million real people playing the game.

Sounds good so far you’d think?

But what Appsavvy did was to create the idea of a “game within the game” where you could win NOT vouchers that you could redeem at your local McDonalds, NOT McChicken Sandwiches or Chicken Nuggets and NOT even toys for your kids.

Nope, you could win points to be used at the fake Farmville/McDonalds store (in the game itself) where you could buy hot air ballons and fake trucks that had the McDonalds logo on it.

Yep, thats it. Nothing whatsoever that is going to encourage someone to get off their bums and buy a Big Mac with fries and a shake. Nothing that incentivises someone to visit their local ‘restaurant’.

But what Appsavvy claim it did was to create “brand awareness“.

First off, is there anyone out there that HAS NOT heard of McDonalds? And secondly, the exercise they did achieved nothing for increasing sales for McDonalds.

So how does this relate to you?

Well, any marketing that you do for you business should do one of 2 things…

1) It should be measureable/trackable, so you know exactly how many people responded to it and how well you did.

2) It should give your prospects a reason to contact you – so have an obvious benefit for them.

The whole purpose of advertising and marketing is to generate leads which in turn give you sales. Anything else is costing you money.

If you did know that then you may want to read my previous post about the importance of headlines.

It never ceases to amaze me how many websites and advertisements I see that don’t have headlines. Does yours?

All adverts should have a headline. And a website, flier, brochure – anything you use to market your business is effectively an advert.

So let me show you 5 rules you can follow when writing headlines. You’ll also learn some different types of headlines you can use, and some proven words to use in headlines.

Rules to follow when writing headlines:

1. Your headline must appeal to your reader’s self interest. You should communicate the strongest benefit (or benefits) of your product/service.

Everyone’s favourite radio station is “WIIFM” – What’s In It For Me? Your headline should answer this important question.

2. You must attract the attention of your prospect. If your headline doesn’t it has failed. Your headline must reach out to them and want them to find out more about you. Don’t forget we’re all bombarded by hundreds of messages every day, and YOU need to stand out amongst your competition (and everyone else too).

3. Your headline must deliver a clear message to your audience. Think of how people read newspapers – most only read the headlines.  That’s because we’re all short on time. Because of this, your headline must make a complete statement and compel your prospect to continue reading the rest of your message – the body copy.

4. Including words such as “quick”, “easy”, “guaranteed” can increase readership. People react to emotional words that have a benefit to a problem or challenge that they have. You need to tap in to that.

5. You should use specifics in your headlines, not generalities. For example, “Grow your investment by at least 12.75% in 12 months” is a better headline than “Make Money Fast”. Specifics are more believable. Of course, your body copy can then add an caveats or terms and conditions.

So this is somewhat of a whistle stop tour about how you can use headlines to increase the readership of your message. Of course your body copy also needs to have a similar affect on your audience, but I’ll cover this for you in future posts.

So why is this? Why is it that important?

Well, a headline is really an advert for an advert. Given the function of all your advertising and marketing (including your website, leaflets, brochures, etc.) is to sell your product or service, its pretty important don’t you agree?

And since a headline is an advert for an advert, wouldn’t you also agree writing a good headline is the most important element in copywriting?

After all, the headline gets your reader to continue reading your message. If they stop reading at the headline, you’ve likely lost them as a potential client. The only purpose of your headline is to get your prospect to continue reading your advert, website, sales letter, etc.  It must get your reader’s attention and it must pull them into wanting to know more about you and your business.

You Can Have the Best Product/Service Out There, But …

It doesn’t make a difference because if your headline isn’t any good, your full marketing message won’t get read.
Here’s what two legendary copywriters say about the importance of good headlines:

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.  If you haven’t done some selling in your headline, you have wasted 80 percent of your money.  The wickedest of all sins is to run an advertisement without a headline.”

- David Olgilvy

“Advice to copywriters: When you are assigned to write an ad, write a lot of headlines first.  Spend hours writing headlines — or days if necessary. If you can come up with a good headline, you are almost sure to have a good ad.  But even the greatest writer can’t save an ad with a poor headline.”

- John Caples

If you’re unfamiliar with both of the above characters, you should Google their names… they’re widely regarded as two of the best copywriters ever.

So now you know just how important headlines are in any marketing communication you have. In my next post I’ll give you some ideas on how you can write better, more effective headlines. This will get more people reading more of your message and wanting to find out more about how you can help them.

However, I thought that a recent radio interview that I had may help, and so do have a listen to this (by clicking on the button below) and feel free to leave any questions or thoughts below.

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In Part One of this article I discussed why it is important to understand who your market is and why trying to market your product or service to everyone is a huge mistake to make.

Part Two will now go into more detail as to how you can do this quickly and easily, as well as identifying what you should and should not do in order to maximise your success.

When assessing who your ideal potential customers are, you may well already have a reasonable idea based upon the existing customers that you have. If you keep a database or list of your current customers, you should start thinking about grouping them logically based upon current factors – it may be based upon income or age perhaps? This is an ideal way to start and it will get you thinking in the right direction for the future.

Use What You Already Have

Once you have been through your list of current clients, you can then begin to think about future clients and how you can start targeting them. You will of course already have an insight into what your target audience is, based upon the customers that you already have. You simply have to go out there and find more of the same.

And once again, all it takes is a little work and effort on your part, but the results can be astonishingly successful when you do this correctly, so a little effort can go a long way. I cannot emphasise enough that the money and effort that you’ll be saving in the long run will more than outweigh the initial effort that you have to put in to this.

If one of the demographics you wanted to target was income, do you think you and your team could target the more wealthy areas in your town or city? Of course you could.

You Can Probably Start Doing This Today

All this requires in its most basic form is that you or someone from your team drives around in order to establish where the wealth could be, so big houses and luxury cars could be your first reference point. If you’re more than familiar with the town or city that you operate in, and the surrounding areas in the locality, you probably have a good idea already as to where you could begin targeting.

You can also do a lot worse that by using mailing lists too, as these can be very effective for identifying a target market. In the UK (where I am based), there are several decent companies who provide this service, and they allow you to drill down to your target audience based on certain criteria and parametres.

Once you have established some geographical areas (or whichever criteria you have chosen) to target, you need to find the appropriate means to contact them. You could use direct mail which can be very, very effective and bring a good ROI (Return On Investment) if implemented correctly.

Do Not Fall Into This Trap

Success also comes from not just trying once and then giving up because the uptake the first time around was not what you’d hoped. Certainly in the direct mail arena there are creative strategies that involve your prospect receiving four, five or more mailings and so the first mailing is merely the first piece of a larger puzzle.

At this point you may start looking at your business in a slightly different way. You might be assessing and evaluating what the benefits of your products or services are to your customers, rather than focusing on the features. This process will also enable you to eventually create an unstoppable USP, and together with your focus on your business’s benefits to its clients, you can now market your business with a message that has the correct and desired impact

You have also now found your ideal, target market by looking at your current clientele, as well as the aspirations of perhaps where your business would like to be in the future, or indeed where it should be, and this will have you streets ahead of your competition.

I’ve also had some strange experiences at various networking events that I have attended this week, and so I thought you may find it useful if I identify a major pitfall that could come back to haunt you and your business.

So what I am talking about?

Whether you are a small business owner, a sales person or an executive for a national or multi-national company this rule applies to you.

It also doesn’t matter whether or not you sell to businesses or consumers, or whether you sell a product or a service.

By reading carefully, and considering the information and ideas in this post, you’ll be way ahead of your competitors.

I urge you today, to switch the emphasis of your marketing away from ‘me too’ or ‘brand recognition’ or what I refer to as ’spray and pray’ – basically throwing mud at a wall – and into sound methods that bring direct response to your marketing.

Who Are All These Experts?

And I have come across this so may times this week alone – media sales people, PR consultants, advertising companies, other so-called business consultants, all of whom have no real idea or appreciation for what direct response is or can do for a business.

And frankly this is a worry, as it is one of the most powerful ways to market your business.

I keep hearing “Well I can get any business on page one of Google”. Ok, but what if this is not right for the business?

Sure the internet can be hugely beneficial for some businesses – but not all. And putting all your eggs in one basket is very, very dangerous.

The fact is, whether it is your web site, or your Yellow Pages advertisement, or your radio advertisement or your business card – it should all be geared towards direct response – meaning getting a response from your prospect or client now.

I’ll elaborate more in another post on some of the specific strategies, but essentially its about having a message that means your target audience feels compelled top contact you NOW, rather than doing it next week, or worse still, contacting your competitor.

Don’t do it the way of the crowd, of the 95 per cent of other businesses who have very little clue what they are doing – and are suffering as a result.