The Key To Marketing New Ideas!
Imagine tossing a pebble into a crystal clear pond on a still day, & watching the ripples make their way to the shore. A tiny cause has a massive effect.
But on a windswept stormy day? You could hurl the largest boulder into the same pool, and the effect would be felt for no more than a few feet.
So it is with marketing new ideas.
Your prospects are in a trance that is like a still pool of awareness. They are in an “I’m worried about money” trance. They are in an “I wish I could finally find that somebody special” trance. They are in an “I’m sick of my dead end job” trance, & so on.
If you enter that trance with your words, your prospects will follow you. They will accept your suggestions. They will give those suggestions power, like the pebble that makes its presence felt on the shore, because receiving your message is effortless.
On the other hand, any striving on the part of your prospect to maintain their attention on your message, because it fails to harmonize with their trance, & no power will be granted.
“Belief Is All-Powerful!”
To enter the buyer’s trance, begin your sales message by showing where your position agrees with their accepted beliefs.
As you move forward, make a logical connection between that which is accepted, & another conclusion that is a step closer to the new conclusion you wish to promote.
This act of mental agreement creates momentum.
For example, let’s say your target market believes that Guaranteed Investment Certificates are the best way to invest for their retirement. Are they likely to listen to you if you boldly proclaim the superiority of Mutual Funds?
But would they give you some attention if you began with, “Would you be interested in more of the kind of money growth you’ve enjoyed through Guaranteed Investment Certificates?”
And then, “If there were a low risk strategy for using GICs, together with Mutual Funds to increase your returns by 53% or more, would you want to find out about it?”
And then, “Give me just 15 minutes, & I’ll show you the failsafe secret to an earlier retirement!”
By establishing empathy in your sales message, you enter the trance. And you can begin marketing new ideas.
Each successive point or question should do three things.
1) Echo accepted belief.
2) Introduce a new element that when logically combined with the previous conclusion, creates a new hypothesis.
3) Raise the level of commitment to the new idea.
You begin pursuing small yes responses, & gradually grow those agreements into bigger YES responses, until your final call to action.
Do you see how this works?
Use questions, statements, & logic that get your prospect thinking YES & OK!
Why Does It Work?
To be human, is to have unlimited freedom of choice. We are able to consciously decide our response to every stimulus. This is our god given gift.
However, we forget this. Instead, we are a bundle of conditioned responses. We hypnotize ourselves into believing that external circumstances give rise to our thoughts.
For instance, if I were to say to you that you are stupid, you would probably become angry. You would think I was a jerk for saying so. That is a choice you make.
You could just as easily make a choice to ignore my remark. You could make any choice you wish. You could even decide to think that I am a jealous fool, & feel sorry for me. The choice is all yours.
On the other hand, if I were to say to you that you are brilliant, you would no doubt feel pleased with yourself. Again, this is a choice. You could just as easily decide to pay no attention to my opinion.
But you forget you are making a choice. You automatically become angry or flattered, depending on the stimulus. You are in a trance of your own making.
To be human, is to be filled with such conditioning.
When we accept a logical conclusion that contains our own beliefs, we are conditioned to accept another one, & then another. Until without even realizing it, we have before long accepted a new belief that we would not have accepted, had it been forced on us in the first place.
Such is the judo of persuasion, & marketing new ideas.
Daniel Levis is a top marketing consultant & direct response copywriter based in Toronto Canada. Recently, Daniel & world-renowned publicist & copywriter Joe Vitale teamed up to co author “Million Dollar Online Advertising Strategies – From The Greatest Letter Writer Of The 20th Century!”, a tribute to the late, great Robert Collier.
Let the legendary Robert Collier show you how to write words that sell…Visit the below site & get 3 FREE Chapters!
http://www.Advertising-Online-Strategies.com/ad-strategies.html
Does Your Advertising Deliver the Right Message
So often small business owners will design their own advertising and some do an exemplary job, but then some don’t and it is a shame really. As a former advertising representative for an Aviation Trade Journal in my younger years, well let’s just say I am pretty aware of the costs of all sorts of advertising, whether it be print, radio, TV, billboards, bus stop benches or even the Bus itself with one of those new shrink rap signs; boy those are cool and they better be as the cost alone is about $18,000 just to put it on the bus.
It is great to see your ad the top of page 3 of the local newspaper, as you know that will certainly generate some interest. But are you delivering the right message to all your thousands of potential customers out there?
Is that message consistent with other advertising? If you are not delivering the right message and it is not consistent you might be actually diluting your brand name, turning off your preferred future customers and cutting into the Return on Investment for that advertising. Don’t waste money.
When designing an add take a look at it and think to your self, does it grab you in under 2-3 seconds. You should be able to tell right away. Then does it tell the right story; that is to say does it deliver the proper message? Consider all this in 2006.
Lance Winslow
Have Something Good To Say
If you don’t get this right, you can just forget about everything else…your advertising will fail miserably if you don’t have something good to say. The great business philosopher Jim Rohn probably summed it up best in his lecture about communications. He was talking about personal communications, not about advertising, but I think the principle holds true. He says to be a master communicator, all you’ve got to do is follow this three-step process: First, have something good to say. Second, say it well. And third, say it often.
In terms of advertising, here’s what that means: Having something good to say means that you’ve innovated your business sufficiently so that you’ve got something of value to the marketplace that’s worth advertising in the first place. Saying it well has to do with taking what you well and saying it in your advertising in such a way that it gets people to notice and take action. We’re going to show you how to use the power of writing and articulating to get more results for the same money spent – say it well. And as for saying it often, that refers to executing your advertising and follow-up marketing in a systematic format that allows you to build brand equity and cost-effectively turn prospects into customers.
So before we get into the how to say it well, let’s spend just a few minutes talking about the first step to successful communication: “Have something good to say.” Some people don’t expect that they have to actually innovate their business to be successful. But so far, in my years of experience, it’s been the best strategy that I’ve seen. You’ve probably heard the old saying that if you build a better mousetrap that the world won’t necessarily beat a path to your door. That may be true; but here’s a strategy that I’ve seen fail a thousand times: Trying to use catchy advertising, tricky words or fast-talking to try and sell the same old, boring mousetrap that everyone else is offering. I think whoever said that line about the mousetrap and the world not beating a path to your door just didn’t understand the principles that govern successful marketing and advertising.
See, once you have created something that people want – or as the common expression goes, sells itself – then advertising becomes infinitely easier. There’s a man named Rossier Reeves who was one of the most successful advertising men in the early days of the business. I know you probably haven’t heard of him, but you’re probably familiar with lots of things he created, even way back in the 50s and 60s; he most famous for M&M’s – “They melt in you mouth, not in your hands.” Anyway, Mr. Reeves pointed this out, “Have something good to say,” way back in 1965: Here’s what he said about writing good advertising:
“The business owner should bring the advertising writer a product or service that deserves to be on the market. It should have significant points of difference from other products. Then the idea behind the advertisement…is very, very easy to find. For example, if a manufacturer brings you car that can go 500 miles on a gallon of gas, you don’t have to look very far for an idea for the ad. The idea is right in front of you. If on the other hand, you have an Edsel that’s not very different from any other car, you are doomed to failure in advance. I don’t believe any advertising brilliance could have saved the Edsel.”
In case you’re not familiar, the Edsel was the greatest embarrassment to the Ford Motor Company in the 50s. They spent record amounts of money promoting it, hyped it to the ends of the earth, then nobody wanted it. Why? Because, despite what the promotion said, it was just another average, ordinary car. Here’s the point: Spending money on marketing, advertising, and the greatest of copywriters of the day didn’t compensate for the lack of confidence or lack of perceived value in the consumer’s mind.
So think about it right now. Do you have “something good to say?” Are there things that you do that make you a better value for the money than your competitors? If not, then why is it that you expect to win in business? If I trotted out the local high school varsity football team to play against the reigning Super Bowl champs, would you expect the varsity to win. Of course not. You’ve got to create something so unique, so good, so unparalleled that it makes your prospects say, “I would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else.”
Rich Harshaw is the founder of the Monopolize Your Marketplace system and CEO of Y2Marketing Business Marketing Strategies