Get Leads Make Sales

In my work as a copywriter, clients sometimes ask me to review their ads to help them improve their sales results. Here I’ll talk about some of the most common small business advertising mistakes, so you can troubleshoot your advertising and get a better Return On Investment from your marketing.

Layout

Too many small business ads read like a list:

I’m sure you’ve seen these ads; company name at the top rather than a compelling headline. Dry copy which doesn’t manage to get your interest. There is nothing to induce you to do business with this company, even remember it. No call to action is given, just the company address and phone number.
We all know these ads don’t work. They just don’t get people’s attention. Readers want to know one thing: what’s in it for me?

This is a much more effective ad layout:

Headline at the top. (Don’t be tricky: just state the strongest benefit of your product or service.)

The bottom right (known in the business as the “anchor point”) should have a contact number and coupon, if you are using coupons in your ad.

Company name and address at bottom left (where the prospect will find it once they’re convinced.)

If there are illustrations or photos in your ad, follow them with headlines. This will create a narrative structure to your ad and keep readers moving down the page.

It’s a good idea to outline the benefits of your product or service with bullet points. Long copy is great, but it’s a lot harder to write.

How are your ads structured? Do they look like a list, or do they tell a story and give a call to action? If your ads read like a list, then you’ll see better results by changing things up.

Failing to Test and Track Ad Response

Test and fine tune your ads, then track their performance. Even a small change in wording can make a huge difference in sales. This can help you to more effectively spend your ad budget.

How to Track Advertising Response

It’s easy to track your advertising, you can just ask people who call how they heard about your business. If you are publishing many different ads, you can get more complex with your tracking using one or more of these techniques.

Use colour coded coupons in print ads, or track coupons with codes. You can also have callers mention a special offer to track the success of your ads.

Online it’s even easier, there are lots of great tracking software programs that will allow you to compare one page against another or one traffic source against another.

One of my clients a while back tracked their advertising response rates and found that their expensive print ad campaign was bringing in almost no responses, while a nearly free flyering campaign was generating a lot of business. They were able to drop the print ads and save a lot of money while having a more effective advertising and marketing campaign.

What To Test

You should test these things in your ads:

Headlines, Offers, Body Copy, Guarantee, Price

Hint: You’ll get the greatest return by testing headlines first.
When you find something that works, stay with it until you find something better. It really isn’t hard to improve your marketing ROI if you use this approach, yet hardly anyone does it! If YOU decide to take action on this tip, you can save money, leverage your marketing budget, and put some distance between you and your competition.

Taking the time to ensure that your ads are effective at generating responses can make a huge difference to your business. It may even be worthwhile for your company to take on a copywriter. Having an expert on hand to create your advertising can be more than worth the salary you’ll pay him or her.

Not Making The Most of a Powerful Guarantee

Many small businesses don’t have a strong guarantee, or they don’t know how to incorporate their guarantee into their ads. This is important, because powerful guarantees have been shown to increase ad response by 50+ percent.

Guarantees put your customers at ease about buying from you. Your confidence in your product or service will increase their confidence as well.

Here are a few tips for successfully incorporating your guarantee into your ads:

1. Your guarantee needs to make specific promises as to results.

Stay away from the generic guarantee language like “satisfaction guaranteed”. It’s much better to use something along the lines of:

“Be thrilled with your treatment or we’ll pay you to go to the competition”

” 50% increase in traffic to your site in 60 days or your money back”

“Send $45 to [Your Company Name and Address]. If you’re not satisfied, we’ll send you back $50.”

2. Test Your Guarantee

As a copywriter and small business consultant, I spend a lot of time working with my clients to produce guarantees which get the reader’s attention. A lot of business owners worry that they will have a lot of customers taking advantage of their money back offers. If this is the case, then start small ? publish one ad with this guarantee, another without. Track your response rate and the number of returns you see. If it works for you, keep offering the guarantee.

In almost every case, a good guarantee will bring in much more in sales than you’ll end up paying out in refunds. Fine tune your guarantee (wording, conditions and so on). You may see a huge difference in sales between a 30 day and 60 day guarantee.

3. Make your guarantee highly visible

Your guarantee should be a headline; you don’t want your reader to miss it.

What can you offer prospective customers in terms of a guarantee that will make them more interested in doing business with you?

I received an email the other day with the following subject line: “Check marketing off your to-do list”. What? Are you kidding me? Whoever wrote that is either an idiot or they think business owners are idiots. Marketing is a process not an event! It’s something that needs your attention all the time. It’s not a “check off” item.

It’s like the “Whack-a-Mole” game at the arcade. You know the one where you stand in front of a table with a number of holes in it. Little plastic “moles” pop up through the holes and your job it to hit them with a mallet before they disappear back into their hole.

Most businesses don’t know exactly when their prospects will be in the market for their products or services. Prospects “pop up” when they’re ready–not when you are. Therefore you have to be constantly alert in order to “whack” them. You’re marketing effort has to be consistent and constant in order to be in front of the prospect when he’s ready to buy.

So, get started. And then don’t stop. Good marketing is a constant effort, not just something you can “check off” your list.

So, get out there and do it now!