5 Elements of Effective Advertising Copy

Every product, service, and business needs to have strategic, effective marketing to successfully sell, and every effective marketing strategy needs engaging advertising copy. In today’s world of blogs and user-generated content, the importance of good copywriting can be overlooked in favor of keyword-stuffed SEO articles. But as search engines have continued to grow more sophisticated, relevance and quality have become more important than ever.

In this way, marketing trends have essentially cycled back to the same concept that helped to create the industry: effective advertising copy. Advertising copy is basically sales in the form of text, and creating effective copy takes many of the same traits as those of a good salesman. While there will be countless variations and variables depending on your product, audience, industry and many other factors, there are five elements which should be part of any successful advertising copy.

1. Engaging the Reader

This is the first on the list because it is the first thing that should be accomplished by the writing. Your copy should immediately capture the attention of the reader and engage them in an issue that would be important to your target audience. Headlines are generally effective tools for gaining a reader’s attention at the start, but you must remember to keep them engaged throughout the article.

2. Specific Benefits

Marketing copy is more than just a list of features or product specifications; it should be designed specifically to tell your reader how your product or service will meet a need or solve a problem. You must always focus on the benefits of the product/service, as opposed to any features. The copy should clearly and concisely explain to the reader how they will be better off if they give you their business.

3. Proof

Although your writing should explain how a potential customer will benefit from your product/service, they are unlikely to be convinced without evidence. While explaining the benefits and advantages you provide, give authoritative, factual evidence to prove it. This could come in the way of statistical data, customer reviews, example scenarios and a number of other techniques, as long as it is viable.

4. Persuasion

Since your overall goal is to gain the reader’s business, your copy should be persuasive above all else. The best way to ensure this is to put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customer. Think about what they want from your product or service and what they would need to understand in order to buy it.

5. Call to Action

If your copy is engaging, persuasive and focused on proven benefits, it’s time for the clincher– a call to action. This is the element that inspires your reader to act now and take the intended next step. It could be a pop-up for an email list, download of an e-book, a phone call to your sales team, free product demo or any other number of possibilities.

Identifying and Targeting the Right Customers

In order to have any sort of success in marketing, you must first identify the type of people who would want your product/service and tailor your marketing efforts to fit them. This may seem like a relatively simple process, but major companies spend millions of dollars to track statistics, analyze data and profile the right people for their business. But for those without these sort of resources, there are still some simple ways to identify and target your market effectively.

One of the easiest ways to locate and understand your potential customer base is to ask yourself two questions:

• Specifically, what do my customers want from me?
• What sorts of related products or services are they currently buying?

Once you understand what people would want to buy from you and what businesses they currently engage with, you will have a clearer picture of your target market. If you can identify the businesses target customers already use, you can engage these businesses and share customers through incentives, affiliate programs, and other similar arrangements.

To put it more simply– you should find businesses with the same sort of customer profile and start a relationship with those business owners that is mutually beneficial. The result should be:

• For You: A clear customer profile and target audience for your business
• For Your Partner: Added value gained through their current customer base

The Formula

While this is a relatively straightforward concept, identifying businesses to partner with and understanding how beneficial these relationships are can get a bit complex. One of the best ways to understand this is a formula developed by Jay Abraham:

LV = (P x F) x N – MC

• LV: lifetime value of the customer
• P: average profit margin of each sale
• F: number of customer purchases per year
• N: number of years customer is with your business
• MC: marketing cost per customer

For those who are not particularly fond of algebra, the formula basically represents the overall effectiveness of your efforts. A higher lifetime value indicates successful marketing efforts over an extended period of time.

The Process

Although the process of identifying your target market can become complex, this technique can be broken down into three relatively simple steps.

• Identify businesses which already serve the type of customer you seek.
• Build a relationship with these businesses through incentives and mutually beneficial programs.
• Target your marketing efforts towards this group of customers and individuals with similar buying tendencies.

Simple Marketing Tips for Startups

As an entrepreneur, you likely have your plate full, from the time the sun comes up until the time your head hits the pillow. Starting your own business is one of the most rewarding possible career paths, but running your business takes more time and effort than any traditional job ever could. In addition to developing and improving a quality product/service, you also need effective marketing strategies to get the word out about your business.

Luckily, the marketing of your brand does not need to be one of the more time-consuming elements of building a successful business. You will need stronger outreach and more efforts geared towards marketing early on, but if your startup marketing is done correctly, it should begin to create its own organic growth. This guide is designed to go over a few of the simple marketing techniques that will help your startup reach the right audience and successfully grow into a thriving company.

Your Audience

One of the fundamental keys to marketing success is defining your audience. Your first step should be to research potential customers, focusing on how your service or product will fill a need for them.

• Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and try to understand what they would want from your business.

• Study your competitors’ methods and try to determine how they effectively reach the same type of customers whom you hope to gain.

Once you have identified your target market, the next step will be reaching out to them. Remember that effective marketing is essentially an exercise in communication. Your marketing efforts should speak to potential customers, not at them.

Following Up

The worst thing a company can do is to gain a customer’s business then immediately abandon them once the transaction is complete. Your current customers have already purchased your product, and these are the people– or at least the demographic– that are most likely to purchase it in the future.

There are three types of follow-ups which can help to show your customers that you plan to build a real relationship with them.

1. In Person – You should try to meet customers face-to-face as soon and often as possible.
2. Over the Phone – Follow-up calls should be conducted soon after business is transacted to go over details, answer questions and foster a relationship.
3. Email / Letter – Thank you letters and emails will go a long way in showing the customer that they are important. The choice of paper or digital may be based on a number of factors, and there are instances when both are good.

How to Educate and Retain Your Customers

Businesses are constantly scrambling to engage and convert new customers. Successful companies need efficient marketing, customer outreach, and sales to let people know about the company and bring in their business. Unfortunately, far too many businesses focus entirely on attracting new customers, and they fail to nurture and retain the customer relationships that they already have.

Every effective marketing strategy begins with analyzing your current customer base. These are people who have already bought your product or engaged your services, and they provide the clearest information on the type of people who should be targeted for future business. But this information is not only useful for statistical data– the people who have used your business in the past are the most likely to use it again in the future.

Understanding Customer Retention

Customer retention is the ability of a brand or business to retain customers through a set of activities, strategies, and actions geared towards customer satisfaction and repeat business. It is an essential part of good business, and it begins at the very first contact between a company and a customer then lasts throughout the entire life of the relationship.

Retention has been shown to have a direct correlation with the profitability of a business. Since retaining current customers is often simpler and cheaper than acquiring new ones, most successful businesses put a premium on customer retention.

How to Retain Customers

There are many factors that are directly related to successful customer retention, and it is not only dependent upon the specific product or service provided. Customer satisfaction is the measurement that is most closely related to retention, and a high level of satisfaction can be achieved with a quality product/service, exceptional customer service, a focus on customer relationships and several other factors.

Some of the most effective strategies for keeping happy customers and earning repeat business include:

• Constant Contact: Simply staying in touch can be the most efficient way of maintaining a good relationship. You should try to stay in contact with your customer base through email, phone, newsletters, social media and any other means that are necessary and appropriate.

• Inside Access: Your current customers should always be offered the best deals, rates, and specials. They should feel as though being your customer makes them part of a special club with inside access to the best parts of the business.

• Professional Integrity: As in any aspect of a business, professional integrity can be the most important element of customer retention. Do what you say; say what you mean, and always uphold any promises and guarantees made to customers. Simple honesty and integrity will do more for your customer relationships than any clever marketing or special deals ever could.

Lessons I Learned from Paris Hilton

Today we’ll talk about shameless self-promotion. That’s right, I said it! Shameless! After all, we are learning from Paris Hilton here.

It’s all about self-promotion! Self-promotion comes in many forms and you can use different tactics to get your name out there. Look at politicians! Talk about self-promotion and in some not so discreet ways, at that. But, seriously, consider some of the major superstars we all know. Madonna, Donald Trump, Howard Stern and Bill Clinton, just to name a few.

We all self promote. Did you raise your hand in class to show the teacher you knew the answer? Of course! That’s self-promotion. This is the kind of self-promotion we are talking about. With dignity, class and the knowledge to back it up. If you self-promote only to prove you don’t really know what you’re talking about, you’re going to lose business.

Natural self-promoters are the former and I want to tell you about the three major traits they have and use to build themselves and their businesses.

1.The first is position. You need to position yourself around people who can make a difference in your life. You need to do this frequently. You need to wake up every morning and ask yourself “Who can I meet today who will make a difference in my success?” In fact, go a step further, write it in big, bold letters and tape it on your bathroom mirror.

Also consider:

Who can help me meet my goals?

Is it a prospective customer/client? A colleague with contacts? An association with key members who may become prospects?

Don’t settle into interacting with the people who are the easiest to access. You need to reach outside your comfort zone and there you will find a wealth of new connections that will bring you great success

2.Now, let’s talk about Style. No, this doesn’t mean you need an Armani suit to bring in more business (though, let’s be honest-it wouldn’t hurt) J What this really means is how are you different from your competitors and others in your industry. What makes you memorable with customers?

If you are meeting a lot of people and they don’t remember you once you leave the room, you have a serious problem! This means you have an opportunity to present yourself in a more memorable way.

There are lots of little subtle changes you can make. Reassess your:

• Business cards
• Company message
• Your picture
• Your wording

Maybe even, your hairstyle (of course, now we’re back to the expensive suit, but it really works!)

You get the idea. There are lots of little ways you can work on making your image and business more successful. Also, consider how you sound on the phone and how you great people at meetings or other events. Think about your 30-sec elevator speech.

3.The third trait of natural promoters is repetition. You can’t say it once and leave it at that. Successful self-promoters say it as many times as they need until they get a response. Would you remember a commercial for Coca-Cola if you only saw it once, no! You see it over and over and eventually you head out to the store.

You, also, have to make multiple impressions on those you are networking with in order to build brand awareness. Repetition is in direct connection with positioning. Once you find people to network with, reach out and find hundreds more who can help in your success as well.