Archive Classics Number 1 - Making Your Marketing More Compelling...

Here is the first of seven of our 'Classics from the Archive'.

This article has helped our subscribers improve their ads, brochures, flyers, sales letters and website copy. It started out with this simple question...

Would any salesperson set out to be vague, clever, and brief and then walk away from the prospect?

The answer is: they wouldn't.

Yet time and time again, businesses (and advertising agencies) make the mistake of creating marketing pieces and ads that do just that.

An effective promotional piece, effective communication, needs to compel action.

It needs to tell your 'magic story', give reasons to buy, and ask for the sale – just as a great salesperson would.

A communication piece with very few words, lots of white space, a big logo, and a clever or vague headline has no chance of achieving those objectives. 

And if anyone tells you this is how to do ads, they're wrong.

But you may say, "nobody has time to read lots of words", right?

True.  NO ONE will read 'all those words'... UNLESS those words are relevant to them, compelling and speak to THEIR needs.  Rest assured, being brief won't make people read your ad either if it has no relevance to them!

Recently, our colleagues in Australia created an ad for a client.  They have created similar ads before, so he was ready for it when all the 'armchair experts' told him the ad was too wordy and that nobody would read all those words.

Credit to him.  He ran with the ad. In a matter of days, it had already produced 27 new patients for his chiropractic clinic.

In 'lifetime value', that equates to over £20,000 in revenue. Not bad for an ad that cost him less than £1,200.