Santa Barbara Advertising Solutions

If your sales are stuck in reverse, maybe you should step back and think about the basic fundamentals and rules for successful advertising.

If you want your advertising to boost sales, you need to understand the needs and wants of your customers and then create a unique value proposition that will compel them to purchase your product or service.

To make your advertising effective, think about applying and practicing the fundamental rules of customer engagement. Then hire an agency to create a creative advertising solution that reflects and embodies these principles.

Establish Your Objective

It’s amazing how many companies develop an advertising campaign without a clear objective in mind. It’s imperative to have a firm objective. This is your rudder to keep you on target. Keep it simple and clear. Be specific: set the exact number of leads, orders, inquiries or responses you want. Be realistic: does your budget match your goal? Can you measure results? Know your "doubling day or half-life" so you can take corrective action, up or down, to accomplish your objective.

A good idea is to put your objective in writing so everyone understands the objective you are trying to accomplish. Share this with all employees who will be interfacing with customers - even the delivery boy. This is the Psychological Principle of Commitment: when you put it in writing you commit yourself to perform.

Brand awareness may be helpful but it won’t necessarily have much of an impact on sales. At POP, we focus on the return on your investment. For that reason, we don’t recommend brand awareness as an end in itself.

Target the Right Audience or Market Segment

Build a database of your customers so you will know who they are what they buy. One size does not fit all. Different offers and copywriting is essential for each niche or segment of your market. Your market is composed of: Best Customers, Average Customers, Marginal Customers, Inactive Customers, Problem Customers (best left to competition), and Prospective Customers. Each of these individual segments requires a uniquely different offer and individualized copy to become profit centers for you.

Manage Your Customers as a Highly Valuable Asset

What is your current customer inventory? What are their lifestyle patterns? What is their Lifetime Value to you? What are their economic and behavioral patterns? You get higher sales revenue from old customers than you do from new customers. There is a direct relationship between customer duration and cash flow. Referral customers turn into best customers. Do you have a customer acquisition and retention budget? On average you will lose between 10% and 30% of your customers each year - due to death, departure and dissatisfaction. To grow, each year you need to replace more customers than you lose.

Sell Solutions, Not Products

Show what your product will do for the customer. Every product or service does a job that solves a problem or serves a specific purpose. Sell Solutions. Goods and services have no intrinsic value; they only deliver benefits to people. What benefits does your product offer? WIIFM - What's In It For Me -- This is all your customer wants to know. "On Target" copy tells the benefits and reveals the features that make the benefits possible.

Hook the Reader's Attention

A "Hook" has self-interest or news value that compels the reader to see, read, understand, believe, like, want, buy, repeat, or recommend your product to others.

Read this sentence: "Increase your vocabulary and grow rich."

Now read this sentence: "How to increase your vocabulary and grow rich."

Two words – How to – stir the imagination.

Develop Your UVP

The Unique Value Proposition (UVP) differentiates you from your competition. What is the "Inherent Drama" in your product or business? This is your Unique Value Proposition, or UVP. "Something" fascinating and dramatic exists in every product or service. What is it in your business? This "Something" should be the big idea you sell through your advertising. It is your UVP that makes you unique. Concentrate your selling on this strength.

Build Loyalty and Trust

Using the psychological principles of affinity, friendship, and consistency.

Customers buy from you for 2 reasons:

• They like you.

• They like your sales offer.

When your customers perceive that you have their best interests in mind, you have a business friend. Always fulfill what customers expect from you: service, honesty and respect. And do it consistently.

Think Long-term Relationship, Not a "One Shot" Hype

Never will there be a single moment in time when everyone who could buy from you will buy from you. There is a difference between sales promotion and advertising. Sales Promotion is used to hype immediate sales: "Buy Now." Advertising develops long-term relationships.

Perform Market Research & Testing

People do things for their reasons, not yours. What you want to tell them may not be what they want to hear. Research will improve your skills and reduce risk. When you keep in tune with your market, you keep a step ahead of your competitors.

Testing: The objective of testing is to improve bottom line profits.

3 reasons why you want to test:

To find out if a new product or service is right.

To increase sales by:

• Increasing response rate

• Increasing average order

• Increasing frequency of purchase

Decrease Costs of:

• Promotion

• Credit and collections

• Fulfillment

• Cost of products sold

Not every scenario is the same, but these cardinal principles can make the difference between dull or irrelevant advertising and advertising that sells. Determine what you want to do, and then develop your battle plan to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

Bob Hemmings, a friend and colleague and one of the Hall of Famers from the Direct Marketing Association, wrote about Direct Marketing and Sales Strategies in 2008 for a newsletter we co-wrote called Marketing Matters. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Bob for starting me to think about effective advertising.