Every now and then an ad makes me want to remonstrate the copywriter… and then rewrite it myself.
Ad in The Oregonian 3-5-17
“First you need to enter the conversation going on in the prospect’s mind.” — Robert Collier.
If your message doesn’t address something your target’s already thinking about, you’ve flunked the “So What” test.
The ad above was in my local newspaper the other day. What conversation does this sentence enter?
Silver Chef’s meal plans are carefully planned by a registered dietitian, then prepared by a highly skilled chef with a senior’s needs in mind.”
I mean… so what?
Silver Chef customers won’t care about Silver Chef…unless they think the company can help solve a problem. This message doesn’t help anyone solve a problem.
I’m in their target demographic — 50’s with an aging parent. As a potential customer, I’d shrug and turn the page.
But the professional copywriter in me suspected there was a better story to tell. So I went to their website, and learned that the company actually tackles a problem that many boomers may have.
What conversation is the family member of a senior citizen having? They may be worried their loved one is not eating properly, and looking for ways to help them stay independent.
What if the ad entered that conversation? What if it said something like this?
We Deliver Peace of Mind Right to Your Door
If someone you love could use some help with meals, call us. Each day we’ll prepare carefully-balanced individual meals — breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack — and deliver them right to your loved one’s home. All they have to do is heat them up and serve.
The headline I used was already on the Silver Chef website. I wrote the body copy myself, quickly (for money, I’d be happy to spend more time on it — call me, Silver Chef!).
If you make your ad about you, you’ll flunk the “So What” test. Talk to your prospects about them, and you’ll pass.
If a client ever tells you “Everyone” is a target customer, tell them about John Grisham.
Photo by alphaspirit
As 2016 came to a close, Grisham’s thriller The Whistler was the #1 hardcover fiction book in the United States.
So when Grisham tells an interviewer he has a particular target in mind when he writes, marketers should take notice. Here’s his take, according to the New York Times:
“First of all, she’s female, because two-thirds of all books are bought by women. She’s going to buy it during the Christmas season, because 35 percent of all books are sold during the Christmas season. I would guess she’s probably going to be over 40, because they buy more books than under 40. And that kind of narrows it down. That’s probably my typical reader.”
Grisham sells a whole lot of books to a whole lot of people. But he recognizes that some people are more likely to buy than others. So he writes with a woman over 40 in mind, and often releases his books in the fall.
Too often, advertisers either don’t bother to focus on a target, or they choose to focus on the wrong target. As you work to craft campaigns for your advertisers, take a lesson from John Grisham: it pays to aim the message at the people who are most likely to act on it.
Examples:
Aesthetic Medicine Practices
I have met with a lot of clinics that offer Botox and other injectibles, fillers, hair removal treatment, and other elective procedures. Every one of them has told me that 85-90% of their patients are female.
But some of them devote a significant portion of their budgets to an effort to attract men. In their minds, it makes sense to grow an under-served population. The problem with this is that men, as a group, are much less likely to walk into their waiting room.
In fact, the owner of one clinic told me she’d had to establish a separate, unmarked exit because men didn’t want to be seen at a practice like hers.
Meanwhile, she said, women bring their friends.
If a dollar aimed at women is 8 times (or more!) as likely to work as a dollar aimed at men, why aim precious dollars at men?
If you’re a motorcycle dealer thinking of going after the female market, that’s good news.
But here’s the flip side of the argument: after doubling, the percentage of motorcycles owned by women was…14 percent.
If you’re working with a motorcycle dealer to choose a target, a starting point for the conversation is that, based on national statistics, a dollar aimed at men is six times as likely to bring in a buyer as a dollar aimed at women.
If the percentage of women doubles again in the next decade, over 70% of the market will still be male.
What about age?
The average age of motorcycle owners has climbed to 48, with Baby Boomers outnumbering Millennials 4 to 1.
If you win…what’s the prize?” — Jim Doyle
The motorcycle industry and some manufacturers are working to broaden ridership, and can afford to take the long view.
But for a dealer who needs a return on their advertising investment this year, older is likely to outperform younger, and aiming the message at men will generate significantly more traffic than going after women.
Three Ways to Help Your Clients Pick a Target
Ask.Really. Some clients have never thought about it.Two questions I ask all the time are: “On a day to day basis, do you see more women than men, or more men than women?” and “If you had to choose a 15-year age spread that’s really the core of your business, where would you put it?
Your station or company’s research department may have national or local statistics for a category. Trade groups like the Radio Advertising Burea also have industry demographics.
Google “[name of category] demographics” and “[name of category] trends”, and you’ll find at least the beginnings of a story. I got the information on motorcycles by Googling “motorcycle demographics” and “percentage of women who own motorcycles.”
Could the advertiser try to attract a different kind of customer? Sure, but it is extremely expensive to try to change the the market.
Seth Godin puts it this way:
Alerting a market segment that isn’t looking is a thousand times harder than activating a segment that just can’t wait for your arrival.
The fastest and cheapest way for a business to grow is to find more customers who look like, act like, sound like, think like, and spend like the people who are already spending money with them.
Don’t try to change the parade. Help your client figure out what direction the parade’s heading, and then get in front.
Now that traditional media companies are offering a full array of digital advertising products, we (and our clients) benefit from all of the measuring tools available to us.
When the message is online or on mobile, we have lots of metrics to choose from. It’s important to choose wisely when it’s time to keep score.
In sales presentations, I often see Account Executives focus on their ability to generate click-throughs. Sometimes they even guarantee a specific number of clicks as part of the package.
Problem: the desired end result for most advertisers isn’t a click-through — it’s usually a sale. Clicks are an activity, not an outcome.
A recent study by the SEO firm Straight North demonstrates that all click-throughs are not created equal.
Over 18 months, Straight North analyzed more than 350,000 form submissions and phone calls generated by internet marketing campaigns. What they found is startling:
Only half of them — roughly 178,000 — were genuine sales leads.
Photo by Brian Jackson
According to Straight North,
Roughly 50 percent of all inquiries are not sales leads, instead made up of things such as:
Customer service communication
Sales solicitations
Job applicants
Phone misdials
Auto-dialers
Full voice mail systems and other phone menu issues
Spam form submissions
Empty form submissions
Form submissions missing contact information such as an email or phone number”
Straight North points out that lead validation is crucial here. When you don’t know what happened after the first click, you don’t know what you’re delivering.
[shareable text=”Clicks are an activity, not an outcome. Focus on the true goal” http://wp.me/p4RXlM-1n4]Clicks are an activity, not an outcome. Focus on the true goal” — Phil Bernstein[/shareable]
If it turns out that half of the click-throughs your campaign delivers are worthless, you may not be delivering the outcome that your advertiser wants.
To generate more sales from the campaign, you’ve got two choices:
Increase the quantity of the clicks with more advertising. If the overall number rises, you can generate more sales even if the ratio of good-to-bad doesn’t change.
If the budget won’t allow more advertising, you need to focus on improving the quality of inquiry, with sharper ad copy, stronger landing pages, and a better sales funnel.
You may think you’re selling click-throughs, but your client wants to buy sales.
When I sold advertising for the New York Mets, my efforts were aided by some built-in urgency: every advertiser wanted their fence sign to be up by Opening Day.
Photo by Michael Flippo
Opening Day was fixed on the calendar, in early April every year. Clients had to have their copy turned in by mid-February.
Before the painter would even start work, we required a signed advertising contract. This hard deadline forced clients to make a decision.
Advertising sales in the “real world” doesn’t generally work that way.
With the exception of some special programs and events like Valentine’s Day or political season, there’s no natural deadline.
Clients can start their radio, television, print, outdoor, or digital campaigns whenever they want. This week, next week, next month, six months from now.
This can make it tough to close business.
Photo by Boyan Dimitrov
A TV sales manager recently wrote to me looking for ideas to create urgency and close business faster.
I replied that this isn’t always possible, or even desirable. Customers will buy when they’re ready to buy, not when you’re ready to sell.
Every sales leader wants fast sales; the trouble is, there aren’t many fast buyers…They are unlikely to change their buying process to match your selling process, so your only option is to be the one who switches.”
A further complicating factor is that if there are multiple decision-makers, each one may be at a different point in the sales cycle. Pushing a client faster than they’re ready to go can result in a shut-down of the whole process.
That said, sometimes a client is just about ready to go, but needs a push to take action. Here are some ways to create a little urgency when appropriate:
End every meeting with an agreement to move forward somehow.
Has the client asked you to re-work the creative or the broadcast/digital plan? Set a face-to-face meeting where you can bring the revised plan in person. If the advertiser asks you to email it, ask them to commit to reviewing it by a certain date, and schedule a meeting or at least a phone call to discuss it.
Does the client need to talk with his accountant? Ask when that will happen, and make an appointment for a face-to-face meeting the day after that conversation is to take place. This requires the client to put something on his calendar, which will force him to either talk to his accountant or admit that he hasn’t.
Put an expiration date on every proposal. Nothing fancy — it can be as simple as “Proposal valid through 5pm Friday, December 9.” Not in small print — in big print where the client can’t miss it. What happens on December 10 is up to you, but to protect your credibility the deal needs to change somehow. Rates might rise; sponsorship mentions could be pared back.
A variation on this: for the right piece of business, a “sign by Friday” bonus can be very effective. Extra commercials or sponsorship mentions; free production if you normally charge for it. They only get the bonus if they sign by the deadline.
If the idea’s strong enough, and the client likes it enough, tell them that the idea’s too good to go to waste, and you’re going to have to take it to a competitor if they don’t sign on by a certain date. Then… take it to a competitor.
None of this will work if the client’s just not ready to buy. But if they’re on the edge of doing something and need a push, these things may help.
The key is to have your pipeline full enough with clients in all phases of the sales cycle that you don’t need any one deal to close right now.
There’s an easy-to-find source of marketing data about your clients… and many salespeople don’t bother to use it.
Photo by Octavus
It’s your client’s Facebook page.
Before you roll your eyes, take a moment to ask yourself — are you looking at those Facebook pages before every meeting?
In my travels as a broadcast and digital sales trainer, it’s been my experience that less than half of the salespeople I work with look at the client’s Facebook page before a call.
If you’re one who does, congratulations. If you aren’t, you’re missing opportunities.
Here’s what I found during pre-visit prep for one Midwestern market:
“Check out our brand-new TV commercial — it starts next week on Channel 4!” The prospect was about to start a campaign on a competitor, and had posted the ad on social media for everyone to see.
Photos of a brand-new location for a multi-store retailer, with information on an upcoming Grand Opening Sale.
“Come meet the wacky Z95 Morning Crew — they’ll be at our Sherwood store this Saturday from 9 to 11!” That’s how we found out the client was advertising on the radio.
A Facebook page with no posts since July of 2015. When I asked the client about that, she told me she wanted to do something with social media but really didn’t know what or how.
All of these things were in plain sight on the customers’ Facebook pages — and all came as a complete surprise when I mentioned them to the AE’s.
Many clients update their social media feeds much more often than their own websites. They do this because Facebook is easier and faster to change, and because they are more comfortable on that platform — they are spending a lot of their personal time there anyway.
For this reason, you should be checking Facebook and the client website before every meeting.
Things to look for:
How many “likes” do they have? If you’ve been to the page before, how does this compare to the last time you looked?
How often do they post?
Scroll down the page — what are they talking about? Is it mostly sales pitches? Employee profiles? Photos of happy customers? Invitations to events they’re putting on — or radio remotes put on by your competitors?
How long has it been since the last post? If it’s been more than a month or two, they may need help — and your digital team may be able to help them.
Click on the “Videos” tab — are there any commercials?
Although Facebook is the most common channel advertisers are using, many companies you call on are also using Twitter. And, of course, the people you meet with are likely tohave profiles on LinkedIn.
Check ’em all.
If you go through this exercise every time, you’ll learn things about your clients and prospects that they might never tell you, even as they’re telling the rest of the world.
From there, you can turn that knowledge into money.
