Copywriting Tips
"The
Differences Between Great Marketing and Terrible Marketing"
by
Peter Geisheker,
CEO, The Geisheker Group
Marketing
Company (920) 471-1638
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As
a marketing consultant and copywriter, I see horrible
marketing everyday. The most common mistake I see is
what I call, "me too marketing".
"Me too marketing" is when a business creates a
marketing piece (advertisement, brochure, sales letter,
website, etc.) that looks and reads like an exact copy
of their competition’s marketing. Instead of
demonstrating why their product or service is unique and
offers outstanding benefits, they say exactly what their
competition says. |
For proof of “me too
marketing”, go to your phone book and look at advertising in
almost any category. You can basically exchange the company
names in the ads and the ads are identical. Nearly everybody is
using the same dull clichés such as, “Our customers are #1”,
“Serving your needs for xx years”, “Family owned”, “Best
Service”, “Friendly Service”, “Great Selection”, etc. This kind
of advertising is SO BORING and overused. That is why it
produces such horrible results. If you want to have marketing
that generates a lot of quality leads and puts you ahead of your
competition, you need to be different and prove why your product
or services offers the best benefits to your customer.
To make your marketing great so it consistently generates high
quality leads, here is a list of the differences between great
marketing and terrible marketing:
- Great marketing includes
an attention-grabbing headline that calls out to the target
market and makes a benefit-based promise. Bad marketing does
not include a headline and hopes that the reader will find
the graphics interesting enough to read the marketing piece.
Big mistake!
- Great Marketing focuses on
a powerful benefits-based sales message and promise. Bad
marketing focuses on aesthetic graphic design and being
“cute and creative” and using as little sales text as
possible. A great sales message is a message that promises a
specific result. For example, “If our skin care product does
not make your face look 10 years younger in 30-days or less,
we’ll give you a 110% refund!”
- Great marketing offers
quantitative proof of why a product or service is better
than the competition. Bad marketing just says, “we are the
best.” For examples of how to show proof that your product
is better than the competition, your marketing should make
statements that you can prove such as, your widget lasts 3.7
times longer, it costs 27% less, our company offers a 90-day
100% money-back guarantee while our competitors offer no
guarantee, our widget is guaranteed to last 5 years or we
will replace it for free, while our competition only offers
a 6-month replacement guarantee, etc. You need to make your
marketing promise so strong that people would have to be a
fool to do business with anybody but you.
- Great marketing uses
customer testimonials to give social proof of the quality of
a product or service. Bad marketing does not. How many times
have you purchased something because you read a lot of
customer testimonials praising the quality of the product? I
know I sure have. Testimonials are one of the most powerful
marketing tools you can use, so take advantage of them and
use them in ALL of your marketing. You will instantly
generate more sales.
- Great marketing asks the
customer to purchase by a specific date and explains
step-by-step how to place an order. Bad marketing does NOT
ask the customer to buy and does not have a time-limit for
the offer. To make your marketing great, you must ask for
the order and give a specific time-limit for taking
advantage of the offer. For example, “Buy our widget by
March 25 and get an instant 10% off”, or, “Buy our widget by
March 25 and get a second widget at half price”. You may
think this is a cliché but it works over and over. That is
why you see it used so often on TV, particularly in
infomercials and other direct-response advertising. I
promise you that these companies would not be making these
offers if it was not leading to a lot of sales and profits.
If you apply these simple
strategies in your marketing, I guarantee you will see an
increase in sales. Remember, fortune favors the bold.
You may reprint
this article for free as long as you include a link to
http://www.marketing-consulting-company.com and the author, content and links remain
unchanged.
If you need help
creating a marketing program to determine the precise strategies
you should be using to market your company, or you need help
developing marketing materials such as a brochure, a press
release, sales copy for your website, a display ad, or a sales
letter for a direct mail piece, please call (920) 471-1638 or
email us. We would love to help you improve your marketing.
To view all of the different marketing services we provide,
please visit
http://www.marketing-consulting-company.com.
To Your Success!
Peter Geisheker
CEO
The
Geisheker Group Marketing Company
"We don't help you compete, we help you dominate™?
(920) 471-1638
Fax: (920) 491-9090
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