Recent Marketing and Advertising Articles
for Your Small Business
Chapter Forty-nine: What do you do when it just ain’t
working?
A classic problem that every business will face.
You slave away – hours and hours of blood sweat and tears put
into your marketing campaign.
The big day comes… and a good old WHACK upside the head! It
just isn’t doing what it supposed to do.
I ran into this recently with a client of mine. A very unique
product that helps you lose weight while you sleep – not with magic pills – or
fad diets – or slaughterhouse exercise routines… but with something much more
subtle… and long lasting.
Right from the start, I knew the challenges are:
· Major competition. Some of the biggest players out
there sell into this billion dollar marketplace. They have budgets up the wazoo.
They have entire departments focused in on each advertising campaign.
· Skepticism. For good reason. With all the diet books –
plans – foods – fads and pills out there – everyone has the magic cure… or so
they say. People who are concerned with their weight have probably tried some of
these plans – a select group has tried most of them. Chances are with dismal
results.
· Believability of the ability to lose weight while you
sleep. It is the perfect diet plan right? But it sounds too good to be true.
With that in mind we went about some smaller tests with the
campaign I wrote. It did ok – nothing stellar – but a 3% order rate is not too
bad… could be better though.
So we try some new approaches – and this goes up a little.
And we test more new ideas… and it goes up again.
We are still trying new ideas to help people see that this IS
the real deal and does work. It worked for me – and it has worked for many
others.
The key though for you to take away…
…never give up trying to improve results!
We changed and tested:
· Believability – using more industry statistics – proof
that it delivers – more testimonials
· Order options – we tested pricing – payment options –
and bonuses
· Use of video and audio to improve the personal feel to
it
Each one of these played into the believability. And will for
you too.
Always remember though… there are 3 factors you need to
consider in your marketing success.
1. The message – which is the copy and the way you describe
what is being offered (responsible for approximately 25% of the success of your
campaign)
2. The media – how you get the message out to your market.
Emails, print letters, postcards, tele-seminars, print advertisements, banner
ads – or a combination of them all. (Responsible for approximately 25% of the
success of your campaign)
3. The market – the group of people you know are your best
buyers. Being that this is responsible for 50% of the success – it is THE most
important factor to consider (although you must also pay very close attention to
the other 2). You must know who they are – where they live – what they love –
what they fear – what they read – and every little nuance that makes them who
they are. This BY FAR is the most neglected of the 3.
When you have all 3 in perfect order – your success is much
more likely. Miss one of them – and you could have a failure on your hands.
Test multiple approaches – know the 3 success factors inside
and out – and find the optimal combination that gets the right message out,
using the correct media, to the right market. Then you have a winner.
If you are interested in seeing more about the Sleep Slim
solution – have a look here. Let me know your thoughts.
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