The main goal of advertising is to increase your sales and profits. You don’t do it for any other reason. There are three steps that will help you realize this goal.
Inform
If your company doesn’t have a sales department that actively promote your products or services, you need to advertise. Advertising is salesmanship in print, and you have the ability to replace your sales department. Direct response marketing is your friend if you have a small business. Even large companies are starting to use direct response marketing because it works. With Direct response marketing you are not using images but paint pictures in words. You are using emotional language to pull the prospect to you. You are concentrating on his hopes and fears. You know his problems, and you are providing the solution.
The first step is to give your prospect an offer which solves a problem for him.
Persuade
With Direct response marketing, you can persuade your prospects to respond straight away to your offer. The prospect knows if he wants the information which solves his problem, he has to respond right now. Otherwise it may be gone forever. You can then capture his details and send him this offer. Now you have him in your list of prospects, and you can market to him. This helps you to continue to persuade him.
Being able to capture his details immediately makes it possible for you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising, something which image based advertising can’t do. There you just have to hope people see it and come to you to ask more questions. For us here at PurpleBiz, hope is not a strategy.
Remind
After you capture your prospect’s contact details, you then need to send him more messages to remind him of the solution you have to offer. The solution would be a product or a service. Being able to send him reminder messages helps you to stay fresh in his mind, and when he is ready to purchase, he will know to come to you. Reminders helps your prospect to come to you and not go to one of your competitors.
If they have purchased a product or service from you, you can remind them of their satisfaction with the product or service. You can then offer them another product or service.
Follow-Up
Not only do you need to follow up in reminding prospects to buy, you also need to deliver good on the promises you made in the advertising to your clients. You need to give excellent service, and a great purchasing experience. It is therefore essential to keep your CRM up to date and to follow up with your customers or clients.
If you are new to Direct Response Marketing, and new to online marketing, you need to list your business in online business directories. Not only can your prospective customers find you easier, but you can find prospects too. This is your first step to being found online as Business Directories help you get found with their excellent Search Engine Optimization.
This article was written by Hannah Kramer from Attraction Marketing.