The Top 5 Ways to Double the Response or More of Your Advertising

Before I go into the top 5 ways in which to double the response of your advertising, I need to tell you something.  But before I tell you this one thing that will change the way you view advertising forever and put you ahead of 95% of the businesses out there, you must promise me you will have an open mind.

Promise?

Ok.  The one thing I have to tell you, that is the basis of all advertising and what you must keep on your mind everytime you do your advertising is that:

Advertising is Salesmanship Multiplied

Have you read that before? If not, that’s okay...not many businesses know this.  If they knew this, then there wouldn’t be so much trash on TV, in the newspapers, on billboards, in magazines and on the radio.

To understand the concept, imagine that each one of those people reading the newspaper (there could be thousands if not millions) are glancing at your ad.  Salesmanship multiplied means having a lot of salespeople promoting your product or service to each one of those people...

with the same words, the same voice and all at the same time.

Why is this one idea so important?  2 reasons:

1) Advertising is leverage.  Say you are putting an ad in a newspaper.  That one square with your product or service that cost a few hundred dollars is going out to thousands of people.  If that advertising works, then you will have a flood of business.

And if it doesn’t work, then you are out a few hundred.  Look at your risk reward ratio: downside is several hundred.  Upside is unlimited. It’s worth it to try it a couple of times to satisfy yourself that you are not losing out on all that upside potential.

2) You are paying for it.  It’s your blood, sweat and tears that is paying for that ad.  Wouldn’t you want every last penny from it?  Wouldn’t you want it to justify itself, prove itself to you?

Can you see now why everything follows from thinking about your ads as salesmanship multiplied?

Now that you are thinking along the same direction I am, it will be a lot clearer why the top 5 ways to double your response are true. 

There are hundreds of things you can change with every ad you put out.  Some are words, size of the ad, colors, and so on.  Too many in fact.  What if I told you that the bulk of the response rate came from only optimizing 5 of those things, not several hundred? 

And by optimizing, I mean either adding it in, or changing it every once in a while to see if it changes response.  Here goes:

1) The first and most important aspect of marketing any product or service is the market you are aiming for.  This can only be found by figuring out a typical profile of someone that is likely to buy or has bought your product or service.

The same ad in different markets may go from no response to thousands of responses.  I did that with a client I was working with.  We tried an ad in a bulletin and got only one response.  We put the SAME ad in a sign and got over $36,000 worth of business within a couple of weeks.

2) The second most important aspect is the headline of the ad.  Think about how you read the newspaper.  Studies show that people just scan the headlines for the articles they are interested in reading (which their brains pick out in a split second).  The same goes for your ad. 

It is absolutely imperative that you have a headline!

And it cannot be just your company name, or some other self serving phrase.  It has to be something that appeals to the reader.

Try a couple of different headlines.  And try to put the word “You” in the headline.  Studies show that the word “You” is the most compelling word in a headline.  I would say it’s the second most compelling word.  The first, in my opinion and experience is the reader’s name. 

3) Your offer is the third most powerful thing to tinker with after the top two.  The top two are just to get you noticed and getting noticed is over half the battle.  Once they are reading your ad, you had better have a compelling offer.

Here’s a formula for a compelling offer that may be worth over $50,000 to you:

a)      Something people want: You cannot sell something to someone if they aren’t interested.

b)      Risk free: Take the risk away from the buyer for once. Let them feel safe purchasing your product or service.  Use a guarantee.

c)      Attractive price: This is of course important and is the topic of item 4 below.

d)      Benefits to the person: What does your product do for them?

e)      Credibility factor: You need to be believed.  Establishing believability is one of the biggest challenges in today’s consumer society.  But that’s the topic of another article.

So to recap the formula:

Something people want + Risk free + Attractive price + Benefits + Credibility = Irresistible Offer

4) Price: Most people think price is the biggest factor with any product or service.  In fact, most of the time it is not.  It can be a deciding factor with comparable products, but is not the whole story. 

For example: if you needed brain surgery, and every doctor was charging $37,000 and you came across one guy that will do a “2 for 1” deal for $48.50, what would you think?

Test prices!  Don’t just set them arbitrarily.  Try higher and lower prices...I have seen both multiply results!

5) Tell them what to do (AKA the so called “call to action”): Most people with busy lives, running two jobs, juggling the kids, worrying about their debt aren’t going to sit there and try to figure out how to buy your product.  If you don’t tell them EXACTLY how to get what they desire, then you will lost a lot of money.

Bonus 6) Yes, I put this one in because it is important.  It’s testing.  Testing is not part of an ad, it is more like what you need to do with your ads to find out if they are optimized (bringing you the highest return on investment they can). 

Most newspapers, magazines and even now the Internet (Google Ads) have the ability to “A/B split test” or run the same ad with one variable changed...this is a good way to test headlines.

You must do this for every ad you run.  Why?  Well, just to give you an example: A Google ad I was running was split with just the order of the second line and the third line changed.  If you know Google Ads, they have three lines, like a classified ad.  So I switched line two and three. No other change was made.

The result?  One ad had a 4.7% click through and the other had a 0.5% click through rate.  That’s an over 800% difference. Imagine what that difference would do to your bottom line.

In the end, ad writing to sell a product or service is all about resonating with your prospect’s desires.  Fall in love with your client and your market, understand the way they speak, buy, and believe and you will never have a problem selling your product or service...through advertising or otherwise.

P.S. Put this article in a place where you can look at often, so you can make sure you are looking at the top 5 critical elements to make sure you are getting the most response out of any ad you are running (and to give it a fair chance to prove itself before you scrap it entirely).

Stay tuned for my next article, where I show you how to figure out which type of ad is best for your product or service.