Do you use this marketing trick to boost your sales and build great customer relationships?

In this article you will learn how to effectively write your advertisements in order to increase click-thru rates and better target your select audience in pay-per-click search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN which will ultimately lead to you getting more bang for your buck.  You will also learn how you can still communicate with a potential customer even after he or she leaves your web site.

The first things that need to be covered are the concepts of branding and direct response marketing.  These two concepts will create the foundation for us to work off for creating the proper kind of advertisement depending on the situation you are in.  The type of marketing we are used to seeing on television and in magazines is usually more about branding.  This means a person is exposed to a certain message numerous times that the company wants associated with their brand.

Read the following sentences and think about what comes to mind.

• Mmm, I'm loving it.
• Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
• Pop, pop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is!

Sometimes the messages are not even set as words.  Certain clothing stores always show young, attractive models wearing their clothes.  They are basically equating sexiness with their clothing line.  Another company may show their product in fun situations.  Once again, they equate an emotion with their product as best as they can.  Huge companies use this approach a lot!  This also means that this tactic is the first thing people think of when it comes to marketing and advertising.  Just because it works for the big companies does not mean it is a tactic that should always be used.

Direct response marketing is another solution that marketers can use to their advantage.  More specifically, it can be very powerful for Internet Marketers and other small businesses that do not have the funds to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on mass media campaigns.

In this kind of marketing there is only one objective. You want your advertisements to generate a list of people who voluntarily give you their contact information and permission to communicate with them.

Sounds pretty simple, huh?

Well, before you fire up your document editor you will want to make sure you do a few things in your advertisements.  You will need to know how to make your advertisement make the right people raise their hand and say, "Hey, I'm interested in what you have to offer!"  You will also need to know what kind of information is more or less likely to make them respond.

It is critical that the right kind of people give you their contact information.  If you have a million people on your prospect list that do not really care about your products or services, then you have achieved nothing more than just having a really big, unresponsive list.  On the other hand, you are golden if you have a list of a 10,000 people that you know are sincerely interested in you.  The way you make sure the right people get on your list is through your advertisement's headline.

One of the easiest ways to do this is by raising a question that relates to their needs and desires.  You will want to write in a way that strikes an emotional chord in your potential customer.  I know you were taught that logic is everything in your High School science classes, but when it comes to the human mind logic is not always the driving force behind decisions. If you are marketing a piece of fitness equipment to the general public that is supposed to make their life easy, you might use "Want to lose 10lbs in a flash?"  A few others with a little more emotional impact might be, "Dear Mr. Love Handles, would you like to learn how to shed 10lbs doing almost nothing?", "Tired of being fat and ugly?", or "Need to lose weight now so you can finally get all the ladies?"  Each of these statements appeals to a certain emotion and a certain kind of person.  The first two headlines appeal to laziness and the desire to get something for nothing.  The last two hit on a person's desire to look good for the other sex.

The next part of your advertisement is the body.  Here you will want to inform the person of what you have to offer and provide a call to action.  You might say the following:

• We have helped people just like you shed ugly fat and look better using a simple step-by-step system.  See how.
• Using our easy step-by-step guide, Susan lost twenty-five pounds in two months without breaking a sweat. Learn how she did it.

At the end of each of these advertisements you would then place your web site address.  Here's a sample advertisement with each section present:

Tired of being fat and ugly?Using our easy step-by-step guide, Susan lost twenty-five pounds in two months without breaking a sweat.  Learn how she did it.www.YourSiteAddress.com

Once the person is at your website, you will want a web form to collect the person's contact information.  In exchange for those details, you give the person the information you described in the advertisement.  A major benefit of providing this information to your potential customer is that it positions you as an expert.  In the fitness example, you are perceived as an authority since you are providing a workout routine for the person.  They need what you have, so you have the power.  If you provide good information, you will even build trust with your customer.  By building this trust, you are able to recommend that fitness equipment you need to sell.  As a side note, provide a top-notch product.  This is especially true if you want to do affiliate marketing.  You might get away promoting junk for a while. However, your deeds will catch up with you and you will find it much harder to run your business as your credibility becomes holier than a slice of Swiss cheese.  So, play it straight from the start and you will be set. 

The second major advantage to using this tactic is that you can communicate with potential customers over a period of time.  Instead of losing a visitor after they leave your site, you now have numerous chances to sell products to them.  This takes care of timing problems where a potential customer is simply not in the right position to make a purchase.  It capitalizes on the possibility that in two weeks this same person may be eagerly wanting to purchase your product.

Now you know how to effectively market your products and services when you do not have large sums of money to spend on television branding campaigns. You can increase your bottom line and build a great reputation for your company by capturing your customer's data and building a relationship with them through continuous communication and education that provides outstanding value to your potential customers.