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Cyberspace
Dating, The Ultimate in Marketing!
Have you ever looked at the personals in the
newspaper? OK, now you’re lying! If you’re married
then you have looked out of curiosity and if you are single you
have looked as a matter of survival. Regardless of why you
were lurking around in the personals, you should know that those
enticing little ads are marketing in its most basic form.
Some of the ads are just flat entertaining,
while others use about as much imagination in the personals as
they do watching paint dry. I mean, duh, what’s the point,
unless you can lie to strangers. Ok, sometimes it’s fun
the read the personals just to see if there are people out there
more pathetic than yourself. By the way if you are ever
cruising the net and run into Sven Morrison, a Swedish Shipping
baron and Competitive Body Builder, say "Hi" for me.
Honestly I have never really been able to get
serious about the personals. They are all written in that
undecipherable code designed to save money in print. I can
figure out the easy ones, like SWM seeks S/DFNSSD. Single
white male seeks single or divorced female, non-smoker, social
drinker, that kind of stuff. But to be really honest it
would have to be:
HSWMWHLHSGALBBIGTSWOARS,IS seeks
SMODSWLG,BDSWAAV/MC.
This would translate to: "Hugely successful
white male who has let himself go a little bit, but is going to
start working out again real soon, I swear, seeks supermodel or
descending starlet who looks great, but doesn’t see well and
accepts Visa or Mastercard."
So I’m having a little fun at the expense of
my morbidly single brethren. But this is a real indication
of how most people, even business people approach marketing.
What is the point? Why go through all the motions of advertising
and marketing your business, products and services if you are
not going to do something that really attracts attention to the
very thing you are trying to sell? I for one, can not
think of a reason.
We are all marketeers. Some of us
consciously and full time, some unconsciously and occasionally.
But humans can not live together in any society without
marketing to each other, not even in a marriage.
Use your imagination, you do have one!
Imagination is not a enormous stroke of brilliance. Such
metaphors should be kept in reserve for mathematicians and
nuclear scientists. That way people like Einstein and Salk
can be called brilliant for the wonders they bring to mankind
and not be compared to 'Where’s Waldo?’. Even the most
hard core among us has to admit that finding the cure for Polio
and E=MC2 is more intelligent than "Plop
Plop Fizz Fizz" . It doesn’t take brilliance, only a
little imagination. Something that you have in abundance
already.
So let’s look at the elements of a good ad or
marketing effort. Although as we have discussed in
previous newsletters, advertising and marketing are different in
application, they do have the same goal and result. Good
or bad, they have the same result!
First, and I can never preach this enough,
target your market. As much as I tell people this, they
constantly don’t think this one through. Just last week, I
had someone who called me and couldn’t understand why his
discount coupons were not working. (He was not a client at the
time, he is now!) Of course he had targeted his market, he
said, "all luxury car owners." That’s half of it.
Now think, why would people who can afford the most expensive
cars on the planet, be interested in $1 off something?
They really wouldn’t. It cost them far more than a $1 in
time and effort to get to the place that made the offer.
So he didn’t think this one through. Targeting can and
does mean pick your customer, it also means pick your offer
equally well.
Second: Do something to attract attention to
your effort. If it is an ad, then put something in that ad
to stop the reader dead in their eye scanning track. If
you don’t you’ll never get the response you want from the ad.
The headline should not be "Dr. Smith announces the opening of
his practice at....." instead it should be "Fast Effective
Weight Loss Now Available in Brookville."
And I don’t want to hear that advertising is
misleading. Of course it is, all advertising is inherently
misleading. That does not mean that all advertisers are
deliberately deceptive. But how can you claim to do
anything better than anyone else and not be? But if you
don’t make such a claim, who the heck wants to come to you to
begin with. Certainly not you... or I. No indeed, we
want only the best for ourselves. Just ask us!
Next, you have to appeal to the reader's or
listener's or viewer's interest. That can and should be
part of the headline or opening statement, but more so, it
should be followed by something that will keep their attention
for yet another few seconds. One of my favorites was an ad
that read,
"This lawn mower makes cutting the grass so
fast and easy, I bought it for my wife."
You can bet this got the attention of every
male out there. The ad went on to explain a little later
that his wife owned a professional lawn service, and then
explained how good this mower is to someone that has to mow 20
yards a day. The opener did it’s job. It got people
to read the ad. See it doesn’t take brilliance, it takes a
little moxsy and a touch of reality. All men would
secretly love to get out of mowing the grass and we all know it!
Don’t do what you normally do, because
what you normally do never got the non customers to begin with.
It really couldn’t be more simple. If they are not
your customer now and you continue to do what you’ve been doing
all along, they won’t be your customer later either.
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it..... and
it’s always broke. Why is it always broke, because you
don’t have all the business and income you want, therefore it
needs fixing. Don’t be consistent, be direct! Repeat
advertising will only attract the people that you’ve already
attracted. Yes, I know that sometimes people have to see
an ad several times to have it sink in, but remember, that’s
several times, not a hundred times. Babe Ruth didn’t need
to hit the ball seven times to get it out of the park, he only
needed to hit it one really good time. The same rule
applies here. Pick your pitch and swing hard.
And by the way, next time you’re cruising the
personals, and you see spot the ad that is in the beginning of
this newsletter......just ask for Sven! |
