How to break through the marketing noise
It’s a new year, a new decade, and a new economy. More than ever before, your customers and prospects are bombarded with advertising. By some accounts, we’re exposed to over 3,100 marketing messages daily.
As a business owner or marketing director, how do you break through the marketing noise?
Two simple (but not easy) ways:
- You need to use direct response marketing.
- You need to connect with your audience and speak their language.
These two ideas are inter-related, but let’s take them one at a time.
Direct response marketing?
Just like it sounds, it’s marketing designed to elicit a direct response from your prospect. Marketing that gets them to move. Take action. Buy.
It’s not an image or awareness ad, or the very 2003-ish concept of branding. Unless you’re Coke or Nike, there’s no need for that.
In this economy, every advertising dollar counts. You’d better be skillfully persuading your readers to buy your product or service.
Now, you know your business better than anyone, right? Since we’re watching our advertising dollars, it probably makes sense to write our own ads, doesn’t it?
Maximize your return on investment
Well…maybe not. If you can afford a professional copywriter, you’ll get a bigger return on investment.
A good copywriter will break through the marketing noise. Grab the attention of your readers. Connect quickly with them. Understand their hopes and fears and needs and concerns. Get them to act by buying your product or service, or bring them into the “pipeline” so you can build trust, and make a sale down the road.
So, how does a copywriter do this? That’s a topic for a year’s worth of blog posts!
Suffice it to say, it’s a rare skill and a refined art at the same time. It takes years to get somewhat good at, and probably a decade or more to master.
Copywriting is selling
But realize that copywriting is basically selling, online or in print.
A good copywriter will connect in a genuine way with your prospects, speak their language, and skillfully and smoothly help them to buy. (Notice I said “help them to buy”, not “sell them”. There’s a difference.)
Tomorrow we’ll look at one technique used by many top copywriters to connect with readers and generate sales. Infuse this technique into your marketing materials, and I promise your small business will grow.
For now, remember: Using direct response marketing and connecting with your audience will help you break through the noise.
