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Seven Steps For
Creating Successful Marketing
After all,
you plan to make money by selling a product or a service or both. The reasons
people will want to buy from you should give you a clue as to the inherent drama
in your product or service. Something about your offering must be inherently
interesting or you wouldn't be putting it up for sale. In Mother Nature
breakfast cereal, it is the high concentration of vitamins and minerals. 2. Translate
that inherent drama into a meaningful benefit. Always
remember that people buy benefits, not features. People do not buy shampoo;
people buy great-looking or clean or manageable hair. People do not buy cars;
people buy speed, status, style, economy, performance, and power. Mothers of
young kids do not buy cereal; they buy nutrition, though many buy anything at
all they can get their kids to eat -- anything. So find the major benefit of
your offering and write it down. It should come directly from the inherently
dramatic feature. And even though you have four or five benefits, stick with
one or two—three at most. 3. State your
benefits as believably as possible. There is a
world of difference between honesty and believability. You can be 100 percent
honest (as you should be) and people still may not believe you. You must go
beyond honesty, beyond the barrier that advertising has erected by its
tendency toward exaggeration, and state your benefit in such a way that it
will be accepted beyond doubt. The company producing Mother Nature breakfast
cereal might say, "A bowl of Mother Nature breakfast cereal provides
your child with almost as many vitamins as a multi-vitamin pill." This
statement begins with the inherent drama, turns it into a benefit, and is
worded believably. The word almost lends believability. 4. Get
people's attention. People do not
pay attention to advertising. They pay attention only to things that interest
them. And sometimes they find those things in advertising. So you've just got
to interest them. And while you're at it, be sure you interest them in your
product or service, not just your advertising. I'm sure you're familiar with
advertising that you remember for a product you do not remember. Many
advertisers are guilty of creating advertising that's more interesting than
whatever it is they are advertising. But you can prevent yourself from
falling into that trap by memorizing this line: Forget the ad, is the product
or service interesting? The Mother Nature company might put their point
across by showing a picture of two hands breaking open a multivitamin capsule
from which pour flakes that fall into an appetizing-looking bowl of cereal. 5. Motivate
your audience to do something. Tell them to
visit the store, as the Mother Nature company might do. Tell them to make a
phone call, fill in a coupon, write for more information, ask for your
product by name, take a test drive, or come in for a free demonstration.
Don't stop short. To make guerrilla marketing work, you must tell people
exactly what you want them to do. 6. Be sure
you are communicating clearly. You may know
what you're talking about, but do your readers or listeners? Recognize that
people aren't really thinking about your business and that they'll only give
about half their attention to your ad— even when they are paying attention.
Knock yourself out to make sure you are putting your message across. The
Mother Nature company might show its ad to ten people and ask them what the
main point is. If one person misunderstands, that means 10 percent of the
audience will misunderstand. And if the ad goes out to 500,000 people, 50,000
will miss the main point. That's unacceptable. One hundred percent of the
audience should get the main point. The company might accomplish this by
stating in a headline or subhead, "Giving your kids Mother Nature
breakfast cereal is like giving your kids vitamins—only tastier." Zero
ambiguity is your goal. 7. Measure
your finished advertisement, commercial, letter, or brochure against your
creative strategy. The strategy
is your blueprint. If your ad fails to fulfill the strategy, it's a lousy ad,
no matter how much you love it. Scrap it and start again. All along, you
should be using your creative strategy to guide you, to give you hints as to
the content of your ad. If you don't, you may end up being creative in a
vacuum. And that's not being creative at all. If your ad is in line with your
strategy, you may then judge its other elements. Jay Conrad
Levinson is the creator of the Guerrilla Marketing series of books - the best
selling series of business books in history. He is also responsible for some
of the most successful ad campaigns in history, including *the* most
successful in history: The Marlboro Man. Jay is responsible for countless
small businesses becoming huge household names. Learn how he does this in his
latest book: "Guerrilla Marketing for the New Millennium"
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