But that doesn’t mean marketing isn’t effective. It can be extremely effective, but only if it’s done right. Luckily, making an improvement to your marketing is easy by following a couple of simple rules and sales strategies. Follow these and you’ll probably improve your marketing more than you could ever have believed. And that in turn will almost certainly lead to more sales and profits.
Number one:
make sure that your advertising (or any type of sales material) is filled with benefits. By that I mean list all the possible benefits your products has, and then put every single one in your ads. This takes a bit of thought, and you want to highlight the benefits that appeal to the most people. But in the end it’s generally true that the more you tell, the more you sell.
You’ll be surprised at which benefits will actually sell your stuff. Some of the most obscure things can be the thing that carries the sale. It could be the peace of mind that comes with your great guarantee. It could be the fact that the product is easy to maintain. It could be the fact that it makes people jealous (for many people having “bragging rights” is a big thing, so don’t exclude this from your advertising)
People buy things for a whole host of reasons, and the more reasons you give that your product or service is great, the more likely your prospects will find one that appeals to them, and go forward with the sale.
One caveat: never put price as a selling point. It’s too easy, and because every other company is doing it, you’ll just bring yourself down to their level.
Number two:
Following on from the point above about different people buying for different reasons, make sure you track which benefits or elements of your sales material appealed to each customer. That means you can discover which elements are working, but also uncover new angles to sell on.
How do you do this?
If people are buying online or through mail order, just ask them to fill in a survey. You can use a sweetener such as a chance to win something to get more responses.
And if you sell in a physical store, it’s as easy as the salesman asking the prospect why they chose to visit the store. In fact, one business discovered that when the salesman used a phrase something like “And what brought you into the store today?”, sales went up.
Why? Well, first of all it reminded the customer what appealed to them about that particular business, which helped get them in buying mode. But asking that question also enabled the salesman to learn exactly what aspects of the product or service had appealed to the prospect, and then highlight those aspects even more, appealing to what the prospect found important.
This is a fairly simple process, and yet many businesses don’t even come close to following the strategies for sales . The advertising is bland and general, and so doesn’t appeal to anyone in particular. And the sales process, once the prospect is actually interested, fails to use the momentum of the benefits the prospect found important. Do the opposite, and chances are you’ll be rewarded with more sales and revenue.
