Marketing 101 for Maximum Sales

What does it mean when we say, “Effective advertising is focused on the prospect.” When you are talking about your product, you are really talking about your prospect! All marketing starts with knowing everything about your buyer and then creating marketing and advertising that they will respond to. It does not begin with thinking about your product.

You can only get the attention of your prospect if you 'meet them where they are'. Without a keen sense of where they are emotionally, physically, and mentally, you are likely to say something they will ignore.

How is that low quality products are sold every day? One of the reasons is the power of effective marketing. On the other side, there are many great products, offering excellent value and yet they don't sell. Why? Poor marketing! It's important to understand the arena in which you compete to make good business and marketing decisions.

Once you succeed at getting your prospect's attention, you need to hold that attention long enough to deliver your marketing message and make your offer. Your content has to be engaging on a number of levels and this nearly always means inflaming emotions. But not any emotions. You want to inflame the emotions that fill your prospect with a desire for what you sell.

Marketing often makes use of story or story structure to hold attention. A story can be very short, existing in just one image or one 30 second video. Or it could span several mediums, starting with a banner ad, then the landing page, email, and sales page. Each piece of content is like another scene in the story.

Every person has a running, albeit unconscious, question on their mind when they consume media. “Does this apply to me?” or “Am I interested in this?” or “Why should I care?” Effective advertisers know exactly who they are targeting. And this should be crystal clear to the prospect so they can answer, “Yes! This is for me!” By qualifying your prospect, you deepen their attention and commitment to hear your marketing message.

There are little hooks that use curiosity and then there are big hooks when an advertiser manages to speak directly to and inflame an existing fear, pain or desire. The latter further deepens the commitment to keep paying attention and ultimately boosts the desire to buy.

Deep benefits go beyond the payoffs of the product features. Deep benefits affect the lives of the buyers and are therefore much more significant. The deep benefit is often the key reason responsible for the sale.

Getting clear on the fantasy or story that is running through the minds of your prospects can make a difference of success or failure in your marketing.  There’s a fantasy related to your product – what is it?