HOW TO MOTIVATE CUSTOMERS THROUGH PRINT, RADIO, AND TV (PART1)
General Principles For Motivating Customers
If you are going to motivate people, you have to know how to put information in a form that will attract readers, listeners, or viewers. The four key elements of motivating customers are:
Get customers’ attention.
Have something interesting to see or read.
Create a desire in the reader or viewer.
Generate action.
These elements are easy to understand. You have a second or two to catch people’s attention. Once you have someone looking at your material, you have another couple of seconds to involve that person. You create desire by helping people realize that they want or need your product. Some of the actions you can generate are sending for more information or visit your store.
Tactics You Can Use To Provide these Four Elements
“You” advertisement is more effective than “Me” advertising.
Which headline invites you into an ad? “You” ads almost always work better. Even for business-to-business ads. A headline like, “You can cut your downtime by 85 per cent “ is stronger than, “Cuts downtime 85 per cent.” You buy products because of what they will do for you. Your customers do the same. They buy for their reasons, not anyone else’s. That is why “you” language works.
Visuals have to tell part of the story
Two crucial parts of any communication are the visual image and the headline. A visual doesn’t have to tell all the whole by itself. It only has to tell half the story. But the visual plus the headline needs to communicate the entire message. Prepare at least four or five possible headline/visual combinations for any ad or brochure; then put them on the wall and ask people which one(s) they like, and why.
Tell people something they don’t know
Piquing curiosity is a great technique for getting interested. This is an especially effective tactic when it is difficult to differentiate your product from competitive products. This tactic works well for products sold to businesses. For example, Bentoville International is a consulting company that helps owners layout Christian bookstores. Its headline states: “You can look this good, for less than you think.” This headline is effective because it uses “you” language and it promises to tell people something they might not know.
Writing down your goals
Everyone who does marketing gets ideas at night, while eating or, during some other activity. And often marketers take these ideas and turn them to programs. However, using a clever idea without making sure it communicates the right message can be a mistake. What you need to do first is to decide what you want to tell people. Then you can worry about how to tell it.
Six questions to ask yourself
Who is my target customer?
What is my product?
What is my objective?
Why should people want to buy?
What makes then product special?
How can I prove its special?
Don’t be brief in your answers. List everything you can think of that is relevant. You want your final copy to be brief, but now is not the time to cut back. You are looking for as many ideas as possible.
Make people smile
Cute, clever, witty Ads are one way to make people smile. It works effectively if it doesn’t detract from the product. Another way to make people smile is showmanship. This is the tactic you should use if your product category is over-advertised, has too many products, or has poor differentiation between products.
Industrial companies typically use demonstrations to generate showmanship. A company might show one machine with eight packaging stations around it, all backed up, trying to keep up with a production line. The headline, “I didn’t know it was this fast!” adds to the showmanship.
Business-to-business marketers can benefit from showmanship just because very few companies use it. Print Ads can also use showmanship.
Be sure the Ad makes sense
When gel toothpaste first came out, people couldn’t understand why they should use it. The manufacturer didn’t have a good reason why the gel was better than the traditional type of toothpaste. The product didn’t sell. Then the manufacturer started to advertise that the gel could combine toothpaste whitener with breath freshener. Now the product made sense.
Hundreds of ads and brochures for industrial products don’t quite make sense.
The biggest problem for industrial marketers is that they say far too much. That confuses people. Start by stating your ad’s goal, then look at each and every sentence and ask if it helps promote that goal. If it doesn’t, take the line out. Industrial marketers like to list every possible product benefit. That only confuses people and will detract from a piece’s effectiveness.
Action Steps
Make a chart that lists these six guidelines. Pull it out every time you are ready to prepare an ad.
“You” advertisement is more effective than “me” advertisement.
Visuals and headlines have to tell the story.
Tell people something they don’t know.
Write down your goals.
Make people smile.
Does the piece make sense?
Start a “hot button file”. Whenever an idea occurs ton you, or whenever someone makes a statement that might work in an ad or brochure, write it down and put it in a file. This way, you’ll have a running start when yo decide to do an ad, brochure, or circular.
Start a file on competitors’ ads. You want to be sure that your ads, brochures and other written materials are clearly different from your competitors’.
