Repackage your sales information
The tide is turning. For a long time, most businesses felt turning sales messages into information such as newsletters and media coverage was too much work. It was easier and faster to just list the features and benefits in ads, and then blast them out to the public.
As media channels get more and more fragmented, it's easy to see how advertising can get off course. Like everyone else, I love to see what a 30-second spot in the Super Bowl sells for. It's now over US$2 million ... or $66,666 per second. Say, for the sake of illustration, that these businesses operate on a 10 per cent net margin (an optimistic assumption). That's a lot of product to sell to recoup the ad spend. So it's more about corporate ego than good marketing communications (marcom) budgeting.
In defence of advertising, many big brand products don't need an explanation like they would have in the past.
Look at the features and benefits in this Coke ad from 1954:
In 31 countries around the globe, busy people relish the pause for ice-cold Coca-Cola. It's the world's favourite way to refresh, for Coke gives a bit of quick energy with as few calories as half a juicy grapefruit. No wonder Coke is the most asked-for soft drink in the world.
Animated polar bears sipping Coke as they slide on their butts across snowy slopes is a good thing. I guess as long as we hear, see and read "Coke" hundreds of times a week, we keep asking for the stuff (then again, I prefer Pepsi).
Most of our clients don't have products that are highly recognisable like Coca-Cola or have been around a century or more. You have products that need to be explained. Some of your products and services are so complex your customers could spend a week in training and still not fully understand them.
So consider how to repackage your sales message as information rather than ads.
- Tell your sales story in newspaper and magazine articles.
- Create a podcast or streaming audio and make it available on your website.
- Write sales letters that are long enough to do their intended job and then mail them to as many people as you can.
- Start your own magazine, blog, print or electronic newsletter.
Turning your ads into information elevates the status of your sales message. Stories find their way into public conversation streams, not ads.
Or as Sam Walton says, "If you're confused in business, go to your customers. They have all the answers and all the money."
Why not expand your sales message? Why not package it as information? That's what people want.
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