200-Proof Marketing

If you want to sell to people, it helps to have some understanding of how they think.

Thankfully there are a ton of psychological studies on buying behavior that we can look at and use to our advantage.

First have a look at this quote from an article in The New York Times:

“Corporate executives are the first to admit they do not really know how advertising works.

They spend $117 billion a year on advertisements, but most people do not remember what product is featured in a given commercial. Four out of five new products flop. There is no conclusive evidence that advertising ever causes sales to go up.”

Wow!

The one thing I focused on was: “There is no conclusive evidence that advertising ever causes sales to go up.”

Now, I assume they’re talking about “Brand Advertising” or “Image Marketing,” which is mostly useless. The one advantage these people bet on is that people will develop a brand loyalty.

That’s great if you’re selling Soda but it stinks for most small businesses.

With Direct Marketing, we know that correct advertising does cause sales to go up. The process we follow leads people to a buying decision.

But, with conversion rates averaging between 1 and 2 percent across the internet, our process still hasn’t been refined as much as it could be.

In my opinion, direct marketing has the potential to convert nearly 100% of it targeted market. Obviously that’s unrealistic, but I believe it is possible.

If you’re selling “Wrinkle Reducing Cream” to women that are insecure about their wrinkles, you should be able to(theoretically) convert damn near every one of them that see’s your copy.

Since this doesn’t happen we must conclude that our “process” is flawed. It’s still the best available but it has alot of potential.

If we want to improve our process we must first better understand why people buy.

Most human behavior is either reward seeking or pain avoiding. That response is one of the most primitive and basic there is. Get more rewarding stuff, stay away from unpleasant, or painful stuff.

That’s why we use benefits and not features. We want the customer to see the potential reward they will get or the pain they will avoid when they buy our product.

So the next time you write sales copy remember to make the reward of buying your product clear. But be careful which rewards you focus on…

The reward of using Wrinkle Cream to eliminate wrinkles isn’t getting rid of the wrinkles.

The reward is most likely one or more of the following: More self-confidence, compliments from others, becoming more attractive, envy of others, or any number of other things…

The reward is rarely the actual effect. When a man buys a Ferrari, the perceived reward isn’t just the thrill of driving a high performance car. The perceived reward is hot young women, respect of others, recognition of success, etc.

Don’t sell a Ferrari with a commercial of it speeding around a track. Sell it by showing a middle aged, average looking man driving around with a good looking young model while people on the side of the road stare and talk about how rich and successful the driver must be.

Alright let’s move on to some Buying Triggers(things that increase the likelihood someone will buy)…

One of the most well known triggers is Scarcity. Which is when there is a limited supply of something. This can make demand go crazy. However most marketers fail to use this correctly because they don’t make it believable. If you say only 10 people will get a product, stand by that limit. Then release a similar product with a limit and watch the product disappear at an astonishing rate.

The next trigger is based on other people. If you see everyone else doing something you are more likely to do it yourself. Home Shopping Channel’s use this and Scarcity to their benefit with the little “Amount Remaining” tickers. It starts at a set amount of say 10,000 then as they present the product, it rapidly drops down to zero. The viewers see this and are triggered by scarcity as well as seeing so many other people buying.

Another trigger is based on like-ability. If someone you like asks you to buy something, you will be more likely to buy it, simply because you like the person.

The Expert Factor also plays a role because people want to buy from someone they believe is in a position to help them.

Then there’s Reciprocity or the desire to return a favor. If your customer thinks you’ve done him a favor, he will try to repay you in some way.

There ya go… That information is potentially more profitable than most $97 ebooks out there. The right combination of the above can make you rich but because your getting the information free you probably won’t realize it until you pay for it.

First of all, I’m shocked by the amount of people that are coming to this blog. I had over 1,500 visitors to it last month. Evidently, you’re all just to lazy to leave comments and discuss what I write about.

Since I’m getting decent traffic I will post some more marketing info here soon.

Alright on to the crappy weekend… You may have noticed that this site, as well as all of my other websites have been down since sometime Saturday. Unfortunately I didn’t find out about it until sunday morning when I noticed I had made no sales for the day.

I’ve had the same webhosting company for a few years now and I’ve never had any problems. But this weekend my traffic exceeded my bandwidth limit, so my webhost shut all of my websites down and locked my webhosting account.

I could go on a rampage about this because it cost me HUNDREDS of dollars in wasted advertising and lost sales but I’m not because it won’t help anything.

Oh yeah, I also lost a lot of money playing poker friday. I’m good and usually make money pretty consistantly but I got hit with a feirce streak of a bad luck for some reason.

So it’s been a crappy weekend, I had planned to launch a new product this weekend but that has now been put off until I have time tonight or tommorow.

There is a upside to it all though… I stumbled on a new Niche a few days ago. It’s not really new, just new to me because I had never considered it.

What I noticed was a huge market of highly passionate, almost desperate customers. The market is huge but even the biggest competitors (some minor celebrities) have weak marketing.

Digital products wouldn’t be too effective for the market since they are buying DVD’s and physical items. That’s actually good because I want to get away from clickbank with some of my products so my entire income won’t fall victim to the “Clickbank Rollarcoaster” of sales fluctuations.

The most popular product in the market doesn’t even do what the customers want, it’s just the best option available. That “half working” product costs maybe $5 to make and ship, yet sells by the thousands for $500!

With some pre-launch hype, that would spread easily on it’s own in this market, I could probably make over $250,000 in sales the first week and over a million in the first year.

How did I find this Market?

Well I actually became a part of the market(ADD leads me to alot of different things) and after hours of research(and buying a few products) I realized the market was hugely underserved.

Lesson: Be your own customer… Become a part of a market before you sell to it, so you can better understand what the market wants.

The first available media for advertising was paper(ex. Direct Mail, Magazines, Newspapers, etc), for which Print Advertising was developed.

Then came Radio, and along with it came new types of advertising that made use of it’s unique capabilities.

After that came TV which adapted yet another new set of techniques for selling(Image Commercials and Infomercials) that fit the capibilities of TV.

Now we have the Internet and exponentially more capibilities than any other media. Why are we trying to turn it into a peice of paper?

The most powerful aspects of the Internet are that it can be Interactive and Adaptive. We can do almost anything we want with a little programming but I’ve yet to see anyone put this to good use in selling. I’ve seen some try but nothing close to what I’m talking about.

People have tried using Infomercials on the net but they aren’t very effective when used alone. However, when partnered with a traditional long copy sales letter they often excel.

So is that the future of Advertising on ‘net? Long copy sales letters with infomercials included?

It makes sense as the next step but it still doesn’t use the real capibilities of the ‘net.

I’m talking about something that learns from the visitor and adapts throughout the sales process to offer the most effective sales message possible. Something that allows the visitors to focus on the information which excites them the most.

I guess the best way to decide how to make such a thing would be to first decide what the most effective sales method is. Sales Letters? Infomercials?

If I was in a “gun to my head” situation where I HAD to make this one sale or die, I wouldn’t pick either of those.

What would I pick?

Face to Face Selling… Without a doubt!

When your selling to a person that’s right in front of you, you can adapt your sales message to fit their concerns, push the right buttons for their personality type, and focus on the benifits that excite them the most.

You just can’t do that with any other type of selling.

How would you make this happen on the ‘net? I have no idea.