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How to Attract, Convert, and Delight CustomersBy: Wizard of Ads Partners Editor: Craig Arthur
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Entries in Making Ads Work (4)
How Many Ads Will I Have to Run Before I Begin Seeing Results?
By Roy H. WilliamsIt’s a question asked by business owners in every town, village and hamlet. It’s asked by the cautious, the anxious, and the wise. It’s asked of every newspaper, television and radio rep. “How many ads will I have to run before I begin seeing results?”
The number of ads you’ll have to run before you begin seeing results depends on your product purchase cycle and the impact of your message.
Product Purchase Cycle refers to how often the average person buys the product. The shorter the product purchase cycle, the quicker you’ll see results.
EXAMPLE: Let’s say 120,000 mattresses were sold last year in my market of 1,000,000 people.
To determine the Product Purchase Cycle for a category:
1.Divide the population of the trade area by the annual transaction count for the category. (1,000,000/120,000 = 8.33)
2.This is your annual Product Purchase Cycle. (8.33 years would be the annual product purchase cycle for mattresses.)
To determine the Percentage of Population in the Market for a product:
Tips to Help Optimize Your Audio Ads - Unique Voices
By Brendan Tacey, Wizard Associate and CEO of Cikmedia
As an advertiser, one of the biggest mistakes you can make in Radio is not selecting a ‘Voice of Difference’.
You spend a lot of time generating a brief; there’s the time you take to fine tune the script, sign off on it…. and then… that’s it. You leave it up to the radio stations producer to build it… because that’s what you do.
What actually happens from here?
Media, Making Ads Work Ready. Angle. Frame.
The MMM by Roy H. Williams
Advertising begins only after you win the attention of your target, a difficult thing to do in this overcommunicated world.
May I suggest you do it like the Great Ones?
When you’re ready to tell your story, choose an angle of approach.
Then frame the scene. Decide what to include, what to leave out:
Specifically, leave out:
1. anything the listener already knows or can easily figure out for themselves.
2. the name of the business anywhere it would not appear in normal conversation.
3. unsubstantiated claims.
4. clichés.
5. complicated ideas.
6. comparisons.
7. self-congratulatory pronouncements, such as “We’re the number one…”
8. statements that reflect your awareness of a competitor.
9. any promise you might fall short of delivering.
10. adjectives that are not essential to the clarity of the message. The strongest ads use simple nouns and verbs with a minimum of modifiers.
Choosing an angle is a bit trickier. You must find a perspective to introduce a new reality. Don’t just add incremental knowledge to what's already known. Introduce a thought that will stand taller than any other figure on the horizon of the mind. It's like setting the stage for a Broadway production, and it can always be done in a single sentence.
Here’s a glimpse of how it’s done by the Great Ones:
“It came down to this: if I had not been arrested by the Turkish police, I would have been arrested by the Greek police.” – Eric Ambler, the opening line of The Light of Day
“My first act on entering this world was to kill my mother.” – William Boyd, the opening line of The New Confession
“The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.” – Thomas Hardy, the opening line of Jude the Obscure
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” – C. S. Lewis, opening line from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
“He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead.” – Alfred Bester, the opening line of The Stars My Destination
“You are standing in the snow, five and one-half miles above sea level, gazing at a horizon hundreds of miles away.” – Roy H. Williams, the opening line of a radio ad written for Rolex
“I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” – Unknown, the opening line of a TV ad written for Alka-Seltzer
Did you notice how I slipped myself into that list of the Great Ones? I wouldn’t usually have done it but this is Monday and on Mondays I’m ebullient. It’s only on Tuesdays that I’m modest.
Most people like me better on Tuesdays.
Here are some typical opening lines from average ads. Compare them to the lines that come from unusual angles and better frame the the new perspective:
Typical: McMorris Ford is having a Clearance Event!
Unusual: We want to get rid of this new truck even more than you want to own it.
Typical: Harvey Chevrolet is Going Out for Business!
Unusual: Here at Harvey Chevrolet we’re tired of being average, so here’s what we’ve decided to do.
Typical: Save up to 70 percent at Neederman Optical!
Unusual: New eyeglasses cost like stink. You know it. We know it, too.
Typical: Leroy’s Lawn Service has served the people of this city since 1972.
Unusual: Life is too short and wonderful to spend it cutting your own grass.
Typical: Juanita’s Mexican Café at the corner of Fifth and Madison serves authentic Mexican Food from 8AM till 8PM daily.
Unusual: So you think you’ve had Mexican food, heh, Gringo?
Choose an unusual angle of view and leave out the obvious. These are the keys to opening the mind’s eye.
Do it when writing ads. Do it when making presentations.
Now that I’ve explained how it’s done in words. Would you like me to show you how it’s done in pictures?
As with every other archetypal truth, the principles will remain unchanged. Details of their application will be the only difference.
Ready. Angle. Frame. Harness these ideas and your thoughts will gain speed and momentum.
Pow.
Roy H. Williams
An Opening has miraculously appeared for the August session of Oceans 11. Would you like to spend 3 days and 4 nights building your business under the guidance of the Wizard of Ads? Move fast. There's only one opening available. – Corrine Taylor
Campus Construction Photo Update
Copy Perspective... "Then vs. Now" & "Me, Them, or You"
by Wizard Partner & Persausion Architect, Jeff Sexton
You can find more articles by Jeff at www.grokdotcom.com.
Want to intensify your mental image for the reader? Make her a participant; use "you" to place them on the scene and set things in the present tense.
Want to tone down the intensity? Talk about someone else and/or set things in the past. Make the reader less of a participant and more of an audience.
It's really that simple. And it's a perfect solution for ensuring that your negative image never overpowers your positive promise of a solution. Here's an example from Sean D'Sousa's PsychoTactics newsletter:
When I first started in business, I'd spend hours in meetings.
I'd be driving to meetings. I'd be sitting in meetings. And
then I'd get back to my home-office (I no longer work from
home). And then have to do the job that the client and I agreed
upon. And I'd do this six-sometimes seven days a week.Fifty-two weeks a year.
=====================================
I was too afraid to go on vacation
=====================================
I was afraid that a really big job would come along, just
as I was getting on the plane. I'd have nightmares about how
the client would call; find me away; give the job to my
competition, and then continue to work with the competition.=====================================
I was living in a bit of a trap
=====================================
And I couldn't get out. And then I discovered the power
of copywriting. That copywriting was more than just copy.
It was control…
Sean creates a negative mental image right away. He highlights the problem by shining a flashlight directly on the dissatisfaction it evokes. But notice that Sean's talking about his problems — not the reader's — and that he's talking about problems from the past. This allows the reader to see as little or as much of herself in the story as she wants, drawing her in rather than offending.
It works like a charm. In fact, I was forwarded this newsletter by Jeffrey Eisenberg as an example of writing that immediately drew him in (not that I'm commenting on how much Jeff saw of himself in that opening story). 
As an exercise, mentally rewrite the opening of Sean's story from above, using the present tense and a "You" perspective. How close do you think that would that come to offending certain business owners (especially those tired of being pitched)?
But look at what Sean does when writing about his solution to the reader's problem:
"[…] You too need to:
- Learn the secrets of strategy and how it beats the heck
out of just words on paper.
- Stop depending on an outside copywriter. You can write
compelling copy on demand. If you choose to use a copywriter,
you can audit their work to make sure it has all the
ingredients.
- Urgency is everything. Learn how to get clients to act n'ow!
- The greed factor. What causes clients to buy at higher prices.
How can you get the greed factor to kick in every single time.
- How can you make clients want your services and wait for
you to return from your vacation
- One factor that will increase your sales by 25% to as much as 65%
- How to create analogies and stories with incredible precision.
- Why signature stories matter and how to create intensely powerful
signature stories.You too can take control of your life with the understanding
of how your customers think. What makes them do what they
do. And how you can make them understand why they should
work with you and you alone…"
He switches perspectives to present tense and "you." In general, this is good advice:
• Put the negative image in the past and the positive image in the present, and/or;
• Make the negative image about someone else and the positive image about the reader (or at least more directly transfer the positive image onto the reader)
Finally, when you aren't using negative images, stick with the present tense and "You." Talk to the customer about what matters to them (i.e. them). Doing the opposite — "WeWe"-ing on yourself in your copy — kills persuasion.
