We’re surrounded by advertising every place we look. From TV commercials and Google Adwords to local newspaper and radio spots, everyone is vying for your attention and the money in your wallet.

So, as a small business owner, how do you weed through the big corporate marketing campaigns and your competitors’ ads, flashy design and high budgets, and figure out what you should do for your own business?

Successful advertisements are those that have been designed with a clear purpose, and for a specific target audience.

Successful ads are successful because they pay for themselves with the sales traffic they generate. They bring in leads, promote products and services, and maintain awareness of your business.

So, like all of the lead generation strategies you’ve been working on, effective advertising is rooted in a strong understanding of your target market and how to motivate them to do what you want them to do.

Just like your lead generating offer, your headline has one job. It doesn’t need to close sales, or win copywriting awards, it just needs to grab and hold your reader’s attention long enough to keep them reading.

Your headline is the only tool you have to get the rest of your copy read, so you’ll need to focus the majority of your copywriting efforts on catching and holding your readers’ attention. The rest of your copy only matters if you can get them to read it!

Headlines are used to grab and hold reader’s attention in ALL marketing materials – not just advertisements in newspapers. Most readers take only a few seconds to decide if they want to spend any time reading what you have to say. Just like you, your audience is bombarded by information every minute of the day, so if you haven’t convinced them to care in a few seconds or less, they’ve already moved on.

Your subheadline is almost as important, because it’s your second chance to tell the reader why they should care and keep their attention. It also creates a transition between your headline and the body of your marketing materials or advertisement, and acts as a teaser.

Powerful offers that drive your audience to take action can be used in your business to do a myriad of things. They’re great for moving old or overstocked product, overcoming buyer objections, eliminating purchase risk, or even just building your customer database.

When putting together an offer, consider the following:

• Establish who you are trying to target, and what you want them to do.
•  Identify the emotional motivators or “hot buttons” that will get your target to take action.
• Once you have identified the emotions you will try to target, determine which type of offer will work best.
• Draft several hard-to-refuse offers based on these motivators
• Evaluate the financial viability of each of your brainstormed offers
• Select two of your financially viable offers, then test them to measure which works best.

Remember – you’ll need to keep improving and revising your offers to ensure you continue to draw leads from them. Otherwise, your audience will get used to seeing the same offer, assume it is always available, and it may become stale.

It’s easy to want to match your competition piece by piece – but when you’re trying to stretch your marketing budget, focus on the materials you actually need. 

Take your existing marketing materials through this audit, and look for opportunities to improve and strengthen

• Are you fighting for their attention with a powerful headline?
• Are you triggering an emotional response to a problem, fear, need or want?
• Are you building their trust or confidence in your ability to meet their needs?
• Are you wowing them with your competitive edge?
• Are you overcoming their objections before they’ve raised them?
• Are you providing an element of risk reversal with a strong guarantee?
• Are you showing them what other people have said about your product or service?
• Are you giving them a reason to act NOW?
• Are you giving them an easy way to contact you?

Flashy design is not important to your marketing campaign – but clear and professional looking materials are absolutely essential.

Every business needs a lead tracking and management system. Do you have one in place?

A lead tracking and management system is absolutely essential to your business for a number of reasons.

One, it is the only way to know which marketing strategies are working, and which ones aren’t. The information your system gathers will allow you to make educated decisions about marketing campaigns and investments.

Two, it organizes your sales and marketing efforts and manages contact information in a user-friendly way. It’s clear who you called, when, what you said, and when you said you’d follow up.

Three, it enables you to manage your sales staff by tracking their progress on several leads at once. You’ll have access to an at-a-glance picture of their sales figures and productivity.

Keep in mind that your lead tracking and management systems need to be simple enough for everyone in your company to use. Even if you are the only one using it.

This simple process will help you get started.

1. Use all the information you gathered about your target market to figure out what your customer’s hot buttons are.

2. Describe the value or benefit that your product or service offers your customers.

3. Think about the outcome of the value or solution that you provide.

4. What is your company’s point of difference? What makes you stand out from the competition?

5. What is the perception you would like others to have about your business?

6. Based on the notes you wrote in response to the above questions, summarize the information into a paragraph of 4 to 5 sentences.

7. Using descriptive language, synthesize your paragraph into a single sentence of 15 words or less.

This sentence will become your unique marketing message!

Qualified leads are the group of people who are most likely to buy from you – they have a current need, problem or desire that your offering will solve or serve. These people are your target market, or ideal customers. Qualified leads are generally easier to convert into customers, so a high number of qualified leads mean a high conversion rate and, of course, more sales.

Knowledge and understanding of your target market is crucial to the viability of your business. You have to know if there is enough demand for your product, or enough interest and need for your service. You have to know how to communicate with your customers, and understand their thoughts and behaviours.

Without a comprehensive understanding of your target market, you can’t make smart choices about your front end offers, marketing strategy, pricing structure, and product or service mix. It’s kind of like driving a car with a blindfold on – you’d be headed for disaster.

In addition to being essential to confirm assumptions and understand purchase motivations, market research is something you will need to get into the habit of doing on a regular basis to monitor trends and stay ahead of the competition.