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What Great Online Advertising Really Is!

Written by: Daniel Levis

Article Overview: Should there be a distinction between sales and marketing online?

What Great Online Advertising Really Is!

Many business people have a distorted view about the distinction between sales & marketing. The common view looks something like this. "Market by advertising to get your name out there, so that people will be familiar with you. When they need what we’re selling, they’ll know who to call".

And off they go, to promote their company with image advertising that shouts to the world how great they are.

They hope, and they prey that some how, some way, the message about their brand will stick in people’s minds. Never knowing if it does, or if it doesn’t. Or whether their marketing dollars are paying them back in increased sales.

Some even think a cool web site, or sexy flash demo is enough to get their phones to start ringing.

This all too common approach is a huge waste of time, and money. Never let an advertising rep tell you any different.

Sales and Marketing are far more alike than most people realize. The sole purpose of marketing, and advertising is to make sales. Full Stop.

If you don't know how many sales dollars your online advertising is really bringing in, stop advertising.

Advertising must do much more than just get your name out there. It must educate, qualify, convince, & persuade.

Great Advertising is Nothing Less Than “Salesmanship in Print”!

Think of it as a sales presentation that’s geared toward accomplishing a carefully defined objective, whether that objective is the actual sale, or a step toward it.

Most successful campaigns are in fact a series of graduated commitments, leading up to a transaction. It might start with something as simple as an exchange of information. For example, the prospects name & address, in exchange for some information about solving a problem. That's always a winning formula.

When a prospect takes this step, they are actually qualifying themselves, persuading themselves, and giving you permission to follow up with them, all at the same time. And without any investment in personal selling.

After all, why should you waste your valuable time talking to a prospect that isn't already highly qualified, and predisposed to buying from you?

The key to profitable sales, marketing, and advertising lies in the response. Yet 90% of businesses fail to ask for, and track incremental response in their advertising. The only thing they track are sales, and then wonder why their results are so abysmal.

Why Is Incremental Response So Important?

Because it tells you what you're getting, so you can change what you're giving, until you get what you want.

The majority of people need to be exposed to your value proposition more than once before opening their wallets anyway. Why not play an active role in the process, and track the response you get to each successive stage of commitment?

Think of a pyramid, with rows of blocks piled one on top of the other. The wider you build each row, the better your chances of getting to the top.

If all of this sounds just too simple, and you don't believe it has the power to line your pockets with all the money you want, think again.

There are millions of businesses out there that just don't get this.

Nobody knows for sure how an individual will react to a given message. But en mass, human nature is as predictable as the hands on a clock. If you broadcast a message, the collective response will consistently come back to you within an amazingly small variance. So measure your response, try things, and repeat. It's that simple.

Set up a few pay per click campaigns on google, track your investment in real time, and start experimenting to see what kind of desirable actions you can get your visitors to take right away when they read your sales message. You get instant feedback, and changes are no cost. The whole set up runs for about the cost of a few cups of coffee a day.

Think of it as your own personal marketing laboratory. When you find something that works, you can replicate it in other more costly forms of media.

And remember, it doesn’t matter if you're selling printed circuit boards, herbal remedies, or anything in between, the same principles apply.

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Article Tags: advertising advertising, commitments, common view, cool web site, distinction, distorted view, flash demo, great advertising, image advertising, personal selling, prospects, sales and marketing, sales dollars, sales presentation, salesmanship, sexy flash, sole purpose, stop advertising, time and money, waste of time



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Top 19 Copywriting books - 1. Ogilvy on Advertising. David Ogilvy. Wiley. 2. Positioning: The Battle for your Mind. Al Ries and Jack Trout. Warner. 3. The New Positioning. Jack Trout. McGraw-Hill. 4. Tested Advertising Methods. John Caples. Prentice-Hall. 5. How to Make your Advertising Make Money. John Caples. Prentice-Hall. 6. Guerrilla Advertising. Jay Conrad Levinson. Houghton Mifflin. 7. Direct Mail Copy that Sells. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall. 8. Sales Letters that Sizzle. Herschell Gordon Lewis. NTC Business Books. 9. Herschell Gordon Lewis on the Art of Writing Copy. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall. 10. Romancing the Brand. David Martin. American Management Association. 11. The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with William Bernbach, Leo Burnett, George Gribbin, David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves. NTC Business Books. 12. Confessions of an Advertising Man. David Ogilvy. NTC Business Books. 13. My Life in Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books. 14. Scientific Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books. 15. How to Become an Advertising Man. James Webb Young. NTC Business Books. 16. The Lasker Story as He Told It. NTC Business Books. 17. Advertising Concept and Copy. George Felton. Prentice Hall. 18. The Copy WorkShop Workbook. Bruce Bendinger. The Copy Workshop. 19. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads. Luke Sullivan. Wiley. This should keep you busy for at least a year. Enjoy!
Re: What is your Business? - We are running a Online Marketing Firm and we have some good clients to which we are offering a complete Digital Marketing strategy like Search, Mobile Marketing, Branding and Design. I think in Online Marketing company online presence can be a wining factor for the success of the company.
Personal duties - Great topic Kevin! My business is obviously my website, a part of which are these forums. In terms of tasks I usually do the following: - Business vision and direction: 10 - Strategic partnerships: 8 (I do it for most of my site while Kevin has begun for the forums) - Managing staff and assigning tasks: 8 (Again, I do it for most of my site while Kevin has begun for the forums) - Content development: 2 (Most of this is done by my authors and staff but I get involved in the management from time to time) - Advertising / sponsorship: 10 (I'm very hands on here as it's the way that I make my money) - SEO: 10 (With so much of my traffic coming from the search engines, if I'm not on top of new developments then I'm not driving traffic and I'm not in business) Generally I've picked the tasks that I most enjoy and feel that I can contribute my skills to. The other tasks are given to people who have expertise in those areas and produce great work.
Re: Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - [quote:31qpen1j]This is just my opinion, but I consider the prospective categories, Online Marketing, Internet Marketing and Online Promotion, as being pretty much one and the same - just different words that different people use.[/quote:31qpen1j] I completely agree! Those are all just "internet marketing" as far as I am concerned. And I normally would have voted for internet marketing, however I chose social media marketing simply because there are more than enough IM forums out there already.
Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - Hi Everyone, 2009 is a new year and I'd like to create a new forum category to jazz things up! In the past, there's been some interest voiced about adding a "Social Media Marketing", "Online Marketing", "Internet Marketing" or "Online Promotion" category. I'll implement [u:1g2tv6tf]ONE[/u:1g2tv6tf] of those new categories, but can someone first tell me what the difference would be between the existing "Marketing" section and one of those new options mentioned above? Thanks


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