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Quick Secrets To Successfully Advertising Your Business How To Grab Their Attention

Written by: Teresa Bohannon

Article Overview: Advertising your business is the one expense you cannot avoid; even online...but if you are smart about it you can cut down on your expenses while still successfully helping the world beat a path to your virtual doorstep. It's really not that hard once you know a few basic secrets.

Quick Secrets To Successfully Advertising Your Business How To Grab Their Attention

Winning Secrets To Successfully Advertising Your Business...A Quick Guide

Advertising your business is the one expense you cannot avoid; even online...but if you are smart about it you can cut down on your expenses while still successfully helping the world beat a path to your virtual doorstep.

Tabula Rasa. That's Latin for blank slate, and that's exactly what you need to start out with when advertising your business online. Why? Because most of your preconceived notions about how to successfully advertise your business in the brick and mortar world are not worth the price of a hill of beans online.

So to begin anew.... What exactly is online advertising?

Is it something to be regarded as a work of beauty or art? Is it clever slogans or amusing prose? Is it workmanship to be judged for an award or recognition?

It’s none of the above.

Simply stated, "Advertising online is successful copywriting."

Nothing more.

And advertising online is copywriting for an audience with the following things in common:

1. They have grown used to instant gratification online and therefore have a short tolerance for taking time to get to the point....
2. They probably did not go to any real trouble to find you, and leaving you is as simple as a click of the back button....
3. They can Google you in an instant and find out exactly what your competitor offers and at what price....

There is a world of difference in advertising in the Virtual World and the Brick and Mortar World, but the rules are simple once you learn them.

1. Virtual World advertising offers numerous avenues for promotion that are far cheaper than advertising in the Brick and Mortar World....
2. Virtual World advertising is generally a more long-term affair since your ads are not going to end up lining the bird cage at the end of one day....
3. Virtual World advertising offers far more competition than you have ever faced before....

The purpose of a copywriter’s job is to sell. Period. The purpose of an online copywriter's job is to grab your attention so that you
A: Are convinced in 25 words or less to click on a link to a website...
B: Do not quickly hit the back button once you arrive....

True, audio ads and flashy videos are prevalent online, but the fact of the matter is, the search engines can't yet read them, so if you do not have powerfully provocative text popping up in your Pay Per Click ads, or in your on-page Search Engine Optimization chances are good that no one is going to come visit you anyway, and even more certain that they will not stay long enough to buy.

So the First Winning Secret To Successfully Advertising Online Is Grab Their Attention...and to do that you...Focus on Them, Not You

Once you have caught your online prospect's eye you have 5 to 10 seconds or less to convince them to click on your ad or link. In other words you have to quickly show them... "What's in it for me?"

And if your copy doesn’t tell them, they will be off to another website before you say Saskatchewan.

A lot of advertisers make this mistake. They focus on them as a company. How long they’ve been in business, who their biggest customers are, how they’ve spent ten years of research and millions of dollars on developing this product, blah, blah. Take it from me your average prospect could not care less.

The only time a prospective client cares about that stuff, is if you have already at least half-way convinced them to buy what you are selling.

Remember, once they've hit that back button, they are gone forever. It's like fishing if you don't set the hook the fish will just swim away.

Now let me stop right there for a second and say that one of the best ways to avoid losing them forever is to give away something for free, and make sure it is branded with your name and a handy-dandy, easy-breezy link back to your website. Both software and ebooks serve this purpose admirably, and I know that because I've been giving away branded items for years and it has saved me from losing more than one customer who went away to think it over or check out their other options.

Now back to focusing on them....

When writing your "focused on them" copy, it helps to think of it writing to an old friend. What would I say to convince a friend--who already knows me--to try my product? How would I target my friend’s objections and beliefs to help my cause?

Begin by using the pronouns “I” and “you.” For example. "I know you’ve wasted time and tried every widget out there. But, trust me, I have the last one you will ever need to try…. And I guarantee it!”

Emphasize Benefits, Not Features

What are features? They are descriptions of what qualities a product possesses.

This flashy sportscar delivers 55 miles per gallon in the city.
This database has a built-in data-mining system.

And what are benefits? They are what those features mean to your prospects.

You’ll save money on gas and cut down on environmental pollutants when you use our sporty-looking, energy saving high-performance hybrid car. Plus, you’ll feel the extra oomph when you’re passing cars, courtesy of the efficient electric motor, which they don’t have!

You can instantly see the “big picture” hidden in your data, and pull the most arcane statistics on demand. Watch your business do a “180” in no time flat, when you instantly know why it’s failing in the first place! It’s all done with our built-in data-mining system that’s so easy to use, my twelve year-old son used it successfully right out of the box.

I just made up those examples, but I think you understand my point.

If you were selling an expensive watch, you wouldn’t say that the face is 2 inches in diameter and the band is made of leather. Whoopdie Do!

You show him how the extra-large face will tell him the time at a glance. No sir! He won’t have to squint and look foolish to everyone around him trying to read this magnificent timepiece. And how about the way he’ll project success and charisma when he wears the beautiful gold watch with its handcrafted custom leather band? How his lover will find him irresistible when he’s all dressed up to go out, wearing the watch. Or how the watch’s status and beauty will attract the ladies.

Incidentally, did you notice how I brought up not squinting as a benefit? Does that sound like a silly benefit? Not if you are selling to affluent baby boomers suffering from degrading vision. They probably hate it when someone they’re trying to impress sees them squint in order to read something. It’s all part of their inner desire, which you need to discover. And which even they may not know about. That is, until you show them a better way.

The point is to address the benefits of the product, not its features. And when you do that, you’re focusing on your reader and his interests, his desires.

And that will grab his attention and hold it!

****
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to
be generous, frank and independent.
– W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915

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Article Tags: avenues, bird cage, blank slate, brick and mortar, business online, clever slogans, competitor, copywriter, google, instant gratification, mortar world, preconceived notions, prose, tabula rasa, taking time, term affair, virtual doorstep, virtual world, winning secrets, workmanship



Related Forum Posts
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!
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: Top 10 Homebased Franchises for 2011 - Hi, great list, thanks! Quick question as far as franchises go in comparison to small businesses would you say that they are they doing well or are they suffering in today's economy?
Re: Attention Age Doctrine - Hi Andy, So how did you find of "The Attention Age Doctrine" Part 1? And has following its guidelines yielded any positive results yet?
Advertisement that sales - Plan your marketing programme. It should include commitment to capital resources. If you run a small business, you aren't likely to have a generous enough advertising budget that will allow you to run costly branding or campaign ads. Every advertisement you run must convey to your prospect a solid offer and attractive reasons to act quickly, and result in increased sales and an enhanced image of your company. Good advertising always pays its own way through increased sales and profits, improved cost-effectiveness, reduced selling costs and shortened selling cycles. A useful formula that will help you increase the effectiveness of your advertising efforts is A-I-D-A, which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. When creating an advertisement, always remind yourself that it should: (1) capture your prospects' Attention, (2) arouse their Interest in your offer, (3) create their Desire for your product or service, and (4) provide a powerful spur to Action, that is, turn your prospect into buyers. Remember, bad advertising is an unproductive expense, and good advertising is an investment in future profits!


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