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Step One: Find Your Target
If you have ever shot a gun, you know that you have to aim at the center of the bulls eye. If you don't, you are not going to hit your target. The same is true in marketing. You have to know who your potential customers (prospects) are in order to attract them to your business.
Your prospects are people who need or want what you provide. They are the consumers for whom you are filling a need. If there are no people who need what you provide, then you have no business.
Determine who needs your product or service. This is your target.
Step Two: Contact Your Prospects
Find a way to attract your prospects to your business. This is where the traditional advertising methods come in. You can place a small space ad in a publication that is circulated to many of your potential customers. You can run a postcard marketing campaign, and send postcards to your prospects. You can mount an email effort. Whatever you do, get in touch with your target customers.
Be careful, however, not to try to “sell” your customers at this stage. You are not trying to convince them that your company is great. You are trying to remind them of a need that they have, and then you are letting them know that you can fill that need.
Step Three: Tell Your Prospects What to Do
Attracting prospects will not do you much good if you cannot close the deal. Customers will only do what you tell them to do. If you make it difficult for them to buy from you, they simply won't. You have to make it as simple as possible to make the sale.
Keep this in mind when you contact your prospects. Whether you are doing a postcard printing or a small space ad, be sure to make it clear how the prospect should proceed with the transaction. If you want them to call you, tell them so and include your number. If you want them to email you, tell them so and include your email address.
Make it as simple as possible for the customer to use your product or service.
Step Four: Push Them Along
We have all seen ads that say something like, “Act now!” or, “Offer Ends Soon!” Why do you think we continue to see those words? Because they work!
Convince your prospects that there is a sense of urgency. Simply plant a seed that tells them to act quickly, and they will. Most of us are compulsive procrastinators, and we need motivation to act. You need to give your customers that motivation.
Despite what you might sometimes hear, banner advertising is still very successful for many small businesses, but only if carried out in the right way. What is the right way, and how does your business avoid the pitfalls of advertising on the internet? The answer is to understand the customer more than many advertisers seem to. There are very many examples of poor advertising on the internet. It is only by being aware of the poor tactics used by those businesses that fail to understand their visitors that you can make sure your own banner advertisements are successful.
An example of a banner advert can be found on the overwhelming majority of web pages across the internet. However, of course, prevalence is no testament to either quality or success, and in many cases, neither attribute seems very evident. Most people have become utterly tired of the clichéd banners flashing like a Las Vegas neon sign that is trying to outdo the rest of the website. Typically, these adverts congratulate the visitor on being the 100,000,000th visitor to see the advert, in which case you feel deeply sorry for the other 99,999,999 people who have also had to risk having a seizure and getting nothing for their trouble!
Similarly, banner adverts which try to frighten potential customers into clicking on them have tended to become shunned, ignored or blocked, such as those suggesting that, in the microsecond since the web page was loaded, they have managed to scan your entire hard drive and discover a virus which was evidently missed by that expensive, award winning anti-virus software you keep updated every day.
Visually nauseating banner adverts, or those which either try to frighten people into clicking no longer have very successful click through rates, and do more harm than good. Yet banner adverts persist. Why? Simply because there are enough examples of good and effective advertising out there that work, for them to remain economically viable.
It takes a great deal of thought and effort for a small business to achieve success with this form of internet advertising. Avoiding repulsive flashing colour themes, fear or trickery are just the first pitfalls to avoid. Another major problem is trustworthiness. Most visitors tend to view banner advertisements with a deep sense of distrust. You're already starting on the back foot, having to somehow persuade the visitor you are trustworthy, honest and reliable, intent on doing no harm, nor of assaulting the senses or of pulling some kind of unpleasant stunt. All this in a handful of words and a small image is asking a lot, but it is possible.
One of the other dangers banner advertisers tend to leap into like lemmings having a bad day is trying to fool the visitor into clicking the advert. This isn't quite the same as frightening them into clicking the advert by making it look like a virus alert or system message, but in visually disguising the advert to appear as though it was a genuine portion of the website. This is not a tactic which your business should employ.
The reason is because visitors do not like being deceived. Clicking on a link because it looks like part of the website menu, and then finding that you're whisked off to a website far, far away on a server somewhere in Eastern Europe is not a good way to encourage repeat visitors.
Remember, your banner advertising is often the very first impression people receive of your business. Take a good long hard look at your internet adverts, and ask yourself if that really is how you want your business to be perceived by your potential customers.