THE 15 MINUTE MARKETER:
The Simple 4 Step Marketing Formula That ALWAYS Gets Results
by Nancy Gerber
Anything that provides information about your business is a marketing message. It could be the copy on your web site, an e-mail about an upcoming program or a new development in your company. It could be a flyer or a yellow page advertisement. It can be a podcast or a
You Tube video. Even product order forms (the really good ones crafted by experts) are stand-alone marketing messages.
In the simplest terms, the purpose of a marketing message is to get the people who read it to take specific actions that will serve them while growing your business in some way.
Before you start working on your marketing message, there are two preliminaries that must be in place.
First, before you write a word, know exactly what action you want your readers (or listeners or viewers) to take.
Also, you must communicate the benefits of what you’re offering to your audience. We’ve all received messages in one form or another from businesses announcing some “exciting event”. I’ve received announcements about rebranding, awards, moving to a new location, new programs or services, staffing changes, and so on. Unless the announcement has relevance to me, and only if I can see some reason
that it will benefit ME to learn more or pay attention, will I keep it and act on it. Otherwise, it’s tossed in the trash. I’m pretty sure your
response is the same. This is a vital lesson: remember that everyone out there is tuned to radio station WII-FM — “What’s In It For Me”.
Think of these two items as the framework — your concrete slab and framing for your house. Now, here are the walls, doors, windows and roof — otherwise known as “Direct Marketing” principles (I learned this formula from one of my mentors, Dan Kennedy).
Make your OFFER. Be specific. Spell it out for the reader. Describe the opportunity, product, or service. Highlight how it solves their problems,
reduces their pain and provides specific solutions. As noted above, an offer is NOT your new company name or the industry award you just won. Create an offer that ties in to that news, and then you’ve got something
the reader will care about.
Attach your offer to a DEADLINE. It can be a time deadline — this price is good for the next 48 hours only. It can be a scarcity deadline — only 3 spots are available in this coaching program. It can be a numerical limit — the first 10 people who order get this additional bonus.
Also, be sure to include a “call to ACTION” in your message — tell readers exactly what they should do and by when they need to do it.
Most important, as I’ve noted in so many other articles, you must know clearly who your TRIBE is. (Dan Kennedy calls this your ‘heard’.) Who are your ideal customers? What do they want? Where is their pain? What are their problems? What’s important to them? Knowing this will help you create offers that will appeal specifically to and get responses from the
people who want what you have to offer.
Here’s an easy way to remember this formula: ADOT
A for ACTION
D for DEADLINE
O for OFFER
T for TRIBE
This week, use your 15 Marketing Mambo minutes every day to study offers crafted by the experts. Read e-zines, look at sales pages and e-mails. Google people like Dan Kennedy, Kendall Summerhawk, Milana Leshinsky, Alexandria Brown, Tom Antion and Adam Urbanski, to mention just a few of the folks I admire. Check out marketing messages in the media. Pay
attention to successful infomercials, commercials and ads you see often — Pro Active and Nutri Systems are two examples. If something is repeated a lot on TV, you know it’s working — a company won’t continue to invest big bucks in repeating it if there isn’t a large response. Look for the ‘ADOT’s’ common to them all. How can you start applying these principles to
YOUR marketing?
Copyright 2008 by Nancy Birnbaum-Gerber
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No matter what your product is, you are ultimately in the education business. Your customers need to be constantly educated about the many advantages of doing business with you, trained to use your products more
effectively, and taught how to make never-ending improvement in their lives.
~ Robert G Allen
