The Landscape of Business Has Changed

In order to explain the "Monopolize Your Marketplace" system, we have to start by defining the importance of marketing. A special yearly issue of Success Magazine called "The Selling Issue" quoted Scott DeGarmo,

"The big money goes to those companies with superior marketing operations. Entrepreneurial companies of today must evolve from being sales oriented to being marketing oriented in order to now win the consumer."

Let me explain why it's important to focus on marketing instead of selling. There was a time known as "the days of simple selling." The days of simple selling are generally considered the days before 1980 or, in some industries, before 1990. In this period of selling, it was a lot easier for a salesperson to go in and sell to a buyer. The reason was simply because the marketplace was a lot less crowded.

For example, in 1980, if you wanted to buy a Ford pick-up truck, where did you go? You went to the dealership. This was the only way to see your choices and ask your questions. You couldn't go online or to Barnes & Noble and read fifteen magazines that compared and contrasted new trucks and cars because these sources of information didn't exist. The dealership was the only source of up-to-date information. In the days of simple selling, there was less competition, fewer choices, and it was easier to make a buying decision. Let's wrap this up by saying, "in the days of simple selling, the seller had the power because the buyer had very few options."

The Days Of Simple Selling Are Over!

Now we've got a new situation; buyers no longer have to rely on limited sources of information about a product or service. The landscape of business now involves increased competition, information, choices, and more resistance. It has made buying cycles longer. There is now price competition that didn't exist before. Products are becoming commodities and a lot of the marketing messages are identical. Because of all of this, a wedge has been created between the seller and the buyer. This wedge is called "The Confidence Gap."

"The Confidence Gap"

is the consumer's inability to determine whether any of the products or any of the services are any better or worse or any different than any of the others. This creates a big problem. What you need to understand is that people, who will be buying from you, have all these different choices. It's very difficult for them to determine whether you are any better or any different from anyone else. So your marketing goal needs to be to narrow the Confidence Gap and restore the consumer's trust and confidence.

How Do I Fix This Problem?

The questions you may be asking yourself are "How do I figure this out?" and "How do I fix this problem?" Go to the business section of any bookstore and you'll find all kinds of books on this topic. You'll find things like "Better Customer Service." The theory is if you have better customer service, you'll have more customers. The problem with this philosophy is you must have a customer in order to give them service. You can't just say, "I've got great customer service." It doesn't work that way; you must have a system that will drive the customer to you! One of the things you might hear business gurus say is, "If you have more sales training and if you are better at sales, then you'll be able to get more customers." The problem with that is, again, you've got to have prospects in order to use your sales skills. If you look at all the sales training books and all the sales training seminars, they are all short on advice in this particular area, which is: "How do I find someone to sell to in the first place?"

There is another way that business books and business gurus tell you how to overcome this thing we call the Confidence Gap. "Use advertising tricks and techniques." "You can trick people through misleading advertisements to call you or come in." For example, I saw a car ad that said, "Pay no tax on all new vehicles." Do you think that sounds like a pretty good deal? If I weren't paying any tax, then I'd probably save a couple grand. The problem is when you looked at the fine print, it said, "Customers responsible for all sales taxes, state, and local. The dealer will pay for the inventory tax." This is a sales trick. It does nothing to build trust and confidence. Instead it builds contempt, hatred, and suspicion. The result is a widening of the Confidence Gap when the goal of the advertisement should have been to narrow it.

These examples reveal a problem. We used to have the days of simple selling, now we have The Confidence Gap. You, as a business owner, need to overcome this in order to be successful. You need to find a solution to the problem.

How Do I Get The Customers To Actually Want To Do Business With Me?

I don't know if you are familiar with Napoleon Hill; he wrote the book, Think and Grow Rich. He had a saying that went like this: "It is as useless to try to sell a man something until you have first made him want to listen as it would be to command the earth to stop rotating." Do you believe that? Think about it; if they don't want to listen, trust me, they are not going to want to buy what you are selling. They are going to view you as a pest. That's where the difference between sales and marketing come into play.

In sales, what you are doing is trying to make people want to listen to you in a sales situation. What we're presenting is a marketing program that does the job of making people want to listen. It prepares the buyers so they will come to you and you will have an opportunity to sell. Sales skills are still very important, but your time is used more productively in closing sales rather that chasing them down.

Marketing Is The Tool You Must Use To Bridge The Confidence Gap

Marketing needs to be concise, well articulated, and powerfully stated. It is low or no pressure. Marketing is one-way communication. It's not afraid of rejection. It's not obtrusive. People can review marketing at their own pace, when it's convenient for them. And, if they aren't interested, they can ignore it altogether. No commitment. That is why we need to talk about a marketing program.

In the Monopolize Your Marketplace system, we teach and implement a Marketing Program that helps businesses overcome the Confidence Gap. It accomplishes this by addressing two points-the Inside Reality and the Outside Perception.

The inside reality is everything your business does that makes you valuable to your customers. It is what gives you a competitive edge in the marketplace. It is all of your skills, your passion, your systems, the way you conduct your business. The outside perception is how customers and prospects perceive your business. It is the ideas and impressions consumers gain from your direct and indirect communication with them.

The Outside Perception Of Your Business
Should Match The Inside Reality

To be successful in business and to continue that success, your inside reality and outside perception should match. If you spend all your resources developing the inside reality and neglect the outside perception, you will be frustrated wondering why you are having minimal results with your superior product or service. On the flip side, if you focus solely on the outside perception and neglect the inside reality, prospects will soon find there is little value in the product or service and you will get little, if any, return business.

To conclude this introduction to the MYM system, I would like to reemphasize the point just made. I paraphrase Jim Rohn, a great business philosopher, in a lecture about personal communications he said: "First, have something good to say. Second, say it well and third, say it often."

The Monopolize Your Marketplace system incorporates all three of these communication elements thoroughly. About 25% deals with having something good to say or the inside reality, the remaining 75% deals with saying it well and saying it often or the "outside".

The Articulated Sales Argument: How To Stand Head And Shoulders Above Your Competition!

The first and most important element in the Monopolize Your Marketplace system is the Articulated Sales Argument or ASA. In a nutshell, the ASA is the argument you build, the case you design, and the reasons you give why a prospect should do business with you. Your ASA should distinguish your business from all the competitors. It will make you the obvious choice and lead prospects to the conclusion, "I would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone but you…regardless of price."

You may have associated the ASA to current business buzzwords like "niche marketing" or "unique selling proposition." The difference is we are not only going to introduce you to the concept, we are going to help you implement the underlying principle in a systematic way in your business.

An ASA Will Raise Your Business Above The Noise

Take a look in the yellow pages and you will find pages of ads for nearly every given product or service. Each ad seems to shout the same thing: "best, cheapest, honest, friendly service" and many other empty words. We call this condition NOISE and it is one of the primary reasons for the Confidence Gap. This condition is not exclusive to the yellow pages, it is in every aspect of marketing and advertising. How then can a prospect determine which, if any, of the offers is the greatest deal? Generally speaking, they cannot. The result is a prospect calling the first few ads then going with the lowest price.

You may be aware that in your industry lowest price does not always reflect the best deal. You can probably name a competitor or two that offer a lower price than you. You can probably also identify how buying from your competition would result in less value for the same money spent. The most important question is does your marketing make your value clear to the prospect?

Build A Case For Your Product Or Service Like An Attorney Would

Envision your marketing situation as a court case - your prospects are the jury, you are the defendant and you must prove to them without a doubt that your product or service is the most practical alternative amidst all the competition. Now remember: this is a life or death situation. Under these circumstances, are you going to settle with a defense that says, "we're better, we're cheaper, we're professional or we've got better service"? Of course not! You are going to probe your jury to know what they will be sympathetic to and respond to. You are going to give substantial, quantifiable evidence to back yourself up.

Once you have gathered this information about your business or developed your ASA, selling becomes incredibly easy. You will have the entire framework for any marketing and media you will ever need to create for your business. In effect, you have defined the "Inside Reality" or the "something good to say." Once you have this clearly defined, you are ready to work on the "Outside Perception" or "saying it well." We have organized an ASA Workbook to help you gather and organize all the information you will need to build a strong case for your business.

If You Feel You Are Making All The Money Possible From Your Written Ads, Then This Section Is Not For You

It has been said that advertising costs the same whether it is used intelligently or foolishly. An ad in the newspaper costs you the same amount whether it generates one new customer or 100 new customers. A mailer costs you the same whether it brings in $10 of business or $10,000. Your degree of skill in marketing and advertising can obviously have a profound impact on your business.

Few Small Business Owners Really Understand
How To Advertise Intelligently

Small businesses must demand maximum performance from every marketing dollar spent. Ad campaigns that are cute and/or silly attempt only to build name recognition or merely say, "Here it is, come get it" must be avoided.

Small businesses cannot afford to spend a lot of money on advertising where the main purpose is to build name recognition. Advertising must lead prospects to act in some measurable, specific way - send in a coupon, call a number, write a check, go to the store, etc. - all in an effort to make a sale.

Headlines

Simply stated, the headline is the ad for the ad. Its purpose is to pick people out of a crowd of readers/listeners who may be responsive to your general offer and give them a reason to continue reading or listening to the ad.

You will usually want to incorporate your Articulate Sales Argument (ASA) into your headline. Your ASA is the singular, unique benefit your customers will receive by doing business with your firm, stated in an easily embraceable way. It's the one thing that really distinguishes you from your competition.

People who have interest in your proposition will read the headline and decide to keep reading. Those who aren't interested in your headline won't keep reading - but you shouldn't care because they aren't qualified prospects. On the other hand, if you use a cute, ambiguous headline to attract attention, chances are you will lose people who are qualified. Remember: you are only interested in selling to qualified, interested prospects!

Being Specific

Claude Hopkins, the father of direct response advertising, said "Platitudes and generalities roll off the human understanding like water from a duck. They leave no impression whatever." To say "Low Prices, Biggest Selection or Highest Quality" is useless. People tend to be skeptical. They need to be convinced.

Instead, try using specific, graphically illustrative words and phrases that quantify your statement. "We Always Have at Least 1745 Tuxedos in No Less Than 22 Different Styles, 72 Varying Sizes, and 10 Desirable Colors, And in Price Ranges From $25 to $125." This is more definite and more believable than the usual generic "Large Selection."

Since people are skeptical, they tend to discount (or flat out ignore) any generalized statements you make. But they know that you wouldn't tell a bold-faced lie. When you make a specific statement about your product, they give it 100% credibility. Changing general statements to specific ones will double the effectiveness of any advertisement. No extra cost. Try it.

Long vs. Short Copy

Interesting short copy is better than boring long copy. But remember who you are trying to sell your products to: interested, qualified prospects - the people who are hungry for information about the product in question.

Think in terms of salesman-like advertising. You certainly wouldn't send a salesman to see an interested, qualified prospect and have him merely hand the prospect a photograph of your product and say, "Ours is higher quality and we have better service," and then leave. But that is exactly what 90% of all advertising says! If you don't believe me, just look in your local newspaper or yellow pages directory.

The More You Tell, The More You Sell

A rule of thumb is to use as much space as it takes to present a fairly complete argument for your product or service. Drew Kaplan of DAK consumer electronics fame has earned hundreds of millions of dollars describing in exacting, painstaking detail every feature, benefit, and advantage of what seem to be very common products. You should see his 32-page mini-magazine that sells one product - a desktop publishing software package. Since I was an interested, qualified prospect, I read the entire magazine twice in one sitting and then placed my order.

W.I.I.F.M.

What's In It For Me? Every ad must address this important question. Surprisingly, most advertisements only breeze over WIIFM. They would rather tell you that they've been in business for 200 years or that they have 44 expert tailors on site.

If this sounds familiar, that's because it is. Your ASA should tell people what's in it for them - and state that reason in clear, graphically illustrative terms. Here's another formula for you to remember when you're describing your products or services: FAB.

FAB stands for Features, Advantages, and Benefits. While most ads focus on features, your ads should focus on advantages and benefits.

Risk Reversal

In almost every business relationship, one party is always asking the other - whether implicitly or explicitly - to bear the burden of risk on the transaction.

If your product or service can truly perform, then you should not hesitate to offer it to interested, qualified prospects at zero risk. If your product cannot perform, or if you're trying to sell it to the wrong target, you have no business being in business. Don't make your prospect take the risk.

Marketing consulting is a perfect example of risk reversal. Even though most of my clients come to me on a referral basis, they don't really know if I can help them out in their situation. People hesitate to pay me in advance to write an advertisement if they've never worked with me before.

But since I know my services will exceed their expectations (I can't go wrong because I hedge by testing), I don't mind "giving" the service away. Depending on the relationship with the client, I might or might not ask for a good faith deposit. But I never accept any money if something doesn't work.

Now, contrast that to my competition - advertising agencies. They demand payment in advance - and I guarantee that they will refuse to refund your money if their $10,000 artwork didn't net you any new customers. They're funny that way.

Like everything else I exhort, always state your guarantee in readily embraceable terms. "Money Back Guarantee" does not evoke the same response as saying "Your check will not be cashed for two weeks and the sale isn't even considered binding until you've taken your diamond to be appraised by at least two certified gemologists of your choice."

Yes, you will have a higher incidence of returns if you offer a guarantee. You might even have a few people take advantage of you. But if emphasizing a performance guarantee doubles or triples the response of an ad, the returns are inconsequential. Again, the guarantee offers you an opportunity to increase your bottom line without spending extra money.

Chameleon Advertising

In many cases, it makes sense to disguise your advertisement. People tend to not pay attention to advertisements, but they do tend to pay attention to news or entertainment your advertisements are so often delivered with.

Paul Harvey tells the whole world "The Rest of the Story" three times a day. At least a couple of times a week, he starts one of his news stories by talking about the consumer satisfaction polls for new cars. Buick Park Avenue, the car Paul himself drives, is always on top. It sounds just like a news clip. It's an advertisement.

Some of the greatest print advertisements of all times looked just like news articles. One I like is frequently found in the sports section. The headline says, "New, Hot Golf Ball Banned From Pro Tour - Flies Too Far." It keeps running year after year; it must be working.

Call to Action

Just like a good salesman always tries to close the deal, your advertisements should lead the prospect to do something. Your objective will determine what that action is. If you're generating leads, your ad needs to tell people to call, send a card, bring in a coupon, and write for more information or some other specific reply. If you're trying to make sales, tell people to write a check or call with their credit card ready.

People are silently begging to be led. If your advertisement has built a solid case for your product, all you have to do is ask for action and you will get it.

In Conclusion

There are several other aspects of ad writing that haven't been covered here, like use of testimonials, bonuses, postscripts, and such. Unless your product is very simple to understand, it's a good idea to use advertising for lead generating. There comes a point when it makes sense to sub a real salesman to close the sale. But don't underestimate the usefulness of employing a huge army of tiny salesmen to open doors and pique interest. If your salesman-like ads are reaching qualified, interested prospects, they will definitely have a positive effect on your business.