I admit, I’m a big AC/DC fan. Have been for years and recently while listening to their Highway to Hell album, the title (and marketing concept) for this article came to me. I hope it paints a clear visual for you and your future marketing efforts.
Last week, I shared an article about a pretty decent display ad I recently came across.
(http://mikecapuzzi.com/display-ad-worthy-of-your-study-can-find-one-missing-thing)
In the article, I covered a number of things this ad did right, but I also pointed out there was one BIG thing I thought it missed and posed the question to my readers. We received a number of responses with a bunch of different ideas as to what was the BIG THING missing. Many of the answers were astute observations and definitely were not wrong answers.
The one big thing this ad and their web site fails to do is give prospects an “off-ramp” if they’re not ready to buy now (or in more simple, direct marketing language, there’s no offer for more additional information and lead capture).
This ad and web site does only one thing – SELL – which is obviously not bad, but what about the majority of prospects who may be very interested, but are not ready to buy now?
Conversely, one of my mastermind members and private client, Gardner’s Mattress and More does it right (and they’re in the same industry). Check out their web site http://gardnersmattressandmore.com and print ads and you’ll see they have off-ramps.
Think of your marketing funnel as a highway. A highway to profits, which is not just a single path with only one destination. Your highway should have several different “off-ramps” to lead different types of prospects to different destinations (calls to action).
- The first off-ramp is a way to buy now, which this ad has.
- A second off-ramp would be to ask for name and email or name and mailing address to send me additional information.
- Another off-ramp might a different product or service offering.
- And other potential off-ramps could happen after a sale is made, including upsell and downsell opportunities.
Make sense?
Of course, as marketers and business owners we would love it if everybody who reads our ads and visits our web sites bought from us. We all know this is a marketer’s fantasy. Instead, we need to realize different types of people buy differently and need to accommodate for these in our marketing and sales process.
Congratulations to Susan Lobsinger for being one of my readers who posted this big omission and was randomly selected to win a copy of the CopyDoodles Swipe File. Congrats Susan!
Congratulations, Susan!
Fun illustration of this extremely important (and almost always overlooked) point.
If more small business owners used this “2-step marketing” approach to their advertising, we’d have a whole lot less people complaining about “this tough economy.”
Keep up the great work, Mike!
Congrats to Susan. Shame on the rest of us for missing that. Thanks for the ‘slap-in-the-head’ Mike. I won’t be ever be forgetting that in the future!
I wonder how much advertising dollars are wasted because we only go after the sale and forget to set the ground work for future sales. I know I’m guilty. I’m putting this on my list of thing to check before submitting an ad.
Thanks Mike