Small Business Advertising
All effective marketing starts with what Dan Kennedy calls a ‘unique selling proposition’ (USP), a message that answers the question: why should I do business with you, above any and all other options, including doing zilch or whatever I’m doing now? This is essential for small business advertising.
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Dan Kennedy on what Magnetic Marketing is and how it can help business owners with their small business advertising: Magnetic Marketing is all about positioning instead of prospecting, about attraction instead of pursuit. For different businesses or sales careers, a different combination of selling message, target markets, and direct marketing strategies comes together in a system, to magnetically attract the right quantity of prime customers or clients, affordably and successfully. This system will modify the way businesses and salespeople acquire their customers.
Dan Kennedy on what’s not right with the way businesses seek new customers now with with their small business advertising: Frankly, an enormous amount of advertising dollars are completely wasted — and businesses can’t or do not know how to hold their advertising accountable, to get tough-minded about it. P. T. Barnum once said, “I know half the advertising for my circuses is wasted — if I only knew which half.” And, for salespeople, much of what they’re taught to do, to prospect, is as old-fashioned as a wringer washing machine — very ineffective, and very frustrating.
Dan Kennedy offers some specific examples of how the Magnetic Marketing system is distinct for small business advertising: Let’s take businesses first, salespeople second. One of my clients is an industrial equipment producer. His marketing consisted of running large, image-building ads in a lot of trade and business magazines and exhibiting at trade shows. Then he had a room full of telephone representatives who would call probable prospects, fight their way through screening, play telephone tag, and finally get to speak to a decision maker. Then they’d send out literature. Then they’d chase that candidate again on the telephone. Then they might make a sale on the telephone or set up an appointment with a field rep. 80% of their operation came that way, requiring an average of 7 outbound calls per prospect. I changed the entire system. For starters, I changed their ads to feature what I call ‘Lead Generation Magnets’ and ‘Qualifiers’, so smaller ads got better reaction and got response from the right decision makers. This switched the inside sales reps from outbound call activity to 80% of their time taking in-bound calls from pre-qualified, interested prospects. This, in turn, cut the time lag from first contact to a closed sale almost in half.
Dan Kennedy on how he used the Magnetic Marketing package to reduce the cost of making the sale, sped up the process of making the sale, and made the salespeople more rich – for just about any sales professional, I can cut out all the old-fashioned cold call prospecting grunt work, get more of his time allocated to really selling to qualified leads, and actually change his whole work experience for the better. For companies, I can lead them from traditional, non-accountable, costly advertising to direct marketing.
Dan Kenendy on any limitations of the Magnetic Marketing package has for small business advertising: If there are, I haven’t found them yet. I’ve been applying, refining and teaching my techniques since 1978. In 1992 and 1993, I worked directly with clients in 63 different businesses and industries, and taught my techniques to well over 100,000 people. Just to give you a feel for the diverseness of all this, let me tell you that I’ve recently consulted with a computer software and services company marketing to large corporations, a leisure travel company marketing direct to consumers and families, a large law firm, salespeople in insurance, securities and financial services, real estate, automobiles, office products, retirement communities, and snowmobiles.
Dan Kenendy on Direct Mail with the Magnetic Marketing package – Just as one example, I have an unusual sequence or series approach that just about any business can use to become the dominant, known presence in a target market for about $1.50 per prospect. Every time I show this at Seminars, people get very excited about it. People are getting reaction rates of 12%, 18%, even 23% from these mailings — compared to direct-mail averages of 1% or 2%. More importantly, it beats any other type of advertising or cold prospecting.
Dan Kenendy offers a few quick marketing tips from his Magnetic Marketing package for small business advertising: – First, develop a compelling advertising message targeted or matched to a very specific prospect. The quality of this match determines whether marketing or prospecting is easy or hard. Second, do not spend even a nickel on any advertising that cannot be held responsible and accurately calculated. Three, stop chasing new customers; chasing drives them away; you need to find ways to attract them, and bring them to you pre-disposed to choosing you over any and all competitors. As you can see, this involves a big change in thought about how we sell.