Seven Steps For Creating Successful Marketing FREE

Seven Steps For Creating Successful Marketing
by Jay Conrad Levinson

1. Find the inherent drama within your offering.

After all, you plan to make money by selling a product or a
service or both. The reasons people will want to buy from you
should give you a clue as to the inherent drama in your product
or service. Something about your offering must be inherently
interesting or you wouldn't be putting it up for sale. In Mother
Nature breakfast cereal, it is the high concentration of
vitamins and minerals.

2. Translate that inherent drama into a meaningful benefit.

Always remember that people buy benefits, not features. People
do not buy shampoo; people buy great-looking or clean or
manageable hair. People do not buy cars; people buy speed,
status, style, economy, performance, and power. Mothers of young
kids do not buy cereal; they buy nutrition, though many buy
anything at all they can get their kids to eat -- anything. So
find the major benefit of your offering and write it down. It
should come directly from the inherently dramatic feature. And
even though you have four or five benefits, stick with one or
two-three at most.

3. State your benefits as believably as possible.

There is a world of difference between honesty and
believability. You can be 100 percent honest (as you should be)
and people still may not believe you. You must go beyond
honesty, beyond the barrier that advertising has erected by its
tendency toward exaggeration, and state your benefit in such a
way that it will be accepted beyond doubt. The company producing
Mother Nature breakfast cereal might say, "A bowl of Mother
Nature breakfast cereal provides your child with almost as many
vitamins as a multi-vitamin pill." This statement begins with
the inherent drama, turns it into a benefit, and is worded
believably. The word almost lends believability.

4. Get people's attention.

People do not pay attention to advertising. They pay attention
only to things that interest them. And sometimes they find those
things in advertising. So you've just got to interest them. And
while you're at it, be sure you interest them in your product or
service, not just your advertising. I'm sure you're familiar
with advertising that you remember for a product you do not
remember. Many advertisers are guilty of creating advertising
that's more interesting than whatever it is they are
advertising. But you can prevent yourself from falling into that
trap by memorizing this line: Forget the ad, is the product or
service interesting? The Mother Nature company might put their
point across by showing a picture of two hands breaking open a
multivitamin capsule from which pour flakes that fall into an
appetizing-looking bowl of cereal.

5. Motivate your audience to do something.

Tell them to visit the store, as the Mother Nature company might
do. Tell them to make a phone call, fill in a coupon, write for
more information, ask for your product by name, take a test
drive, or come in for a free demonstration. Don't stop short. To
make guerrilla marketing work, you must tell people exactly what
you want them to do.

6. Be sure you are communicating clearly.

You may know what you're talking about, but do your readers or
listeners? Recognize that people aren't really thinking about
your business and that they'll only give about half their
attention to your ad- even when they are paying attention. Knock
yourself out to make sure you are putting your message across.
The Mother Nature company might show its ad to ten people and
ask them what the main point is. If one person misunderstands,
that means 10 percent of the audience will misunderstand. And if
the ad goes out to 500,000 people, 50,000 will miss the main
point. That's unacceptable. One hundred percent of the audience
should get the main point. The company might accomplish this by
stating in a headline or subhead, "Giving your kids Mother
Nature breakfast cereal is like giving your kids vitamins-only
tastier." Zero ambiguity is your goal.

7. Measure your finished advertisement, commercial, letter, or
brochure against your creative strategy.

The strategy is your blueprint. If your ad fails to fulfill the
strategy, it's a lousy ad, no matter how much you love it. Scrap
it and start again. All along, you should be using your creative
strategy to guide you, to give you hints as to the content of
your ad. If you don't, you may end up being creative in a
vacuum. And that's not being creative at all. If your ad is in
line with your strategy, you may then judge its other elements.

Jay Conrad Levinson is the creator of the Guerrilla Marketing
series of books - the best selling series of business books in
history. He is also responsible for some of the most successful
ad campaigns in history, including *the* most successful in
history: The Marlboro Man. Jay is responsible for countless
small businesses becoming huge householdnames. Learn how he does
this in his latest book: "Guerrilla Marketing for the New
Millennium":

http://www.roibot.com/r_gm.cgi?R33288_bsng

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