Monday, May 29
Written from a traditional Thai desk overlooking the Banglamphu canal in Bangkok, Thailand. It's a hot, humid day; overcast with a breeze.
MY AVAILABILITY
Next month I will be working in Hanoi, Vietnam for 26
days---if you have any suggestions for me while I'm there, please let me know!
I have availability for 2 large marketing campaigns if you want to get something done (and billed) before the end of the financial year. e.g. product launch, sales funnels, full
marketing campaign.
I've also opened up one more spot for my Facebook Ad management or Google ads services. Starts from $1,000/month and does not include the cost of the ads themselves.
I can only take on 3 more of these this year because they are a LOT of work to do properly.
I have smaller jobs throughout this month already booked and have room for 5-10
more jobs like this. e.g. website content writing, lead magnets, copywriting sequences, or marketing audits.
Note: I am already booked out for the last week of June.
Message me now to let me know what work you want done before I book up.
You don't need a full brief ready, just let me know the gist of what you want to achieve
and I'll see if I can help/have availability.
Dear friend,
Today I’m going to explain the first of three parts that make up any advertisement—the
list.
The second part is the offer…
… and the third is the creative.
Together, these three parts make up the core of any advertising campaign.
Copywriting legend, John Francis Tighe, called these three parts all working together the ‘3-Legged Stool’.
It’s these three parts that will make—or break—your ads and the results they provide you.
Now, imagine: You pull out a stool to sit on, but notice one of the legs is broken.
Immediately, you know it won’t hold your weight.
So, the stool is useless, you’re standing around twiddling your thumbs, and now your feet hurt.
This, in essence, is what most advertising campaigns suffer from—one or more ‘broken’ legs.
You need all three parts working together to have the most effective advertising possible.
By simply understanding these basics, you’ll have the knowledge to put yourself ahead of most other
businesses.
But first:
AN APOLOGY
I must apologize for my ‘absence’.
You see, a little over a week ago I was in the northern-region of Thailand and it got a bit
stormy…
… which meant no power—and with that, no internet.
Now, without electricity and the internet, it’s awfully hard to stay in contact with you and my other clients.
But, thankfully enough, I don’t need either to plan or create the core of my ad campaigns.
So, work carried on as per usual without much of a hiccup…
… except that it was done by candlelight…
… to a
choir of frogs in the nearby pond outside…
… and a horde of young termites tapping at the window trying in vain to flutter towards my candle.
As I was working away by the flickering light, I had an ‘aha!’ moment.
And it was this:
The only reason I could continue working on these ads was thanks to my understanding of these three parts.
I knew them
well enough—practiced and studied them long enough—to not need an outside resource as my crutch.
That outside resource being the internet, in this example.
So, there I sat with pencil in hand and started scribbling notes and ideas on who these ads were for.
It sounds obvious but too many businesses forget to do this, and it causes the most diluted and confusing of ad campaigns.
So, here is what you came here
for …
WHY YOUR LIST IS SO IMPORTANT FOR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS
First things first…
The list aka ‘customer avatar’; ‘target market’;
‘audience’ etc. etc.
… all of them mean the same thing in this context.
So, whatever you call it, know that I simply call it “the list”.
(Blame it on my background in direct-response copywriting, where I sourced actual lists of prospects based on specific segmentations I was looking for.)
The list is so vitally important for advertising campaigns because it will dictate
what offers you will make and the ways in which you will persuade your prospects.
With the wrong list, you could have the best offer imaginable, alongside the most incredible creative and it would still fizzle out.
As a very simple yet poignant example:
You see this ad in a magazine.
The only problem is… you don’t read Japanese.
Because if you did, you'd find the offer to be good: artisan bonito flakes.
And
the creative even better: A great photo of dried bonito beautifully carved into a wise old woman atop a bed of bonito flakes.
The copywriting reads:
“Caught, dried, and scraped—only the best is taken, the rest thrown out. Life is like a bonito flake.”
Now, clearly that doesn’t translate too well, but this was a brilliant campaign from Japanese ad agency Dentsu in Osaka,
Japan.
Yet, it would absolutely bomb if it were run in Australia.
No on even knows what a bonito flake is, for starters. (It’s dried, fermented, and smoked skipjack Tuna.)
Let me give you another quick example:
Run this ad made by gryo (Chicago, USA) in an inner-city magazine and you won’t be sitting pretty with responses.
So, from this we can safely say that knowing who you’re creating ads for is the most important part of any advertisement.
It will dictate everything you do within the ad to make the campaign work.
With a clear list comes a clear campaign—allowing you to easily:
- Make the perfect offer
- Craft
the perfect message in your creative
- Achieve superior results in your marketing efforts
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON’T START YOUR MARKETING WITH A LIST IN
MIND?
Remember John Francis Tighe’s ‘3-Legged Stool’ analogy?
Without a list in mind, you’ve got a stool with a broken leg—useless.
If you don’t have a clear list in mind when you’re creating campaigns, you’ll be:
- Finding it hard to come up with the right
offer
- Finding it hard to create compelling creative and copywriting
- Frustrated with the results your ads are producing
Because of these reasons, you’ll always want to make sure that you have the right targeting for your ads.
By narrowing your focus to target a specific
segment of the market, you’ll be able to more effectively position and promote your product or service.
This is the key to making sure the return on investment from your advertising is as high as possible.
If you use a traditional ‘shotgun’ approach to your marketing, you’re spreading your message too thin and losing impact.
This reduces the chances of
a result because you’re putting your ad in front of people who aren’t necessarily interested in what you’re offering.
Instead, you’ll want to narrow your focus and embed your message deep within a specific target demographic like a laser beam.
Now, this isn’t suitable for all businesses and all campaigns. (I’ll explain why in another message.)
It depends on what you’re actively trying to achieve from your
ads.
But, for MOST businesses, the list is the first thing you should always focus on in any marketing campaign.
To give you an example, I’ll talk about the real estate industry.
I’m very familiar with it and they’re awful at working their list.
Imagine you have a development you’re selling.
Technically it fits into any demographic, if they can afford it.
Yet, there are
inherent benefits that will only be of any real interest to certain segments of the population.
The location, the building itself, the financing options, and other offers such as government rebates etc.
These points of interest should be what segmented ad campaigns revolve around.
By focusing on these different interests, your list can include people highly interested in
the specific benefits they’ll receive that the development offers.
Which means showing an ad that specifically calls out to these interests will have a much higher chance of getting a positive result like an enquiry.
Yet…
No real estate campaigns do this well.
They continue to run the same ad to everyone, instead of targeted ads to specific segmented lists.
This is often because
the campaigns aren’t given enough time to be made, which means ads can’t be placed in the appropriate channels in time.
It also means that not enough time is given to properly segment lists to make more effective advertising.
There is an inherent lack of innovation with advertising within the real estate industry.
I guarantee you that if the margins weren’t as high as they are now, this would change quickly!
Campaigns I’ve run for developers and real estate agents throughout the 2015-2017 period have seen incredible lifts in response rates thanks to simply shifting focus onto understanding their lists.
As an example, within the Australian real estate industry I’ve found that leads can cost anywhere from $57 - $130 each on a normal campaign.
Through campaigns where the list was put into focus, and proper segmentation occurred, I could get leads around $23
each.
This stuff works, and it’s basic enough that anyone can do it.
So, let’s see how you can use this…
CONSIDERING YOUR LIST: PRINT
ADS AND DIRECT MAIL
When running print ads, this means taking into consideration both the distribution of the publication and the typical readership.
Want an easy, free way to see what ads are
already working?
Look at past editions and count ads that have been running consistently for several months.
These are most likely ‘controls’ (a time-tested, winning version of an advertisement) and continue to pull in leads or sales every time it’s shown.
You can also ask the publication for stats on their readership and distribution directly to help with this process.
With print publications ranging from general interest through to niche and trade magazines, you’ll be able to find a spot for almost every industry.
This can be especially helpful when your industry typically can’t run ads on the major digital networks like Facebook or Google e.g. adult industry, gambling etc.
On the super targeted spectrum lies direct
mail.
Direct mail is still a massive driver of revenue growth and is also an excellent way to re-engage past or inactive customers.
This is where your list is key.
I spent the majority of my early marketing career as a direct-response copywriter and the list was the ‘make or break’ component.
Without a good list, and creative revolving around that list, a profitable campaign could quickly turn
into a money sink.
If you have lots of customer data, direct mail is an excellent way to increase the lifetime value of a customer by encouraging repeat sales.
CONSIDERING YOUR LIST: DIGITAL ADS
When running digital ads, your list is important because most of your ad spend is done on a CPM basis i.e. charged for every 1,000 ad views.
If you’re list is too broad, you’ll be showing it to thousands of people that won’t be interested in your offer—no matter what you do—and you’ll still be charged for showing it to them.
Which, if you’re following me so far, means you’ll be spending more for your ads without selling anything… never a good thing.
A couple of quick and clever examples of digital ads making the most of a
good list:
- Facebook Ads provide a powerful way of finding new customers that match similar characteristics of your
current ones using your list.
- Using the retargeting feature on Facebook or Google, you’re able to create a list of all the people who’ve visited your website to show them a follow-up offer.
- Facebook Ads can create a relevant list for you using a video marketing technique called ‘carpet bombing’—creating a new list based on how long people have watched a video for.
These are all incredibly powerful features that will help you reduce your ad spend and increase the likelihood of getting a real result.
In fact, the list is so powerful in digital ads that I’ll need to write another article on that entirely to do it justice.
SUMMARY: WHY LISTS ARE IMPORTANT IN MARKETING
So, here’s a short-version.
Lists are important in marketing because they allow you to focus on what’s
important.
With a clear list comes a clear campaign—allowing you to easily:
- Make the perfect offer
- Craft the perfect message in your creative
- Achieve superior results in your marketing efforts
You’ll also be able to use some very advanced features when using digital marketing such as:
- dynamic retargeting
- custom audience and list creation
- and lookalike list creation
... and that’s just naming a few of
them.
If you don’t know what any of that means, just take my word for it… it’s good.
If you don’t have a clear list in mind when you’re creating campaigns, you’ll be:
- Finding it hard to come up with the right offer
- Finding it hard to create compelling creative and
copywriting
- Frustrated with the results your ads are producing
Keep in mind the legendary copywriter John Francis Tighe’s ‘3-Legged Stool’ approach to marketing, and you’ll be set for a great campaign.
The three legs were:
- The
list
- The offer
- The creative
If anyone is interested in learning how to find or create their own lists for their businesses, hit 'reply' and let me know.
Cheers,
P.S. If you want to do any work together, message me now.
June is already filling up and I will be opening a LOT of hours this month to push campaigns out for your end of the financial year/mid-year promotions. |
|
|
