Let’s be honest. When you run a small business you wear a bunch of hats. Human Resources, marketing, quality control, even window cleaner. Every aspect of business can give you headaches at times. I think for me it was advertising. There were a few years in the beginning that I just couldn’t gain traction. 

I was really trying to do what I thought was best instead of what my customers wanted. You are selling your window cleaning to someone OTHER than yourself.  We aren’t usually our own avatar’s.  Or our target market.  We need to stop selling to ourselves.  

AVATAR

The first part of knowing HOW to advertise is knowing WHO you are advertising to.  Are you talking to a man or woman?  How old are they?  When you come to figure out your avatar you should know EVERYTHING you can.  It sounds kinda odd in the beginning, but trust me, Coca-Cola knows to the T who their target customer is. 

This is what our typical avatar looks like:

Credit: Jamie Hallman

A 38-52 year old woman who is a mother and wife.  She works from home or is a stay at home mom.  She has kids that are above 15 years old, most times in college.  She has pets, usually 1 dog.  Her husband will be a corporate type who enjoys golf and cars.  Our Avatar drinks wine, and loves to entertain.

With all of this info you may be thinking why?  From here if I do an add about giving them time back to visit the kids at college or hit the links, this will resonate with them.  Know WHO you are selling to.  Now you know the WHO

USP

This is Unique Selling Point…the WHY someone should choose you.  This one is HUGE.  And to tell you the truth most people have no idea.  

90% of the people I ask “what is your USP” and they say “people like me”  well, NO.  That isn’t a unique selling point because if they always deal with Gary, your crew chief, they will forget about you. Its a sad truth, I know.  But this is the WHY.  If I line up 10 companies that are all at the same price why do I chose you?  There has to be reason’s you think you are the best option for them right?  Well, what is that?  What ever it is THAT is what you sell on.  100% satisfaction guarantee, 7 day rain guarantee, picture ID’s, ANYTHING that makes your company the best choice.  Now you know the WHY.

Sell on value

When you advertise sometimes people can misunderstand what people want. If you are selling something but only based on price that is all they can see.  We don’t want to base it on price, but value.  If I sell you something, but I don’t say what it is, and all I say is its going to cost you $1, $10 or $1,000, you will almost always go the cheapest.  If I explain the value, and that it is a brand new Ferrari NOW you will buy 2 at $1,00 with no questions asked right?  If value blinds someone of the price you have done your job.  Instead of “SAVE $50, buy now” try something like “get a free gutter cleaning” Explain what they are getting extra and from your USP.  Now they look at that and say, why would i go with XYZ, when this company has all of this.

Keep your designs all the same

Every ad you put together should be coming from the same main idea.  Everything down to the images, colors, layouts, info, EVERYTHING.  You want to make all of this feel the same.  If they get an EDDM, they subliminally think “oh, yeah i have seen this before”  familiarity creates comfort, and comfort creates sales.  If you are always giving a different message, you can never drive a single one home.  This is a great way to help your efficiency all together.  You make 1 master image and from that you can adjust the size to fit any platform.  Try to do this every year, and run the same for the whole year!  

Now with all of this we know WHAT message we are giving WHO, and what we are going to say to them to get a killer ROI. Advertising is all about creating a message that gets the most amount of people to buy your services because of it.  If you do that right you are going to create an ATM!

Like the article? Well check out the podcast!

~Jersey

WCR Nation Podcast