This horse is my gift to you — it holds the key to cutting through the clutter and getting your advertising noticed online!
What I’m about to share with you is not actually an “internet marketing” strategy.
In fact, most good strategies in internet marketing are simply good marketing strategies applied to the internet. (Read that last sentence about 10 times until it really sticks — it’s the most important thing you need to know to be successful online.)
And yet, this strategy is one of the best ways to get your sales copy and your pitch read by your target audience online. Which is very important — because if they never read (or watch, or listen), they’ll never respond.
So…
Let’s have a quick chat about what it takes to cut through all the marketing clutter online… Get noticed… Get read… And get response!
I don’t have to cite a bunch of trite stats about the thousands of marketing messages we see every day. My coffee cup advertises Google. My Windows computer (yes, I use Windows, the blasphemy!) has icons across the bottom from… Let me count… At least 10 different companies. I open nearly any page on the internet and there are as many as a couple dozen different advertising messages hidden throughout the content.
Advertising is everywhere.
There was a very important book that came out a few years ago called The Paradox of Choice. For the purposes of our conversation, you only need to understand its fundamental observation. When given more options, it’s actually HARDER for us to make decisions, not easier.
Which suggests that with all the marketing messages we see every day, we’re actually prone to shut down altogether, and buy as little as possible. As consumers, we’ve erected walls and gates and barricades against advertising and marketing messages.
As a marketer, this is your worst enemy.
And frankly, it’s your potential customer’s worst enemy, too — assuming you sell a product that actually brings benefit into their life. If they ignore your marketing and don’t buy, they’re actually worse off for it.
Yet just coming at them with another strong and obvious marketing message is unlikely to get through to them.
Modern consumers have a highly-refined barricades to hold off the overwhelm they’d otherwise feel from the never-ending barrage of marketing in our daily lives…
If you want get maximum response from your marketing, you have to find a way to pass unimpeded through the gates in that barricade. At least long enough for your prospect’s interest to build in what you have to say.
You’re familiar with the story of the Trojan Horse?
After a 10-year siege of the city of Troy, the Greeks had little to show for their efforts. The city stood, and the Greeks looked to have no chance at winning the Trojan War.
In an apparent truce, one night the Greeks packed up and left, leaving only a giant wooden horse as a “gift” outside the city’s gates.
Sensing no danger from the departed Greeks, the citizens of Troy brought the giant horse into the city.
Little did they know that the horse concealed a small band of soldiers, who that night would let the rest of the Greek army in through the city’s gates.
The Greeks sacked the city, and won the war.
Perhaps the war metaphor is not to your liking, but it makes the point: if you want to get your advertising past your prospect’s gates, you should try the Trojan Horse approach…
If your prospect has barricades in place against advertising and marketing, then you don’t want to present what you’re doing as obvious advertising. Sure, at some point you need to make the switch. But only once you’re “in.”
But what should your marketing and advertising messages look like if they’re going to get through?
Well, what else gets through?
Content. The same buyer who will readily ignore 500 marketing messages will just as happily dive into a piece of content in the same industry.
(This is the driving principle behind why advertorial advertising works so well. And today’s “native advertising” trend, too — though that’s nothing more than a new name for advertorial.)
For example, I’m not in the market for music equipment or training right now. But in my spare time I’m reading a bunch of articles on mixing and mastering. While I’m consuming all that content on getting the perfect mix on a song, it’s easy for a sales message to slip through. In fact, there’s one course I’m especially interested in right now. Not because I’ve been sold hard on it, but because I’ve been sold gently through content.
I’m not advocating direct content marketing here. In fact, I’ve written before that I believe most content marketing is bull——. However, putting valuable content on the front-end of your marketing piece is a proven effective way to get your prospect engaged.
Two proven approaches to do this online…
First is the article-to-sales-letter approach. You write relevant articles that have a tie-in at the end to a sales message. The call-to-action at the end of the article is to go read the sales message. You see that a lot in what I write.
Second is the valuable-content-in-the-ad approach. In this approach, you actually make the ad itself contain useful, valuable content. This is a great way to get a long sales piece read. If there’s a promise up front of valuable content, and you deliver on that promise quickly, you’re in through the gates. I especially like this approach for video promotions.
Ideally, you use a combination of these. You write valuable articles that link to the sales letter or presentation. Which also contains more valuable content. All along the way, the prospect feels good about what you’re giving them. Which leads them to the conclusion that you really have their best interests at heart, and that they’ll continue to get incredible value when they buy from you.
Not only does this work to get past the gates and get the attention of your prospects, it also works to get higher response…
Do this right, and you’ll get the attention of your prospects. You’ll get through the gates with your Trojan Horse content technique.
And then, because of the goodwill this engenders, it will also get more of your readers to respond and buy.
It helps you get higher response to your online marketing in multiple ways!
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets
