Is your marketing hitting the mark?

It has been estimated that every single day we are bombarded with between 3000 and 30,000 brand names and ads. They are delivered to us on variety of platforms; billboards, radio, TV, social media and texts, to name just a few. What that means to every business owner is that your marketing message has to work extremely hard to grab our attention.

It is not just advertising messages that have to work hard it is every employment ad you write, every email you send, every presentation you deliver, every newsletter you write…they are all competing for your audience’s attention.

Over the years the world of advertising has become more and more sophisticated and yet despite this the basic principles of producing compelling copy that an audience will not only be attracted too but also feel inclined to take action on, remain the same. Your message needs to grab their Attention, Interest them in how your product or service can help solve a problem they are having so build their Desire to contact you by taking some sort of Action to contact you.
As you can already see AIDA is an acronym for

• Attention/Attract
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

These are the four stages you need to take your audience/target market through if you want them to contact you, buy your product, apply for a vacant position, or get them to read you email.

How you can put AIDA to work in your business.

Whenever you write anything that you want to result in others taking some form of action use AIDA to transform your responses. Here is a brief explanation of each of the elements of AIDA:

• Attention/attract

With so many messages reaching your target audience you need to do something to grab their attention really quickly. The use of powerful words in the form of a headline is normally the best way to raise people’s attention. Consider when you are flicking through a magazine or newspaper what is it that normally pulls you in? In most cases, it is the story headline or a picture.

It has been estimated than 5 times more people read the headline than read the body copy.

With that in mind you need to invest some time writing compelling headlines that will perk your reader’s interest. For instance:  an email subject line of Attend this Seminar will probably get a lot less opens than: By Attending this seminar you will transform your business results. Guaranteed!

• Interest

Once your headline has had the desired effect you now want to engage them so that they feel compelled to read on. Focus on your readers needs by making it easy for them to pick out any relevant messages quickly. A way of achieving this is the use of subheadings and bullet points to break the text up so that your points stand out.

• Desire

The aim here is to help them understand how what you are offering will meet their wants and needs. This is where you engage them on an emotional level sell the sizzle and not the steak. Henry Ford once said “If I ask people what they want they will tell me they want a faster horse” his next question will then be “What does a faster horse give them” in other words what are the benefits to them. Your readers are tuned into WIIFM (what’s in it for me) so the focus here should be on the benefits to your reader and not the features of your product or service.

• Action

In the planning stage a question you should be asking is what do I want people to do as a result of reading this piece? It could be visit your web site, buy a product, watch a video, sign up for a newsletter or phone now for your FREE financial healthcheck (The word FREE is one of the most powerful words in advertising). The key thing is to give them something to do because with so much information coming at them on a daily basis, they will quickly forget about your message.

Using AIDA could be one of the most important strategies your business can use to help it grow. It will ensure your message gets read more often keeps your readers and prospects hooked and drives them to take some kind of action.

If you would like to find out more just gives the team a call on 0151 348 1202.

Have you ever been lucky enough to observe a 12 month old up close? Have you seen them take their first few steps. I know that at some stage we have all gone through the same process, but have you ever really considered the tenacity, mistakes, slip ups and potential embarrassments that you went through to do something that you can now do without ever thinking about it? Lets consider the process. They usually spend some time, crawling along whilst watching and observing the older people in their life run around everywhere. Through that observation, they now consider that they are capable of modelling those actions themselves. They spend a month or so preparing, starting to pull themselves upright on anything that comes to hand, table/chair leg, your leg, sofa and even the dog. Eventually, they get to the point where they can stand up, but those first, tentative steps normally ended up with them falling. Undeterred, and surrounded by a chorus of encouragement from their cheer leaders (family), they get up and have another go, each and every time learning from their previous experience. By making micro adjustments to their movements and balance they get to take those first few steps and now they are a walker; truly a miracle to behold. What might have happened had they started out on there quest with adult thinking? The thinking we learn from, our peers, the media, the education system etc. The learning that teaches us that to fail is bad. Upon falling they might have thought to themselves “Maybe I’m not cut out for this walking lark” they may have also been embarrassed to attempt to walk in front of others in case they made a mistake and others were able to witness there ‘failure’. They may have thought, “the time might not be right for me to walk” and made a decision to put it off and wait for the perfect conditions. They might have thought, “maybe I haven’t got the right abilities to take on this challenge so why bother?” Fortunately, they don't have adult thinking or, as some call it, stinking thinking, so encouraged by those around them, they pick themselves up dust themselves off and go again until they reached their final objective. What has this got to do with business? Unfortunately, for most of us, we have had the experience of being conditioned to think that to fail is bad and to ask for help is a sign of weakness. So, when we start off in business, we muddle along working really hard for little or no reward and suffer a great deal of stress in our attempts to get our new business off the ground. After a period of time, our new lifestyle becomes all too familiar and we are in a rut. I have heard a rut described as a grave with the ends kicked out! A sad statistic that is banded about these days is that as few as 4 out of every 100 businesses that open their doors will not see their 10th birthday. What would happen if instead we applied the innocent thinking of a baby to some of life’s and business’ obstacles? What might we be able to achieve? What if we were to accept the fact that if others’ can do it, then so can we? What if we were to learn from those who have gone before us? What if we were to learn from the mistakes those people made, so that we didn’t have to go through them ourselves? How might our outcomes be different? The challenge is that our ego sometimes gets in the way and, instead of searching out sound advice, we think that letting others see our vulnerability is a sign of weakness when, in fact, it is a sign of strength. We stay in our ‘rut,’ when life could be so different. If you ever find yourself thinking “there must be another way” or “how can I do this differently?” you might be interested in our FREE seminar 'Take Control of Your Business' where we will looking at simple, yet effective strategies to build a better, far more profitable business, whilst generating a better lifestyle. Come along and hear for yourself it will be great to meet you. Click here to book Your FREE place/s

Have you ever been lucky enough to observe a 12 month old up close? Have you seen them take their first few steps. I know that at some stage we have all gone through the same process, but have you ever really considered the tenacity, mistakes, slip ups and potential embarrassments that you went through to do something that you can now do without ever thinking about it?

Lets consider the process. They usually spend some time, crawling along whilst watching and observing the older people in their life run around everywhere. Through that observation, they now consider that they are capable of modelling those actions themselves. They spend a month or so preparing, starting to pull themselves upright on anything that comes to hand, table/chair leg, your leg, sofa and even the dog.

Eventually, they get to the point where they can stand up, but those first, tentative steps normally ended up with them falling. Undeterred, and surrounded by a chorus of encouragement from their cheer leaders (family), they get up and have another go, each and every time learning from their previous experience. By making micro adjustments to their movements and balance they get to take those first few steps and now they are a walker; truly a miracle to behold.

What might have happened had  they started out on there quest with adult thinking? The thinking we learn from, our peers, the media, the education system etc. The learning that teaches us that to fail is bad. Upon falling they might have thought to themselves “Maybe I’m not cut out for this walking lark” they may have also been embarrassed to attempt to walk in front of others in case they made a mistake and others were able to witness there ‘failure’.  They may have thought, “the time might not be right for me to walk” and made a decision to put it off and wait for the perfect conditions. They might have thought, “maybe I haven’t got the right abilities to take on this challenge so why bother?” Fortunately, they don't have adult thinking or, as some call it, stinking thinking, so encouraged by those around them, they pick themselves up dust themselves off and go again until they reached their final objective.

What has this got to do with business?

Unfortunately, for most of us, we have had the experience of being conditioned to think that to fail is bad and to ask for help is a sign of weakness. So, when we start off in business, we muddle along working really hard for little or no reward and suffer a great deal of stress in our attempts to get our new business off the ground. After a period of time, our new lifestyle becomes all too familiar and we are in a rut. I have heard a rut described as a grave with the ends kicked out! A sad statistic that is banded about these days is that as few as 4 out of every 100 businesses that open their doors will not see their 10^th birthday.

What would happen if instead we applied the innocent thinking of a baby to some of life’s and business’ obstacles? What might we be able to achieve? What if we were to accept the fact that if others’ can do it, then so can we? What if we were to learn from those who have gone before us? What if we were to learn from the mistakes those people made, so that we didn’t have to go through them ourselves? How might our outcomes be different?

The challenge is that our ego sometimes gets in the way and, instead of searching out sound advice, we think that letting others see our vulnerability is a sign of weakness when, in fact, it is a sign of strength. We stay in our ‘rut,’ when life could be so different.

If you ever find yourself thinking “there must be another way” or “how can I do this differently?” you might be interested in our FREE seminar 'Take Control of Your Business' where we will looking at simple, yet effective strategies to build a better, far more profitable business, whilst generating a better lifestyle. Come along and hear for yourself it will be great to meet you. 

Click here to book Your FREE place/s

The problem with living on Someday Isle

One of my clients was recently talking to their Dad, who, sadly, at the moment is fighting a life threatening illness. During the course of the conversation, he asked his Dad, “If you could live your life again, what would you do differently?” Some of the things his Dad said didn’t surprise him, but what did surprise him was how easily these things rolled of the tongue. It became obvious to him in that moment that his Dad had spent a great deal of time thinking “if only”. He would eventually go to his grave with lots of regrets.

Apologises if you feel that the opening paragraph is a little depressing, but the fact is that most of us will go through life (and, indeed, in our business) thinking “one day I will get round to doing….” Add your own situation here it could be; sorting out my cash flow, growing my business, taking control of my time, saying, NO more, letting go of that employee that, although they may have all the skills my business needs, are toxic in the workplace, spending time with my kids, getting fit and healthy…

Why do we do it?

There could be numerous reasons/excuses for it, but what I would like to do is focus in on some that have definitely shown up in my own life, but also show up in the lives of my clients, family and friends.

We become tolerant with our present circumstances.

It is very rare in business that a problem just happens. The customer that goes bust owing you money has almost certainly been on your radar for some time, but because there isn’t a gaping hole in your cash flow, instead of chasing them, you rationalise, “They have always been good for the money in the past and I have cash at the moment, so I won’t bother them just yet”. A key word here is, ‘rationalise.’ What we are saying to ourselves is perfectly rational, but, in actual fact, we are lying to ourselves because the alternative to letting it go has a feeling of discomfort associated to it. Picking the phone up and asking for the money might mean the client gets angry for being pestered, he might take his business elsewhere, I might have to face the truth that they are in fact in financial trouble and I could lose the money….we play out in our heads all sorts of scenarios of what could go wrong.

But what if it is just an oversight from their accounting department?  What if your invoice was lost in the post? Again, there could be lots of positive reasons why the invoice hasn’t been paid, but it is still easier to give in to that uncomfortable feeling you get when you rationalise. I am going to suggest a reframe on that word to ‘rational-lies;’ we lie to ourselves because it feels more comfortable. By giving into these rational- lies, we are in fact shrinking our comfort zone or as I prefer to call it our familiarity zone -after all, a comfort zone isn’t necessarily comfortable. The problem with this way of thinking is that all the good stuff in life and business could well be on the other side of that zone.

We think we have unlimited time.

How many times have your said to yourself, “I will do it tomorrow, I promise?”   Tomorrow comes and we push it back again because there is something more urgent to deal with. We push back the important to deal with the urgent because we rational-lies we will have time to get round to the important stuff one day. What happens to that important stuff that we keep putting off well one day you can guarantee it will become urgent. That is how we could end up like the Dad of my client; with a whole load of regrets.

Fact of the matter is that, in the UK we have a life expectancy of around about 80 years and, for most of us, that seems a long way off in the future and gives us a warped perspective about time. We put things off because we think we have lots of time and we move to a new address ‘Someday Isle’. Someday Isle (I’ll) fix that cash flow problem, someday Isle (I’ll) tell that toxic member of staff to go and be successful in some other company, someday Isle (I’ll) take that holiday, someday Isle (I’ll) get round to spending more time with my kids. Problem can be that someday never arrives because there is all this urgent stuff that demands our attention and, if we choose to allow it, it will always get in the way of the important things in life.

I recently read the book, ‘Life in Half a Second,’ by Matthew Michalewicz and he had an interesting exercise it the book to bring home how we can get a more real perspective on how much time we do in actual fact have and that could if we were to choose lead us to stop putting the important things off.

The exercise is to simply take your age at your next birthday away from the 80 years you will get, if you live to the average age. Turn that answer into days by multiplying by 365 and add to that figure the days between now and your next birthday. What you have now is the number of days you could potentially have left. Does it change your perspective? Do you feel like wasting any of those days on trivial stuff? Does it make the important stuff more important?

Are you driven by pain or pleasure?

In other words, when you think of a goal that you may have, what thoughts come up for you? Do you think about all the great things that will happen as a result of achieving the goal or are you driven by the consequences of what will happen if you don’t move towards the goal? It is really important when goal setting to understand yourself. What is it that drives you? Think back to a goal that you have achieved in the past, what drove you to achieve it? What were you saying to yourself at the time? What were you looking to achieve/avoid? When you discover your preference you are now armed with the knowledge of how to speak to yourself in any moments of doubt or weakness. If you are a ‘towards driven’ person, you can tell yourself about all the great things that will happen when you get over this moment of weakness. If you are an ‘away from’ driven person, then you will almost certainly get over the moment by telling yourself about the consequences of giving into the weakness.

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