The Marketing Equation Explained.

The fundamental purpose of all marketing is to get potential purchasers to know, like, trust, buy, and refer you or your product. This involves taking the potential purchaser on a journey of discovery, what we call the ‘buyer’s journey’ (you can read about this here). To do this you need to organise the buying and selling processes to present compelling information that persuades your potential purchaser to take specific actions. Your marketing needs to inform and persuade your potential purchaser and address the wants and needs of them, so that they continue to move through the various decision-making stages of the buyer’s journey.

To do this your marketing must do 3 things:-

1. Grab their attention.
2. Facilitate their information gathering & decision-making process.
3. Provide a specific, low risk, easy to take action that helps them make a good decision.

All your marketing must follow this equation: Marketing Success=I+E+E+O

1. Interrupt… You must interrupt your potential purchasers so that they’ll firstly notice your message and then pay attention. To do this your message must get through the Reticular Activating System (RAS), this is a bundle of nerves at our brainstem that filters out unnecessary information so the important stuff gets through.  We all have a RAS because we’d go mad without one.  Imagine a world where you are constantly bombarded with stuff that you have to pay attention to, it hardly bears thinking about.

To get through the RAS we use what we call a ‘reticular activator’, this is something that our potential purchaser will pay attention to.  The reticular activator will depend on the medium that you’re using, for example in TV or video advertising you often see funny or unusual characters, like the talking meerkat used by compare-the-market.com, who can resist paying attention to a talking meerkat.

 

 

With written media you really need an attention-grabbing headline to act as your reticular activator. 

The headline must resonate with the hot button issues faced by your specific prospect in your specific niche market. Every marketing piece MUST start with a headline that grabs the prospect’s attention in an emotionally compelling way. The headline serves a second crucial function – It immediately qualifies your target customer and ‘disqualifies’ those prospects who aren’t your target customer. A well-written headline will only grab the attention of those prospects who genuinely want your product or services.

Here’s an example from one of the ‘RedTops’ newspapers back in the 1980s. It famously grabbed everyone’s attention.

Perhaps one of the most famous headlines of all time, even though it was written over 30 years ago. It’s still talked about today.

Notice the sub-headline is also engaging (he did what!). See below for a more detailed explanation of sub-headlines.

 

 

 

In marketing circles, headlines are seen as the single most important factor of any written piece.  David Ogilvy famously said that the headline is 80% of your copy. If they don’t read the headline, they won’t read the rest of the piece. This is why good copywriters will spend a lot of time on the headline.

The king of headline writers was John Caples, so many of his headlines are still in use today, it’s ridiculous. Perhaps one of his more famous headlines is:-

“They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play!—”

You can get access to my headline examples here. There are 170 of the most copied headlines of all time, written by the best, and all of which are designed to interrupt your potential purchaser.

So the first step you must take is to ‘STOP’ putting the name of your business or logo at the top of your ad or website and use an attention-grabbing headline.

2. Engage… Now that you have the attention of your potential purchaser you must quickly engage them by persuasively promising to provide them with vital decision-making information that will solve their major problem, frustration, fear, or concern.  Failure to do this will lead to your prospective reader/viewer quickly abandoning your advertisement. This is what we call ‘false up time’ i.e you’ve got your prospect to pay attention but you’ve failed to engage with them.

To engage your audience this is normally done using a sub-headline which builds on the impact of the headline and makes it intriguing.

The headline and sub-headline work together to Interrupt and Engage your target customer by promising to provide them with vital, decision making information that will solve their major concern or frustration.

Your Sub-headline tells your story in brief form to glancers who don’t have the time to read your entire advertisement. Your Subheadlines get copy, read that might otherwise not be read.

For example, if your target customer’s major concern is with losing weight you can use a combination of the headline-subheadline example below to get their attention as in this classic example:-

 

How to burn off body fat, hour-by-hour!

Medical doctor’s new discovery burns away more fat and fluid than if you ran 98 miles per week.

 

 

Writing headlines and subheadlines takes practice, patience, and a great “swipe file”. A swipe file is a collection of previously used, tested, and proven headlines and subheadlines that can be used as examples to help you get started developing yours. If you would like to get access to our swipe file then drop an email to info@johnolivant.com

3. Educate…Once we’ve interrupted and engaged our ‘potential purchaser’ we have to give information that allows them to logically understand how and why we solve the problem they’re facing. This is accomplished by giving detailed, quantifiable, specific, and revealing information. 

This is typically done in the body copy of your ad. When we educate, we need to reveal to your prospects the important and relevant information they need to know when making a good decision, and that your business… and yours alone… provides it to them. The ‘interrupt’ and ‘engage’ hit the prospect’s emotional hot buttons. Educate is the logic they need to justify picking up the phone and calling you. 

In your body copy, emphasize the benefits prospects want. Follow these guidelines for your body copy:

• Focus on a product or service’s benefits, you must not focus on the features of the product. Simply put, features are the characteristics of your product. These are the plain facts about the product – its size, weight, and functionality. A product benefit is ‘the value’ that a customer realises from the product. It is an expression of fulfilling the customer’s needs.

So when Steve Jobs from Apple launched the ‘Ipod’ he spoke of a 1000 songs in your pocket ( a benefit) whereas other MP3 manufacturers spoke about devices with 1Gb of memory (a feature).

• Body copy must inform your prospects about the extraordinary value you offer with crystal clarity.
• Resist the temptation to throw in every bit of juicy information, and focus on only one hot button at a time.
• Give just enough info to entice them to want to know more.

Remember – You can only focus on one ‘hot-button’ at a time, trying to highlight multiple ‘hot-buttons’ will lead to confusing your audience.

4. Offer… Always end your marketing message with a compelling offer. Your potential purchaser will not take action unless you ask them to do so, and give them a good reason why they should. Offers have one purpose… get prospects to take action. Offers need to have a ‘low threshold resistance’, i.e not require the prospects to take a great leap of faith in your product or service.   

So for example, If you sell a low priced ‘non-complex’ product or service, the next step might be to buy. This a product or service where the prospect can instantly understand the benefits they will receive.

However, if you sell an expensive or complex product or service then there’s a good probability that the potential purchaser will require additional information before they’re ready to take the next step. An excellent way is to offer a free report, ebook, or whitepaper; usually, these are made available by download. 

The report, ebook, or whitepaper should contain the following information:- 

1. Highlight the problem that your potential purchaser has.
2. Highlight the dangers of not taking action.
3. Highlight how this type of problem is typically solved using the solution your product provides.
4. Highlights why your business is the right choice for your potential purchaser.
5. Includes social proof in the form of testimonials from satisfied customers.

This free report should be available upon request – use a landing page to instantly download the report. When prospects call or go online to request the report, you should capture their contact information If they don’t buy immediately, begin a “drip campaign”.

A drip campaign takes the potential purchaser on the buyer’s journey. It continues to highlight the problem they were looking to solve. It educates the prospect on what the benefits of your product or service are. It highlights and answers any objections they might have to buying your product. And finally, it answers the question of why they should buy from you rather than your competition. 

The lack of an offer is the single biggest mistake that is made. A strong offer via a ‘Call to action’ is absolutely vital for your marketing to work.  

Putting it all together.

Here’s an example of an Advert that uses all four elements of the marketing equation. Although the offer is a little weak, ‘call us toll free’ is not a great offer. A free report on how we can save you tax would have been stronger.

The “Marketing Equation” of Interrupt, Engage, Educate, and Offer should be used in EVERY marketing piece you create and for every marketing tactic you use. It’s a process… NOT an event. 

There’s more to marketing than “getting your name out.” You now know the process, and you have the marketing equation to guide you through it. If you act on this information, you should see a dramatic increase in the number of leads you begin to generate… the number of customers you begin to attract… and significant increase to your bottom line.

Your Next Steps.

One way of acting on the information presented here is to test your marketing pieces. We’ve developed a simple tool FREE for you to use. Our Marketing Equation Evaluator (MEE) allows you to assess your marketing piece (Webpage, Advertisement, Leaflet, Sales letter, etc) against the equation and get instant feedback.

Simply complete each section and answer truthfully and you’ll receive a report scorecard for how well your marketing is performing against the marketing equation.  This is not to say that your marketing isn’t working but to indicate that if you fixed the relevant sections it would work better.

You can use the tool for FREE as many times as you like.  To get started just click the button below, this will open up a questionnaire, once completed you’ll get your scorecard:-

Get Started Now