How To Create Advertising That Sells. Five Easy Steps Anyone Can Follow - Step #2
Furniture World News Desk on
12/3/2013
David Love. Love Furniture Profits.
Last week we talked about five elements each ad must have to achieve maximum rather than just some results. To recap:
- A potent headline. In addition to the main headline for the sale, there must be selling subheads for the store and the items on sale.
- Body Copy which carries forward the selling idea in the headline.
- A layout which serves your selling by following a logical sequence.
- Benefits supported with features.
- Call to action. Tell them what to do next.
This week we’ll tackle the second element: copy.
If I showed you one of the most successful ads I've ever created, I absolutely guarantee you’d say, “no one will read all that copy.” If you’d like to see that ad, shoot me an email and I’ll send it to you. It and others like it, produced a 43% increase for that month over the same month a year before.
90 some years of response research proves that opinion is just wrong. So as you read this article, I hope you can suspend that belief and just accept what I say. Even if you don’t believe it, just pretend I know what I'm talking about. What have you got to lose?
Listen to this story. I ran into an old friend of mine at High Point Market last month, I hadn’t seen him since I moved from northern California. He was one of my retailers when I was a rep for Sealy back in the late 80s. He’s now a rep for Hooker and related companies. When he had his store, he turned his Sealy advertising over to me and we doubled his business.
Know the first thing he said when he saw me? “You made me a lot of money. You taught me that intelligent people want to read intelligent ads.” Hear that? Intelligent people want to read intelligent ads. The first thing he said. He hadn’t seen me in over five years. No how you doing? No how have you been. None of that. It was “You made me a lot of money. You taught me that intelligent people want to read intelligent ads.”
People buy for one reason and one reason only: Benefits. Ads which convey no benefits can’t possibly return maximum response. When you pay for ad space, you're not buying advertising. You're buying the opportunity to advertise. Your salespeople can’t sell with few words and neither can your advertising.
There are three things to be sold in your ads: (1) the event (2) the individual items (3) your store as the place to shop.
Let’s talk first about selling the event. I just completed a January sale post card mailer for a client. I guarantee other stores in town will be having a January sale as well. Their ad will have the sale headline, a bunch of pretty pictures and little else.
His ad starts off with a powerful selling headline followed by four paragraphs of copy. These paragraphs are short but potent. A paragraph of copy explaining why “Now” is the time to buy. It goes on telling why he’s having such an extraordinary sale now. That this or no ordinary sale. Remember this: specifics are many times more believable than generalities. Then he says, this sale is only at [store name]. Then there’s the bid for action (just like selling in person).
Readers who don’t know much about what you have to offer can't determine relative value on any of the items from a typical copy-starved ad with few words, a picture and a price. This is especially true of mattresses cause they all look alike.
Let’s say your ad features a sofa at $599. The store across town has one at $499. They both look pretty much alike. The other ad has only the picture and a price. Your ad says the sofa s 87” long. That it is covered with a dark brown micro fiber that wears and easily cleans. That it comes in a choice of fabric. A choice of colors. You list the colors. That it is plush and comfortable. Depending upon the space you have available you can pile feature upon feature, benefit upon benefit. The more you tell, the more you sell.
Without copy to differentiate the two, the reader will naturally assume the one at $499 is a better value. Without copy to explain how she benefits by owning yours at a higher price, she will always go first to the store with the lower price.
Without adequate copy to sell what you offer, you're back to the same old game; who has the lowest price and the longest free financing. That’s a game you cannot win.
Next week, I think I’ll spend a little more time on copy before we move on to layout. It’s that important.
David Love is the owner of Love Furniture Profits. An advertising consulting and coaching firm that shows retailers how to get more traffic, more and higher ticket sales and more profits using long-lost scientific advertising secrets unknown by about 99% of all of today’s retailers.
David is a 41 year furniture/mattress, in the trenches, industry veteran. His unmatched-by-anyone background includes retail furniture sales. Manager of a retail furniture store. 22 years on the road making money for companies like Sealy Mattress and Best Chairs. His territory and his retailers achieved sometimes remarkable sales increases due to the expert advertising and sales advice he gave. He has also owned and sold his own profitable store and was a highly regarded sales manager of a top 100 furniture store.
With his knowledge and front-line experience he has a passion for passing it on and sharing that experience to help furniture and mattress retailers cut advertising waste and maximize sales and profits.
To find out more, get your free copy (a $29 value) of his just released, breakthrough Special Report for Furniture and Mattress stores, “5 Long Lost Scientific Retail Advertising Secrets that work like magic in today’s economy for any furniture or mattress store to get you more customers, more sales, more profits.” Go right now to
www.lovefurnitureprofits.com. David can be reached at
david@lovefurnitureprofits.com. 707-580-3415.
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