The ultimate goal of marketing is to lead your prospects to do one thing ­ buy from YOU!  Marketing needs to make your prospects feel like an absolute fool to do business with any one else but you... regardless of price.  In order to do that... your marketing needs to delineate all the points that make your business superior and unique from the rest of the marketplace.  Next... you need to create powerful lead-generators that hit (what we call) your prospects hot-buttons.  These are the power-points that makes your prospects WANT to read what you¹re saying in the first place.

How does marketing and advertising lead your prospects to feel that way?

The greatest marketers of all time have concluded one thing:  Effective marketing (and advertising depending on their definition) is scientific in nature.  I encourage you to look up people like Rosser Reeves, John Caples, David Ogilvy, Fred Hahn, and Claude Hopkins. They have all come to the same conclusion:  marketing effectively is a science and a process not a purely artsy or creative activity.

There is a system that needs to be followed. In effect ­ the system contains three basic fundamentals:

1. Knowing your prospect.
What makes them look at an advertisement? What makes them want to read on, or continue listening? What kind of information are they looking for? What are their frustrations and goals? What have prior experiences been like in dealing with businesses like yours?

2. Testing your marketing / advertising.
On a small scale of implementation run ads up against each other to determine which pulls the best results. Run your ads through survey groups and get feedback. When you start to hear from John Smith that everything you are saying is exactly what he is looking for ­ don¹t hold back on the advertising. Now ­ you know you have the right emotional connectivity that is based on real life situations, frustrations, wants and needs. Be sure that it is not something cute, funny, or off the wall just for the sake of being creative. That distracts from what you are trying to sell. David Ogilvy said one of the biggest mistakes he ever made was using Eleanor Roosevelt to push margarine. People remembered her ­ but forgot the product. Another example: When Budweiser ran its "Whassup" Ad at the Super Bowl... the sales for Budweiser went down for three consecutive quarters afterwards. But hey ­ they won all the advertisement awards that year. That's all that matters anyway right? NO... it's RESULTS that matter.

3. Provide easy to take offers that generate immediate response.
Over 95% of the advertising you see in newspapers, on TV, in the yellow pages, and hear on the radio contains no offer whatsoever. These people are stuck in the paradigm that the only good prospects worth talking to... are the ripe prospects'. There are two problems with this.

• Problem 1: Any prospect that is even remotely thinking about buying your product... Is worth talking too. They just may be ready to buy a few days, weeks, or even months down the road. But if you knew a way to capture all the future buyers, then shift marketing dollars to those people - and reduce marketing dollars spent on the masses that you knew absolutely nothing about ... do you think you would get a bigger bang for your marketing buck? Of course you would. You would be marketing to a much more specified target market.
• Problem 2: Only 2-5% of your prospects are ready to fork over the cash today. So, for those people, no offer is needed.  However, the name of this game is, Monopolize Your Marketplace. This is something you'll never achieve with only 5%.  Sadly... If you provide no way for the other 95-99% to learn more about YOU in a no-risk, easy to take way guess what, they will forget about YOU!  And when they are ready to hand over their money to buy what it is you sell - YOU are left with only one option and that's to beg, plead and hope that they see your ad first.

Caples had a three step system that Ogilvy followed. They called it the three step approach to creativity:

1. Capture the prospects attention
2. Keep their attention
3. Move the prospect to a  favorable action

It's interesting this three step system mirrors a psychological path that our brain follows when doing anything ­ and in this case marketing and advertising.

Let's take a step back and go to step number one of the marketing process: Knowing your prospects.

You're probably familiar with the saying, "If you want to know why John Smith buys what John Smith buys, you've got to see the world through John Smith's eyes."  You've taken great pains to build a business that gives customers what they want.  The problem is, most business people don't have the foggiest clue about the decision making processes that customers use when deciding how to solve their problems (in other words, how they choose a company to buy from).

First, you have to understand how John Smith's brain works. Now we are getting back to Caples' three steps and how the brain operates. There are three quick concepts you need to know:

• Alpha Mode: This is the hypnotic state of the brain that habitually performs tasks without any conscious thought.  In Alpha, which is the state of daydreaming, hypnosis, meditation and sleep (awake or asleep, and functioning at approximately 7 to 14 cycles per second) you will find that this is like when you drive to work and then realize that you didn't consciously see a thing along the way while driving!  In marketing terms, this means people see and hear ads, but they don't consciously notice them.
  
  
• Beta Mode: This is the brain's active state of engagement. In Beta (approximately 14 to 21 cycles per second) you chase after a million dollars, that red sports car, the perfect career, or whatever it is that you give your full attention too.  Beta is truly for the hunt.  It's like when you drive to work in a heavy thunderstorm; your hands are firmly gripped at the 10 and 2 o'clock position and your pupils are as big as dimes. In marketing terms, this is when a person consciously notices ads and is open to suggestions and hunting for solutions.
  
  
• Reticular Activator (RA): This is the part of your brain that's on the lookout 24/7 for things that are familiar and/or problematic. Have you ever bought a new car only to discover afterward that everyone else on the face of the planet earth has the exact same make, model, and color? This is because your new car is now familiar, and therefore embedded in your RA, which then easily picks the car out of any crowd.

Marketing's first job, then is to get the prospect to "snap" out of Alpha and into Beta. This is done by finding out what problems, frustrations, annoyances, etc. your prospects have and talking about those in your marketing (instead of speaking in general platitudes about the things you do, or talking about how great you are).  As I mentioned before, these are the prospect's "HOT-BUTTONS;" because they're familiar and/or problematic, they will register in their Reticular Activator and get them to "snap" from Alpha to Beta mode.  Sounds simple, doesn't it?  It really is.

Once the prospect is snapped into Beta mode, you're not done. Marketing's second job is to now get the prospect to do something... to take the next action in the buying process.  In ten years of research we have discovered that there are four stages in the "Marketing Equation:" - not three like Caples and Ogilvy suggest. They are:

1.  Interrupt: This is getting the prospect to pay attention like we just discussed. This is accomplished by turning those "HOT-BUTTONS" that already exist in your prospect's brain into headlines that their RA can find and snap them from Alpha to Beta. Now most ad agencies do a really good job of this. This is fundamental and everyone knows this. However what they don't realize is that using sex appeal, images out of the ordinary, or a play on shapes, words etc ­ when it is not hitting the right emotional hot-buttons ­ has a negative effect.  The interrupt is lost and the Reticular Activator tells the mind "oops - false beta, go back to doing whatever it was before you saw or heard this ad." This is why companies and ad agencies have to always come up with new campaigns; because we as a whole get so used to seeing all of these false betas. These ads get to the point that they no longer even interrupt anymore because our reticular activator has "ignore that ad" on autopilot; and we don't even see it.
   
   
2. Engage: Once the prospect is interrupted, it's critical to get them engaged. This is done by using a sub-headline that gives the reader the promise that information is forthcoming that will solve the problem that they were interrupted with. It needs to carry the same idea portrayed in the headline and lead into the selling points of the ad. All too often the ads we've seen have no sub-headline or no direct relation between the headlines and the context of the ad. The lack of a sub-headline or any function that executes the engage phase of the advertisement is immediately losing potential viewer ship. Now ­ one thing I want you to understand is that the use of a sub-headline is not critical for there to be an "engage"; the engage can also be taken care of in the headline itself. For example:
   
   Ask Any Consulting Firm These 7 Questions And Know In Less Than 15 Minutes If They'll Be Able To Handle Your Project And Provide Your Solution On-Time, On-Budget
   
   This headline Interrupts and Engages. Understand... engaging is the key issue here - not having just any old sub-headline.
   
   Now look at the words in red, replace these words with words that describe how your business solves problems.  Do you see how the same 'concept' can Interrupt and Engage your target market?
   
   
3. Educate: Human nature dictates that people always want to make the best decision possible. They want to feel like they're in control. Once you've interrupted and engaged the prospect, you have to give information that allows them to logically understand how and why you solve that problem. Their problems (a.k.a. their hot-buttons) is the ITCH, the Control information (what your company does to solve it) is the SCRATCH.
   
   Let's use the chiropractor analogy again and pretend that YOU are the chiropractor. If you provided in your ad a list of the 14 specific questions your prospect needed to ask; then delineated how these questions should be answered to ensure that the chiropractor your prospect was contacting could provide them with the utmost in quality service and under any circumstances (which of course they couldn't because you're the best... right).  What do you think would happen?  Your prospect would now feel like the person in control of the buying situation. He now has confidence to make a well qualified decision when deciding who to do business with. Guess what that result translates to?  Worst case scenario... it's a powerful response to your ad asking for at least more information about who you are and what you do; plus you'll have the ability to gather their contact information... that is if you get the next step right.
   
   
4. Offer: Now the prospect's been interrupted based on problems that are important to him. He has been engaged by the promise of a solution, and examined the Control information that makes your solution real and believable. The last step for you is to give the prospect a low-risk way to take the next step in the sales process. This is done by offering a free marketing tool such as a report, brochure, seminar, audio, video or something to give even more Control information to allow the prospect to feel in control of the final decision.
   
   It is here at the decide phase that marketing and advertise can become fully leveraged... or severely limited.
   
   I am going to draw a simple diagram to illustrate what I mean. The diagram below represents what we call the "Educational Spectrum". Whenever someone goes through the buying process we all go through a series of steps (which differ from one decision to the next) in gathering information to help us make the best decision. This is merely an educational process in which we are learning which of all the options available is best to suit our needs.
   
   Here is the educational spectrum:
   
   
   This is the buying cycle of your prospects. "A" represents when they start thinking of buying what you sell; "Z" is when they fork over the cash; and in this example "U" represents when the buyer gets serious and begins active engagement in looking at all options. So the points between U and Z people are actively engaged (in Beta Mode) in buying what you have to sell. Between points A and U though, your prospects are in Alpha mode. They are looking at all the options for information ­ but only if it interrupts them. So how does all this tie into the decide function of the equation? Let see for ourselves. Lets take a look at all the offers out there ­ and based on the type of offer lets make a conclusion as to where their targeted prospects are on the educational spectrum.
   
   

   The Most Common Types of Offers	Position in the Educational Spectrum
   Buy 1 Get 1 Free	Between U and Z
   Get a discount when you buy	Point Z
   Free Evaluation or Consultation	Point U
   Coupon for $X.00 off next purchase	Between U and Z
   Come visit us	Between U and Z
   Free liter of Sprite with Large Pizza	Point Z
   Bring a Friend Get 10% off	Point Z
   Sign Up Today and Get A Free XYZ	Point Z
   Buy Today	Point Z
   NO CALL TO ACTION REQUESTED	Point Z

   
   Do you get it? 99% of marketing and advertising is targeted to those who are between point U and Z. Did you know that represents only 2% - 5% of the total prospects at any given point? Not only that but when you compete that way you are dividing up that 5% among all the competitors.
   
   Is that what you want? To perpetually feed incompetent media moguls who generate for you a measly portion of a fraction of the 5%?
   
   Or would you rather snap the other 95% from Alpha to Beta ­ gather these prospects who are looking to be nurtured like fruit on a tree, build a powerfully stated argument for your business as they progress from A to U; and when they do become ready to buy... you are the obvious choice in a sea of competition.
   
   I think the best choice is obvious.