Last week we began our look at the Three Magical M’s of Marketing. We examined the first of the Three Key Elements that you must carefully consider to be successful with your marketing, Use the Right Media.
This week we will continue our study with the 2nd M, Create the Right Message.
Of the 3 this is the most difficult to accomplish well, and requires the most attention. However, for too many jewelers, this aspect is almost an afterthought. More time is spent on the product or service offered, the sale or event, the media selection, the advertising budget or other concerns. The actual content of the advertisement is often thrown together with little thought. Material is used from previous ads or content copied from someone else. As a result our marketing is far less successful than it could be.
Why Your Message Matters
From the beginning of time until the year 2003, five billion gigabytes of information was published. Today five billion gigabytes of information is published every 10 minutes! The amount of information that took all of history up until 2003 to be published, is being created and published in nearly the time it will take you to read this article. The Information Super Highway has created Information Overload.
In 1960, every US citizen was exposed to around 1,500 advertising messages per day, by 1990 this number had doubled to 3,000 messages per day and rose to 5,000 messages per day in the year 2000. Today consumers are bombarded with over 15,000 advertising messages every day.
Your message has to cut through the marketing clutter. Our brains cannot truly process that much information. The vast majority of marketing messages we are exposed to every day go by without notice. We have become immune to information and especially marketing. We tune it out. Only a very small percentage of the information we are subjected to is noticed, much less absorbed and given meaningful thought to.
Stop the Scroll
There is so much information thrown at us today that consumers could not read it all even if they spend all day reading. As a result they quickly scroll through their Newsfeed stopping to read only what seems interesting to them.
The content of your marketing message, the images and text, must Grab Their Attention and Stop the Scroll. If not, they will zoom past and never know they had been exposed to it.
Create the Desire
Here is where most Social Media advertising fails!
A cute baby picture or funny pet picture can grab the consumer’s attention. But if the image is not related to your product or service it will not create a desire to own the product or use the service.
The right message should link the use of your products and services with their innermost wants and cravings. It should trigger an emotion within them to cause them to believe that their life will be better if only they had what you offer.
As mentioned earlier, there is stiff competition for consumers’ time and attention. It is hard enough to grab their attention, but once you do, if you do not connect with them and create this desire they will quickly move on to the next item.
Compel Them to Action
Once the desire to own your product or use your service is created, you must motivate them to take action. There are a lot of women who desire to own and wear a nice piece of jewelry. But if they are never compelled to come into a jewelry store and take out their credit card and purchase it, the desire does not benefit the jeweler.
You need a strong Call To Action (CTA) that tells them specifically what to do. ‘Come in Today’ and ‘Call Us Now’ are both examples of a strong CTA. They are short, direct, and there is no question as to what you want consumers to do. In addition, they both add a sense of urgency.
‘Go Ahead – Indulge Yourself’ is another effective form of CTA. While not directly telling them to contact your business as in the above examples, it gives the consumer permission to make the purchase. People in general are apprehensive of being seen as self-indulgent, reluctant to make a self-purchase. Receiving reassurance it is OK, even from a complete stranger, is often all that is needed to bring them into your store.
Forget About the Click
Ever since the first internet link ad was created, marketers have obsessed over Clicks, Click Thru Rates, and website traffic. And, for an online store, these measurements are all important. However, for brick-n-mortar stores it is not website traffic that matters. In-store traffic is the only measure local retailers should concern themselves about.
A recent study by Data Logix revealed that over 99% of people who purchased products in a brick-n-mortar store never clicked on an online ad.
Unless the goal of your ad is solely for prospecting and you have a strong capture mechanism to gather e-mail addresses on your website for future e-mail marketing, don’t waste your time and marketing dollars creating ads to send people there. Consumer’s attention span is short and the space in your ad is limited. You will be far better served if you wisely spend that space on driving customers to your store and forget about getting clicks on your ad. Get their feet thru the door, not their eyeballs on your website!
To create a compelling message that grabs the consumer’s attention, creates a desire for your products and services, and motivates them to shop with you is a daunting task. Especially considering the limited space most advertising provides for you. In spite of this, taking the time to improve the content in your messages often makes the difference between an average marketing message that produces mediocre results and one that is outrageously successful. For a Resource List of tools and materials to help you create your content go to www.FeetThruTheDoorMarketing.com/resource-list.
Next month we will look at the 3rd Magical M – Target the Right Market. For more information on Mobile Social Marketing for retail stores, and Creating Compelling Marketing Messages go to www.FeetThruTheDoorMarketing.com.
Brad Simon is co-owner of Internet 4 Jewelers and Feet Thru The Door Marketing. They provide affordable full-service Social Media Management and Facebook Ad Campaign Management exclusively for retail jewelry stores as well as Online Educational Programs for local retail stores. For more information contact Brad at 864-680-4416 or Brad@Internet4Jewelers.com.
