My wife and I were driving by when we passed this sign strung out in bold lettering across the top of our favorite eatery last week. My wife and I both saw it at the same time. We looked at it through the car windows and then went right back to what we had been talking about before.
The advertisement should have attracted us. It’s our favorite Italian restaurant. We love the food, atmosphere, and staff there and go whenever we can. The advertisement was printed in big, black lettering across a white background strung high enough for passing motorists to see from a distance. But for some reason this advertisement didn’t catch our eye enough to make us want to go again.
Why do you suppose that is? It’s the same reason many advertisements fail. It lacks some very important features of a good advertisement.
An important feature to any good advertisement is a deadline. Our favorite restaurant could have simply added the words “This Week Only!” to the end of their current ad to enhance it. Those 3 words would have given my wife and I the knowledge that we need to eat there this week to get the discount. Without those words we didn’t feel the need to go there as soon as possible.
Adding a deadline to your sales copy creates the powerful sense of urgency. Creating urgency is so important because it makes people buy your product NOW instead of whenever they get around to it, and more often than not they don’t buy at all.
Have you ever gotten up at 5 A.M. on the Friday after Thanksgiving Day so you can be one of the first people in line to buy a Christmas present? If so you know the power of urgency. You have this sense that you must buy this item now because if you don’t you will pay significantly more for the same product down the road. The point is to create an urgency so your customers buy now rather than later.
If your advertisement is not selling as well as you expected it to, consider adding limitations to it. Put limits on the quantity you are able to sell. By doing this you create a scarcity for your product or service.
For example you’ve probably seen signs that say things like, “Available for the First 25 Customers Only.” or “Limited Quantity Remaining.” or “Last Chance. When We Run Out There Won’t Be Any More Made.”
Telling your customers there is a limited number available creates that same sense of urgency that causes customers to buy sooner rather than later.
We all want what we can’t have. When you create the sense that something will run out because of either time or quantity you tap into this primal human emotion. The trick is to make it all seem genuine. If you fake it, your audience will see right through your ruse and you will lose all credibility.
To get around this create a legitimate reason for the limitations and deadlines. Explain to your customers that you only had 25 copies of your product made. Or explain why you can only offer this special during this limited time. And why not add some proof to make your statements even more believable. Disclose a picture of an invoice that shows you only had 25 copies printed or ordered. If you are selling a service prove why you can’t take on more than a certain amount. You can explain it’s because of time or that you don’t want to overextend yourself resulting in lower quality service.
Another feature that will enhance your sales copy is a guarantee. Guarantees take away so many of the fears that keep your customers from purchasing your product or service.
When your product or service offers a guarantee you are essentially taking away any and all risk from the buyer and transferring it to the seller. This is important to do because buyers loathe buying items or services sight unseen.
The best guarantees are unfair to the sellers, not the buyers. That means if the customer takes advantage of the guarantee the seller is the one getting ripped off, not the buyer.
When you take away all the risks you leave the customer no reason not to buy your product or service.
The bottom line is you need to throw in features that trigger customers to buy. Trigger features like deadlines, quantity limitations, and guarantees take away all reasons a customer could wait to buy your product/service. I’ve seen these techniques double, triple, and even quadruple responses to features. Take a look at your sales materials and evaluate them. Does it contain one or all of these features? Add them and watch your responses go up and up!
Until Next Time…
