from Your Marketing Here's one of the most common and critical marketing mistakes that we see being made every day by business owners around the world. The mistake is -- trying to interest a person in buying your product or service during your Prospecting stage, before they know anything about you, your company or your product/service. Here is a classified ad written by an entrepreneur who sells gift items. FREE Gift Catalog. 15% Off Your First Order! At first glance, you may think that this is a perfectly good ad. But it actually includes 'obstacles' that will eliminate the possibility of anyone responding. If you understand a basic marketing principle that you can't 'sell' your product or service in one, quick and easy step, then you realize that the most you can do with an ad is generate prospects -- not sell. Once you attract prospects to your business, you then can follow up with them repeatedly with information about your business, your products/services and special offers. It is through this follow-up that you will get your prospects to know, like and trust you enough to actually buy from you. This ad isn't trying to attract prospects. It is trying to skip the prospecting stage and leap ahead to the sale. That's a guaranteed 'obstacle' to response, and it also guarantees little or no response. This is a 'selling' ad. Here's how to identify it as a selling ad. The word 'catalog' means you are trying to sell something. The words '10% Off' means you are trying to sell something. The words 'Your First Order' means you are trying to sell something. Trying to sell in your first step is the fastest way to kill response. You must attract prospects with a non-selling approach. If you want to attract prospects, focus 100% of your prospecting ads on the offer of free information. Here's one way to reduce the obstacles in this ad: FREE Gift Catalog filled with fun and unique gift ideas. There's no obligation. This is certainly an improvement, but even this ad still hints at selling, since we've left the word 'catalog' in it. Here's a pure Prospect attracting ad: FREE Big, Gift Idea Book filled with 101 fun and unique gift ideas for the holidays. Hurry, supplies are limited. The only people who will respond to this Prospect attracting ad are those who are looking for fun and unique gift ideas for the holidays -- the very people who this entrepreneur should want on his or her Prospect list. Notice that there is absolutely no hint of selling -- only 'giving.' This is what we mean by our 'Give to Get' philosophy. This is the same 'Give to Get' marketing philosophy that has helped us attract over 700,000 prospects to sign up for our free Idea-Kits, and free newsletters for our Web businesses. It's also the philosophy that helps us generate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from our two Web sites. Of course, this 'Give to Get' philosophy applies to 'all' kinds of businesses, not just Web businesses. It definitely applies to 'your' business. Focus your first-step ads on 'Prospecting' not selling, and you will eliminate one of the biggest Response Obstacles. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2000-2023 by Joe Gracia - All Rights Reserved. All content, graphics, and HTML code are protected by US and International Copyright Laws, and may not be copied, reprinted, published, translated, hosted, or otherwise distributed by any means without explicit written permission. For Reprint Policies and Details Click Here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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