9-11-2013
Most of us have used a version of the marketing funnel to tell the left brain/right brain story and explain to our clients that buying decisions begin at an emotional or subconscious level, and become more conscious and logical as consumers get closer to the purchase end of the funnel.
Even though we tell our prospects buying begins in the heart and is only rationalized in the head, we often use an upside down funnel in our own marketing.
Most media account executives try to open the door with logic?.rankers, ratings, and research, before winning our prospects emotionally.
Radio sales people need to learn to lighten up like that, reaching customers' emotions first, and appealing to logic once that ice is broken.
Social media and YouTube can be among your best tools for reaching your prospects at an emotional level.
With a little time and effort, you can find a short video that makes the point with humor or emotion, that you?ve been trying to make with statistics and logic .
If you want to persuade a yellow pages advertiser that yellow pages are dead, for example, sending this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtrdhEog73w to the video of Ellen Degeneres slamming yellow pages, will make your prospect laugh, and open the door for your logical follow up.
If you want to persuade a client they need better copy to make their advertising work, this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgi0t2ap-us to a video that demonstrates the importance of choosing the right words in your ads will bring a tear to their eye, touching them emotionally.
Over the years I have built an old paper file full of jokes and stories I use in sales training workshops or to send to prospects to make my points emotionally. Over the last few years I?ve started to build the same types of files with online stories, jokes, cartoons, and videos.
Each story, joke, and video is filed by the point they make, and they?re proven to touch prospects emotionally, opening the door for my logical appeals.
We?re in a creative business and our clients expect us to be creative.
We once created a successful prospecting campaign that resulted in 28 new 52-week advertisers. We used our Pre-Qualifying Score Sheet to identify 140 prime prospects then purchased 140 blue gift boxes.
Then we carefully cracked open 140 walnuts down the center, and replaced the inside nuts with fortune-cookie-like message that said ?In a nutshell, we want to help you grow your business,? along with my phone number. We glued the nuts back together with the tail of the message sticking out so my prospects could see them, and attached an address label with the decision-maker?s name.
We then hand-delivered these boxes to 10 pre-selected businesses a week, and 20 percent of them became clients over the next 12 months.
Developing account strategies that utilize the same marketing funnel we tell our clients to use, with emotions at the beginning and logic at the end, can also serve you well.
I hope to see you at the NAB/RAB Radio Show in Orlando where my old friend Jim Taszarek and I will be co-presenting "Smart Prospecting."
Wayne Ens is the president of ENS Media and producer of SoundADvice, the radio e-marketing system. His "Winning in the New Media Economy" advertisers seminars have converted millions of local print dollars to an electronic media mix of radio and Internet.
(9/12/2013 5:04:15 PM)
lo3QL7 Really informative blog article.Really thank you! Keep writing.
(9/12/2013 5:04:08 PM)
Sh9qMx Major thanks for the post.Really thank you! Great.
(9/11/2013 10:10:22 AM)
If only our locally-produced ads were allowed to take a similar approach.
Somehow, "Buy today 'cause when they're gone - they're gone!" just doesn't seem to have that emotional appeal...
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