Marketing Secret #8 News-Style Advertising Gets Up To 500% Greater Response Than Image Advertiser
Yes, you read right. It’s a proven advertising fact. News-style advertising gets up to 500% greater response than colour brochures, business cards, flyers and all other forms of product or image advertising. Do you know why?
News-style advertising doesn’t look like advertising! It looks like news.
Very few people read advertising… but a lot of people read news and other stories.
It is a fact that the newspaper industry has known for over 100 years!
This doesn’t mean I’m telling you to toss out those good looking (and probably expensive) colour brochures and business cards you’ve had printed up. I’m sure that you may get nice comments about how they look. However, are they really producing results for you??? Do they say what will appeal to your customers?
Image advertising does get your name and “image” out there. (Although someone still has to explain to me how one can pay bills with “image”). But, it is not the best or fastest way to get prospects to respond to you!
If it looks like advertising, most people won’t read it.
The human brain would literally fry if it tried to process the thousands of advertising messages it gets hit with every day. To protect ourselves, we have learned to quickly identify things that look, sound or smell like advertising. Unless an ad or commercial gets our attention and interest, we turn the page or switch the channel!!
You may not have thought about this consciously, but most advertising does have an identifiable look and feel to it – doesn’t it? Like a radar detector, our brains can instantly scan and sense advertising pictures and messages largely from their shape and size.
This is precisely why the best marketing approach is to do everything you possibly can to make sure that your advertising does not look like advertising! The secret is to make your advertising look like a newspaper story. People don’t trust advertising. But we have been conditioned since childhood to trust and accept the look and feel of what we read in newsprint. News-style advertising has been proven for decades to get 500% more responses than advertising that looks like advertising! (This technique was started over 100 years ago, so know I didn’t invent it.)
But If It Looks Like A News Story, People Will Be Much More Likely To Read It! Remember, They Can’t Respond If They Don’t Read It!
See what I mean? Take a look at this sample ad, and see if you get the idea. (You will find more samples throughout the secrets. For now, we want to educate you on this point.)
So let’s look a little closer at this particular ad:
- No graphics
- No pictures
- No slogans
- No logos
- No “image”, etc
All it has is a headline, copy, and a non-threatening response device (recorded message – which is another secret).
Do these ads work better than “regular” ads? Well, how about a real story that is just one of the literally hundreds that we hear about from our clients? (Keep in mind that this story isn’t making any promises that you will get the same results. It’s only an illustration of the difference between unproductive, “professional” advertising and results-driven editorial advertising.)
Here’s a real life example. One of our clients spent $650 on a large, typical ad with his picture, a laundry list of services, and a “catchy” slogan. On the same page, he ran a small ad from the secrets which cost $75. Can you take a guess on the results? The client received two responses from the “professional” ad and 84 responses from the tiny, emotional, editorial, “unprofessional” ad!
This happens on a regular basis. Not that we guarantee that an editorial ad will always be a winner. There are a lot of variables that can affect any ad.
What we do guarantee, however, is that this formula we’re teaching is the best producing, lowest-cost formula ever proven in real world testing.
I’d love to say I invented this formula, but that would be a lie.
Rather, this formula was discovered almost 100 years ago and rediscovered by us a few years ago.
I am giving you the best field-tested samples we know of. But, that doesn’t mean in your chosen publication, on a given day, your ad will work.
Sometimes changing a headline, or the location of the ad, or the day of the week, can make a huge difference. We’ll talk more about testing in other secrets. For now, understand that emotional, curiosity-provoking ads, in editorial style, are the only worthwhile way to get results, not “your name out there”!
It’s Proven That Emotional News Headlines Sell More!
Today’s television and news headlines whether on paper or online are filled with bad news.
Headline News Story
$2.00 a Litre! The rising price of petrol
London Fire! 6 die in Grenfell Tower Blaze
2,500 More Jobs To Be Cut BHP announces more layoffs
Tomorrow’s headlines will be just as bad … or worse.
Why?
Because emotional news sells a lot more newspapers and magazines.
Sad…but true.
Turn on your television. Check out the local magazine rack. Stand at the checkout line at the supermarket. What do you see?
We’ve Become A Tabloid “Talk Show” Society. See what I mean…
National Enquirer
The Star
Oprah Winfrey
Jerry Springer
Weekly World
Times are definitely changing.
Like never before, millions of people all across the country are tuning in their television sets every day to watch Oprah, Springer and dozens of new celebrity talk show hosts cover every topic under the sun, from the front pages to the freak show.
A whole new breed of tabloid news shows like Hard Copy and Inside Edition have surfaced, as well…giving viewers a leering look inside human interest stories about crime, passion, greed, heartbreak, hope…you name it!
Don’t underestimate the power of this kind of media. It made Monica Lewinski and Linda Tripp household names in millions of homes throughout the country. These same tabloid-style techniques can be used to make prospects respond to you! (Without being obnoxious or sleazy or unethical or illegal!)
8 million copies of tabloids are sold each week!
Yes, you read it right.
Over 8 million copies of National Enquirer, Star and other news tabloids are sold every week! And this doesn’t include the more “upscale” gossip magazines like “People” or “Us”.
Don’t kid yourself…lots of people like to read this stuff. You would be surprised!
The next time you are at the doctor’s or physio office.
You may not read them…But your prospects do!
A truly fatal mistake in advertising is to think that your prospective clients/customers/patients think like you do…and like the same things that you do.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
Just because YOU may think that tabloids like the Enquirer and gossip magazines like Women’s Day and Australian Women’s Weekly are food for the mindless, don’t make the mistake of thinking that your prospective clients/customers/patients feel the same way.
Did it occur to you people who buy and sell homes, balance chequebooks on computers, surf the internet, dine in coffee shops and fine restaurants, shop at Brook Brothers or K-Mart…people from all walks of life, gossipy magazines…along with Time, Forbes and Fortune?
Why?
Because they are easy to read, they’re entertaining, and they offer a simple escape from reality.
People enjoy hearing or reading human interest stories…(and the nosier, the better!)
Tabloid headlines like these get people’s interest!
Look around on the newsstand, and you’ll see dozens of consumer magazine publications like Money, Consumer Report, Or Changing Times. Study their covers and you’ll see that they all use attention-grabbing headlines, human interest stories, and “insider information” appeals to get people to buy or subscribe. Each month it’s a new financial angle, tip or story.
Keep in mind, I’m not advocating that you advertise like a tabloid, or that you should like or read them just because your prospective clients/customers/patients do. It would help, but that’s not my point.
The same principles of successful advertising apply to any and all industries!
I hope that this is making sense, because you’ll need to adopt a new attitude to make your business work for you, year after year.
Think carefully.
Open yourself to new realities.
When you do, you can experience all kinds of new successes!