Persuasive Advertising for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners

How to Create More Effective Sales Messages

William Winston, Jay P Granat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781560249948
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317952947
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Here is the perfect book for entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to know how to create effective advertising on an affordable budget. Persuasive Advertising for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners shows you how to plan and execute money-making advertisements and commercials--on a workable budget. Jay Granat, an experienced marketing professional and ad man, provides readers with a practical understanding of advertising principles, media selection, copywriting, consumer behavior, and persuasive advertising methods in promotional efforts. These principles have important implications, and Jay Granat shows you how to utilize them and stay within your means. Successful cases from across the media--television, print, direct mail, radio, transit, and public relations, representing construction, law, medicine, publishing, retail businesses, restaurants, and others--highlight various prosperous approaches to persuasive advertising.Written specifically for entrepreneurs and small business owners, Granat's book is the first to explain how to use persuasive tactics and strategies. Ideal for established small business owners and those starting such a venture, this manual makes affordable advertising an easier step on the path to success. In addition to analyzing many aspects of advertising, this manual outlines appropriate networking and public relations strategies for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Granat teaches you how to construct money-making advertising and to recognize when your sales messages are effective and when the messages need to become more persuasive. To help illustrate the power of effective sales messages, he includes examples of his own advertising successes and failures. You will be better equipped to foresee when your own advertising campaigns are more likely to succeed or more likely to fail and how to reverse a failing campaign. Descriptions of the advantages and disadvantages of each advertising medium assist with the question of how to construct effective and persuasive selling messages for specific media.Whether you are looking for advice on how to plan a marketing/advertising campaign, ways to familiarize yourself with each medium available and select a medium to carry your messages, or how to use mind-set advertising, you will find it in Persuasive Advertising for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners. This abundance of useful information is ideal for copywriters, brand managers, entrepreneurial institutes, business professors, communications professionals, readers of Inc., Success, and Entrepreneur, advertising and marketing students, and of course, entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Chapter 1

Introduction

 

WHAT WILL ENTREPRENEURS LEARN FROM THIS BOOK?

•You will learn how to think like an advertising professional and be able to distinguish potentially successful advertisements from potentially unsuccessful ones. This will help you make more money with your advertising and save more money on your advertising.

•You will develop the skills that you need to create effective advertisements and commercials.

•You will find out how hypnosis and hypnotic principles can help you to increase the effectiveness of your sales messages.

•You will learn how to select the appropriate media for your sales messages.

•You will discover how to use public relations in conjunction with your advertising.

•You will see examples of successful and unsuccessful campaigns.

•You will learn how to work more effectively with advertising agencies and advertising consultants.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK?

The information in this book should be of interest to entrepreneurs, small business owners, copywriters, chief executive officers, product managers, brand managers, advertising educators, and marketing directors.

In short, this book should be of interest to anyone who is concerned with creating more effective and more persuasive sales messages.

WHAT'S DIFFERENT ABOUT THIS BOOK?

Most advertising books for small business owners follow a rather uniform pattern. They begin with a brief overview of advertising and marketing, define some key terms, review some guidelines and formulas for creating good advertisements and commercials, and then show samples of effective campaigns. To be honest, when I initially thought about writing this book, I planned on creating a manual that followed the same general outline.

Fortunately, a few months after signing my contract with The Haworth Press, I had a brief but exceedingly valuable phone conversation with William Winston, my editor. Bill suggested that I include a lot of my personal experiences in the book. He felt this would make the book more interesting and would help me to teach the advertising concepts in a more innovative and proficient manner. I believe Bill is right.

In addition, if I evaluate myself as if I were a product and ask myself, What sets me apart from others who have written on advertising? I would have to say that it is probably the fact that I have a rather unique background compared with other people who work in this business.

As is noted in the “About The Author” section, I have had a diverse array of experiences. I have run a publishing company as well as an advertising agency. I am also a college professor and a psychotherapist. I have won advertising awards and have been a judge in advertising contests. I have been fortunate enough to create campaigns for a wide range of products and services.

My clients have included health care facilities, law firms, pharmaceutical companies, dentists, construction companies, photographers, software companies, video production companies, caterers, accounting firms, graphic artists, printers, psychologists, weight control clinics, accounting firms, drug treatment facilities, inventors, and consultants. I have also written ads and commercials for books, video and audio cassette programs, and seminars.

I believe that all of these business and life experiences make it possible for me to provide other entrepreneurs and would-be entre-preneurs with some rather novel insights into the ad game. I hope that my broad range of life experiences will allow me to impart some useful information to you. Again, I believe Bill Winston is right and that a book that includes a personal tone will be more interesting and instructive than a book outlining theories, lists, rules, and guidelines.

I have given dozens of seminars on advertising, marketing, and public relations to a wide range of audiences, and I have noted that invariably workshop participants are very interested in the instructor's background and experiences. While I am not one to spend a lot of time recalling advertising war stories when teaching my college courses and workshops, I have observed that students listen very closely when I integrate a campaign that I have worked on into one of my lectures.

Moreover, many students are far more interested in real-life experiences than they arc in the theoretical kind of information contained in most textbooks. As I mulled over Bill's advice, it occurred to me that a personalized book would probably be more fun to write-and hopefully more fun to read-than would a straightforward manual that resembles a textbook for small business people and entrepreneurs.

Throughout this book, I will integrate anecdotes about my advertising and business successes and failures. I will also try to tell you as many relevant tales as are needed in order to clarify and enliven the concepts under discussion.

ONE ENTREPRENEUR TO ANOTHER

Entrepreneurs are a rather special breed. Like a lot of you who are reading this book, I am an entrepreneur who has both made a lot of money and wasted a lot of money on all forms of promotion. I know what it is like to try to make decisions about copy, media, and advertising budgets.

Moreover, I have a gut-level understanding of the stress, anxiety, and challenges that entrepreneurs encounter on a daily basis. I know what it's like to stay up all night worrying about a big loan or a big cash investment in a venture. I also know what it's like to have a burning desire to see a creative business idea come to fruition.

I understand the powerful drive that so many people have to work for themselves. For some, self-employment is a question of getting away from a difficult boss. Others want the freedom and independence that their own business provides. Some entrepreneurs lack the tolerance and patience for corporate meetings and for large, cumbersome bureaucracies that move at a snail's pace. My wife, who has just started her own psychotherapy practice, and who has been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, recently told me, “I don't know how I ever put up with traveling into Manhattan every day. Besides, I'm really glad to be away from that pain-in-the-ass boss of mine.”

Other entrepreneurs catch the fever by watching a parent or loved one build a family business. When these youngsters enter the world of work, they often feel destined to have their own venture. Some simply want to model the behavior of an adult role model. Others are quite competitive where parents and significant role models are concerned, and they are compulsively driven to outdo and surpass what their parents have accomplished.

The point I am trying to make is that I am an entrepreneur as well as an ad man. I have a lot of friends, clients, and associates who are in business for themselves. I have been in several businesses the last twelve years. I hope I will be able to relate to you in a personalized and meaningful manner because I have probably experienced many of the same thoughts, feelings, problems, and situations you have faced or are confronting right now.

In addition, because I am trained as a psychotherapist, I understand many of the conscious and unconscious emotional and motivational issues that influence advertising, sales, and human nature. As you probably know, and as you will see through the course of this book, there is great deal of psychology involved in advertising. One of the links between my training in psychology and my work in the advertising business is my interest in the roles that hypnotic techniques play in selling. Some of you may be starting to conjure up images of subliminal advertising and you may be thinking I am some kind of nut. In fact, some of my colleagues in academia looked at me as if I were a little weird when I mentioned my interest in hypnotic advertising.

Despite the fact that some of my own and others' ideas about hypnotic advertising have not yet been scientifically proven, I strongly believe there is much that entrepreneurial advertisers can learn by viewing advertising as being similar to the hypnotic process.

Also, I have been fortunate enough to do a lot of direct response advertising, which is often the kind of marketing communication the entrepreneur relies on. Many of the advertisements and commercials I have created are intended to get the phone ringing, get the checks in the mail, or get people into a store or facility. In fact, it is this kind of advertising, as opposed to image advertising, that many small businesses use most often. While some of these advertisements have enhanced a company's image over the long haul, their prime function in most cases was to get feedback in the form of sales or inquiries. In my view, direct response is the most challenging, scientific, and pragmatic form of advertising. You can actually quantify the cost-effectiveness of every dollar spent on a direct response campaign. In addition, direct response advertising and marketing are among the most powerful business tools for entrepreneurs whose companies are growing.

In addition, as many of you know, complex and multifaceted business problems and advertising problems often require multidisciplinary solutions. In other words, it is sometimes useful to be able to evaluate situations from several different perspectives. I believe my diverse background allows me to develop an overall perspective on many entrepreneurial dilemmas.

Similarly, it is quite common to find people who have diverse backgrounds within the fields of advertising, marketing, and public relations. I know a number of outstanding account executives who have backgrounds in law, accounting, and economics. Likewise, many fine copywriters have training in English, psychology, political science, or journalism. H. Gordon Lewis, a fine direct response copywriter, has written screenplays for movies. David Ogilvy, the famous ad man, had a lot of different jobs before getting into the advertising business.

Advertising is clearly an industry in which people's personal experiences play a powerful role in the business decisions they make. For instance, it is quite common for a creative director to base an advertisement or a commercial on something he or she has observed or on a memorable life experience that has been stored in the person's unconscious mind.

Like a lot of people who are drawn to the communications fields, I am an idea person. I hope that my experiences and creative juices make this book worthwhile for you. I also hope I am able to impart useful information that will show you how to produce outstanding advertising for your entrepreneurial ventures.

Chapter 2

“The Medium Is the Message” –
Even for a Five-Year-Old

MY START IN THE ADVERTISING BUSINESS

Like a lot of you who are reading this book, I grew up being fascinated by the Gillette Friday Night Fights, Howdy Doody, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, The Untouchables, Dragnet, and Leave It to Beaver. I can also vividly recall President Kennedy's assassination, Nixon's resignation, and dramatic footage of the Vietnam War. Much to my mother's dismay, I could spend hours in front of the television feeling as intrigued by the commercials as I was by the programming. I also recall the intense excitement around my house when my father was a guest on The Dave Garroway Show. I sat in awe with my eyes fixed on the screen while my dad spoke about one of his business ventures.

However, my preoccupation with the electronic media was not restricted to television…. I can remember sneaking my transistor radio into my bed so that I could listen to the Floyd Patterson-Ingemar Johansson fight. I remember Muhammad Ali's controversial knockout of Sonny Liston as if it were yesterday. Likewise, I can still recall Mel Allen's unique voice, along with his vivid and animated descriptions of the action at the New York Yankees games: “That ball is going, going, gone. It's another long home run for Mickey Mantle.”

As long as I can remember, I have been enamored with all forms of communication: radio, television, books, and magazines. As a kid, when I got interested in something, I had to read everything I could get my hands on. When I got my first dog, I read dozens of books on dog training and animal psychology. When I got into surf casting, I had to learn all I could about this form of ocean fishing. I read every magazine, book, and catalog that dealt with striped bass fishing and bluefish fishing in the Northeast. I guess I was a communications junkie at an early age. And it seems that some things never change, since I am now in the midst of a passionate love affair with Prodigy, the computer on-line system. In fact, when I take breaks from writing this book, I sign on to Prodigy to keep track of my investments, make travel plans, select restaurants, and monitor the news.

When I ask college students how advertising has affected their lives, they often have difficulty answering. Perhaps they are unaware of the impact that the thousands of messages they have been exposed to have had on their attitudes, beliefs, and feelings. Maybe they are embarrassed to admit that they have been affected by some of the nonsensical stuff that appears on the airwaves and in other media.

I, on the other hand, can vividly recall the numerous ways in which advertising and the media have influenced my life. I used to place my ear next to my bowl of Rice Krispies so I could hear the snap, crackle, and pop loud and clear. When I grew tired of this, I used to stare at the picture of Tony the Tiger on m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Table of Contents
• The Power of Persuasive Advertising
• An Inspirational Message for Entrepreneurs
• Author's Note
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: “The Medium Is the Message” – Even for a Five-Year-Old
• Chapter 3: Entrepreneurial Advertising: Some Business Basics and a Lot of Common Sense
• Chapter 4: Persuading Customers
• Chapter 5: Words That Win Customers: A Short Course in Copywriting
• Chapter 6: Testing: A Scientific Approach to Advertising
• Chapter 7: The Adventures of a Mail Order Entrepreneur: Direct Response Advertising
• Chapter 9: Brochures That Bring in Big Bucks
• Chapter 10: How to Create Great Television Campaigns on a Small Budget
• Chapter 11: Radio: Sounds That Sell
• Chapter 12: Where and When Should You Run Your Message?
• Chapter 13: Publicity, Public Relations, and Advertising: A Powerful Combination
• Chapter 14: What Entrepreneurs Really Need to Know About Advertising
• References
• Index