3 Steps to Small Business Advertising Success with Classic Salesmanship

What makes a consumer buy a product or service? One reason might be classic salesmanship from a salesman to a customer. But what entails classic salesmanship? It includes getting to know the customer and explaining how the customer can benefit from the product or service. Then the salesman directs them to the product or service using features the customer needs in order to gain the desired benefits.

Good salesmen do things that small business advertising often don’t. They make a personal connection with customers and gain emotional reactions. Then it reinforces that emotion using logic and reasoning that backs up what they’re wanting to do based on that emotional response.

The majority of small business advertising in print an other media simply show the features of a product or service, instead of showing the customer how they’ll benefit from those features. In reality, the customer doesn’t much care for a feature unless it directly benefits them.

For example a vehicle that can hold up to seven passengers. But if I have a family of three, I have no reason to want or need this feature. It has no benefit for me. But say a good salesman learns that my only child has a bunch of friends over to our house and that I shuttle them between activities a lot, the classic salesmanship can take over and the salesman will recognize that the feature can benefit me.. The vehicle that fits seven could make my life easier because I can fit all my child’s friends in the car, thus making me super parent of the week because my kid can spend more time with friends.

In order to have effective small business advertising, it’s important to know something about your customers, or potential customers. You can create small business advertising that speaks directly to your customers once you know enough about your customer to describe them. You can then show how they’ll benefit from your product or service.

Features. Benefits. Emotion. Those are the keys to small business advertising. But the response you want to elicit-and the order in which these words and concepts matter to potential customers-is in reverse order.

Your small business advertising must elicit emotion first. It has to create a response or reaction that’s based on emotion. They need to feel connected to your product or service and desire it.

Next, you must justify the emotional desire from your customer by showcasing the benefits in your advertising. Most people are mainly looking for a reason to buy a product or service, but they must justify the expense first. Describing the benefits will help your customer justify their expenditure on your product or service.

Finally, you can showcase the features of a product or service. Do remember that features only matter in the first place if they demonstrate the real benefits that support the customer’s emotional reaction and desire to purchase. So don’t start out by focusing on features in your small business advertising.

Don’t forget, if you want actual business to result from your advertising, then you want to gain your responses in the proper order. First, get your emotional response. Second, explain benefits that justify the purchase. And third, highlight the features that provide these benefits.

Filed under: Marketing and Advertising

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!