Writing Ad Copy (email or direct marketing) - Craig Simpson

Todays episode I brought on one of the best marketing guys on the west coast. His speciality is direct mail slash email marketing. I am passionate about marketing and advertising because it is absolutely essential if you guys want to create a predictable and repeatable business and this is a skill that very few people have mastered. Let me give you guys a quick explainer here ----most people think that advertising and marketing are the same thing –they are not. Let me quickly try to explain the differences. If you guys can wrap your head around the differences between advertising and marketing and understand how to use this in your business you are going to thrive if not, your in for some pain-----the pain of losing money and we all hate that. For this discussion I am going to use BMW. Bmw is super good at what they do. First—the difference between advertising and marketing is simple. An advertisement is an inducement—in short its and offer—it's a promotion and these promotions are very simple. If you google BMW January 2020 ---you will see two things----you will see something called January promotions and the other thing you will see is January incentives. The offer is dead simple-----drive a new bmw 330 for 349 a month. It give you a term 36 months and an expiration-----all in the headline. Drive a new 330 for 349 a month good thru January 31st. It couldn't be more simple than that. That is an advertisement. This type of advertisement is meant to drive sales through the month of January. This is not a marketing piece. A marketing piece is different---marketing will typically have long and mid range goals with the intent of embedding an image or a "brand"—for BMW their brand is "the ultimate driving machine" aimed at middle upper class people in mid-age 35-50 and is excelling at their career and have aspirational tases—these are people that are value their social status. A BMW marketing piece might be one that embeds the idea that upwardly mobile or wealthy people drive BMW's. Drop into a dealer and look at some of their brochures---heavy cardstock, images that almost move and after looking at one for a few minutes you can almost smell the leather wafting off the page. That is a marketing piece For me I am a Porsche guy and my love affair with Porsche started when I was in my teens. I visited a Porsche dealer ----looked through brochures and dreamed that one day I would have that kind of life—whatever that meant to me at the time I don't know but, whatever those brochures said or conveyed---they worked. I currently own 3 Porsches and 1 dedicated track car. Long range marketing works but, your not Porsche and this is the mistake I see all the time with people building their business. They think they can use "branding" in their business and have it work. You cant---at least not at first. We put realtors on radio and television and every spot we write is a direct response piece—its an advertising piece. Similar to that BMW ad----drive a new 330 for 349 a month---we create spots that create an offer that induces a direct response—in this case a phone call. Maybe I will do a podcast just on how to write an ad so if you want to hear an episode on this send me an email and let me know. For now here is what I will tell you. In every outbound message you create---whether that is a direct mail piece, a facebook ad or a radio spot----you need to focus on just 4 things A compelling headline----BMW's is drive a new 330 for 349. For you that might be "I'll sell your house in 10 days or less" How will you do this? For BMW they tell you the term –in this case its 36 months; You might simply say "I have so many approved buyers….dot dot dot" The third piece is a testimonial. BMW doesn't have to spell out how your going to feel in their ads because the image of social mobility, luxury and refinement is so baked into their "brand" you already know your going to feel great driving a BMW. The last piece is a strong call to action. BMW does this with a simple expiration---its 349 a month for the next two weeks—after that your going to pay full pop. So---lets hop into this interview with Craig Simpson and see what he has to say. Let me say one quick thing about advertising and marketing. Whenever I meet someone and we invariably ask what I do ---I tell them I put people on radio and television and that I write ads and a very typical response is---yeah I can see that but, and heres the big but, in this I have personally spent time with some of the best people in advertising and most of them are not mad men type extroverts a lot of them are very introverted and have found their way into advertising because they weren't great salespeople at least not face to face. I say that because maybe you're the kind of person that feels more comfortable behind a screen or maybe you're a little introverted—I wanted to let you know that theres more than one way to skin a cat and as we get into this interview I have a hard time getting this guy excited so stick with us----theres nuggets in here. OK—here we go