WARNING: There’s gonna be a lot of dead sacred cows all over your screen. In order to make room for the good stuff, we first have to take out the garbage. Proceed at your own risk.
As soon as your commercial starts, thousands of listeners are defensively crossing their arms and asking, “Why should I give you my hard earned cash?”
Why should I give you my money?
So…
How do you respond? What’s your answer?
Your radio commercial needs to be more than a laundry list of services or a recitation of your menu. (Boring.)
The stakes are high! What are you going to say to get me to hand you MY money?
Here’s the short list of the most common justifications – and we’re going to banish them from your ads forever.
- “Convenient location” – since you’re downtown I should give you $20? Only the people within walking distance (100 yards or less) will find you truly convenient. Will that be enough customers to keep your doors open?
- “Friendliest staff” – I think of Chick-fil-a, Trader Joe’s, Ritz-Carlton, and a handful of others – is your service REALLY at that level? Gut check time. And assuming your answer is still “yes”…you expect me to give you $20 just for standing there? No.
- “Greatest selection” – Regardless if I purchase something or not, just the fact that you have more “widgets” than the competition, I should drop $5 in the jar…? Not gonna happen.
- “We treat you like family” – Really? The last time you had Thanksgiving at your place, you vowed that would be the last time you EVER had Thanksgiving at your place. And since I wasn’t even invited, I’m going to picture MY family at Thanksgiving…<shudder>. There’s no WAY I’m going to relive that. Are you really going to treat me like that? And you’re bragging about it?
Here is the secret to advertising.
The real reason I’m going to give you my money is because of the benefit I derive from your product or service.
In short: It’s not about you (your company, your products, your service), it’s about me (the customer or client.)
Get rid of the self-serving, laundry list that drones on and sounds just like the other guy (wow, wouldn’t it be terrible if I heard your ad and bought from your competition just because I really couldn’t tell you two apart?)
Talk to me about me. How is my life going to be better? How am I going to feel fulfilled, have more time for my interests, make more money, be a better dancer, have whiter teeth?
Cut out the cliche’s that really make it easy for me to tune out and ignore your ad, and replace it with what I’m interested in…then you’ll have a customer.