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Here’s a quick tip that could change your whole idea about what makes an effective marketing
campaign. Understanding this will help you dramatically boost your income and results,
without getting stuck and stressed because you can’t figure out why people aren’t
buying from you.
Now, like most people, I love the GOT MILK marketing campaign. So as a marketing specialist
I was floored when I read how milk sales actually went DOWN with the GOT MILK campaign.
I kid you not… and pay close attention to this, because if you’re interested in building
an effective marketing campaign for your own product or business, there’s an important
lesson here for you. An effective marketing campaign is supposed to get more people to
buy your product or service. But four years after GOT MILK started running Business Week
ran an article entitled, Got Milked – After a $385 million dollar campaign, sales are
declining. How could that be – a marketing campaign everyone loves and yet, sales are
going down, not up?
Well, here’s an important lesson on creating an effective marketing campaign. First, it’s
easy for us to get fooled into thinking something must be a success if it’s running for such
a long time and especially if so many people love it. But the reality is, the International
Dairy Foods Association that runs the campaign is like a big union where, even if sales are
low, if their families absolutely love the campaign and the goodwill it creates, they
refuse to cut it. But don’t get fooled by the glitz and the movie stars. When it comes
to boosting sales, GOT MILK is a failure. And when you look beyond the surface, the
reason it’s a failure is obvious.
It used to be that just about every man, woman and child would drink milk every day, to stay
healthy. In fact, milk used to be so universal, the first half of the 20th century, milkmen
in white trucks would deliver glistening white glass bottles to the doorsteps of virtually
every home in North America.
But then, something strange started to happen. Milk became associated with illness rather
than health, and people stopped drinking it. Some people discovered they were lactose intolerant
– where milk was making them feel sick. The fat content in milk became a problem especially
for women who were dieting. Rumors of immune system ailments and even, prostate cancer,
further dampened the enthusiasm for milk. CALCIUM – the miracle ingredient in milk
– Started showing up in other foods and vitamins, so people didn’t NEED to drink
that refreshing glass of milk every day… Later, controversy around BGH - Bovine Growth
Hormone in milk further added to the mass exodus from the product.
Of course, the reality is, milk does have tremendous positive benefits – and only
a relatively small number of people are actually negatively affected by ANY of these problems.
But all this negative has taken its toll and has led to decades of lower milk sales.
So, let me ask you a marketing question. If you’re afraid that you’re lactose intolerant,
or that milk might get you sick, would the phrase “GOT MILK” really make you want
to buy milk? No, it wouldn’t, would it?
And herein lies the problem, and the lesson for your own marketing campaign. Even with
the biggest movie stars in Hollywood promoting it, the GOT MILK campaign fails to answer
the biggest fears many people have. Maybe they’d love to buy milk, but many people
are afraid. And the GOT MILK ads aren’t telling these people anything or doing anything
to reduce their fears.
So, the point for your own marketing is this. If YOU could really understand why people
are NOT buying from you, the only way to get them to buy is answering their questions and
concerns. Do YOU actually understand why some people are NOT buying from YOU?
Surprisingly, unlike the Got Milk people, many marketers have little idea why customers
are NOT buying. This is definitely something you want to understand, because the more you
understand about this incredible road block that stops people from buying, the easier
it is to figure out how to open the flood gates to higher sales and much better customers.
For the GOT MILK people, even with all their money, they forgot to explain why anyone should
buy milk. Don’t get fooled by marketing campaigns like GOT MILK and wish you could
be as famous as them. Instead, make sure your advertising, your brochures, your website
and your emails – all tell people WHY they should buy from you. And boring ads that tell
people WHY they should buy from you will always outperform the most exciting ones that give
people NO reason to buy.
So remember, the clearer you are in letting people know exactly why they should buy, the
greater your chance of selling many more of your products and services.
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