About Benefit Sell
Five simple steps load sales
power into your ads and
sales presentations
The seventh marketing idea – Benefit Sell. Maverick developed this special format to design ads. We tested it for many years to learn you can often more than double response most advertisers expect.
Benefit Sell works because it relates more closely to tested professional selling rules than to faddish “creative” advertising.
You’ve probably noticed trained salespeople employ professional selling rules and a specific structure to give sales presentations. These stars use such rules to educate, reveal benefits, and allow prospects to make purchasing decisions naturally. We approach ads from the same perspective.
Sorry, but creative advertising can turn into a “hit-and-miss-crapshoot” when you’re pushing to bring real dollars in the door.
Here’s why. “Creative” advertising often relies on ploys to attract prospects’ attention and entertain them, but quite often their ads don’t sell. We see it happen all the time. People marvel at the cleverness of your ads – but your sales progress along like an exhausted turtle.
It’s ironic because clever ads are the ones we usually notice. Because we notice them, the general public often thinks that’s good advertising.
Sound correct to you too? Okay. But when you’re preparing to plop down your hard-earned cash, which do you prefer? The sincere, honest, helpful (and not very flashy) salesperson who knows her product? Or the clever dude with the purple shirt, nose ring, and a card trick?
We’ve observed “creative” advertising tactics often fail even though a few of those ads get “raves” from both critics and the public.
Everybody loves your ad but nobody buys.
In contrast, the Maverick Benefit Sell method works because each ad is designed to rivet your customer on your product – not the ad.
Fact is we get shook when people tell us one of our ads is cute or clever. After they hear it, if they can’t tell us what the customer’s product is, the whole thing goes into File 13.
We also discovered when customers’ interests dominate center stage and the ad designer stops angling for recognition and compliments for his/her creativity, the Maverick Method takes wings.
The majority of our clients who use Maverick methods, which include Benefit Sell, grow at least twice as fast as the average business in their category. Consistent 10% to 50% yearly growth patterns are not uncommon as opposed to the average business’s growth of 3% to 4%.
(This passage is excerpted from Maverick’s website article, “Need A Marketing Idea? Eight Secrets To Success”, if you’d like to read the whole piece.
You sell more with the
“Benefit Sell” template
Benefit Sell supplies you with a tested template to make better ads. It comprises five simple steps based on professional selling rules.
Benefit. Ask yourself, “What will this product do for or give my customers?” When you answer it, you have your ad headline. Install it at the top or beginning of your ad big and bold. Better yet, write four or five of these headlines and ask 20 customers “Which of these lines interest you most?” Use the line that gets the most votes.
You focus very hard on your benefit headline, giving it more emphasis than the rest of the ad. Why? David Ogilvy, the father of modern advertising, summed it up when he stated that five times as many people read your headline as read the rest of the ad. It is imp0rtant because you must entice prospects into the balance of the ad. The gateway to your offering is through your “benefit” headline.
Offer. Define your offer to your prospect – item, service, or idea.
Proof. Prove your product’s value with features and benefits.
Restate the benefit in words which prospects “see” or “feel” themselves enjoying the results.
Action Request. Tell your customer to move: phone, see, make appointment or purchase.
NOTE. You can learn more about Benefit Sell for print when you click on “How To Put Sales Magic In Your Newpaper Ads”.
Learn Benefit Sell for broadcast when you click on “Would You Believe Radio & Radio Copywriting Could Out-Perform All Other Media In Advertising Ideas & Results?”.
Recently, advertising industry leaders’ eyes have riveted on research news. Media are reporting very little sales growth results from national level “creative” advertising. Could it be . . . ?
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