You must attract your potential customer's interest in less than seven seconds. If you don't, you will have wasted every Euro spent. Yes, that is right, just 7 seconds for the headline and subtext, to hook your potential client.

To those of you that survived the above seven second test; this article will help ensure that all monies your marketing team spends are spent wisely. If you are not interested any more, then I have attracted the wrong reader thus far. This leads to the second key observation about your headline. You must ensure that those seven seconds are spent conveying the right message to the correct audience. If that message was wrong, since marketing is a one sided conversation, you don't get a chance to correct your mistake.

Direct selling is actually much easier to get right. Conversely it is also much more expensive to get wrong! Sales people can actually help a customer see the value of what your products or solutions will bring them. While this may seem like an art, it is made a lot easier due to the fact that the sales person and the customer are engaged in an active dialogue. A good sales person will actually lead that dialogue by asking questions that help the customer visualize what your product will enable them to do. In marketing, the only way you can get feed back is by testing multiple versions of your message with small groups of your target market.

So now that you know what you need to do, and how to ensure that what you are doing is right, the million dollar question that remains, is how you create that message.

For this article, I will keep things at 10,000 feet and not go into specifics, suffice it to say, I will show you the key steps to creating that message. I will also assume that you have done all your market research and you know which markets you are targeting and what your competition is offering.

So the key steps are as follows;

Write down, for your target market, what problems or desires your product or service solves or fulfils.
Clearly articulate what solving those problems or fulfilling those desires would enable the people or companies within your target market to do.
Demonstrate how the decision maker within your target market would put a value on the ability to do what your product has enabled them to do.
Decide exactly what you want that decision maker to do, when they read your ad or marketing communication – this is called a “call to action”.
Now, what is that worth to you – how much are you prepared to spend to get that phone ringing, email coming in or fax whirring?

The last question is very important, because the answer to this, fixes your marketing budget. Once you know your marketing budget, then you can decide which mediums, such as online, newsprint, classified ads, etc. that you should be utilizing.

Once that is agreed, you can write your headline, sub text and body copy including appropriate visuals, to get your leads rolling in. If you have done your homework well, the leads that do come in should be good strong qualified leads yield sales.

About the author:
Business Owners who need more sales and better marketing advice, turn to Peter Lawless, of 3R Sales & Marketing – www.3r.ie. For previous articles and interviews like this, visit our website and subscribe to Success. We also provide free Sales & Marketing Assessments for Business Owners with an Irish Connection.