There is one word that fundamentally changes what advertising is, what its function in business it. I'm borrowing it from marketing guru Seth Godin, and his book "Purple Cow," which I highly recommend you read. This word is so important because it at once tells us what needs to change in advertising while at same time tells us what advertising can do for us.

Remarkable. (Whatever you do, don't stop reading here. This may not mean what you think it does.)

That's it. In a nutshell, a company must be remarkable or it will be invisible - no matter how much advertising it does.

As we said earlier, advertising has traditionally been a post development process - applied last. But most extraordinary advertising in world from Madison Avenue's most famous advertising agency will struggle for results if product, service, or company is not somehow remarkable. In today's media frenzy, that ad will hardly be seen by masses.

What's required of companies who need to increase sales and experience new growth is not a surface treatment of "magic ad ointment." They must inject creative, strategic, and critical thinking of advertising into their design, development, implementation, or service. By moving primary stages of advertising up in marketing cycle and becoming remarkable, task of post development advertising will be much easier.

Spreading word about a remarkable company is much more efficient than trying to convince world that an average product is more than it actually is.

What's even better, by rearranging marketing cycle in this way, cost of marketing can vastly decrease.

In next Tall Tale, we're going to swing bat at one of our old favorites and tell you why marketing doesn't have to cost a ton of money.

Get full ebook "Ten Tall Tales Of Traditional Marketing That Cost You Tons" and others at our website: http://www.scend.net/small_resources.htm

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Give them a true believable reason. For example, let’s say you have a slow time of year and you want to increase your business during this period. Make a special, limited time offer. Offer to throw in an extra free bonus or a special discount simply because it's your "slow time" and you need to pay your staff anyway.

Don’t you think people will believe it? If you can give a solid reason for a particular action, people will have no doubts about what you say - there is simply very little room for doubt.

Greed

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People are greedy. I'm not talking about food but 'greedy' in a marketing perspective. Everybody feels from "what’s in it for me” syndrome. They really want to know how your product can benefit them. Notice that, "customer's will buy benefits and not products". Confused? You'll see what I mean in a minute.

Analyze following list of benefits written about a digital camera.

* Can store over 200 photos

* Supports every color you can see

* Manual included so you can start even if you have no previous experience

This will certainly open eyes of a person who has an idea of bu'ying a camera one day. This is in complete contrast to following, where 'product' is described.

* Has a memory of 6000k

* Supports 16-bit colors

* 60-page manual included

Customers don't want a memory of 6000k, but they want to store 200 photos. Get it? You must clearly tell customer how will they benefit by bu'ying your produc't. You can then describe prod'uct itself, when they are looking for more information.

To make this point clearer, understand that,

"Customer's will bu'y benefits and 'not' features."

Okay.. Whats difference between features and benefits? Features describe product itself - what it has. Benefits describe advantages a customer gets by bu'ying product. The first list above is a benefits list and second is a features list.

Benefits will drive customers to explore more information about product. This is when you should give them features and describe product itself. To summarize, get customers into looking for more info by telling them benefits and then describe prod'uct. This will assure best results.

I laid out just 3 powerful strategies here. There are many more 'explored' and 'unexplored' tactics, and hope you can discover a few too. Please let me know if you do. I hope this information was helpful to you and wish you good luck and success in your future mark'eting efforts.