You know what the problem is with most small business marketing?
It doesn’t ask you to do anything. It doesn’t offer you a reason
to act.

Pick up any publication that caters to small business and what
you will find are a bunch of ads that promote great customer
service or leading supplier of blah blah blah or 15 years of
service to the market.

Now I don’t know about you but these ads don’t get through to
me at all.

Of course the reason so many businesses continue to run these
institutional type ads is because everyone does it and so, the
thinking goes, it must be the way to do it.

For the small business owner the most effective ads make the
reader an offer they can’t refuse. Now understand that the
reader quite likely has never heard of your company so when
I say offer I don’t mean “buy today” The problem with that
type of offer is because they don’t know anything about your
firm they don’t know why they should buy from you.

The type of offer I am talking about is the offer for more
information in the form of a free report, workbook, checklist
or booklet. The type that screams to the reader that this
is something that they need. The kind of offer that answers
the only question your potential client has – What’s in it
for me.

You see with no offer at all or the only the offer to buy now,
the reader can’t answer the WIFM question. First you must
use your advertising to get their attention and once they
respond to your offer of free, helpful, useful and maybe
even provocative information then and only then can you
move on to actually offering them the “buy now” message.