Nathan Fraser

Be a Track Star (Track Your Advertising Efforts)

This is what sets Direct Response Advertisers apart from everybody else in the crowd… We track everything.

If you’re not tracking what’s working vs. what’s not working, I guarantee you’re wasting money on your advertising.

Most business owners can’t even tell you what their best-performing advertisements are, because they aren’t tracking anything.

They kill their best-performing ads before they run out of juice. And they keep dumping money into the ads that aren’t performing for them at all.

They handle their advertising like throwing noodles at the wall, hoping some of it sticks, and not even tracking what sticks or why.

I could understand it if tracking was hard to do… but it’s not. It basically comes down to sending similar ads to similar people and testing one variable at a time.

All you need is a way to track which version works better.

Here’s how it works.

You send out two ads, where everything’s the same, except for the headline and the Call to Action. The goal is to see which headline works better.

The advertisement with Headline A tells people to call 555-1819.

The ad with Headline B tells people to call 555-1810.

You send Headline A out to half of your market, and Headline B to the other half. Then, you track which number gets more calls. That lets you know which headline performed better.

You can track your ads by using different coupon codes. You can track them with custom URLs or custom 1-800-NUMBERS. You can track with cookies, pixels, UTM codes, or other types of analytics software.

The goal is to see which messages are working, which traffic sources are working, and which ones aren’t. That way, you know where to spend more money on your advertising, and where to spend less.

Also, when you’re sending traffic to your sales funnel, you can track people through each step of your funnel. You can see which parts of your funnel are working and which parts need to be adjusted.

By tracking which advertising efforts are working, and which ones aren’t, you’ll have a clear idea of which ads you should pull, and which ads you should scale.

That’s the biggest benefit of being a track star.

Big Beautiful Back-Ends (Back-End Advertising)

When people think about advertising, they tend to think of front-end, “push” advertising.

Grab the attention of new prospects. Turn those prospects into leads. Then, turn those leads into new customers.

A lot of business owners spend most of their advertising budget on expensive front-end offer advertising. All the while, ignoring the much more cost-effective back-end advertising.

Here’s an important thing to understand; advertising is just the act of buying customers.

Or, more precisely, it’s the act of buying a sale.

You’re spending money to get people’s attention. But you’re really spending money on getting them to spend their money with you.

And the money it takes to get an initial purchase from a new customer… is almost always more than what it takes to get an additional purchase from an already existing buyer.

Selling to an existing satisfied customer is way easier than selling to a skeptical prospect.

Where it might take $20 in advertising to get a new customer into the store to buy a pair of shoes…

A current customer, who already loves your shoes, might come in and buy a new pair… with only $5 spent on advertising to them.

Take some of the money you spend on trying to get new customers, and use it on remarketing to your existing customers.

I recommend spending at least 20% of your ad budget on remarketing to already existing customers.

That 20% often brings in as much business as the other 80% spent on trying to bring in new leads.

Just adding an upsell at the point of purchase can cause a huge jump in profits. It’s why they always have a bunch of impulse items at the checkout stand of the grocery store.

If you’re not doing so already, create a list of buyers and start sending them exclusive promotions.

Offers to people who’ve already raised their hands and said, “Yes, I like doing business with you,” consistently bring in the highest return on ad spend.

So, to get the most out of your ad budget, make sure you pay attention to that big, beautiful backend.

Be OPEN to More Sales

Education-based advertising is all the rage. But trying to educate someone into becoming a buyer is very expensive.

• First, you have to convince them there’s a problem.
• Then, you have to convince them there’s a solution.
• Then, you have to convince them that your solution is the best solution.
• Then, you have to convince them that your solution is worth more to them than the money they have in their pocket.

That’s a lot to convince someone of in one piece of advertising.

Why go through all that education-based marketing? Especially when there are plenty of people out there, who are already two-thirds of the way to being your perfect buyer?

That’s where OPEN advertising comes into play.

I credit this concept of open advertising to Ray Edwards. He’s one of my favorite copywriters out there and he taught me this concept. It’s the idea that OPEN stands for:

• O: Oblivious.
• P: Pondering
• E: Engaged
• N: Needs

These are the four different types of people you can advertise to.

Imagine you’re selling a bottle of Advil and you’ve got four different people that you can tell about it. But you can only tell one of those four people.

Do you spend your time, energy, and money, trying to sell to someone who’s in the O – Oblivious – category?

Someone who’s never had a headache in their life, or even ever heard of a headache.

Do you go after somebody in the P – Pondering – category?

Maybe they’ve heard of a headache before, but they’ve never experienced one for themself. They’re pondering. But are they worth advertising to?

Do you go after the E – Engaged – people?

These are the people who’ve had headaches pretty frequently over the last couple of years. Maybe they’ve had one recently and they’re actively engaged in looking for a solution.

Do you put your efforts and advertising dollars into going after the N – Needs – people?

These people have a headache, a migraine, right now, and they need your solution.

You’ve got all four groups of people out there, but you’ve only got enough money to advertise to some of them.

Who do you target?

Do you target the Oblivious people? The Pondering people?

Or, do you target the Engaged people? The Needs people?

If you want the best return on your ad spend, you only advertise to the Engaged people and the Needs people.

Selling to someone who already knows they need what you have to offer is way easier than trying to convince someone they need it… and then convince them to buy.

For the most part, education-based advertising is a huge waste of money.

Only go after those high-hanging fruit people, after you’ve tapped out the market of low-hanging fruit.

Advertise to the people who are already two-thirds of the way to a purchase.

You barely have to educate them. You don’t have to manipulate them into buying. You just have to give them a few reasons why they should buy from you, rather than from your competition.

This is a much easier thing to do with your advertising.

Avoid the Oblivious people. Avoid the Pondering people. Go after the Engaged people. Go after the Needs people.
That way you’re OPEN to getting more sales.

Stand Out Advertising

Let’s face it. Most ads suck.

They’re annoying. They interrupt what you’re trying to enjoy.  And you learn to ignore them.

People have the ability to go “Ad-Blind”.

But here’s the problem. If you can’t get somebody to give you their attention, good luck convincing them to give you their money.

Most advertisers try to mimic what’s working for their market. But you don’t want to look like everyone else in your market. When they Zig, that’s when you want to Zag.

I’ve found the best way to get attention to your ads is to create ads that don’t look like ads.

Instead, create ads that look like content, ads that look like articles, or ads that look like editorials. Just remember to include direct-response principles. Give people instructions on what to do next… that clear, singular, Call to Action thing I was talking about earlier.

Don’t copy what the Big Brands are doing.

What works for them, won’t work for you.

They’re in the game of “Reminder Advertising”. They have money to throw away in their advertising. You don’t.

Also, the ads that Big Brands run tend to be Boring AF. That’s because they practice something I like to call “Copy by Committee”.

It’s safe. It’s predictable. It’s boring.

It’s easy to ignore.

And I get it, big companies are afraid to offend the Twitter mob. They’re afraid to plant flags and take a stand. But boring-ass fence-sitters rarely inspire action.

So, instead of copying what the big advertising firms are doing, don’t be afraid to identify your market’s villains. And don’t be afraid to throw stones at those villains.

Don’t be afraid to identify controversial topics and speak your mind, speak your truth on those topics.

As long as those topics are relevant to your market.

Yes, you’ll alienate a small number of people in your market. But you’ll inspire fanaticism in many, many more.

Fanatics are the people who go out and buy everything you produce. They’re the ones that rally behind you. If you do get attacked, fanatics are the ones who go out and do your marketing for.

In order to inspire that kind of fanaticism, you have to be willing to stand out from the market.

So have fun with your ads and avoid making them look like ads. Avoid that safe, bland, boring, corporate, big brand style advertising.

That kind of advertising is for giant companies who want to avoid losing their market share. Your goal is to gain market share. It’s two completely different strategies.

Stick the Landing, Your Call to Action

Besides your headline, your CTA (Call-to-Action) is the most important part of your advertisement.

Your headline gets people to give you their attention. Your CTA gets them to give you their money… It’s also the place most advertising goes wrong.

It’s easy to talk about something you’re excited about… You know; the thing you sell.

But it’s not always so easy to ask for money… You know; the thing you have to do at the end of your sales message.

Here are the three main ways I see advertisers mess up their CTA.

1. Not having a Call-to-Action at the end of their ad.

In the industry, we call this “Reminder Advertising”.

If you’re Nike, Kraft Foods, or Oreo Cookies, you can get away with this kind of advertising. Those brands are just trying to remind you they exist, so they can maintain their market dominance. But you’re not Nike.

You can’t spend all that time and energy on your advertising and not have any kind of pay-off at the end.

If the perfect prospect reads your advertisement, it connects with them, and you don’t have a Call-to-Action at the end…

It’s like meeting somebody at the bar, having a great conversation with them, feeling a spark of magic between you…

And then, at the end of that conversation – instead of getting their phone number, or setting up a second date – you’re like, “well, that was fun. Maybe we’ll meet again, sometime.”

That’s not a smart way to approach your advertising.

At the end of every advertisement, you need a clear call to action; something you want your prospects to do next, so you didn’t just waste your money on the advertising.

And that leads us to the second way people can screw up their CTA…

2. Having too many Calls-to-Action.

I get it. You don’t want to exclude any potential sales with your advertising. If someone’s not ready to buy, you don’t want to lose them completely.

So you add a Buy Now button, a Call Now button, and a Follow Us On Social Media button.

On your sales page, you’ve got your toolbar at the top. There’s a Home button, a Contact button, an About Us button, a Shop Now button, and the list goes on.

You pay a bunch of money to get people to your sales page… And then you give them 18 different options on how to leave your sales page. And only one of them leads to a sale.

If you’re writing a sales page, wipe it clean of everything, except the one action you want people to take… Buy Now.

The same thing goes for when you’re writing an advertisement or marketing email; give people one Call to Action. And it doesn’t always have to be “Buy Now”.

Sometimes the goal of a landing page is just to get somebodies email or to get them to book a call with you. 

Sometimes it’s just a “Lift” message, where the only goal s to get your prospect to the next step of your funnel.

Either way, there should only be one Call to Action in any ad or piece of marketing you put out there.

Oh, and don’t screw up your CTA with our third offender…

3.  Having a Cowardly Call to Action.

When it comes time to ask for money, a lot of marketers, copywriters, and business owners tend to beat around the bush.

This comes back to people’s aversion to asking for money.

We start to use what I call “weasel words”, like should, probably, might, could, strive, etc.

“We STRIVE to provide the best experience possible.”

“This MIGHT be the best product you’ve ever seen.”

You get the point.

When you use these weasel words, it starts to feel like you’re selling from the heel. It conveys a lack of confidence in your offer. And if you don’t have confidence in your offer, why should your reader?

So remember to stick the landing. End each piece of copy with a clear, confident, singular call to action.

Stop Letting Your Wee-Wee Show

As business owners and marketers, we want to impress our prospects. So, in our marketing messages, we list a bunch of things we think will make us look more desirable.

“We’ve been servicing this community since the founding of our business, way back in 1984.”

“Here at Corporation X, we really care about such-and-such social justice issues.”

“We believe in delivering the highest quality experience possible.”

“We, we, we. Blah, blah, blah.”

And I get it. As the business owner, those things are all important to you. But they’re not that important to your prospect.

Here’s what to do instead.

I want you to put yourself in the shoes of your prospect. Imagine that your marketing message is like a first date with your business.

You show up to the date, you sit down and the person across the table won’t shut up about themselves. They never indicate any kind of interest in getting to know about you, or what’s important to you.

Talk about a bad date.

Now, would you call that person back for a second date?

Probably not.

When prospects come across your ads and sales pages, they want to hear about what’s important to them. They want to know that you care about them and what’s important to them. So…

Shut the f*ck up about yourself.

Instead, speak to the things that they care about. Their desires. Their fears. How their life will be improved by taking you up on your offer.

If you can explain their issue to them better than they can explain it to themselves, they’ll trust that you have a solid solution for them.

A lot of times, if you get just this one thing right, you’ll have people asking you how to buy before you’ve even made your offer.

Put away your wee-wee.

Less  “We,” “Us,” “Our.”

And more  “You,” “You’ll,” “Your.”

Speak about them, and what they care about, and they’ll be a lot more likely to pay attention to your advertising.