Honest Abe and Reason Why Advertising
By Keith Lee
Even if some of the stories were fiction, two of our greatest presidents were known for their honesty – Honest Abe and “Yes I chopped down the cherry tree” George Washington.
This month we’re going to tie honesty into “reason why” advertising. People like to know why. This applies to a lot of things and certainly applies to your advertising and 3D Mail advertising. Also, while there may not be any real reason your customer saves more at an “Anniversary Sale” or “Back to School Sale” or “End of Season Sale” or etc, etc, we all know that an “Anniversary” or “Back to School” sale is more effective than just “Sale”.
The NOT SO OBVIOUS Part of Reason Why Advertising
The “reason whys” I use above are pretty obvious and are used a lot, but I want to talk about some not so obvious “reason why” advertising and the power in using them. I send a marketing tip of the week each week (actually twice a week) to my American Retail Supply clients (you can sign up to get the tip at www.AmericanRetailSupply.com by clicking on “Free Retail Store Marketing Newsletter.” With each tip I send a ‘special of the week’. Here’s a special I recently went with a reason why.
Let’s look at difference between using ‘reason why’ advertising verses ‘just telling you it’s on Sale’.
I could have simply said “Sale ½ Price” and included the details of the product itself.
Instead I told a story. Here’s the story with the reason why:
‘I won’t go into details but our client received the wrong OPEN sign so we have this one here in our warehouse, and since it’s not in our catalog, or on our web site, it will just sit here unless I tell YOU about it. Sale Price One Only $151.93
Now I don’t know how many orders we would have gotten had I simply offered the same product at ½ of its normal price, but I know that the Sale sign in the tip, with reason why advertising, was sold before 10AM on the morning that the Marketing Tip was sent.
So what does this have to do with Honest Abe? Often a great reason why is simply telling the truth of why you’re having a sale or something in particular is on sale.
Here’s another example of reason why advertising that I used in a marketing tip of the week special:
We just got done with our twice yearly inventory and we found a few things that are going to just sit here taking up room unless we tell you about them. So, over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing these items with you. Now remember, these are here due to some mistake so the supplies are very limited at these prices.
Here’s an example of our sales rep using reason why advertising and making lemonade out of lemons. BTW – this was a huge success!
The picture shown is of a refrigerator magnet. The middle of the magnet can be removed after the event and used by the recipient for other pictures. The American Retail Supply logo shown is the picture below is a label that Ariane used to cover up the RSVP phone numbers, email and the like.
Here’s the letter Ariane sent.
“You’re Invited…”
OK, I admit, you’re not actually invited to my wedding. To be perfectly honest the wedding was called off before I could even send out the invitations, and now I’m stuck with 200 of these magnet invitations! But I am inviting you to take a couple minutes to look at the enclosed magnet and flyer and see if they’d be right for your store.
I’ve always been one to make lemonade from lemons, and after holding these things for over a year wondering what the heck to do with them, I finally had an idea. I’ll send them to my top clients, like you, to show you the great BIC products especially magnets you can get from me at American Retail Supply.
I’ve enclosed the flyer so you can see some of the shapes, sizes and colors you can get for your store. I realize budgets are tight right now, but you’ve still got to advertise your business and get the word out. Promotional products and magnets in particular are a great way to do that. You can give them away as gifts to your best clients, give them to people who make a qualifying purchase, or you can even sell them in your store and make a profit while you advertise yourself!
Hopefully you know by now when you purchase your packaging and fixtures from me you’ll always get my “Make-You-Happy” customer service. The same goes for any promotional products including:
- Magnets
- Pens
- Cups & Mugs
- Key Chains
- And 1,000’s of other great products!
As an added bonus, I’ll give you 20% off your first order of any promotional product, you purchase in the next 30 days. Please give me a call at your earliest convenience to talk this over. I look forward to speaking with you.
Sincerely,
Ariane Caruso Ariane (AmericanRetailSupply.com
800-XXX-XXXX ext. XXXX
P.S. Remember, no matter what you order from me you’re always guaranteed to get my “Make¬You-Happy” service. If you’re not over-the-top, grinning from ear to ear happy when you receive your order, just give me a call at XXX-XXX-XXXX and I’ll do what it takes to make YOU happy.
(End letter… con’t on next page…)
How can you use ‘reason why’ advertising in your business? You know, I think it’s next to impossible (and very risky for your business) to have one way to get 100 new clients each month. I think it’s much more secure and achievable to have 100 ways to get one new client each month.
The same is true of keeping existing clients and getting them to buy more from you. You need 100 different ways of doing that. But how do you find time to do that?
If you’re going to do the marketing for your business (and I suggest you do) you better have systems in place to see that everything else runs very well.
That’s what I do. I spend the huge majority of my time doing the marketing for American Retail Supply.
How do you get 100 things done? Our Management System creates consistently great client service but also allows for a lot of personal initiative. So in the case of Ariane’s letter, Ariane had the idea. She took the idea to Travis, and Travis created the letter. Then our receptionist Megan stuffed the envelopes to complete the mailing.
So the point is, I don’t personally complete all the 100 ways we have of getting or keeping a client. I can’t get 100 things done and I don’t have the ideas to get 100 things done. We have systems that encourage individual initiative and that means I’m not the only person getting 100 things done.
How can you tie in transparent honesty with your “reason why” advertising?