The Conversion Equation

The Conversion Equation – the four steps you must master in order to generate immediate cash flow from your marketing

Researchers estimate that over the past seven days, you have been exposed to as many as 117,000 ads. So out of 117,000 ads, how many can you name?

If you’re fairly attentive, you may be able to come up with 3 or 4 specific ads… but I’ll bet that’s because you probably see those ads over and over… week in and week out.

Of the few ads you do remember, how many of their products or services have you bought?

I’ll admit that I personally loved the E*Trade baby commercials. But… I don’t have an E*Trade account. Why should I?

What benefits do they offer me as a buyer of online trading services that any of the hundreds of other stock trading services offer? See my point? Does a smart-aleck, wise-cracking baby have any relevance to online stock trading whatsoever? Of course not.

Businesses today are led to believe that all they have to do to be a successful is create some type of attention-grabbing form of marketing and they will generate leads at will. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First, you MUST understand what marketing is supposed to do:

1. It must capture the attention of your target market.
2. It must give them the hope that reading or listening to your marketing will give them enough information to help them make the best decision possible when buying whatever you sell. In other words, train and teach them how to recognize the true value of your product or service… and conclude that you… and you alone… offer the best value versus your competition.
3. It must lower the risk of taking the next step in the buying process.

Marketing that accomplishes these three objectives will result in your prospects and customers coming to one single conclusion… that they would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else but you, regardless of price.

So listen up … here is our four step process for generating immediate cash flow from your marketing.

Our Conversion equation has four main components.

1. First, we must interrupt your prospects. We must get your qualified prospect to pay attention to your lead generation marketing. The interrupt is done through your headline if your marketing is in print… or it’s the first thing you say if you’re marketing through radio or TV.
2. The second component is to engage. Once your prospect is interrupted, it’s critical we give your reader the promise that information is forthcoming that will help the prospect make the best buying decision possible. This is the job of our subheadline.

The interrupt is our headline that highlights a specific problem that your prospects are looking for a solution to… and the engage is our subheadline that promises them that you offer a solution to the problem we mentioned in our headline.

1. The third component we need to include is educate. Once we’ve interrupted and engaged your prospect, we have to give information that allows them to logically understand how and why you solve the problem they’re facing. This is accomplished by giving detailed, quantifiable, specific and revealing information. This is typically done in the body copy of your ad. When we educate, we need to reveal to your prospects the important and relevant information they need to know when making a good decision, and that your business… and yours alone… provides it to them.

The interrupt and engage hit the prospects emotional hot buttons. Educate is the logic they need to justify picking up the phone and calling you.

1. The fourth and final component of our marketing equation is your offer. Now that we’ve interrupted your prospect based on problems that are important to them… engaged by a promise of the solution… and they’ve examined the educational information that makes your solution real and believable… the last step we need to take is to give them a low risk way to take the next step in your sales process. We do this by offering a free marketing tool, such as a report, brochure, seminar, audio, video or something that will continue to educate them. Your offer will allow your prospect to feel in control of their final decision to call and buy from you.

So our conversion equation is interrupt, engage, educate and offer and together they equal market domination.

Now here’s the problem. Most marketing today only contains two of these components. They interrupt by throwing something at you that’s either familiar like Tiger Woods… or unusual like a monkey or talking babies. Then once they grab your attention, they make you some type of offer such as “call now for whatever.” They have left out the engage and educate, and marketing seldom succeeds when that happens.

If you’d like to learn how to apply our conversion equation to your business so that you can generate all the leads your business can handle you can request the full video and workbook “The three biggest lead generation mistakes small businesses make and how to avoid them all” at www.akelapartners.com.

But a word of warning … this video is 100% great content. No sales B.S., no useless platitudes about how wonderful we are (and we are really wonderful … just ask me). Just the key fundamentals you need in order to generate immediate cash flow from your marketing.