How To Sell Anything

If you’ve ever struggled to put together an ad that drives sales, I know exactly how you feel.

I’ve tried everything; from listening to marketing “gurus” on YouTube to those sketchy Instagram Reels where you comment “sales” to receive a half-baked marketing guide.

Looking back I’m not quite sure what I was expecting.

Maybe some sort of magic scroll of hidden knowledge that would impart raw truths straight into my brain.

The Truth Of The Matter Is…

Everyday marketing has warped our idea of what is actually effective.

I’m sure you’ve seen the Coca-Cola polar bear ads that pop up every Christmas. 

Not sure about you, but I’ve never seen a polar bear and thought:

“Oh yeah, need to buy some Coke.”

But when you have a marketing budget of $5 billion per year, you can afford to throw “everything” at the wall to see what sticks in the name of brand awareness.

And because we’ve been bombarded with this type of marketing since childhood, most businesses think they should advertise their services in the same way.

Mega-brands have warped our ability to see the elements that actually increase an ad’s sales, brainwashing people into making terrible marketing decisions:

“This ad needs to have a famous person in it.”

“There needs to be a woman in it for sex appeal.”

And worst of all...

“We need an annoying jingle!”

While these factors do play a role in advertising, they’re just the icing on top of a more important base.

Before you worry about jingles and celebs you need to focus on three core elements:

1. Who are you talking to?

It doesn’t matter what your product or service is, there’s a certain audience that it’s geared towards and it’s up to you to find it.

Tailoring your message towards these people is necessary because it’s impossible to come up with a message that speaks to everyone.

Keep in mind we are following general rules and ignoring the exceptions.

A great example of this would be car mechanic tools. I’m not sure what percentage of technicians are men, but it’s easily in the 90% range. 

So your message needs to speak to men.

“But what about female technicians?”

They make up an extremely small percentage of your target audience; it doesn’t make sense to target women in your ad. 

If they want to buy your tools, that’s great! But targeting the minority in your marketing budget is a surefire way to haemorrhage cash.

2. What are you saying?

Your message needs to be powerful, clear, persuasive, compelling, intriguing, and every other positive adjective in the dictionary.

It’s a competitive world out there, your ad needs to cut through all the clutter.

It can not be boring, and it can not be what everyone else is saying.

3. How will you reach your audience?

Figuring out the “how” used to be difficult and expensive. In the past you had to buy a list of addresses and physically mail your ad to prospects.

Social media has made this step easy. 

With the use of Meta and Google ads, you can target anyone you wish!

- Men or women?

- Young or old?

- Are they local?

- What are their interests? 

The great thing about Meta/Google ads is you can test multiple audiences at the same time and fine-tune your ad on the fly as results come in. 

More leads with headline A over headline B? 

Go with A while trialling a new B to see if it outperforms headline A.

Then Rinse And Repeat! 

You can combine a clear target audience, a powerful message, and a strategic method of outreach into a marketing campaign that cuts through all the nonsense and gets you more sales. 

Experiment, track your results and refine your approach as you go.

Try it out.

Talk soon,

Pritesh Chauhan

P.S. For more marketing insights take a look here:

pkcmarketing.co.uk/blog