You’re probably wondering what picking a movie has to do with marketing and writing a great ad.
Well, bear with me and you’ll find out.
Over the last few months I’ve watched some fantastic movies including…
Doubt
Milk
Ghost Town
Gran Torino
Marley & Me
Last Chance Harvey
and on Saturday night I picked out one which was not a well known movie, but in my opinion had great acting and an exceptional story line: Frozen River.
In fact, my wife wouldn’t watch it because she didn’t like the look of it.
And I normally wouldn’t have picked it out either.
Nor would I have picked out Ghost Town (the movie I watched the week before) as I had never heard about it or seen it advertised either.
So what made me make those choices?
Research.
You see, I had watched a few dud movies in a row a few months back. And I thought to myself: this is ridiculous. I work hard. I value my personal time.
And it takes at least 1 to 2 hours to watch a movie.
How can I make sure this time is not wasted?
And that’s when I came across a site called Rotten tomatoes – www.rottentomatoes.com
It basically walks you through what’s good and what’s rotten in terms of the movies out at the moment.
For instance, if you go to the site now you’ll see that…
Inglorious Bastards
The September Issue
And The Cove
… are winners
And according to Rotten Tomatoes…
The Ugly Truth
GI Joe
And Dance Flick
… are rotten.
Of course, you need to take it all with a grain of salt. My wife really wanted to watch Will Smith’s latest movie a few weeks back (Seven Pounds) and apparently it was awesome despite the fact the reviews were not great.
Also, the movie Australia was an awesome movie in my opinion, but it only received a rating of 54%. I think it deserved a lot higher.
(I fell asleep, but I did actually like the opening)
However what I do is look for the movies which have a higher rating (anything over 70%) and I can be pretty sure I am on a good thing.
So what does all of this have to do with advertising and marketing.
The lesson here is research. If you do your research you will end up with a better movie. You will also end up with a better advertisement or sales letter.
But most people cannot be bothered.
Most people won’t spend 5 minutes checking the best movies online before choosing one.
They will just go in blindly and hope for the best.
And most people won’t do the appropriate research to create a great ad.
For instance, let’s take the example of a chiropractic business…
If I was creating a marketing campaign for a chiropractor, the first thing I would do is look at who the top customers were.
The 20% who were generating 80% of their business.
I would send them a special offer.
Research.
Then I would have a “What did you think about us” form in the lobby which anybody could fill out and hand in at anytime (or go home and fill it out anonymously over the web.
Research.
And then I would look at the reason why most people came into see me (is it back pain, shoulder pain, headaches, whatever) and build ads around these general niches to the general public.
Research.
And then I would look at all the facts about chiropractic from the associations, etc. and feature those statistics in my advertisements.
Research.
And then I would look at all of the great ads which have been written by chiropractors in different areas and take aspects of what they are doing and apply them to my own business.
Research.
And then I would send out a questionnaire to my clients asking them what else I could do to help them and create additional joint ventures, products and services to fulfill those needs.
Research.
How much research are you doing in your business? And isn’t it time you got started?
If you answered yes, then there’s a couple of things you might want to do…
Learn how to use the internet as the greatest research tool that’s ever been invented and get a head start over your competition by getting your hands on this
Find out the fourteen questions you need to ask to get the information you need to write a customer generating advertisement by heading on over to http://www.copywritingthatsells.com.au/cashflow
