"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted,
and the trouble is I don’t know which half." Viscount Leverhulme, 1851-1925

Just what makes ones ad 20 times more effective than another? Why does one promotional campaign outpull another by 100 times? And how do you know which yours will be?

Remarkably, the answer is often quite simple. The trick is to think about your marketing as if you were selling. Out goes fancy showmanship. In comes effective salesmanship. The invariable result: higher response rates and more sales.

Does Your Marketing Sell? is a distillation of the author’s 25 years of successful sales and marketing experience, hundreds of real case studies, the pick of marketing communications research, and the received wisdom from some of the world’s greatest marketers.

Woven together, these strands make a simple, practical model that will help you create a striking piece of marketing communications, and - just as importantly - spot and remove the flaws from your marketing message. Highlighting the best (and worst!) of contemporary marketing campaigns with numerous illustrations and examples delivered in a witty and accessible style, it will show you how to:
* get 4 times as many customers to read your ads
* double the response rates to your mailers
* triple the uptake of your promotional offers
* employ the 7 most powerful ways to gain attention
* write with the 100 most persuasive selling words

Whether you’re the MD of a blue-chip corporation, or do the marketing for your own one-person business
(or work somewhere in between), you will be able to read Does Your Marketing Sell? ... and answer: yes - it does!

Synopsis
Does Your Marketing Sell? brings together in one practical and visually attractive guide a new marketing philosophy. The old AIDA model -attention, interest, desire, action - doesn't get the results. Ian Moore has developed a new model - one which is simple, memorable and user-friendly - and is built on the astonishingly oft-overlooked principles of salesmanship. His New (navigation, ease, wording) AIDA concept includes clear details on how your customers interact with marketing and gives easy to follow advice on everything from simple navigation to correct language use which are proven to increase campaign results.

About the Author
Ian Moore is a founder of the award-winning Blue-Chip Marketing Consultancy and has worked for global names such as Kimberly-Clark, Cadbury-Schweppes and Lloyds TSB. He continues to create campaigns at the marketing coal-face for a range of national and multi-national companies as well as training and writing on the subject of effective marketing communications. He is a winner of the ISP Grand Prix for Best UK Promotion and Best European FMCG Campaign for the Kleenex Hayfever Survival Kit, as well as a further 50 industry awards ranging from, Best Copywriting to Most Innovative Campaign. He is currently a Creative Consultant specializing in training staff in the development of effective marketing communications, helping people to understand how they will work and why they will sell. He has a monthly column in Incentive Business magazine.

Excerpted from Does Your Marketing Sell?: The Secret of Effective Marketing Communications by Ian Moore. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Whether you run a small business or a big corporation (or work somewhere in between), you probably get involved with marketing communications. This could mean ads, brochures, display cards, leaflets, mailings, on-pack offers, posters, sales presenters, websites... or simply "marketing" for short.

And like most people, you probably wonder if your marketing sells. You may not be 100% sure, even if you employ a specialist advertising, design or promotional agency to help you. Indeed, you're probably not even 50% sure.

Don't worry, you'd be in good company. Lord Leverhulme, founder of Lever Bros, famously said: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don't know which half."

In fact it can be more serious than that. John Caples, one of the pioneers of "scientific advertising" in the US, cited a campaign in which one headline created nearly 20 times more response than an otherwise identical ad.

The missing ingredient

So why does one piece of marketing succeed where another fails? What is it that causes almost 20 times as many people to respond to one message than to another? Just how do you make your marketing sell?
It seems there's a paradox. What well-intentioned marketers think they should do to make their marketing sell often doesn't work. And that's because they get salesmanship confused with showmanship.

Salesmanship is the missing ingredient in making your marketing sell.
What salesmanship means - and you may be relieved to hear this - are the quiet skills of empathy and perception. They are so often forsaken in modern marketing communications. Does Your Marketing Sell? is all about how to put them back.