There is a simple but extremely powerful way to pump up sales, get better quality leads, and practically eliminate advertising waste.

But what may surprise you is that very few business owners employ this simple but powerful “tool” in their advertising.

This tool is the call to action.

If you don’t ask, then you don’t get. Sounds reasonable, right? But very few business owners use this simple tactic to boost sales.

Why Use A Call To Action (CTA)?

First of all, it works. It’s a great way to move people down the sales funnel.

Second, it measures the effectiveness of your copywriting.

When you think about your “call to action” think about what objective you want the reader to do…

… sign up for a webinar, download some information, visit your store or call now.

Pretty simple, right?

If you’re stuck or just can’t find good ideas for your call to action, then start an advertising swipe file.

A swipe file is a collection of good ads that are producing good results. And how you’ll know that these are “good” ads is that you’ll see them running over and over again.

Savvy marketers do not like to spend money on advertising that is not producing. It’s all about a good ROI (return on investment). And only good direct response marketing gives you this opportunity.

Here are a few examples that produce results:

Register

Subscribe

Buy

Download

These are much better than the plain old ‘click here’ and be sure to tell your reader what benefits she/he getting, for example…

Download your free copy of our business survival guide

Subscribe to get your free reports

Register now to get in on this webinar

And so on.

Now let’s add some urgency to the mix.

We humans sometimes need a bit of pushing sometimes. Adding some sincere urgency to drive the funnel can be just what’s needed to get us moving.

Here are a few examples to get your creative juices flowing…

Offer expires

First 50 people only

Hurry, the price goes up at noon today

While supplies last

And very effective is ‘Immediate Download.’ It’s a great call to action because folks like downloads and they like immediacy. Bam. Here you got both.

Last, how to removing risk from your offer or call to action.

As you can imagine, risk removal or reversal is a powerful marketing tool.

How do we lower the risk?

Oftentimes doing business for the first time with a new company is a scary deal. After all, you know or trust this “new company.” And who hasn’t been burnt before? Heck, these days trust has flown out the window, right?

So why not start by truly focusing and empathizing with your prospect and clients. Put yourself in their shoes. Again, they do not know you and they don’t trust you. Make a point to earn their trust… and keep earning their trust.

Prove that you truly care by showing them you’ll shoulder the risk. Communicate this in all your marketing messages.

Here are a few examples…

“Start your no-obligation 30-day free trial”

“You have a no-hassle, no-questions-asked, 100% money back guarantee”

“Not Satisfied? No Problem! We’re double your money back immediately”

You get the idea.

Use these ideas to create a strong “call to action” in your next advertising pitch.

Local Business Advertising Tips

Small business advertising has changed dramatically in the past five years due to a number of factors. The first being the changes in technology allowing local businesses to target their market more effectively and the second being the downturn in the economy.

Technology has actually been a double edge sword in the marketing world. On one hand, DVR’s and TIVO’s give the consumer the power to filter out a for air commercials, on the other hand, if you are running commercials utilizing Google TV your spot can become more cost effective and have a lot larger audience.

Here are some tips on how you can save more money and be more effective with your local business advertising strategy.

Advertising Using Social Media

Many studies tell that the social networks are the most effective. Facebook continues to be the most popular with LinkedIn and Twitter not far behind.

Facebook Tips For Small Business

Facebook can be little confusing at first but like any learning curve, the more you press through the more you learn what to do. There are at least four areas that business owners can get very cheap local business marketing with Facebook.

Creating a profile, creating a like or fan page, creating a places page and utilizing the Facebook marketplace. Once a place or fan page has been created business owners can utilize Facebook’s vast database to target specific users based on demographic data that is entered at the time an ad is set up.

The more effective ways to utilize Facebook to market your product or service is to keep people on Facebook with your fan page and promote your product or service from within the site.

A good way to start your small business marketing with Facebook is to offer something of value like a video or free report in turn for others clicking the like button your page. This is a cheap way to build your list similar to building an email list.

Once you have the following sending out updates on discounted services or new products you are carrying becomes very effective. Facebook places can be used for local businesses similar to Google places being that it is a geographically targeted listing on Facebook.

Local listing sites.

The top local listing sites Google places, Yahoo local and Bing local are great cheap ways for small business exposure. Taking ownership and optimizing your local listing does a couple different things to increase your exposure and enhance your small business marketing strategy.

For local brick and mortar businesses that don’t have a web presence or a website, the places pages can be an inexpensive way to not only get exposure but also get listed on the search engine maps.

For businesses that do have websites and are working at SEO to get them listed on the top of a search result, having your local listing optimized will help with your SEO strategy as well.

Taking ownership and optimizing your business local listing will also allow your business to be found on mobile devices. Getting your business listed on mobile devices is the next critical task for your small business advertising.

Taking advantage of these cheap and effective resources can decrease your marketing budget sometimes by 50 percent or more while being more effective in helping you attract more customers as well as staying in contact with your current customers.

The next thing you should do is take action with these resources and implement your local marketing strategy.

Don’t forget. No Action, No Business. Also, if you want to succeed, Never Quit! Very Simple.