I’ve written something like 4,000 direct mail letters and direct response ads for golf products now. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not much.
Sometimes, the best ads come from sheer desperation. I was hitting the very bottom of my bag of tricks last year, when my client requested yet another “killer” letter for another new golf product.
I’d just come from a real-estate seminar, where I was a featured speaker. And at that event, I met a ballsy agent with a good bit of salesman’s blood in him. He’d been running a small ad in local papers with the headline: Butt-Ugly! The ad described a house that would politely be called a fixer-upper.
It was the biggest-pulling ad he’d ever run.
What it did was target exactly a certain part of the house-buying market: People who knew they could never afford a truly nice house. But who desperately wanted to buy something, and stop renting, or start getting their credit scores up, or whatever. The term “butt ugly” spoke volumes. (It also pulled in leads from landlords who wanted cheap houses they could rent out.)
I liked it so much, I borrowed it for a golf ad. This is a great illustration of taking inspiration from some totally unrelated part of your life, and applying it to another part.
There is no question in any golfer’s mind what playing “butt ugly” golf is all about. We’ve all done it. And we’d like to avoid doing it again, thank you very much.
The ad pulled like crazy. Interesting note: It ran in the coldest winter months, which can be — with the right appeal– the best months for selling golf instruction. Guys are cooped up, going nuts because they can’t play, and they practice indoors and dream about hitting the links on the first semi-dry day of Spring.
This rule applies to other markets, too. Often, in the height of the actual “season”, it’s tough to sell anything. Because the hard-core have already bought what they need, on the first possible day it was available. This is why the local clothing stores do not carry shorts and swimming trunks in the Summer. By late June, they’ve already put all their summer stuff on the bargain table, and restocked the shelves for Fall.
This sucks for late shoppers like me. But for most people, it makes sense.
Click here to see the “Butt-Ugly Golf” ad.
(It will open in a new window or tab, so you can toggle between the ad and Carlton’s commentary.)
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