Entries Tagged 'marketing' ↓

Is there a definitive template that will guarantee a successful sales letter?

No.

The only reason I say “no” is because there are far more factors that have to be taken into consideration when it comes to successful sales letters.

Yes, you can include all the elements that draw your reader in (I’ll talk more about that in a minute), but you must remember that there are external factors that could scupper your chances of a sale, including:

• Your audience
• How they’re feeling when they get your letter
• What you’re offering them
• When you send your letter

Now I’ve got that out the way, let’s take a look at the humble sales letter.

Once the bread and butter of your marketing department, they have been usurped by email marketing because it’s faster and cheaper. The problem is that now so many companies are doing email marketing, its effectiveness is being watered down. So, a well crafted letter could be more effective.

Earlier I mentioned there are certain elements in a sales letter that will draw your reader in. So, without further ado, here they are.

1. Powerful start

If you want someone to read your letter it has to grab them from the start.

Think carefully about your headline (if you’re using one), or first sentence. Either must tell the reader instantly why they should continue reading – that means outlining the main benefit you are offering.

Some companies will try to be clever and write something that’s so creative it completely misses the point. The best advice I can give is always go for clarity over creativity.

2. Problem/solution

There are lots of different ways to structure a sales letter, but the problem-solution approach is the most powerful.

Empathise with the reader and then show them how your product or service will get rid of their pain and enhance their life.

There’s no need for paragraphs of elaborate prose. Just get straight to the point.

3. Benefits

Always, always focus on the benefits not the features. The number of colours or sizes your widget comes in isn’t going to sell. The fact that it will make the reader the envy of their friends will.

4. Offer

Your audience would much rather accept your offer than buy from you any day.

Eh?

When you go to the opticians you don’t buy a pair of glasses, you go for the buy one get one free offer.

It’s the deal people want more than the price.

5. Guarantee

If someone is thinking about buying from you for the first time they will want to know that they can get their money back if they want to.

Providing a no quibble guarantee not only puts their mind at rest it also shows your confidence in your product or service.

6. What’s next?

Once your reader has stuck with you and got to the end of your letter they’ll want to know what to do next. That’s where your call to action comes in to play.

Make it as simple as possible to buy from you. Let them do it through email, over the phone, even snail mail (always include a stamped addressed envelope) and give clear instructions.

That’s as close to a sales letter template as you’ll get. Just remember by making sure you include each of these you’ll give your sales letter the best possible chance of success. Even though there are several factors you can’t anticipate, if the content of your letter is focused on the needs and wants of your audience you won’t go too far wrong.

Do you write your own marketing materials?

How is that going for you?

Is your website converting visitors?

Are your brochures being read or are they used as coffee mats?

Do your emails hit the right spot or are they deleted as soon as they arrive?

Thought so.

Want to know why?

It’s because you have too much knowledge about your business.

Too much knowledge is bad

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking – how can too much knowledge be a bad thing?

The simple answer is because you start to make assumptions.

Your writing takes on a level that your customers don’t understand. You’re writing as though they have the same inside knowledge you do.

Look at it this way, if you have kids you’ve probably been asked for help with their homework. Because you’re older and more educated, you immediately launch into an explanation that’s several layers above them, telling them stuff they haven’t even learnt yet. And when they don’t get it, you start to get frustrated because the answer is obvious to you.

The same thing happens when writing your marketing materials.

Instead of starting at the beginning and building on knowledge, you write in a convoluted high-brow fashion that confuses your reader.

Overcoming the knowledge block

Once you know stuff it’s really difficult to ignore it. It feels as though you’re dumbing it down, but you’re not.

That’s why it’s often easier to outsource your writing.

When I work with clients, during the initial briefing session I always ask them to treat me like a customer. They mustn’t assume I have any knowledge of their industry, so they have to brief me without using any jargon, acronyms or technical terms that I wouldn’t understand.

If any sneak in I just stop them and ask them to explain and keep asking until I completely understand what they’re telling me.

It can get frustrating, but rather that than them putting out marketing materials that their customers can’t understand.

If you don’t have the budget for a copywriter, try out these tips:

1. Write down what you want to say
2. Review it to make sure it is aimed at your customer and not about you and your company, highlighting the benefits
3. Review it again and simplify the language and remove any jargon
4. Get someone not connected with your business to read it to see if they understand what you’re saying and whether it would make them buy/get in touch etc.
5. If the answer is no, go back to the drawing board and start again
6. Keep going until you write something that’s simple, clear, engaging and compelling

I did’t say it would be easy.

Writing effective copy is hard. It takes a lot of though, a lot of time and a lot of determination, but when done well it will bring in more sales, traffic, enquiries and brand loyalty.

Author – Sally Ormond, Briar Copywriting Ltd

The tone of voice you use across your marketing will dictate how your customers view you.

Too stiff and formal and you’ll come across aloof and unfriendly; too casual and street and you’ll be seen as a bit flaky, a company that can’t be taken seriously.

That’s why it’s important to work out who you are from the outset.

Factors that will affect your tone of voice

Before I get into that, there’s something you must remember.

It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, or whom you do it for, never ever use jargon or industry speak in your writing.

There’s a tendency for many businesses to create random sentences formulated from impressive sounding words because they want to appear aspirational or intelligent. Well, your readers aren’t stupid. After reading your lofty prose they’ll realise it has no meaning or substance and is just there for fluff because you couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Right, back to those factors.

For starters you must know:

• Who you are and what you stand for
• Who your customers are
• What you’re selling
• Why they would buy from you
• The benefits you offer them

You can’t develop a tone of voice without that information because if you don’t know who you are as a company how will you know the personality you want to convey? If you don’t know what you’re selling or whom you’re selling to you won’t know the language you’ll need to sell it. And if you don’t know what your product is, or the benefits it offers, you’ll just be wasting your time creating content that’s meaningless.

Your tone of voice

If you’re a B2B business selling professional services of some sort or another, your language will be more formal than if you sold bespoke surfboards.

For starters, your audiences will be poles apart, but that doesn’t mean as a B2B business you have to be starchy and corporate just because you’re not selling a cool product.

On the contrary, even though you’re pitching to businesses, it’s real people that will be doing the buying. Whenever real people are involved (and that would be in every sales scenario) their buying decision will be mainly emotionally driven.

That means your content must evoke an emotional response. If your product or service saves them time that means they get to spend more time with their friends and family. If it saves money it means their business will run leaner, generating more profit that ultimately, means more earning potential.

See what I mean?

Getting back to the actual language, in the surfboard scenario it would be perfectly reasonable to see the odd “dude” in the copy. Try that as a B2B and you’ll be laughed at, but that doesn’t mean your language has to be staid and boring.

Remember, a real person will read your writing. It doesn’t matter how educated they are, it’s important to keep your language simple, unambiguous and conversational.

Why conversational?

Because that drives engagement, has personality and is better received than formal writing.

Many people shy away from writing with personality (i.e. conversationally) because goes against everything they’ve ever learned. That’s a real shame because it works.

Look at this post. I’ve written it as though you were sat in front of me and we were talking about tone of voice. By the way, that’s a great tip for nailing conversational writing – imagine you’re sat opposite a customer and talk to them about your product, writing as you do so. You’ll be amazed at how engaging your writing becomes.

Summary

What’s the moral of this blog post?

• It doesn’t matter who you are or whom you’re trying to sell to, your writing must have personality if you want it to work
• Use language that’s appropriate to your market
• Stay away from jargon and industry speak
• Keep your vocabulary simple
• Remember you are writing for a real person
• Write conversationally to boost engagement
• You can only achieve the right tone of voice if you know who you are, what you’re selling, who your customers are the benefits your product or service offer

Author – Sally Ormond, Briar Copywriting Ltd

It’s the age of the entrepreneur. Businesses are springing up everywhere, so how do you get yours noticed?

As a start-up you have no track record, no testimonials, no social proof. That might sound like a brick wall, but if you can prove to the media that you can change the world you will get your story heard.

Your pitch: I can change the world

The usual course of action for a new business trying to get noticed is to write umpteen press releases, but journalists are inundated with them so how about trying a different approach?

Writing a pitch, tailored to the journalist you’re targeting, will help you stand out, but only if you write it from a benefits point of view rather than as a sales document. Give them everything they need, from your logo and contact details to ideas for your story. Remember though, as I said earlier, this isn’t a sales document. You must prove you can change the world.

What do I mean by that?

Your business, whatever it does, will solve a problem, create wealth, make someone smile or take their pain away.

Why?

Because if it doesn’t have a tangible benefit it’s not a business.

Your job is to understand that and show the reader (in this case the journalist you’re pitching to) how you change people’s lives. The “people” are their readers, so if they can smell a great story you’ll have their attention.

Who do you contact?

It’s all well and good creating a great pitch, but who do you send it to?

Every newspaper, magazine, TV and radio channel has it’s own audience. Your job is to do your research to find the journalists who write about the problems your company solves.

Why?

Because their audience will be the people who will buy your product or service.

If you want to maximise your coverage you have to match the journalist with your message.

Once you have your list, don’t just send cold pitches because they are likely to be ignored.

It’s all about who you know. Look at your contacts, is there anyone who can help you? Perhaps there is someone who can make an introduction for you?

Get in touch with journalists and build a relationship with them. See if you can help them out before pitching to them. Try to meet them in person. The stronger the relationships you forge, the more likely they are to run with your ideas.

Did they say yes?

If they say yes and run with your story, fantastic, well done. Keep in touch with them and let them know your areas of expertise and that you’re interested in being interviewed or happy to contribute to future stories.

If your idea doesn’t get picked up don’t hound them. Chase after about a week, sending your story again just in case they didn’t receive the first one. If they’re still not interested, don’t just give up. Try sending it to a different contact, even one within the same outlet – just because one person wasn’t interested doesn’t mean no one will be.

If you want people to talk about your business you have to show how you can change people’s lives.

There are too many press releases out there that try to sell. The trick to getting noticed is to show yourself as a company that puts its customers first by highlighting the benefits they receive.

Author – Sally Ormond, Briar Copywriting Ltd

When Matt Cutts speaks everyone sits up and listens.

There are loads of small businesses missing out on some great opportunities because they have made a huge SEO mistake.

They think that just because their business is small they don’t need to bother with a website.

Why should they?

They have their local customer base and no one is going to search online for them…or are they?

A website is crucial regardless of the type of business you run. If you don’t believe me, this is what Matt Cutts has to say about it:

More and more people are searching online for the products and services they need.

If you market yourself through leaflets or magazine ads you’re only reaching a small percentage of your potential market.

Get a website and make sure you’re seen by the people that need you when they need you.