The Secret To Writing Kick-Butt Advertising That Generates Cash

If you do nothing else about your business from this day forward, you must learn that good advertising and marketing copy can make you very wealthy. Imagine crafting a sales letter that will compel a prospected buyer to pick up the phone and place an order or fill out an order form and fax you money while you sleep. Oh, it is a beautiful thing indeed!
Regardless of whatever business you are in, if you get good at marketing, you will be successful in your business. One of the first key ingredients in crafting good advertising copy is to cater your message to the market you are trying to reach. The “message to market match” concept of copywriting was taught to me by one of the greatest minds of direct response copywriting. It is a concept that goes back to the early days of direct response copywriting and holds just as much importance today as it did back then, probably more.
If you are like me, and many of you are you open your mail somewhere very close to the trash can. I accumulate my mail all week and on Sunday morning it all goes on the kitchen table with the trash can by my side. Since I am a student of marketing, I open and look at all my “junk” mail and sort things out and keep the things I will read from the things that get tossed immediately.
The lesson here is that you have a split second with your printed material to catch and hold the readers attention, otherwise your mailing/marketing piece becomes land fill material. You cut through that mound of clutter by having a very clear message to your market. If you have taken the time to target a prospect to receive your marketing material, you better be darn ready to stop them in their tracks and get their attention. The “message to market match” can and will do just that.
The second important factor of creating marketing materials that will get opened and read is to NEVER have your material be boring. If the average reader looks at the mailing and says in essence “so what,” then you have lost them. If all your advertising does is expound on how great you are and that you are a member of the Better Business Bureau, and that you have been a member of the Rotary for 20 years, it’s like ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ, who gives a rat’s rear end?
Now if you want to liven up your mailing piece, do something out of the ordinary or better yet send the marketing material in a clear envelope. Use dimensional mail or something that will grab the recipients’ attention and make them want to read what you are saying and buy what you are selling.
One way to almost guarantee some sort of response leads us to our next critical piece of copy that MUST be in your marketing message and will certainly relegate it to the heap of uninspiring mail in the bottom of the trash can.
If your advertising or marketing piece, regardless if it is your yellow page ad, your weekly ad in the local paper, your company flyers, or whatever. If your ads do not answer the paramount question that your prospect is asking when they are reading, which is: “What’s in it for me?” Then you have just wasted your money on printing and mailing and the cost it took to pay someone to put it in the mail.
If you think long and hard about any purchase you have ever made, you have asked and answered that single question (What’s in it for me?) in your mind before you made the purchase. I could write volumes about the proof I have for this assertion and it would fill a room. If I am buying a new car I am asking myself why am I buying this product. Is it just because I need transportation, if that was the case then we would all be driving the cheapest car around and nothing else would matter. I want to know about the warrantee, the repair records, the rating from Consumer Reports, in other words; “is this the right purchase for ME.”
This concept holds true if you are going to the doctor or hiring a lawyer, you are asking what these two will be doing for me and how much will it cost. Again, what’s in it for me? If a CEO is deciding on a material supplier, they are think both quality and price and if I make the right decision, it will make me look better in front of the members of the board of directors.
I could go on and on, but you must examine today, right now if the marketing messages you are sending out are answering this critical question. If not, fix it right away, you are losing business, not to mention MONEY!