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How to Make Your Marketing Work Harder for You
– by Ted JanuszHas this ever happened to you?I was riding along in the car with my teenage son and started to say something Ihad vowed I would never say, “When I was your age . . .”Stephen’s eyes rolled to the back of his head. You see, Stephen doesn’tparticularly care to hear his old man’s reminiscences of the good old days…yetagain, so soon.Yet count the number of times a sales letter begins, “Our company was startedby my great-grandfather back in 1905. We now have 10,000 installations and25,000 satisfied clients . . .”As a potential prospect, such a lead-in fails to grab and sustain attention.Potential prospects are arrested by, “What’s In It For Me (
WII-FM
).”As a marketing consultant, I was recently asked by an accounting firm, after thefact, to review their new marketing materials. They handed me a professionally-designed, glossy folder that profiled each of their partners – where they had goneto school, degrees they had earned and achievements for which they had beenrecognized. The accounting firm was very proud of these slick new materials.Guess what. A prospective client doesn’t really care about the number of degrees conferred or awards won. Rather, it’s all about, “What can you do for me? How well do you understand
my
pains and
my
issues? What steps can youtake to solve them?” That’s what prospects truly care about – What’s In It For Me. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, companies able to demonstrateWhat’s In It For Me win business.My favorite formula for writing result-producing marketing materials for companies is:
○
Identify the Problem
– The circumstance causing the customer to initiatecontact
○
Implement the Solution
– Propose and implement the remedy.
○
Document the Results
– Detail the quantifiable benefits the customer received.
○
Record the Testimonial
– The customer explains the way in which their relationship with us helped them.
Two Million Tons
Many companies will attempt to secure new business by mailing out marketingpieces.
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Americans now receive close to two million tons of 3
rd
class or bulk mail per year.There are two reasons for this: 1) Americans have more printing machinery thanany other country on earth. 2) Despite recent rate increases, Americans haveone of the lowest postal rates in the world.Unfortunately, unless targeted recipients are specifically on the lookout for your material, it will likely get mixed up and lost in those two million tons.What’s to be done instead?
E-mail Newsletters
“Without a doubt, the most powerful thing you can give away is a free e-mailnewsletter,” says Andy Sernovitz, author of
Word of Mouth Marketing
. “It’seasy to produce, relevant to the reader, and easy to pass along. If you don’thave an e-mail newsletter, start one today.”As advertising guru David Ogilvy said, potential prospects are much more likelyto read an article you’ve written than an ad you’ve devised. “There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements,” he continued. “If you make themlook like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.”
Advantages of E-mail Newsletters
Advantages of an e-mail newsletter include:
○
No printing costs
○
No mailing costs
○
Less lead time required, recipients receive pertinent information secondsafter it’s releasedServices like
Constant Contact
iContact
MailChimp
(www.mailchimp.com) will even integrate with your Twitter and Facebook accounts.These services provide professionally-designed templates for e-mail newsletters.Simply select appropriate graphics, insert content (which, ideally, should look likea case study, editorial or advice, rather than an ad), enter contacts’ e-mailaddresses and press the enter button.These services subsequently provide metrics such as:
○
The identity of those who opened the e-mail newsletter
○
How many e-mails bounced back
○
The identity of those who may have opted-out of receiving further e-mailnewsletters
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If you have 500 or fewer opt-in subscribers to your e-mail newsletter, a basicaccount on MailChimp is free.For example, I recently sent out an e-mail newsletter, using Constant Contact, to1,300 subscribers. I invited them to a breakfast presentation I was to give inCleveland. On Cleveland’s coldest day of the year, nearly 100 of them bravedthe weather to attend. The total cost to promote the event: $30. Printing andmailing as few as 30 marketing pieces could have easily exceeded $30.
Most Important: the Subject Line
For an e-mail newsletter, the most important component is the
subject line
.The average white-collar worker now receives 160 e-mails daily. To be sure thatyour intended recipients want to open your e-mail newsletter, include a WII-FM.If the subject line does not entice the recipients to open the e-mail, all of your effort spent on its writing and on the development of graphics will be wasted. For that reason, be sure to include the name of your association or company in thesubject line.
Offer Value
In composing the body of the newsletter, consider the words of Eric Groves, asenior vice president at Constant Contact:“It’s no longer just a, ‘I’m going to blast it out and try to drive immediatebusiness.’ It’s all about asking, ‘How do I send out a communication that buildsmy reputation with my customers so that they want to come back?’”David Meerman Scott, author of
The New Rules of Marketing
and PR
gives thisadvice:“The vast majority of e-mail newsletters just serve as advertising for a company’sproducts or services. Each month you get a lame product pitch and a 10-percentoff coupon. No wonder that house e-mail lists suffer from significant opt-outnumbers.But consider using a different type of e-mail newsletter, one that focuses not onyour company’s products and services, but on simply solving buyers’ problemsonce per month.”####Copyright @ 2010 Ted Janusz
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