Too often, companies spend a lot of time and money developing their logo and the graphic appearance of their promotional materials (important aspects of effective marketing), while giving only cursory consideration to their marketing message, an equally important component of promoting. your business successful. . At least as much time should be spent developing your marketing message as you do developing the graphic elements or what is commonly referred to as “look and feel.”
Here’s a six-step process that will help ensure your marketing message sells.
1. Grab your target market’s attention with a headline that clearly defines who you’re talking to. If you’re selling to retire, your headline might be something like “If you’re 65 or older.”
2. Identify the problems, symptoms, problems, needs and wants of your target market. You need to start with where they are and then move them to the action you want them to take. To continue our example, if you’re looking for retirees to volunteer for a cause, your subheading might read, “And looking for a way to make a difference in the lives of others.”
3. Provide a brief description of the product. These are the characteristics of your product or service. Be sure to describe features that are important to the target market you are communicating with, and describe them from the target market’s perspective. In other words, talk about what your customer is buying, not what you are selling.
4. Describe the benefit and value the customer will get by buying your product or service (or by taking the action you want them to take). Again, these benefits must be relevant to the customer group you are selling to.
5. Give credibility to your message. This could include testimonials, case studies, or money-back guarantees.
6. Specifically indicate the action you want the recipient of your message to take. For example, “Pick up the phone now and call 111-222-3333 to register” is much more likely to lead to action than simply giving a phone number and assuming that if the person wants to register they will call the number. Whenever possible, you’ll also want to offer multiple ways for people to take action (ie, phone, email, fax, mail, and website).
Follow these six easy steps and you’ll have a marketing message that sells. And the best thing about investing in the development of your marketing message, just like your logo, you will be able to, and will want to, use it in all of your promotional materials from your 30-second intro to your website.
