Archive for the ‘Copywriting’ Category

Number of Touches

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Even for those who spend a lot of time or effort in marketing either forget this or are unaware of this point.

It often takes a number of times to get through to your prospects. You may need to contact your market repeatedly to get them thinking that they should contact you with an enquiry.

An example of this, is when I was still at school my father had a business providing educational services. To get more students he would advertise in his local paper. What he found was that he only got inquiries after the third consecutive day of advertising and none of the people, when asked, had noticed the earlier two advertisements.

Obviously the content of the promotion plays a roll, but it’s the number of times a person sees the same promotion which has a very definite affect. This affect will vary depending on the medium used, your product or service and of course how it is communicated in your promotion (the copy).

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Fax Broadcast Copy – One Glance Is All You have!

Monday, June 8th, 2009

I have often heard of web marketers say that you only have four to seven seconds to get a visitor to stay on a web page. They don’t know how lucky they are. In fax broadcasting, you have less than a second.

You receive an ad via fax broadcast – how long does it take to decide whether you are going to read it or throw it away? I bet all it takes is a glance. This glance on average only takes about .25 of a second. If you have not attracted the recipient into reading the ad within this time, you have lost him and the work you put into the ad is lost.

Write your fax broadcast copy with the intention of grabbing attention within the first glance. There are other things that should be included but this is the first step. Read this earlier article for what should be included in your copy.

This is another reason why you can target the same area a number of times – it may take a number of times before the person actually reads the ad.

Once you have your foot in the door, you have to tell them what to do. There is no point in generating interest without giving the next step. This may be calling or going to a web page to order.

I have come across someone who had a phone number on the fax image while fax broadcasting but when some called the number, it just rang out. What a waste!

Always keep in mind what you are trying to do with any copy you write. After all you want a return for your valuable time spent on the whole campaign. Why include anything in an ad that is not going to help that cause. Being too detailed will work against you. Why would anyone want to read a text book before buying something?

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Posted in Copywriting, Fax Marketing | 2 Comments »

The Key To Survival – Promotion

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

For Any Business to Survive, it has to be seen. Some businesses are in the lucky position to be seen by enough of its ideal potential customers just by being there to keep itself busy but this is not very common. Even a shop along a busy walkway has to find some way to get people to come in.

Once you know what people are looking for in reference to what you offer, you have to know how to communicate this to people. Read this article on how find out what about you have to offer people are looking for.

Promotion is a communication and this has to get a response which makes it worth communication in the first place.

First of all you have to keep in mind what you are promoting or selling. Make sure that you can supply what you are selling. Promising the world when you can’t come up with it once you have sold it will not only make you broke in the long term, it is also criminal.

If you are not the person in charge of coming up with the product or service you are marketing, you still have to be sure the product or service can be delivered once sold. This may seem common sense but you have to keep this in mind. Make sure that all promotion is truthful. There is nothing to be gained form giving false promises.

Any promotion (communication) has to have three components. You have to get the persons attention, once this has been done, you have to give him something that will appeal to or interest him. Once this has been done, have to get your communication across to him. This sequence is important.

While you must be truthful, be careful not to undersell yourself. After all, you are trying to get the person getting your promotion to take some action. You still have to get them to do it.

Sales which is too forceful has given sales people around the world a bad name. This force only comes into play when the person using this force does not know how to sell. The fact remains however that you still have to compel the person. Being apologetic or indirect to avoid too much force will work against you.

To survive, you have to promote – you might as sell optimise your return for time spent on it.

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Know Before You Go In Marketing & Advertising

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

What is the best way to know how an ad will be received? In fax broadcasting, like any advertising, it is possible to miss and get no response. You need to survey.

Would it not be better to know what people are looking for or to what they are likely to react to before you spend time on a marketing campaign? Knowing this is Possible.

There are companies which charge a lot of money for all kinds of information about potential or past companies. This information is quite easy to get if you know what you are doing.

There are two major areas that you look at to find this information. They are your existing clients or potential clients.

This is done by survey. You have to ask to find out.

If you have a number of services or products you sell, you can look at what has been popular in the past and push that. You can also ask clients what prompted them to contact you in the first place.

In contacting those who are not already clients you find out what they need or want. Not just the product or service they are after but what feature or characteristic do they want.

Once this information has been found, use it in your marketing.

Remember that you may have a number of markets that you have to cater for. If you were selling cars, a mother would have a completely different idea to a businessman as to what a good car is.

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Advertisment Copy

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Below is an e-mail I sent in response to a request for a critique on a fax advertisement. I thought that others may find it of use:

Thanks for sending through your fax image to me.  I like it especially when you include your clients.

Some things that I would look at changing:

  1. Because selling is an emotional thing, benefits work better than features.  An example of this is people don’t buy a new Mercedes because the lights turn on by themselves or they have a high safety rating. They are bought because the person wants to be one up on his friends or he wants to keep his family safe. The thing to do is find the main benefit that you offer and convert it to a heading. You may need to do a few and then pick the best or the main one. Unfortunately I don’t know enough about your product to do this for you.
  2. This is not critical but I have found it good to get the person to call up to find out more. If you have someone there to take the call and they have enough knowledge to sell the product, it may be better to have this in place.  They just have to be briefed that the first calls that come in are often people not wanting to get faxes before the real prospects call so it is important that they don’t become despondent with the ask-off calls to start off with.
  3. I try to include the following in every fax:

8 points of an Ad:

What is it?

How valuable is it?

What does it do?

How easy is it to do it?

How costly is it?

How do you acquire it?

Where do you get it from?

Why should I get it now?

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