Some people are great at communicating verbally, whilst others are not and vice versa. Whilst being great in a face to face sales situation is very important, being able to arrange and attract potential customers to want a face to face conversation in the first place is even more so.
Writing can be a daunting process for us all, even those that are good at it. Producing content, like anything is a difficult task unless you know where to begin, and this is why you need to follow a proven structure called the AIDA model before you put pen to paper. We will look at the AIDA model in more detail later on in this guide.
Before we move onto structuring your content, there is a key aspect behind successful copyrighting that almost every business owner, sales person and marketing manager forgets, and that of course is the customer.
How your customer takes in and uses the information that you are trying to communicate to them is of the greatest importance. All of us receive mail through our doors, a lot of it tends to be marketing material of some description, but how much of it is actually any good?
The industries that tend to be awful at marketing through written communication tend to be from a technical background. Look out for marketing material from ‘techie’ people and you will see what I mean. Don’t get me wrong ‘techie’ people are fantastic at other areas of business and within your business, but when it comes to marketing, it’s usually not one of their strong points.
Tech related marketing material tends to state all the facts, all of the statistics, all the BORING stuff. Without going into detail, here is a brief example of the difference between how a marketing specialist and a tech wizard might market a hard drive through written communication:
‘Techie’
Our new 500GB Nexus 2000 includes 1.2 RAM, .75 mhz, USB wire, protection pads and a carry case. This hard drive is on sale now.
‘Marketer’
We have an exclusive offer on our 500GB Nexus 2000 hard drives; 500GB is enough storage to save 12,000 of your favorite songs, 750 of your favorite movies or 40,000 loving family photos. Avoid the loss of those precious memories and save significant storage space with this 500GB hard drive. Stuff Magazine rate the Nexus 2000 10/10 and their technology Experts praised how easy and fast this device is to use, simply plug in and save everything you want to one single device.
As you can see, the tech specialist conveys a very different message from a marketing specialist, the tech expert uses stats about a product because they know what those features will be able to do for them. I sound like I’m picking on tech experts, but this applies to everyone that knows their own business and their products and services do, the thing is you need to sell to people that don’t. This is why it’s important that you convey your message clearly and in a language that they can understand – if you fail to do this, you will fail to make a sale.
Going back to the AIDA model before we insulted ‘tech specialists’ which is not what we were trying to do. They were a good example as they work closely with us in the digital marketing industries and we can see the huge difference between effective marketing and how most tech companies market their products or services.
The AIDA model should be taken into consideration when producing marketing materials such as; letters, postcards, leaflets, brochures and online content.
AIDA is an acronym used in marketing and advertising that describes a common list of events that may occur when a consumer engages with an advertisement. It stands for attention, interest, desire and action.
Attention
Everyone is bombarded with marketing material on a daily basis, so standing out from the crowd can be quite a challenge. The best way to get your-self noticed is by making your headline eye catching, this ensures your message draws that persons attention away from everything else that they are doing so they focus on your material. For example the heading of a letter, the subject of an email and of course the first line within any content.
Interest
Now you have that person’s attention, you need to spark interest immediately. At this stage you need to describe the problem that you can solve for them. For instance an accountants would be to save you more money through tax efficient processes. A bank could solve a problem for business owners that work 6 days a week by being open on a Sunday. A web designer could solve a business owners problem by giving that business owner control of their website by including a content management system. Identifying the problem and solving the issue is one thing, but how you convey that message is the most important aspect.
Desire
Once you have the prospects attention and sparked their interest, it’s time to make the recipient of your marketing information want to buy from you. This will only be achieved if you are able to hit their emotions, if you’re able to trigger their emotions, they will take action. In this section you need to go into a bit more detail on how you can help and how you have helped others. Maybe it’s the worry that you are able to remove, maybe it’s a fee that aggravates people or even that your service or product has worked wonders on ‘x’ number of people suffering with a bad back. Regardless of what it is you are offering; create a strong desire to want your products.
Action
So you have their attention, you created an interest that was followed by a mouth-watering piece on how desirable your offering is, now it’s time to make something happen. What that is will be down to you. Whether that’s a report in exchange for their email address or a sale there and then, it’s up to you. Either way, you must make it very clear as to how they take you up on what you have to offer and what they need to do next. Don’t just assume that the recipients of your marketing material know to call you, or know to visit your website, or know to visit your show room. It’s vital that you make it crystal clear as to what that person should do next and what will happen. Will their order arrive in 2-3 days? Will a quotation be issued? Or does that person need to fill out a form online? I don’t know and neither will your customer, unless you tell them!