Getting Your Ego Out Of The Way
One of the most painful things to admit is that your marketing sucks!
Yet, 99 out of 100 marketing pieces could be better.
Mine included.
Just recently, I had to slap my ego upside the head and tell him to take a hike.
After numerous versions of a sales letter for a client - I came to the realization that I needed to start over - completely fresh.
Which is not easy to do after many, many hours invested.
But, what is important is the results the piece gets - not my pride. The pride will be rebuilt when the piece sells him a million dollars worth of products!
Are you measuring your results in your marketing and advertising?
If you are - you know which pieces need to be redone - but are you redoing them?
More times than not, people sit on things they know should be fixed.
Here is the easy way to get your ego out of the way and build yourself a drastically more responsive marketing piece.
(1) Admit that it can do better
(2) Forget everything you know about your product or service and START OVER from square one.
(3) re-read all your marketing materials from your customers eyes (the key to this is to get out of your own head and put yourself in your buyers shoes).
****>> Imagine your perfect customer asking you this "if I knew what you know, would I truly want to buy what you are selling? Why?"
(4) List off features on one side of the page and benefits on the other
(5) Pick ONE BIG BENEFIT and make that the sole focus of your next marketing piece.
(6) Write to them as if they are the most important customer in the world to you (because they are).
(7) Count the mentioning of the words "I" versus "you" - you should have 5-10 times more "you" than "I" in your copy. Your customers don't really care about you (the "I" in your copy) - all they care about is what you can do for them.
(8) Read it out loud and fix any spots you stummble over.
(9) Test it out and compare it to your last version.
Chances are, it will outperform the last by extreme amounts.
It is not about your pride or ego - it's all about your customers, keeping them happy, and keeping them buying.
Try it out and see for yourself.
Would you happen to have any sample evidence/metrics/stats of specific eCampaigns that demonstrate the effectiveness of headlines that use "You" versus "I" examples? Probably the easiest samples would be from email subject lines. Convincing clients to write customer-centered headlines can sometimes be a challenge. They get stuck stroking their ego and starting all their flyers with "I do this for you..." type headlines. Aargh!
Posted by: MayaAndMarketability.com | February 22, 2008 at 12:22 AM