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Millions of dollars are spent annually on creating and sending brochures and cover letters. Most of these dollars are wasted, because these marketing materials don't do what they're supposed to do: get a prospect to act, either by requesting further information, picking up the phone and making an appointment, or actually buying something. These are the sole purposes of marketing documents. If the brochure and cover letter you create don't do one of these three things, they have failed. Completely. Which brings us to the first rule of this game: the brochure and cover letter you produce must have a purpose. And since the only real purpose of any marketing document is motivating immediate prospect action, the purpose of what you create can only be one of the three things above. Your brochure and cover letter exist either to: . get the prospect to request more information; . call up and arrange an appointment, or . buy something, by either filling in an order coupon, or walking into your establishment. Prominently post the purpose you have selected before you write your brochure and cover letter. Everything you put into this brochure, this cover letter must work towards achieving this single objective. Nothing else must be allowed in. The truth is, when most marketers create their brochures and cover letter they get off the track. They forget what they're doing... and why. Don't be one of them. There's a very easy trick to seeing if your brochure and cover letter are correct: after you write each sentence, ask yourself if it's helping achieve your overriding objective. If it isn't, it's wrong. And that's a fact. Focus On The Prospect, Not Yourself Everybody supposedly knows that all marketing documents ought to be about your prospect, not about you. Sadly, the vast majority of brochures and cover letters fail to achieve this objective. Take a brochure I received in today's mail: on the mailing panel it simply says, "Instrument Calibration and Repair. Calibration: Standardizing a measuring instrument." That's it. Now, I ask you: are these words about the sender, or about the recipient? It's obvious, isn't it! Lines that are about the marketer rightly elicit this response: "So what!" "Instrument Calibration and Repair". So what! What does this have to do with me, your prospect? Lines that are about the prospect, the most important person in every brochure and cover letter, get this response: "Aha!" The prospect is interested in knowing one thing and one thing only about you: "What can you do for me?" And when that question is answered, he's interested in these questions: "When can you do it?" And "How much will it cost me"? When you're writing a brochure, do this simple test. Read each sentence and ask yourself if it's about you or your prospect. If it's about you the sentence will feel incomplete, because it won't have the persuasive information the prospect wants. No wonder! Your prospect is saying, "So what?" to it. But if the sentence is focused on your prospect, offers him honest, believable benefits, and motivates him to take immediate action, it's finished. Doing Your Homework The big reason most people's brochures and cover letters fail is because their creators don't do any homework before writing them. Most people hate writing; their objective is to get it out of the way as quickly as possible, right or wrong. But not your savvy marketer! He may hate writing as much as the next person, but he never loses sight of his objective: that each marketing piece will either make him a profit, or be a dead loss. And that if he's to achieve the former, he needs to get other people, his prospects, to act... NOW! Homework helps achieve his objective. What You Have To Know Before You Write The first thing you've got to know before you can successfully create any brochure or cover letter is who you're talking to. The best marketing documents, even if millions are sent out, are conversations between two people... you and just one prospect. You have to know who this prospect is and have to understand what he wants, when he wants it, why he might not take action to acquire it, and how much he can afford to pay for it. All these points must be dealt with in your marketing materials. Without a doubt, one of the greatest single reasons why marketing communications fail to get people to take action is because those people don't feel that what they're being asked to consider has anything to do with them... it doesn't speak to them about what's important to them and, therefore, doesn't motivate them to take immediate action. In marketing, this is disastrous. Hint: don't create brochures and cover letters for a mass. Create them for a single perso ... Author: Dr. Jeffrey Lant
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