Why Brochures Suck
It seems like not a week goes by that I don’t get a small business owner who wants my help with their brochure. They need help with the copy, with the design, with the layout — all of it.
They are usually ready to pay me good money, too. Only problem is I tell them there’s no way I would ever waste my time with a brochure. I’ve never used them myself and I’ve never known anyone who used them and reported it made a big difference in their profits.
So I always tell people to forget the brochure. Instead, use a sales letter. A sales letter is much more effective than a brochure.
Why do I say this?
Well, for one thing if you get two pieces of mail one day — one a three cover folded brochure, the other a letter that looks like it’s hand-typed and personally signed and personally addressed in a number 10 white envelope with a stamp on it — which one are you going to read first?
Fact is a simple, even ugly, sales letter is more personalized than a brochure. And so they are way more likely to be noticed and read and acted on.
In my humble opinion, brochures are losers as far as communication. They’re cold, ineffective, institutional advertising pushed by people by producing such materials.
There is nothing a fancy, expensive brochure with pretty pictures and designs and curly cues can offer and do for you that a letter — a plain white piece of paper with words — can’t.
If you don’t believe me test it yourself. Test a regular, typed up letter (or letter that looks typed) against a fancy brochure.
You’ll see what I mean.
Michael Senoff is a sought-after Internet marketer, interviewer and business coach with more than 50,000 students on four continents. For a limited time he is giving away free over 120 hours of in-depth audio interviews with some of the richest and most successful marketers, copywriters and business experts in the world at his famous website http://hardtofindseminars.com
3 Secrets to the Perfect Headline That Will Have Your Prospects Hungry for More
The key to attracting a potential customer’s attention in any form of marketing is your headline. Your headline is the first thing that a prospect sees in your marketing campaign, and it will either make or break the effectiveness the rest of your ad copy. Here are three key steps that your headline must accomplish if it is to draw the reader further into your offering:
1.) Get Your Prospects Attention.
Your first job as a marketer is to grab your prospects attention and get them to focus on your message. The two factors that influence whether a headline will have the attention grabbing effects that you desire is the content and design of your headline. The content is the actual words used in your headline, and the design is how it is visually presented. The text you use in your line should cut right to the heart of how your product or service can benefit the reader. This should be a benefit specifically targeted to your desired audience. Get into the mind of your prospect. Whatever it is that they need or want the most should be addressed in your headline if you want the reader’s attention. Visually, the design of your headline should cause it to leap off the page to the viewer. Find a way to make your headline stand out amongst other ads that it shares space with, by using a different typeface, color or other attention grabbing visual design elements.
2.) Identify Your Target Audience
You should know whom your specific target audience is that you are trying to reach through your marketing, and target your headline to get their specific attention.
Wording your headline to appeal to your target audience heightens their interest and draws them into your ad copy like a magnet. This technique of narrowing your message to appeal to a target audience is known as flagging. In a sense, you are holding up flag that says to your target audience, “This message is for you!” This alerts the prospect to give your ad priority attention because you are specifically addressing them. A message that specifically addressees your target audience speaks to them on a more personal level and your ad copy has a higher perceived value because of this.
3.) Make A Clear, Benefit-Filled Statement
When your targeted visitor reads your headline the one thing that they need to see to continue onward is benefits. Your headline needs to clearly address how your product or service can benefit your reader. A benefit is different from a feature. A feature describes the contents and characteristics of a product or service. A benefit clearly answers the question in the back of every prospects head: “What’s in it for me?” A benefit is the solution or result a customer can get from using your product or service. A benefit should satiate a hunger or relieve a pain, and is the number one reason why a prospect will continue to read your marketing piece. Your headline should inspire the reader with hope that the advertised benefit can be theirs. This hope of a realized dream, or the cessation of a pain compels the find out more about your solution. Clearly state the benefit of your product or service in your headline and your potential customer will be receptive to hearing more about what you have to offer.
In summary, a powerful headline that covers the above three points will serve you well by setting up the rest of your ad copy and marketing message for success. A headline sets the marketing “dinner table” and inspires your guests to gather around it, ready to partake of the rest of the message about your product and service.
Darby Miller is the owner of http://www.Home-Based-Dad.com/1-Step-System-Blog.html, a
blog about the Ultimate Marketer’s Toolbox, an all-in-one multimedia marketing
resource created by the 1 Step System. Darby writes about the Ultimate
Marketer’s Toolbox at the 1 Step System
Blog
Be Courageous
For such a simple statement, this is one of the hardest things for people to do. It
goes back to that damn survival instinct each of us is born with. If an animal draws
attention to itself in the wild, it might soon find itself the main course of a larger
animal’s next meal. That fear of being chewed up and spit out has survived all our
millions of years of evolution and is alive and well in today’s business environment.
Fight or flight is another instinct many of us haven’t yet learned to manipulate. It’s
easier to run away from a new idea than it is to stay and fight for it. With today’s
leadership-by-committee mentality and intense public scrutiny, the easiest solution
is unfortunately the most popular. Companies today often miss the forest through
the trees. They tend to concentrate so much on short-term profit that they fail to
make investments or take advantages of opportunities that promise long-term
profit simply because they require a short-term loss.
It may also be argued that fighting for a new ideawhether that means pushing for
the development of a new product, staving off competitors or supporting a
slumping brand rather than letting it dieis usually undesirable because of such
costs.
Certainly that might be true in the short term, but in the long run, giving up too
soon my actually cost your company far more in lost revenues, public outrage or
shrinking market share. It requires a different way of thinking. Advertising and
promoting your business is an investment in your business’ future. Investments are
not mere costs. They come with a benefit.
Let’s get one thing straight from the very beginning. No company ever dominated
its industry by operating with a philosophy of fear. And, ultimately, no company can
survive if it doesn’t learn to conquer its fear and take chances, make changes.
It is the ability to see past any short-term problems to the bigger, long-term picture
that has fueled the meteoric rise of the world’s most successful companies. Nobody
knew what Apple was before its history making 1985 Super Bowl commercial.
Apple paid to run that commercial only once, but it ran again hundreds of times
around the country and the world during local and national news broadcasts. Stories
about Apple and its commercial were front-page news for weeks.
When it comes to advertising, you might wonder what kinds of changes are needed.
After all, it’s just advertising. If your ads look like your competitors’ ads, if your
messages are strikingly similar, if you talk to yourself instead of your customers, if
you worry more about your logo being large enough than the message being
attention-getting enough, you need to change.
Now this is just the first step, so we won’t get into any more detail here. The object
of this step is to let you know that you need to screw up your courage and prepare
to make some changes in your advertising that will have a profound effect on your
bottom line.
Fear is the greatest motivator. However, instead of motivating people to act, it
usually causes people to freeze or retreat. It takes courage to make the kinds of
changes that are needed to survive in today’s crowded, complicated and competitive
business environment.
Conquer your fear. Be courageous.
This article introduced the first of the twelve steps. Challenge yourself, your staff
and your advertising agency to make a revolutionary transformation of your
advertising program. And, remember, even the largest revolution begins with just
one stepthe first.
© 2006
After more than a decade in the business, Jeff Berney offers more than a passion for
prose. Above all, he is a strategic thinker, an idealist, a brand evangelist. The articles
posted here are from his collection entitled, “Twelve Steps to Creating Breakthrough
Advertising Campaigns: A creative philosophy to help companies recover from years of
playing it safe.”
Jeff Berney is a freelance idealist, brand evangelist and writer. He can be reached at
816-507-2124 or jeff@jberney.com.