The quickest and least expensive method to improve your currentmresults is to review your existing sales and marketing strategies and improve or better still, transform them.
My mentoring clients automatically get their sales and marketing benchmarked and improved by me through my ‘Scientific Marketing Makeover’. Even if that includes you, it’s worth me taking you through a good example of what you can achieve when you take your existing pieces and then apply the ‘CORE ELEMENTS’ to them. The difference is often significant, resulting in instant improvements with more leads, sales and profits, WITHOUT spending an extra penny or cent!
Now in fairness ‘artspec’ have tried to communicate to us rather than just saying ‘please find our brochure enclosed’ – which most people do – but none of the CORE ELEMENTS are used or deployed effectively.
So, the results from this letter will be poor. Now remember, by transforming this letter we’re NOT increasing costs. We’re merely optimising the current marketing piece using the CORE ELEMENTS in order to greatly improve its effectiveness.
To explain, let me take you through the process of ‘OPTIMISATION’.
Now I don’t know anything about this company (they’re not members or mentoring clients) so I’m going to make some assumptions—but it still serves as a great example of how to systematically improve what you’re using at the moment.
Remember, in this particular example, the sole purpose of sending the letter and brochure is to generate a lead or an enquiry. That MUST be the focus of the letter. I often talk about ‘laser- beam focus’.
What this means is that for every sales and marketing strategy, you must write down what its number one objective is. This gives you complete clarity on what you’re trying to achieve.
First, let’s do a very quick summary of the letter using the CORE ELEMENTS as our guide. Let’s address each CORE ELEMENT in turn…
1. TARGET MARKET:
They are targeting ‘marketing companies’ which is a good fit—but notice there’s no tailoring of the letter to marketing companies.
So even though they have chosen the target market (one of them) correctly—they’ve sent a ‘Mass Market’ type letter out! The letter has to scream out and say to the reader ‘this is for me’. When you achieve this, you’ve created the perfect targeted mailing.
2. DIFFERENTIATOR:
The lack of any differentiator, especially in this very competitive market is a killer (as it is in EVERY industry). I’d build the differentiator around a ‘Guarantee’ that’s focused on things like delivery times, quality of print, etc.
3. HEADLINE:
As with 99% of marketing pieces it’s no surprise that this letter has no headline. My headline is going to be an ‘Offer Headline’ based around the offer shown below. Here’s the headline…
“Attention Marketing Companies – FREE—5000 Full Colour & DoubleSided Leaflets With Your First Order”
4. IRRESISTIBLE OFFER:
Every sales and marketing strategy has to have an irresistible offer. This letter does not! My offer is going to be ‘FREE – 5000 Full Colour & Double-Sided Leaflets With Your First Order’.
5. FEATURES & BENEFITS:
You may have been led to believe that ‘in order to meet those tight deadlines we can take both your artwork and data online and even supply proofs for approval online’, is a benefit, but it’s not – it’s a feature.
The important point to remember here is that the whole purpose of this letter is to get the recipient to request a quote (the lead or enquiry). Therefore the benefits (and features) need to focus on ‘WHY’ the reader should request a quote.
6. GUARANTEE/RISK REVERSAL:
See above (differentiator).
7. REASONS WHY:
Their letter doesn’t contain any—but with my offer, the letter will need to explain we’re giving away 5,000 leaflets on the first order. Here are my Reasons Why…
846 Customers Can’t All Be Wrong – Here’s Why…
You see, our customers (all 846 of them) know how good we are – but just like you, before they ordered from us – they had no idea.
8. SOCIAL PROOF:
No evidence of any social proof here. It’s important to try to tie in the social proof to the objective of the marketing piece.
So, you’ll ideally want your testimonials to say something like: “I was actually very happy with our current printer, but I thought I’d give artspec a try.
“What astonished me was the quick turnaround of the quote, and combined with their competitive prices their quality of printing is unmatched. Two years later and I would never choose anyone else.”
9. CALL TO ACTION:
Their call to action is very weak. My call to action will reinforce the offer and state a deadline to help reduce procrastination.
Here it is…
To request your Instant Quote all you have to do is complete the enclosed ‘Instant Quote Request Form’ and email it back to us. Alternatively phone……
