Sales Letter Marketing: Building a Mousetrap
Cheese - anybody? How about some peanut butter? These may not sound good to you, but to our four legged unwanted home intruders, they appear quite succulent and delicious, at least when placed on the 'got-ya stick' of a mouse trap. Now I don't know about your mice, but mine are quite well educated. They know how to get to the cheese or peanut butter, lick off every crumb of it, and get away before the trap flips. (I suspect my boys are teaching them how to do it, but I have no proof.) So - in order to capture the beady-eyed little critters, I had to come up with a better plan. The problem definitely didn’t have to do with a lack of mice. I live in a rural area where mice seem to multiply like rabbits (and so do rabbits). It's all in the marketing. When you present a piece of cheese or peanut butter in the middle of a board with a wire operated by a spring set to remove their tail, and other various body parts. I firmly belief mice are onto us. They know you've got the trap set and their tail is at risk. Now, they don't want a chopped off tail... So, they aren't buying. What happens if you put that same bit of cheese or peanut butter in a different trap? Something less decidedly - well, entrapping? Marketing is all about bringing your prospect to the bait. Sales letters look like, smell like, and feel like a trap. Your clients hate them. So, how do you distinguish your business intro letters to get attention without setting off the proverbial ‘Trap – Warning’? I personally, get twenty or thirty sales letters a day - enough to raise a Sequoia in California once a year. They are exaggerated and mutilating attempts to sell me something I'd never buy in the first place, so... Why? What can you do differently? Ambiguous, over stated headlines that exaggerate the product look and feel like a trap. A simple straight forward presentation of your product might work better. Honest wording without the folderall that makes your product appear to look and smell like a tail removal machine would probably help sell your merchandise. What if you presented your product in a manner that shows your enthusiasm for the cheese and peanut butter and leaves the choice open to your reader? Perhaps a change in your call to action. Tell the reader the truth, show them the value, offer them a discount and a guarantee in case they don’t like the product then put your “Buy Now” Button on the page so they can make an educated choice to purchase your valuable merchandise. Now you're talking! Let's sit down and have dinner, discuss this between two logical adults, and decide how short we want the tail. Then we'll talk sales. Come on over, I've got the crackers out... This Dynamic Marketing Guru learned early the value of life balance, accountability, and confidence in the work place. Let the Marketing Guru take you where you want to go with Marketing Choices that Rock your Business World with Success Strategies. Visit Jan Verhoeff, The Marketing Guru, at http://janverhoeff.com |
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