All copywriting, whether for web or paper, should be biased towards one thing: the customer.

Blabbing on about the company is a total waste of time, customers don’t give a tinker’s toot about the business, they only care about “what’s in it for them”, how will they benefit from the product or services offered, will it make them feel better, look good, improve their life, or whatever.

So much promotional material uses the wrong slant; if they were to adapt the way their descriptions were written into the customers’ point of view, talking about how the customers will benefit, then they will achieve more sales.

Analyse the successful ads on TV: the one’s that work don’t even mention the product, they go on about the effect it will have on their customers, how their hair is thicker and glossier, how much the decor of their house has changed, how soft their skin has become, how good their feet now look, what a fantastic two weeks their children will have on holiday, etc.

Stop being selfish and start thinking about who you are actually selling to. The customer is king, not the content.

People expect clear definitions about what kind of business you are. In fact, directories have boxes that state either one profession or the other when you apply, without an option for anything else. And if you join a networking group this rule also applies. You are supposed to be either a designer, or a marketer, and not something in between.

But things start to get a little cloudy if you describe yourself as a designer with a marketing twist, or as a visual marketer. People’s foreheads furrow and they may even turn to look for an easier subject to network with. If you don’t fall into those easily understood categories then that’s more hard work for them, and it’s more hard work for me to explain exactly what I do.

Let me provide you with two scenarios. First, decorating a room. There’s all that time needed to strip off the wallpaper, wash down the walls, make good the cracks, sandpaper down the door frames and skirting boards, and get it all ready before you put the paint on to make it look nice. If you don’t do all this the paint will peel off, the walls will not be smooth and the end result will look amateurish.

Scenario Two: have you ever looked at a cake in the café and salivated with the thought of eating it, but when you took a bite you were bitterly disappointed? Chocolate cakes have a tendency to do this. It all depends on the kinds of ingredients used, the conditions the cake was baked in, and whether the flavours matched up to the expectancy of the finished results. The humble carrot cake in the corner probably provided a better treat, as well as being healthier, because the ingredients were superior.

Scenario One demonstrated that a lot of preliminary work needs to be done beforehand that cannot necessarily be seen in the finished result. It is important to set up your foundations for a frame to hang the design on. Scenario Two showed that just because it looks fancy it doesn’t necessarily mean it will perform well. And make sure the contents of your leaflets reflect the purpose, are aimed towards your customers’ needs and wants, and provide a suitable call to action to make the project worth while.

So a visual marketer will combine the elements of design and marketing to make leaflets perform better. Rather than creating logos, I work with your logo (as well as any other imagery that’s relevant). I write copy that has a purpose and an understanding of the psychology of the customer. It’s not just how you position the words and pictures on the page, it’s what you say to gain the reader’s attention and get them to do something towards achieving a sale or buying into a service.

There’s a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ stuff that goes towards a successful leaflet. And that’s what this blogsite is all about: I hope to explain it satisfactorily in future posts, so watch this space!

Quick reference:
How to get your leaflets to start working for you
How to get your successful leaflets to look good

It’s not what you say, but how you say it, that contributes towards a successful campaign. Be aware that your customers come first; after all, your business would not exist without them, so therefore they need to be the main focus for your campaign. This means you need to turn your mindset around to accommodate the fact that your business comes way down the pecking order of importance.

Each element of your message needs to be carefully planned, placed and executed. The first thing at the top should not be your logo and company name. Even though most leaflets and adverts blare theirs out from this position, this only works for worldwide recognised businesses; otherwise the reader’s reaction is ‘who?’ or ‘so what?’.

The main key element is the headline, which should be designed to attract attention. Begin your campaign with a statement or question that stimulates a positive response to your customers’ pain or problem. You should have done adequate market research to find this out, so position yourself inside your customers’ head and start to think like them. Work with something that will result in the reader saying ‘yes’.

The subhead should provide the resolve or solution to the headline, and there you can subtly drop in the name of your company.  I mean subtly, as the solution should always come first. The result should be to increase the readers’ empathy towards what you are offering.

Next highlight your benefits in bullet points. Here most businesses happily list their features, but remember since you are focusing on your customers, turn these features around to their point of view, so that they become customer benefits. Take out all the ‘we’ and ‘our’ and substitute them with ‘you’ and ‘yours’ to achieve this.

Why use bullet points? Readers find it easier to scan or quick read through a list than to trawl through a dense paragraph. In this fast moving 21st century, bombarded with stimuli from every direction, people don’t have the time or inclination to read everything. A list containing concise, focused and relevant points is more likely to be absorbed.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. How many campaigns forget to include a call to action? The remainder of your leaflet could contain all the right ingredients, but if you don’t ask your readers to do something, even to tell them to call you for more information, then what is the point? And by making this time-dependent you are more likely to stimulate a response, otherwise, even if they have the best intentions towards your campaign, there is no stimulus to demand a quick reaction and your leaflet could get forgotten.

And last but not least, make sure your contact details are large, clear and easily accessible. If your telephone number doesn’t jump out to hit them between the eyes, your landing page web-address is not clearly visible, or your email is hidden amongst other text, you will not encourage your customers to make contact. And no customer contact means no sales.

When you write about a specific subject in your newsletter, the best way is to break it down into its basic components, and explain it simply using everyday language. This exercise is more difficult than it sounds, because the idea is to make it not only interesting, but to appeal to as many readers as possible to gain their trust and form relationships with them. By breaking down a subject, it will then lend itself to a number of other subjects which will become fodder for future articles.

Do a postcard campaign to gain interest and increase your readership. This is cheaper than creating a large quantity of the first edition of your newsletter and potentially losing most of them to an uninterested audience. The postcard campaign would have to be run over a series, as in today’s society not everyone responds immediately to information, they may need to be coerced into your way of thinking, seduced into the benefits of your profession, and stimulated by fascinating facts that they may not have thought of before. Sometimes it can take several goes to gain a follower.

Please don’t bore your readers too much about your business (this may sound unkind, but people are notoriously self-centered, and only think in terms of what is in it for them). You could easily explain the various features of your company through the benefits it offers, by writing about successful case studies, funny stories with good endings, witty and entertaining information articles about certain subjects you want to get across, special offers that cannot be resisted, competitions to raise awareness, ‘try before you buy’ offers to get them across your threshold…

Selecting certain pages for particular subjects is a good idea, because if you are going to make your newsletter a regular feature, people will like to look at a particular page first (like as for the local newspaper the sports section, the horoscopes, the letters page, the classified ads, for example) before reading the remainder of the newsletter. Keeping a consistency will help your readers in gaining confidence, and they will then look forward to the next issue. It’s like a supermarket that always has its basics like milk and bread, but the way there will offer all sorts of more provocative products to entice their interest.

But it is all very well giving them all this wonderful information if you don’t get anything in return. The idea is to get more people to try what your organisation has to offer. Therefore you must provide special offers that have a time dependent call to action. These must be worth the reader’s while, maybe even a lost leader to get them to sample what you have to offer them. Usually if you do a really good job, it will sell itself and you will get more customers. I say time dependent because if you leave it open ended, the lack of urgency will disappear from their busy minds and the opportunity will be lost or forgotten.

Why not create a blog as an archive medium for all the really important or successful features and articles of your newsletter. Because it is a blog, it would be frequently visited by the ‘internet spiders’ compared to that of a website, which can wait weeks for a visitation. The more frequent the postings, the more often the spiders visit. These postings could have links to your website or any other internet based information, which again would raise awareness and click value of your website, because it is not only spiders who roam the web and click on links but people too.

Create a sign-up form on the homepage of your website to increase your newsletter membership. You could have past copies in pdf form on the newsletter page, which readers could download if they’ve lost their original copy, or interested future subscribers to see what it is like. Again the spiders trawl the pdfs, so more info is passed onto the internet, encouraging more visits to your website, blog and sign up forms, especially if you include web links in the newsletter.

At a ‘Power Breakfast’ this morning I gave some tips away about how to design a postcard marketing campaign with marketing in mind.

In today’s world it’s not enough to design a pretty postcard and send it out to lots of people to see if any of them will buy from you.  Here are six of various factors that need to come into play:

First, assess your target market. Are you sending your postcard to the right people? Don’t waste your precious marketing material on the wrong kinds of business or individuals.

Second, how are you going to get a return from your campaign? The take-up rate for mail-outs is usually 0.5% – will that be enough? Is it cost effective? Would you like to capture your potential clients’ details so you can communicate with them later?

Third, when putting together a postcard campaign, consider these other elements. Do you have a good call to action your prospective clients will react to? Do you have something of value to offer them that they can’t refuse, but doesn’t quite give them everything? Do you have a method of collecting names and emails into a database for later use?

Fourth, if you have a website, could you set up a ‘landing page’ specifically for this postcard campaign? This is a stand-alone webpage that re-emphasises the information on your postcard, provides a large telephone number for contact, and displays a sign-up form to download a special incentive or free gift as part of your call to action. Its main purpose is to capture their details or get them to call you to find out more.

Fifth, the postcard itself will have to use the AIDA marketing technique, which consists of a catchy yet relevant headline to draw attention to the main message, bullet points of your benefits (not features) that are in the customer’s interest, a call to action by offering a juicy incentive, and clear and large contact details. A bright and colourful picture will help too.

Sixth, once you’ve got their email details, then you can use them to set up a relationship with them through an e-newsletter. It is quite normal to have to contact prospective clients several times in many formats before they come round to buying from you. Keeping regular updates on how your company is doing, any new products/concepts/services/etc on offer, crowing about any successes or achievements, testimonials from satisfied clients, descriptions of how you overcame particular problems and what results it had – the list is endless as long as it’s relevant, readable and entertaining. Make sure your prospective clients will read and look forward to the next issue, and if you include more call to actions within your posts, you will eventually get more sales.

If you want to know more, I will setting up a series of e-books based on combining design with marketing (or marketing with design – take your choice) which will explain this in more detail. Watch this space. Meanwhile, visit my website and join up to my newsletter to find out more about what I do.

Some of you would have heard of Auntie AIDA, a marketing term which translated means

A is for Attention

I is for Interest

D is for Desire

A is for Action

But now I want to introduce to you Auntie ALICE:

A stands for Attractive graphic design with Attention to detail

L stands for Leading the way in designing Leaflets and other Literature

I stands for Interested in your business to Improve your marketing material

C stands for Clear, Concise and unCluttered graphic design, managed from Conception to Completion

E stands for Efficient and Effective products that are Economically good value

A good referral for me would be someone who wants to know more about both Auntie AIDA and ALICE, because “if writing for your leaflets seems too big a task, scintillating copywriting from Alice you must ask”!