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Your customer wants a cleaner kitchen, not a kitchen cleaner.

Your customers are interested in benefits, not features. So sell benefits in your sales letters.

The difference between a feature and a benefit comes down to this: A feature is what something does. A benefit is what something does for you.

Everything you have to say in your direct marketing sales letters boils down to features and benefits. With every piece of copy you write, however long or short your copy, you are always talking in terms of features and benefits.

When I worked on the Bell Mobility account, I discovered that the marketing folks at Bell have a policy of always presenting the benefit first, followed by the feature. I had usually written things the other way around. But they had a good policy.

For example, I would have said, “Digital Data2Go lets you receive email with your cellphone, saving you the hassle of finding a phone jack for your laptop whenever you need to check email while travelling.” Bell insisted that I present the benefit first, so I instead wrote something like this: “Never again waste time hunting for a phone jack when it’s time to check email while travelling. Digital Data2Go lets you receive email with just your cellphone.”

I think Bell has the right idea, although there are times when the feature needs to come first.

The tough part in all of this is translating features into benefits before you start writing. Some benefits are obvious. Others require some detective work to uncover. I learned that lesson all over again when I taught copywriting at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies.

I gave my students an exercise that always turned up a surprising benefit. I told my class that the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada was 1,815 feet and 5 inches tall. Their assignment was to come up with as many benefits as they could that related to that feature. Most of them stared at me.

Then they picked up their pens.

Slowly, they started to write.

Each time I ran the exercise, a student or two came up with a benefit that I had not thought of. Here are a few of the benefits of having the world’s tallest free-standing structure in your city:

• attract tourist dollars by charging for tours
• see the whole city from one vantage point
• generate revenue by selling souvenirs
• impress your date with dinner at the revolving restaurant
• host fundraisers (a race up the stairs to the top is a popular annual fundraiser)
• generate revenue from organizations that monitor the weather
• navigate around the city easily because the tower is a landmark visible from almost everywhere
• generate revenue from TV and radio companies by hosting their antennas on the communications deck
• improve the flow of traffic along the nearby Gardner Expressway by locating traffic cameras on the tower
• generate publicity by hanging a banner down the side of the structure

There were many more benefits, some worthy and some just wacky, but all of them were benefits of one kind or another. Together, they demonstrated that products and services, including yours, probably have more benefits than are apparent at first glance.

So hunt for those benefits that are relevant to your potential buyers and current customers. And remember this, every time you craft a sales letter: your client wants a 5/8 inch hole, not a 5/8 inch drill bit.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Sharpe is a business-to-business direct mail copywriter and lead generation specialist who helps business owners and marketing managers generate leads, close sales and retain customers using business-to-business direct mail marketing. Learn more about his creative direct mail writing services and sign up for free weekly tips like this at http://www.sharpecopy.com.

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If you don’t get this right, you can just forget about everything else…your advertising will fail miserably if you don’t have something good to say. The great business philosopher Jim Rohn probably summed it up best in his lecture about communications. He was talking about personal communications, not about advertising, but I think the principle holds true. He says to be a master communicator, all you’ve got to do is follow this three-step process: First, have something good to say. Second, say it well. And third, say it often.

In terms of advertising, here’s what that means: Having something good to say means that you’ve innovated your business sufficiently so that you’ve got something of value to the marketplace that’s worth advertising in the first place. Saying it well has to do with taking what you well and saying it in your advertising in such a way that it gets people to notice and take action. We’re going to show you how to use the power of writing and articulating to get more results for the same money spent - say it well. And as for saying it often, that refers to executing your advertising and follow-up marketing in a systematic format that allows you to build brand equity and cost-effectively turn prospects into customers.

So before we get into the how to say it well, let’s spend just a few minutes talking about the first step to successful communication: “Have something good to say.” Some people don’t expect that they have to actually innovate their business to be successful. But so far, in my years of experience, it’s been the best strategy that I’ve seen. You’ve probably heard the old saying that if you build a better mousetrap that the world won’t necessarily beat a path to your door. That may be true; but here’s a strategy that I’ve seen fail a thousand times: Trying to use catchy advertising, tricky words or fast-talking to try and sell the same old, boring mousetrap that everyone else is offering. I think whoever said that line about the mousetrap and the world not beating a path to your door just didn’t understand the principles that govern successful marketing and advertising.

See, once you have created something that people want - or as the common expression goes, sells itself - then advertising becomes infinitely easier. There’s a man named Rossier Reeves who was one of the most successful advertising men in the early days of the business. I know you probably haven’t heard of him, but you’re probably familiar with lots of things he created, even way back in the 50s and 60s; he most famous for M&M’s - “They melt in you mouth, not in your hands.” Anyway, Mr. Reeves pointed this out, “Have something good to say,” way back in 1965: Here’s what he said about writing good advertising:

“The business owner should bring the advertising writer a product or service that deserves to be on the market. It should have significant points of difference from other products. Then the idea behind the advertisement…is very, very easy to find. For example, if a manufacturer brings you car that can go 500 miles on a gallon of gas, you don’t have to look very far for an idea for the ad. The idea is right in front of you. If on the other hand, you have an Edsel that’s not very different from any other car, you are doomed to failure in advance. I don’t believe any advertising brilliance could have saved the Edsel.”

In case you’re not familiar, the Edsel was the greatest embarrassment to the Ford Motor Company in the 50s. They spent record amounts of money promoting it, hyped it to the ends of the earth, then nobody wanted it. Why? Because, despite what the promotion said, it was just another average, ordinary car. Here’s the point: Spending money on marketing, advertising, and the greatest of copywriters of the day didn’t compensate for the lack of confidence or lack of perceived value in the consumer’s mind.

So think about it right now. Do you have “something good to say?” Are there things that you do that make you a better value for the money than your competitors? If not, then why is it that you expect to win in business? If I trotted out the local high school varsity football team to play against the reigning Super Bowl champs, would you expect the varsity to win. Of course not. You’ve got to create something so unique, so good, so unparalleled that it makes your prospects say, “I would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else.”

Rich Harshaw is the founder of the Monopolize Your Marketplace system and CEO of Y2Marketing Business Marketing Strategies

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“Regular communication with your customers is essential to your success.” - Heidi Richards -

E-zines - The alternative of choice for many companies is a great way to market your company. All you need is an e-mail account and permission from your customers/clients to send the e-zine. In fact, I have found e-zines to be so powerful that I write and produce 4 a month. And I am working on a 5th one.

They are:

Self-Marketing News www.self-marketingnews.com

PetalsNCents (a marketing newsletter for the floral industry) - www.petalsncents.com

Creating A Legacy (a newsletter for the nonprofit community) www.creatingalegacy.com

Ramblin’ Rose (a newsletter for my customers) - www.EdenFlorist.com

WECommerce News (a newsletter for members of The Women’s ECommerce Association, International) - www.WECAI.org

Since the whole topic of e-zine production can be overwhelming, I will just touch on the highlights to get you started.

1. The first thing you must do is collect your customers/clients e-mail addresses. We collect them when they call, come in the shop, answer surveys, or enter our contests. We ask for it every time we have interaction with them.

2. We tell them the benefits. The e-zine is filled with product updates, trends, surveys, special offers, testimonials, discounts and my favorite CONTESTS.

3. Make it easy to read and brief. Two to three pages max.

4. One of the most important things we had to deal with was when our lists started growing (beyond 250); we were very limited in sending through our original e-mail account (AOL). They have rules and sometimes will freeze an account if you send too many at once. The format would also get botched sometimes. The lists became unmanageable when we had to remove unsubscribers and duplicates. Finding the ones who wish to unsubscribe can be challenging. We switched to another service hoping they could send our newsletters and maintain our lists. It was a good service; however, we didn’t like the look of our newsletter. It had limited capabilities (no bold or italic). Since I’m the creative type, I didn’t want my e-zines to look like everyone else’s. We have now found a program we are very happy with. There is no monthly fee, just a one-time purchase fee. It is called Group Mail Pro - Mailing List & Group Management Software. And it only costs $79.95 (and you own it).

If you plan your ezine right, give it a great title and offer your customers and clients benefits, your ezine will be a success!

PROMOTION

Have a subscription form on your website!
Have a sign up sheet at the office.
Promote it with postcards in your monthly statements.
Tell anyone you think might be interested.
Offer a free report when they sign up. Buy the URL with the title of your e-zine so you can easily direct traffic to subscribe.

Good things happen with e-zines; increased visibility, increased business and goodwill. Happy Writing!

Excerpted from The PMS Principles - Powerful Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business © 2005 - Heidi Richards

Heidi Richards is the author of The PMS Principles, Powerful Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business and 7 other books. She is also the Founder & CEO of the Women’s ECommerce Association, International http://www.WECAI.org (pronounced wee-kī) - an Internet organization that “Helps Women Do Business on the WEB.” Basic Membership is FREE. Ms. Richards can be reached at http://www.HeidiRichards.com or heidi@wecai.org

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