Marketing With Brochures
With the explosion of the internet and online businesses many business owners forget how important it is to market offline as well. One of the main pieces in your company's marketing should be a brochure. You should have a brochure for your online and offline marketing. Brochures have many advantages over most other marketing tools available to you. Probably the most important advantage is that brochures can convey a lot of information about your business. Brochures can tell a detailed story about your business that cannot be told through display advertising. A brochure gives you the flexibility to communicate your message with both words and graphics. In the information age people expect to get the information they want and need quickly. And that is exactly what a brochure does. It gives prospects the information they want in just a few seconds. In most cases the more you tell the more you sell. People don't read brochures unless they are seriously interested in gaining information. They are not interested in "white space;" they are interested in learning more about your business and your product or service. And they resent it if you don't give them enough information to buy what you are selling. Your sales letter should be warm, human, sincere, honest, personal and one-on-one. But your brochure should be technical. It showcases the attractions, components, advantages or positive benefits of your product or service. It should be written in concise one-sentence or one-paragraph statements that give a solid list of facts and benefits. Reprint or excerpt your best testimonials, endorsements and recommendations. You should begin your brochure with a headline that summarizes the contents. This is very important because your headline is the ad for the brochure. Here are some important tips to help you create a winning brochures: * Tell your prospects why they should buy your product or service. * Tell your prospects why you are enthusiastic about your product or service. * Give some important facts that your prospects should know about your product or service. * Tell your prospects why your product or service will benefit them; Give facts, figures, and testimonials that confirm the case for buying your product or service. * Use visuals, photos, graphics, and illustrations that help create a desire to buy. * Use a three-fold (six-panel) brochure that fits neatly into a #10 envelope. * Use a larger brochure with a flap inside the rear cover to hold 81/2 x 11 sheets of paper. This helps you personalize your brochure to specific prospects. * Create a brochure that can be used for many years. For example, instead of saying, "We're ten years old," say "We were founded in 1995." * Always end your brochure by summarizing the entire proposition of what you're selling. And restate your guarantee very powerfully and prominently. The job any brochure is to get your prospect interested in your product or service. So make sure you give them all the information necessary to make a decision, and then offer them a way to move directly to either purchase or request more information. Your brochure should act as a tour guide for your company. The goal of any brochure is to convey your key message quickly and concisely. Prospects want to know what's in it for them. They want to know how your products or services will help them. Always remember, prospects have to be told what to do. So make sure your brochure does that. Your brochure is a call to action. Run ads that invite prospects to call, write or e-mail you for a free brochure. Your brochures should be given to prospects who request them or have a high probability of purchasing from you. By doing this, you can give many reasons to purchase from you without paying for the advertising space to do so. Then you add the names of the brochure-requesters to your mailing and e-mailing lists and write to them regularly. One final note, never send out a brochure without some type of letter with it. Use your brochures to spread the word about your company. Use ads, your customers, the internet, and any other outlets you can think of to have your prospects request them. The more places you use, the more effective your brochures will be. Your brochure will compliment every part of your marketing. It will leave your prospects with everything they need to help turn them into buying customers. CopyrightŠ 2005 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Joe Love draws on his 25 years of experience helping both individuals and companies build their businesses, increase profits, and achieve total success. A former ad agency executive and marketing consultant, Joe's work in personal development focuses on helping his clients identify hidden marketable assets that create windfall opportunities and profits, as well as sound personal happiness and peace. Reach Joe at: joe@jlmandassociates.com Read more articles and newsletters at: http://www.jlmandassociates.com
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Every January, trade publications put out a list of predictions for the coming year. They discuss products, services and trends that they think will change the way business is done, labeling these "disruptive technologies."
The idea of disruptive technologies comes from Clayton Christensen's 1997 book, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. A disruptive technology is a method, procedure, skill, device, or material that redefines the competitive standards. Note that the technology doesn't have to be a physical item and that it often forces us to re-examine the way we work.
InfoWorld's list of disruptive technologies for 2003 included open source, self-service CRM, digital identity, and my personal favorite, Weblogs. How can a simple, Web-based journal be disruptive?
For starters, it's worth describing what a Weblog is. Basically, a Weblog or "blog" is a personally created, online, time-stamped web page that includes the thoughts, ideas, and comments of the "blogger." The musings are usually brief, but they are published frequently and consistently. People can subscribe to receive the blog updates via e-mail. Often, the blogger is an expert on the subject he/she is discussing.
At first glance, it doesn't appear that blogs would be at all disruptive. So why all the hype? If we look closely at the structure and intent of blogs as a communications tool, we can see some powerful ideas at work.
Blogs are a direct, one-to-many vehicle for communicating ideas. They expand an individual's ability to communicate. They are fresh and timely. The blogger, in order to maintain interest, must communicate often. Blogs enable a single person to share ideas, insights, and useful knowledge with an audience. Thanks to the Web, the audience can be a global one.
Whenever a new tool or process-such as e-mail- expands communications, the effects are far-reaching and dramatic. Even though blogs have been around for 3-4 years, they could be the next big thing.
Blogs Are The "Real Voice"
Two important characteristics of blogs are that they are written by a person who is knowledgeable and passionate about the topic, and that they are written in a "real voice." This is a cosmic shift from the marketing and public relations materials that are the staple of business communications.
Often, when information goes through a formal marketing or PR process, the end result is an attractive, expensive, stale, diluted document written in corporate speak. This result is generally due to the processes that evolved to accommodate the costs and standards of print technology, rather than to the incompetence or malevolence of corporate communicators. The edge, the authenticity, and the voice of the professional speaking to his fellow professionals is lost.
Blogs offer the human voice that can be loud, controversial, and even wacky. But the realness of the blog inspires trust and piques people's curiosity. A blog can create a community and a dynamic discussion.
If you are a product manager working in the chemical products industry, chances are that you would rather hear about the real experiences of other product managers in your industry than read a glossy marketing piece put out by the marcom department. Blogs fit this communications requirement perfectly.
Blogs Are Simple
Weblogs are easy for people to publish, read and respond to. They can foster a community of like-minded individuals and be the catalyst for spirited discussions. Blogs are an inherently proactive form of communications. Weblog participants can subscribe to receive scheduled postings to the blog. Weblogs are inexpensive to produce and they can include a variety of multimedia content (audio, video, files, etc.) and hypertext links that add value to the discussion.
Blogs Empower The Individual
There are a host of tools on the Internet that make blogging a snap! Blogs empower a single person to capitalize on the reach and ubiquity of the Web. And they don't require the investment or recurring costs of print technologies.
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Blogs empower the knowledgeable people within a company to share their insights, know-how, and expertise. The value to a corporation is that this knowledge can be organized, distributed, and leveraged to increase the value of different product and service offerings to the customer.
If a corporation is going to use a blog, however, it should understand that controlling the content of the discussion is difficult. If you want an authentic exchange, you have to be willing to accept the stone-throwing and critical comments that often occur in a blog. This requires extending trust and giving up some of the control a company would normally have when it publishes a press release or hosts its own online forum, for example. The upside is that people will listen to a real voice.
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You can adapt blog technologies to your corporate electronic newsletters by taking advantage of the underlying concepts. You can, for example:
* Publish a small amount of well-organized information frequently and regularly
* Include content from individuals who are knowledgeable and passionate about their work
* Make it easy for your employees to communicate directly in their own, human voice
* Respect the reader by making sure your e-newsletter provides value and that he/she wants to receive it.
E-newsletters geared towards educating a marketplace, rather than those focused on advertising or marketing, turn out to be particularly effective. E-newsletters offer an affordable, direct way for the experts in a company to communicate with an audience. This means that a product manager or an engineer can enhance the flow of information and make it more accessible to those who want it.
Think of your channel and the information needs of your partners. Your company has a wealth of information that would help them sell your products more effectively. There is much insight within your partner community that could be leveraged throughout the channel. And your technical experts and engineers have critical knowledge and understanding that everyone could utilize.
What's often missing is an easy way for the "know-how" keepers to capture their knowledge, organize it, and deliver it. The best e-newsletters are written in a real voice, not in corporate speak.
Two years ago, the book The Cluetrain Manifesto shook up the business community (see http://www.cluetrain.com/book.html). The revelation? That business is about humans. As Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Petzinger Jr. writes in the foreword: "I was dumbstruck. There in a few pages, I read a startlingly concise summary of everything I'd seen in twenty-one years as a reporter, editor, bureau chief and columnist for my newspaper. The idea that business, at bottom, is fundamentally human. That engineering remains second-rate without aesthetics. That natural, human conversation is the true language of commerce. That corporations work best when the people on the inside have the fullest contact possible with people on the outside."
It turns out that the human "voice" is an underserved or ignored need. In a world of 6+ billion inhabitants, the individual craves to speak and to be heard.
References
Blogs As Disruptive Tech: How Weblogs Are Flying Under The Radar Of The Content Management Giants, By John Hiler, CEO, Webcrimson, http://www.webcrimson.com/ourstories/blogsdisruptivetech.Htm
Making Room For Disruptive And Emergent Technologies, By Hugh Blackmer, Science Librarian, Washington & Lee University, http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/sabb/nitle2.html*
Blogs As Disruptive Innovation: What A Brave New World Blogging Is Building!, by Dr. James V. McGee, Professor, The Kellogg School Of Management,
http://www.mcgeesmusings.net/2002/05/15.html
Weblogs At Harvard Law, Bookmark List For ABCD Weblogs Meeting, By Dave Winer,
http://Blogs.Law.Harvard.Edu/Stories/Storyreader$199
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