If you have skipped this important step in creating your sales material, be it your brochures, website landing page, or direct mail pieces, then the chances of converting your prospects into cash buyers or clients has been greatly compromised.
Knowing your target market and how to relate to them in your sales material is extremely important. The more you know about your prospects and what keeps them awake at night, will help you nail your copy and offer so that you will have an opportunity to gain them as clients.
You certainly wouldn’t talk to a prospective client in the real estate development business as you would talk to a software engineer; there’s a completely different voice, terminology, and desires that will have to be addressed.
A Hard-Core Marketing Lesson That I Learned from a Pack of Guru Wannabes
I sometimes frequent an online forum where Internet marketers and wannabes hang out and sell their wares. I decided to hang out in the section where many of these entrepreneurs were selling their various products and analyze the copy they were using to sell their products with.
I would then send a pitch to these entrepreneurs and tell them where they were going wrong with their copy and how they could sell their stuff better. It didn’t take very long before I got annihilated by several of these sellers.
As it turns out, many of the sellers that I contacted were doing quite well with their products and their copy, and they told me in no uncertain terms how stupid I was. (Man, do these young Internet marketers get snarky!) As it turns out, I had failed to study the people I was trying to prospect to and how their products are sold. The same copy that I was using for motivational speakers is not the same copy I could use on this bunch, which resulted in an epic fail on my part.
Writing to Everyone is a Waste
One of the lessons I just had to learn was writing copy the same way for everyone is just not going to work, just like marketing to everyone is marketing to no one.
Usually, when I’m writing for a client, I have rather extensive research form that I make the
clients fill out before I write a single word. Actually, I have several of these sheets for them to fill out, and I usually ask them to send me every scrap of advertising copy they can to include past and current brochures, radio or TV scripts, and any other types of copy they may have. If they have any demographic studies on their target market, I’ll ask for that too.
On these forms, this is what I’m basically looking for:
- Who are your clients and customers? If you’re a real estate investment firm, the clients that you are probably dealing with are successful 30 to 50 year olds that are interested in passive investments and are college educated. You need to gather as much information about your primary marketing target as you can. This is an extremely important step that you cannot skip!
- Are these prospects able to buy what you have to offer? Marketing to prospects that have no money or cannot see the value of your services is of no use to you. So determining who and where your best prospects are is another important consideration.
- If you already have clients, what do they look like? The famous marketer, Dan Kennedy, once had to write copy for a business that sold dump truck tarps to construction companies. Kennedy actually went to the buyer’s offices and hung out with them so he could get a good idea of the language, work environment, and day to day dealings these buyers of tarps had. He even wanted to know how they ate their lunch, and he interviewed quite a few of them. This type of research is vital to getting your marketing message across.
- What do your current clients and happy patrons like about your product and services? You can easily send out surveys to past clients to find out what they liked about your business. If you offer them a reason, like a free gift to fill out your survey, chances are they will be more than happy to give you this data.
Just like a good copywriter, if you do your research on the front end, you will fare much better in your marketing message and will be able to craft compelling copy at the onset. Knowing everything you possibly can about your prospects will save you thousands of dollars as well as prequalification in your target market.
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If you would like to know how you can easily transform your online landing page into an automatic lead generating machine, please contact me at the email address below, or give me a call. I’ll be happy to send you my FREE copy of “How to Immediately Increase Your Website Conversion Rate by 64% or more!” This is a concise report full of ideas to help you easily and quickly turn prospects into paying clients.
To Your Success!
Mark “Elmo” Ellis
(859) 797-9560