Tuesday Marketing Notes (Number 85—July 10th , 2007)

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Frame-Making and Role-Switching: How You and Your Team Must Think and Work When Writing Marketing Materials (Part 1)

By Mike O’Sullivan

You know how it is. It’s the life of your average sales rep.

Anytime they interact with a prospect (by email, by phone, in person!), they have to choose their words carefully. They have to show a very specific understanding of what the prospect cares about. They have to prove to the prospect they’re worth listening to, and worthy of trust.

If they fail to do that it’s at best a setback, at worst it stops a sales cycle in its tracks permanently.

So if your marketing materials don’t meet that standard, you’re helping your sales reps fail.

And those are just the failures you can see!

Your marketing materials of course often have to act on their own. A prospect visits your website but he react to the copy the way you want him to? You don’t know.

So how do you and your team create materials that will do their job?

Your One (Most Important) Criterion

Your team will only write the best possible materials if they all commit to writing and judging the materials according to one fundamental criterion:

Just as a salesperson must when she meets with a prospect, marketing materials must revolve around your target prospect’s life…NOT the product & services being sold.

That’s it. Everything else flows from there.

Just as a frame fits around a painting, effective marketing materials make a frame around your prospect’s life. The “frame” articulated in the copy is narrow enough to convey an understanding of your prospect’s specific needs while broad enough to encompass every element of what you’re trying to sell.

Having put that frame in place, your products & services naturally come next, because you’ve already made it clear why they exist -- why they MUST exist. You just need to illustrate what they do and how they work in your prospect’s life. 

Copy That Meets and Doesn’t Meet the One Most Important Criterion

Imagine this is the introduction to your company’s main brochure:

Market research and data collection doesn’t need to put on a strain on your resources. We are a full-service market research and data processing company that provides all of the following services…

(…With a long list of all your services following)

What’s the problem with it?

It doesn’t frame the prospect’s life in a meaningful way.

Rather, it assumes your reader has some experience with what you do (in this case, market research and data collection). Or has at least read or thought about it. It assumes your reader has already reached the conclusion you want him to, that market research and data collection puts or will put too much of a strain on resources.  

Plus, for those who might not be familiar with the topic -- like people who aren’t your prospects but might have an opportunity to influence your prospects -- it doesn’t HELP them understand it. 

Had a sales rep SAID this to any prospect other than those who’ve already “sold” themselves, it’s safe to say that prospect might tune out. 

Now imagine THIS is the introduction to your main brochure:

Whether it’s conducting survey research, performing telephone interviews, or simply distributing and compiling forms, making the right business and organizational decisions requires collecting data, sometimes at a large scale.

A few specific illustrations among many:

Customer Service Departments: Running an ongoing customer feedback program (from warranty programs to loyalty programs)

(…five other illustrations noted)

Whatever your specific data collection project, you want (and likely need) to gather and act on the data as quickly as possible. But the logistical portion requires knowledge and time your organization may not have.

This usually includes:

(…six logistical activities described)

Consider how much time you and your staff spend on these tasks, and how much time this takes away from other work. And given your need to have information quickly, consider what that delay is costing. As time passes, data becomes less meaningful and so the decisions based on that data become less sound.

Equally important: Beyond the logistical components of data collection, you need to ensure you have the expertise to determine what data you need, what methodologies and approaches should be used to gather it, and how to conduct the rigorous analysis required to decipher meaningful conclusions. 

Sentenium can help…

(The above text is Copyright 2005-2007, Sentenium. I was the writer.)

Here you’ve effectively framed the prospect’s life as it pertains to what you do.

It’s all ABOUT your prospect and the tangible activities your prospect deals with. And so your prospect is more likely to listen!

And those not familiar with the topic will, at a basic level, ALSO know what you’re talking about. As a result, they’ll be in a better position to influence your prospects when those opportunities arise. It’s like the major deal that started when someone a year before that happened to meet your prospect at a family BBQ and happened to say the right thing at the right time!

And though the copy is all about your prospect, the copy is all about you too -- because you’ve established why your prospect needs you!

Wait…Isn’t There a Criterion Missing?

You may notice I haven’t mentioned another very important criterion: readability.

After all, you can speak from your prospect’s perspective but if you don’t communicate it well or lay out your text in a way that’s easy on the eye, your prospect is less likely to read and absorb what you’ve written.

However, as absolutely critical as this is (and I don’t mean to suggest otherwise), it’s ultimately a stylistic issue.

Get hung up on style too early and you can lose sight of what’s most important. If the substance isn’t there, if you don’t know how to frame your prospect’s life in a way that what you do fits perfectly, then it’s a moot point whether you, for example, use one word or phrase over another.

After all, you’ve undoubtedly seen marketing materials that read beautifully but, well, don’t REALLY say anything.

Just like our earlier example. The sentence “Market research and data collection doesn’t need to put on a strain on your resources” reads well and feels crisp. But ultimately, you don’t know why it matters to you, NOW.

You’ll get the style right and it’s very important you do. Just get the SUBSTANCE right first.

Implication of the “One Most Important Criterion”

Call this a corollary to the one most important criterion.

Imagine there’s an idea or phrase you’ve come up with that you really like. Maybe you’ve even invested a lot of time in it. Maybe you’ve been using it a long time, and talk about your offering that way in past materials you’ve written.

Like (again) the sentence “Market research and data collection doesn’t need to put a strain on your resources.”

But given the objective of speaking to the customer’s life as specifically as possible, it doesn’t work.

And so writing successful marketing materials means forcing yourselfto let go of what you might hold dear.

It’s something I have to force MYSELF to do all the time, so I know. This applies to everyone!

Now yes, in your case it may not be just you but OTHERS who need to let go of what they dear. Your arm may not be the only one that needs twisting. So I know it’s easier said than done.

But if NOT doing so could mean the difference between your prospects listening to you or pushing you away, then it’s pretty important! Ask your salespeople…

Now that I’ve talked about the criterion your team must unite under when writing marketing materials and given an example of marketing copy which meets that criterion, next week I’ll describe what your team must do to get there. I’ll talk about the two categories your team members fit into and discuss how their roles switch back and forth.

Mike O’Sullivan helps business-to-business companies with complex product and service offerings write marketing materials that will meet the needs of their sales teams, their distribution partners, and their prospects.

Mike is also the author of a new white paper called “Marketing Communications as Product Development: Building the Portable Salesperson.” Download the white paper, and see samples of Mike’s client work, at www.mikeos.com.