Skip to content

Four Elements of An Effective Marketing Message

Consider these four elements of an effective marketing message: Voice, View, Purpose and Target. These elements can apply to a wide array of marketing materials from websites to direct mail. Depending on how you approach each element, you can either move forward with your marketing or tend to get stuck!

“Voice” is what your marketing says and how you phrase what you are saying. You can be professional and reasonable and clearly state a message, or you can worry about how persuasive and clever your messages are and get bogged down. Too much emphasis on persuasion can present poorly and look overdone. Instead, state your basic message in simple and honest terms. Make an effort to use “value” words that speak to the significance of your products and services to your customer (i.e. saves, helps, solves, strengthens, cures, fixes, improves, etc.). Other value words stress a timing element (i.e. early, now, today, soon, often, immediately, quickly, etc.). But, be careful not to go over the top with it!

“View” refers to how your marketing material appears from a visual standpoint. Here again, emphasize professional and clear first. Worrying too much about how pretty or appealing your marketing materials are provides another opportunity to over think your approach and get stuck. First consider how well the layout communicates your message. Then add appealing visual elements, but not the other way around. Be mindful that too many visual elements can cause confusion. Visual elements may complement a message, but they should not diminish the message.

“Purpose” refers to the actual point or intention of a marketing element. What does a particular marketing message actually ask a prospect to do? What is the intended end result of a particular marketing piece? Is it to inform the prospect? Should a prospect call you back if interested? Should he or she click on a “link,” set up a meeting, fill out a survey, schedule an appointment? Further, how does the specified action taken by the prospect set in motion a well defined series of steps that will ultimately lead to business? Keeping the purpose of a marketing piece in mind throughout its entire production keeps it on track and keeps your focus on creating objective results.

The “Target” is the intended recipient of your marketing. In my career, this has been the most important element of all. I am constantly working to identify more and more well qualified prospects and to put my marketing material in front of their eyes. The better the prospect is, the easier the sale and the less persuasion is needed. When you see to it that any marketing element you produce is finding its way into the hands of good prospects, it will take some pressure off the elements listed above.

Putting It All Together

Move forward with your marketing by making it professional and clear. Add appealing visual elements as an enhancement, but don’t let them take over. Stay focused on the purpose of your marketing. Have a clearly defined end result that moves in the direction of transacting business. Lastly, try to put your marketing materials in front of as many qualified prospects as you can. In doing so, you will achieve more effective marketing communication – and gain more business!

Posted in Articles.

Tagged with , , , , .

No comments

By Ted Stevenot – June 26, 2009

Improving Prospecting with Email Marketing

Where are you interacting with your prospects? Is it over the phone, at trade shows, in seminars, at a storefront? Wherever this interaction is occurring, one place or a combination of places, take the opportunity to ask prospects for permission to send them an email and /or to join your email list. Email marketing works best in conjunction with a well conceived website. Even if you don’t sell products directly on your website, your site provides you the ability to provide detailed information on your product or service. By inviting prospects to your website, they can peruse your information – and get to know you better. In doing so, it builds a bridge to the prospect that lays a foundation for making sales.

I heard somewhere recently that roughly 60% of major purchases today are first researched via the Internet, but are then purchased locally. Whether we are talking about big screen TV’s or accounting services, this is not a statistic to ignore! You must take the time to describe in words what you are about and post such information on your website. (See Post: Creating a Website that Works). Once your website is in place – and it sufficiently and professionally tells your story, you’ll need to draw folks to the site. There are many ways to do so, one very important way is using email.

Permission Based Email Marketing

Essentially, permission based email marketing refers to marketing emails that (in general) include links back to your website. All such email must be sent with the direct permission of the recipient. This practice is regulated by something called the CAN-SPAM Act. The best way to get started is to hook up with an email service provider or ESP. Reputable ESP’s will help you learn best practices and how to comply with the law when it comes to email marketing.

Many ESP’s will allow you to try their services for free initially. Spend some time perusing their websites! I remember the first time I sent emails to some of my clients, I was amazed at how terrific the service was. My ESP (I use Constant Contact) provided me with statistics about who opened my emails and who clicked through to various links to my website. It showed me who was interested and in what. They provided me with fantastic research for follow-up. The next step I took was to create and send survey’s to clients and prospects. The same story was true. I learned who was happy, who was not and what kinds of new products current customers were interested in hearing about.

A great book on email marketing is, Email Marketing for Dummies, by John Arnold. At first, I was not the biggest fan of the Dummies books, but every one of their books I have read recently has been outstanding. Arnold’s book is no exception – check it out!

Posted in Articles, Internet Based Prospecting.

Tagged with , , .

No comments

By Ted Stevenot – June 25, 2009

Creating a Website That Works

I cannot begin to tell you what a struggle it was to finally settle on a suitable approach to a website. If you are struggling with how best to approach your web presence, I can save you a mountain of time in just a short paragraph or two on the subject!

First, it is important to know that websites must possess two vital characteristics:

  1. A website needs to be “index-able” by the major Internet search engines. This means that when someone types into a search engine either; your name, a partial site name, or keywords on the subject matter pertaining to your site; the search engine will be able to find you.
  2. Second, a website must be easily “malleable.”  This means it must be easy for you to manage and change the site’s content. A good website must be tended to regularly in order to stay current and grow. It can’t be like a coat in a closet - where you have a web developer create five pages for you - and then it just gets “hanged” out there on the web. Instead, your website must be something you can work with and build from day to day and week to week.

I spent thousands of dollars on the subject and far too much time reading and learning about the elements of websites before settling on an approach that works. I even took on the task of learning web design (I read through several web design software books – one of them over a thousand pages). I didn’t do this because I was being cheap or controlling, I did it because I wanted to be able to personally build the best site I could. After learning about a variety of approaches, the answer finally materialized: Create a blog site.

Creating a Website from a Blog

The word “blog” if you didn’t know it, is short for the words “web log.” Blogs from the major blog originators like Blogspot or Wordpress meet both of the requirements outlined above. You can have one up and running in about ten minutes, they are very inexpensive (if not free at first), they can be “themed” to look just like a regular website, they are easily indexed by search engines (in fact, some feel that search engines prefer blogs in some cases), and they are extremely easy to manipulate in terms of content.

Search through blogs on various subjects and you’ll see that others have discovered this approach, too. Many blog sites are very well established and include excellent and varied content. Check it out! If you have been struggling with your web approach, a properly themed blog may be just the answer you are looking for. If you didn’t realize it already, you are looking at such a site right now!

Posted in Articles, Internet Based Prospecting.

Tagged with , .

No comments

By Ted Stevenot – June 23, 2009

Scheduling Telephone Prospecting Calls

To the degree that you work in an environment where telephone prospecting is a viable business activity (such as a business to business market), telephone prospecting calls can be a very useful tool for the purpose of further qualifying prospects.

Of course, any reference to make a telemarketing call assumes that such a call would be subject to the condition of being qualified as permissible by all applicable state and federal laws. (See www.ftc.gov and www.fcc.gov for more information on telemarketing rules.  www.the-dma.org is a good resource too).

To succeed with telephone prospecting,  a commitment must be made to achieve a call volume that is sizable enough to cover either,

  • your entire market
  • a manageable segment of your market.

Also, a sufficient amount of time specifically dedicated to calling must become a part of your regular work schedule.  The amount of time required to make calls is determined by:

  • The total volume of calls needed (determined by the size of your market or selected market segment).
  • How quickly you are able to make those calls (i.e. dials per hour and average length of time spent on each call).
  • How often you plan to cycle through your list (i.e. how often you plan to call the same list on a repeated basis - once every 60, 90, 120 days etc.).

Allocating time to make calls can occur on a variety of schedules. Some examples are:

  • Daily - dedicate two or three hours each day to calling (i.e. 10 - 15 hours per week).
  • Weekly - dedicate one or two workdays each week, or a combination of mornings and afternoons for outreach via the phone.
  • Monthly - find a week or two in a month that you can substantially dedicate to calling.
  • Quarterly - dedicate the first two or three weeks of each quarter to calling.

The speed at which you make calls is derived by a combination of:

  • Dedicating specific, uninterrupted time for calling.
  • Being organized when you call (i.e. having your list pre-selected, pre-sorted and ready to go).
  • Utilizing a concise call script (i.e. one that is limited in length and has a focused set of objectives).

In other posts we will discuss in more detail what is needed in order to optimize the total volume of calls and the speed at which calls are made.  But, for today, the point to note is that having dedicated an organized schedule for calling is important.  Without such a schedule, it is easy to put calls off or to allow other distractions to get in the way of making calls.

Posted in Articles, Sales Prospecting Training.

Tagged with , , , .

No comments

By Ted Stevenot – June 18, 2009

Formulating a Buyer Description and Creating a Prospect List

Prospecting using the “Prospect Factory” system I work with, requires some advanced preparation or groundwork.  This includes spending some time thinking about the products and services you sell in order to determine two important things.

  1. Who buys your products and services? (In some cases the “buyer” may be replaced with a person or entity that facilitates the buying of your products and services.  This could be distributors, sales reps, brokers, etc.)
  2. Where are those buyers located? (i.e. Literally, what geographical location?)

Once you know what kind of person (or, business) buys (or, facilitates the buying of ) the types of products you sell and where they are located, you can then create a general description of your typical buyer.

Here are two sample general descriptions:

“All single-bore widget manufacturers located in the States of Washington, Missouri, Ohio, Florida and Maine transacting between $10 and $25 million in sales per year.”

“Any business or organization operating within a 75 mile radius of XYZ radio station’s transmitters that transactsover $500,000 per year in sales that may ever have an interest in radio advertising.”

The next part of groundwork is to take your buyer descprption and apply it to a variety of primary sources (i.e. published lists, directories, internet sources, etc.) for the purpose of identifying potential prospects. In doing so, your goal is to put together a well thought out list that includes the names and contact information to many, ideally thousands, of prospects.

It’s notable from the very first step that this approach is not “relationship based.”  The prospect list created as a result of this process is a top-down catalog of your market as a whole (or, a segment of it).  There is no prerequisite that you know or “know someone who knows” any prospect prior to his or her name being addded to your list.  Instead, you attempt to collect a broad array of prospects whose most significant common link is only how well they match your buyer description.

Posted in Articles, Sales Prospecting Training.

Tagged with , , , .

No comments

By Ted Stevenot – June 17, 2009