A local car repair job has one of those changeable signs, and this week they were promoting a special on something called LOF. I’ve eaten lox, but not lof. Or maybe it’s an animal of some sort.
A GHOST OF A CHANCE TO PROMOTE YOUR ORGANIZATION
Looking for a new way to promote your organization and build credibility among your audiences? Perhaps you need to find a ghost. No, I’m not suggesting you tag along with Scooby-Doo and Shaggy to a creepy island (besides, we know that the caretaker did it). Instead, consider the marketing value of ghostwritten stories.
MEANINGFUL IS FAR MORE POWERFUL THAN POWERFUL
Think that sending a more powerful message is the best way to get a rise out of your audience? It isn’t. Power focuses on the message, while the most effective communication focuses on the audience.
What people call “powerful” is often a form of communication by intimidation — and typically offers little more than puffery that people see right through. So much so-called “powerful” language has actually become trite, meaningless, and just plain weak through overuse.
YOU REALLY SHOULDN’T BE WRITING YOUR OWN COPY
No, I’m not questioning your ability to write. I’m suggesting that it may not make sense for you to handle your own writing projects. Why? Several reasons:
ARE YOU TELLING THEM WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW?
Are you wasting precious time in ads, direct mail, and brochures telling prospects what they already know?
Instead, tell them what matters. Talk about benefits, not features. Don’t say your product uses a three-handled veeblefetzer unless you can explain what that will do for them. “The three-handled veeblefetzer lets you core twice as many radishes in the same time.”
THE DEATH OF APPRENTICESHIP
A wise boss once lamented what he called the death of apprenticeship. As organizations downsized, the paths to management were compressed, and people found themselves making decisions that they would have previously waited a decade or two to make.
Where a generation before, a marketing decision-maker would approach those decisions having spent many years working under other decision-makers and learning from them, today, it’s not at all unusual for people fresh out of college to find themselves in control of what companies do. Of course, most leave school with more focused education than in days past, but there’s still a lot to be said for experience.
YOUR SILENT SALESMAN
What is a brochure? An ad? A radio commercial? A website? You get 5 points if you said they’re all marketing communications channels. But they’re also something more.
You can’t be everywhere, and that includes everywhere your prospective customers are. So you develop materials such as ads and brochures to stand in for you. In essence, they’re actually salespeople for your organization, conveying messages when you can’t be there to do it.
THE ROYAL WE AND YOUR BUSINESS
Way back when I started my business (in the days when the Internet was powered by squirrels in exercise wheels and nearly all websites were blue), I spent a lot of time in online forums and other sites that catered to the small-business crowd. Like the rest of the denizens, I was looking for sound advice. Frankly, I found little.
But I still remember that one conundrum really seemed to vex visitors to those sites. “When writing about my business, should I use ‘I’ or ‘we’?” Oh, there were impassioned arguments about this topic, and I see the same arguments today on sites that cater to budding entrepreneurs. So what is the answer?
RESUMES ARE LIKE ROMANCE
Not long ago, I spoke to a group of high school students about resume writing. My goal was to help them understand what resumes really are – a tool that allows companies to quickly eliminate people from the application and interview process.
I spoke with some experience, having been the resume screener at several jobs. When the company would run an ad and 200 resumes showed up in response, the first responsibility is to cut that number to something manageable. So I’d spend five to ten seconds with each resume, determining whether it went into the “maybe” pile or the trash.
ADVERTISERS, DON’T GIVE IN TO GUILT
Nearly every local newspaper publishes special editorial sections and pages like the Spring Sports Review, the Home Improvement Preview, or the Celebrate America’s Freedom tabloid.
I call them “guilt sections” because many sales reps use guilt to sell the space. “You don’t want to support high school basketball? You don’t think Independence Day is important? You know, your competitor down the street is going to be in there.” Have you ever known a point guard to sit depressed on the bench or miss a shot because a particular business didn’t buy an ad?