Vantage Point Article Library
Six…five…four…three…two…one. So little time to capture attention. No matter what marketing tool you’re creating—brochure, white paper, letter to prospects, website—if your first few words fail to get the reader’s attention quickly, the rest of the piece will go unread. The key to getting readers involved is not a great company or product features. It’s about understanding the reader’s pain and solving a problem. Their pain. Their problem.
Assuming marketers know they should focus on buyers’ pain like a laser beam, why does so much marketing copy get sidetracked by peripheral features and benefits—things developers think are sexy, but aren’t paramount to buyers? Before you blame the copywriter, ask yourself if you clearly described to the writer the customer’s problem and how your product or service uniquely solves that problem. Without this essential ammunition, the writer is forced to fall back on empty fluff (there’s nothing copywriters are better at). There goes your focus on the customer. There goes your customer.
Powerful copy requires a solid product or service positioning statement to serve as a firm foundation. There are different variations, but all positioning statements fill in the following blanks:
FOR: (Target customer group)
WHO HAS: (The problem your target customer has)
OUR PRODUCT/COMPANY: (What your product category is or what your company does)
THAT: (How your product solves the problem described above)
UNLIKE: (Why competitor alternatives don't really solve the problem)
EVIDENCE: (Some concrete examples that prove the claims)
When the blanks are filled in, there should be no more than 1-to-5 short sentences that the writer can easily convert into compelling, on-target marketing copy. In fact, it should form the basis for all of your marketing writing—from sales presentations and product sheets to direct marketing programs. While this may sound like Marketing 101, a surprising number of IT companies forget about this simple exercise, which, when facilitated, can take executives or product teams as little as a few hours to do if they can clearly articulate the issues.
Bad copywriting is extremely expensive in terms of reader loss and lack of interest in your products and company. So, before the writer begins his or her job, make sure you’ve done yours—position your product or service.
copyright 2005, KC Associates, LLC