How To Prepare For A Marketing Project
September 5, 2007
Good marketing persuades prospects to take action through skillful use of emotional hot buttons and by presenting useful information about the products being advertised. The more facts you include in your marketing materials, the better.
Here’s a four-step procedure we use to get the information we need to create persuasive, fact-filled copy for our clients. This technique should be helpful to copywriters, marketers, and business owners alike.
Step 1: Get all previously published material on the product.
For an existing product, there’s a mountain of literature you can send to us as background information. This material includes:
- Tear-sheets of previous ads
- Brochures
- Catalogs
- Article reprints
- Technical papers
- Copies of speeches
- Audio-visual scripts
- Press kits
- Swipe files of competitors’ ads and literature
Even if your product or service is brand new, there’s sure to be mounds of paperwork you can give us. These include:
- Internal memos
- Letters of technical information
- Product specifications
- Engineering drawings
- Business and marketing plans
- Reports
- Proposals
By studying this material, we should have 80 percent of the information we need to write effective ad copy. And we can get the other 20 percent by picking up the phone and asking questions. Steps 2-4 outline the questions we ask about the product, the audience, and the objective of the marketing.
Step 2: Ask questions about the product.
- What are its features and benefits? (Make a complete list.)
- Which benefit is the most important?
- How is the product different from the competition’s? (Which features are exclusive? Which are better than the competition’s?)
- If the product isn’t different, what attributes can be stressed that haven’t been stressed by the competition?
- What technologies does the product compete against?
- What are the applications of the product?
- What industries can use the product?
- What problems does the product solve in the marketplace?
- How is the product positioned in the marketplace?
- How does the product work?
- How reliable is the product?
- How efficient?
- How economical?
- Who has bought the product and what do they say about it?
- What materials, sizes and models is it available in?
- How quickly does the manufacturer deliver the product?
- What service and support does the manufacturer offer?
- Is the product guaranteed?
Step 3: Ask questions about your audience.
- Who will buy the product? (What markets is it sold to?)
- What is the customer’s main concern? (Price, delivery, performance, reliability, service maintenance, quality efficiency)
- What is the character of the buyer?
- What motivates the buyer?
- How many different buying influences must the copy appeal to? Two tips on getting to know your audience:
- If you are writing an ad, read issues of the magazine in which the ad will appear.
- If you are writing direct mail, find out what mailing lists will be used and study the list descriptions.
Step 4: Determine the objective of your marketing.
This objective may be one or more of the following:
- To generate inquiries
- To generate sales
- To answer inquiries
- To qualify prospects
- To transmit product information
- To build brand recognition and preference
- To build company image
Before we write any ad copy, we study the product — its features, benefits, past performance, applications, and markets. Digging for the facts will pay off, because in great marketing, specifics sell.