Polish your message for customers

Polish your message:
As you fine-tune the publication, make sure that you also step back
regularly to make sure that it still fits into your overall marketing plan.
It is not hard for writing to take off in an unintended direction. Now is
when others can most help you by bringing a fresh eye to help you
find what you may have overlooked.
=>Keep it simple :
The fewer words you use, the more likely your audience will read them.
=> Use a clean design.
A clutter of fonts, colors, and pictures can confuse a clear, straightforward message.
Just as you have worked hard to achieve a simple message,
strive for a simple design that supports your goals.
Focus on the medium:
What and how much you write differs depending on whether
you are writing content for a postcard, a brochure, a newsletter,
an e-mail message, or a Web site. For example, a postcard message
must focus much more on enticing than informing the reader, and
a newsletter's overt purpose is to inform. The content principles
outlined in this article don't vary much for each medium, but
the final form and format do.
Double-check that you cover what is important:
People want shortcuts, and the most convenient shortcut is
often the wastebasket. Make sure that the customer can discern
in 10 seconds what your publication is about, who it is from,
what they need to do next and when they need to do it,
and how they can contact you. Make sure that someone else
checks for errors . Consider asking several people to look over the publication.
You need impartial help of two kinds.
First, ask someone who is similar to your target audience to
review your work and tell you whether the message is coming
across clearly.
=>Are they hooked? Does it leave them with unanswered questions?
Second, ask someone to proofread for you.
Misspellings, typos, and poor grammar reflect poorly on your business.
If you are sloppy with your message and image, customers can bet that
you will be sloppy in your service to them.

=>How to get a response:

To reach a potential customer and get a response, deliver a personal
message that is tailored to the individual. Because that is seldom
feasible on a large scale, the next best approach is to organize your
prospective customers into distinct categories that you can address
individually. Your customer database and mailing lists can help
you filter for common characteristics that you can use as the focus of
your marketing efforts.
For example, a business in musical instruments might segment
prospective customers by the specific instruments that they play.
The same business could use of the purchase date of customers' instruments
to send reminders such as: "You've been blowing your horn for a year.
It's time to bring it in for cleaning and tuning."
The more you know your audience, the more confident you will be that
they are ready to read what you want to tell them and that you
understand their concerns (in their terms, not yours), and the more
specific to their interests your message will be.

For more information about categorizing your customer database,
search " Tips for personalizing your publication ".

Suprabhat Saha.
Ebiz4ver.com

Proper Answering Of Customer Needs

It is a continuation of tyhe last post .......
Expect and address skepticism and objections first
=> Answer the biggest objection first:
=>Why should I bother reading this?
=>Give details, =>reassure, =>persuade —
whatever is most appropriate for your audience.
If you hook them, they want answers to their questions:
=>What is it?
=>What will it do for me?
=>Who else (like me) has used it and what did they get out of it?
(Here is a place to incorporate testimonials and endorsements.)
=>How much will it cost?
=>When and where can I get it?

Focus on the benefit to your customers .

Instead of focusing on the features of the product or what you do,
tell your customers about what they will get.

When you do write about a product feature, tell customers
what it will do for them — why it will make their lives better.
Create a desire.
It may be useful to pose a question to the customer,
show them the benefit, and tell them the action to take to get it.
Consider providing information that is useful in its own right,
such as a helpful tip or resource. This adds a benefit to the publication,
and it demonstrates your intentions and expertise.
Use testimonials:
Unless you are writing to leaders and executives,
who are less likely to be impressed by others' opinions,
let testimonials describe the problem that your business
solves and the benefit. Use testimonials that don't sound
as though you wrote them. But don't let testimonials drown out
your voice and message. You want to develop a personal
connection with your audience.Make it authentic, personal,
fresh, and direct Suggestions for how to do this include:
=>Write the way you talk — casually, informally.
=>Don't get caught up in being grammatically correct.
Talk directly to the reader ("you").
Write as though you are addressing someone you know.
The more you have identified a specific segment of your audience,
the easier this is to do.Avoid hype and overstatement. If you need to
convey excitement, can you do it without saying that it is "exciting!"?
Don't risk disappointing your readers by misleading them or promising
things that you can't deliver.

Edit the draft:

It is time to edit. When you edit, work from general to
specific — and from key messages to details.
Focus on organization first, language later.
Group it Look at what you wrote and start to group the sections
that make sense together. Be flexible. Try different arrangements.
Remove redundancies.Grab them Start with an intriguing anecdote,
a provocative question, or an unusual perspective.
Don't cause customers to respond, "So what?" Inspire them to continue reading.
You likely have fewer than 10 seconds to engage them.
Concentrate on a single message If readers give your message
only a few seconds, will they absorb it? Cut content that doesn't
serve your message or goals. Help your readers scan .
Organize your message in containers
(a heading and a paragraph or two, maybe with an associated graphic and caption).
Convey your important points in the elements that customers read first (and often last):
=>Headings :
They are the most important part of your content because readers are
likely to skim only them when deciding to read more or move on
to something else. Take special care in crafting them.
=>Captions :
Use them to make a point, not just to describe the image.
After headings, readers are most likely to skim captions.
=>Subheadings and bullet lists :
These devices help readers to skim the publication quickly
and give them additional entry points into it.Hone your message
to the essence of each idea Use short sentences (10 to 20 words)
and paragraphs (2 or 3 sentences).
This is also a good time to check for grammar and edit out
anything unnecessary: "modifiers, complex clauses, awkward phrases ".
=> Use an active voice, and avoid business jargon, obscure words,
stale phrases, and any abstract or confusing ideas.
=> Make it concrete and straightforward.

Tips for writing effective marketing publications

When you want to develop your business ==>>
=> how do you get your message across?
Awash in information, few people have the time to find, read, ponder, and respond to the many messages that inundate them.
=>How do you connect with potential customers?
The short answer: Send your message to the people whom it is likely to interest,strive to develop a personal connection, and get to the point quickly, clearly, and compellingly.
Marketing writing that is effective is not flashy. It communicates, and it elicits a response.Use these tips to write effective marketing materials, and then learn more about how you cantarget your message delivery for the best results.
In this article you will, I think personally, acquire :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How to write effectively
How to get a response
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How to write effectively :
Successful writers take a variety of approaches to the task of writing.The following steps outline an approach that you can adapt to suit you:

=>Prepare to write,
=>Draft your copy,
=>Edit the draft,
=>Polish your message .
Note : Why not copy and paste? For efficiency, most businesses
frequently reuse copy, such as descriptions of the company,
products, or key personnel.This boilerplate text is usually
general and supplemental. If you start with it,customers
probably won't read past the boilerplate text before they stop.
Boilerplate text is often efficient but not always effective.
Use it wisely.

=>Prepare to write:

Preparation is the partner of clear thinking, and that is
the foundation for clear writing.The better you prepare,
the easier the task of writing becomes.
Do your homework and gather your research.
Learn as much as you can about your customers,
your market, and your competition. You will lean on this
knowledge to build your credibility with your potential
customers. The resources for gathering this information
may include the following: Industry data Performance statistics
Customer metricsSales dataTestimonials and endorsements
of your products and servicesListen to your customers .
You will develop empathy for their issues.
Then, when you remember and usetheir language,
you will convey that you understand their concerns.
To learn the terms that your customers use,
try the following:
Visit online newsgroups and discussion groups daily.
Listen in on sales and support calls weekly.
Meet with key customers as part of a quarterly advisory council.
Identify the action that you want readers to take.
What do you want customers to do when they are finished reading?
=>Click a link?
=>Make a phone call?
=>Send a response card?
=>Think more highly of your business?

Determine carefully how much information you need to provide to get customers to act.
Be realistic — you are unlikely to close a sale.
And test your response system so that you can follow through
effectively when many of your readers do act.
Define your goals :
=>What will success look like?
=>Do you want a specific number of new prospects, or new or returning customers?
=>Do you want to meet a specific sales volume, or
=>increase thenumber of visitors to your business?
Knowing what and how much you want to achieve helpsyou
to stay focused when you develop your content.
Take stock of your resources:
Work within your budget and other limitations. It is better to work with what you have than to get halfway through your projectand realize you can't possibly meet your goal within your resource constraints.
Draft your copyKnow the difference between writing and editing.
When you are writing, editing hinders you. Save the honing for later.
Write anything at all . Don't expect to get it right at first.
Turn off the inner critic as you write about:
=>Your overall message => Your key points =>What you want to tell your readers?
=>What you want them to do? => How your product or service will benefit them.
Keep writing until you think you have covered all the points that you need to make. Make it as long as you need. You will return to it later to organize, edit, and hone it.
Suprabhat Saha.
Ebiz4ver.com

FFA Sites become interactive.

By 1998 we had discovered the FFA phenomena. We new that posting to
FFA sites was the
poor mans answer to the search engines. It would result in some
traffic. We built a submission system that would post to multiple FFA sites
at one time and this increased some leads and traffic, but, it wasn’t until
we created the FFAFARM at:

http://veretekk.ffafarm.com/suprabhat1983
did we start to see a significant increase in email lead generation. This was
around 1999 and was so successful it caused our single server to constantly
crash from the magnitude of automated postings.

Meltdown from to many leads and complaints

1999 was the year of meltdowns. As we continued to build more lead systems,
our databases began to crash. Our server couldn’t handle the demand of the
many postings and we started to get accused of spamming because we did not
have any type of verification in place. We had entered the next nightmare on the
Internet. As more of our lead systems and traffic sites became popular and used
often, the email databases we were building for our subscribers grew very large
and very fast. The problems were many, but the worst problem was the
complaints. You see, someone would sign up for one of our services, but as soon
as one of our subscribers sent that contact an email from our system via
autoresponder or direct email from our sites we would get hundreds of Spam
complaints.

Now, we were not Spamming, but we were being blamed for it. We were in for
the biggest challenge of our lives. We had to expand our system to hundreds of
servers to handle the demand on our technology, we had to convert to an SQL
database to prevent our database from crashing and we had to build a
verification system to prove the email we sent was legitimate. It took us 9 months
to accomplish this and we worked 20 hours a day for these 9 months to do so, all
under the threat of being shut down by our service provider who hosted our
servers.

Our provider didn’t believe us. They received 1,000s of complaints from
SpamCop regarding the email our system was legitimately sending out. The
problem was we could not prove these emails were legitimate because it was
virtually impossible for us to prove the recipient was legitimate and had
authorized us to send them email by using our services.

The Internet is at Risk because of Flammers not Spammers

We succeeded in building a fully searchable verified and verifiable system. This
new system was completed in late August of 2000. It is ironic that the day the
first version of our system was in place that Above.net shut us down. It took us 5
days to get the system back up with many emotional and sometimes angry
phone calls to our lawyers, Above.net officers, etc. and we finally convinced them
our system was now compliant to their new stringent anti-abuse policies. We
finally got reinstated after 5 days of being shut down. OUCH, that hurt!
Since we built our verification and verifiability system some interesting facts have
surfaced. Now, pay attention, because we think we have uncovered a major
conspiracy that is even affecting our economy! Here is why!
Many of you have probably heard of Julian Haight’s SpamCop system. If you get
an email you think is Spam, you can just go to Spam Cop, copy the alleged
Spam and paste it into his system, press a button and whammo….you have just
sent an anti Spam Flame to everyone connected to that email, links in the email,
uplines, etc. Most ISPs will shut you right down if they receive email from this
system with no questions. Bang, you are dead without the ability to even try to
defend yourself.
Interesting thing about our verifiability system though. We have automated the
verification search logs so any email in question can be entered into a form right
online and in seconds deliver a report on that email. Go see for your self:
http://inetekk.com/abuse.html (Search tom@wavefour.com for a sample)
If that email is in our system from verifying, it will give an in-depth report,
including the time, date, service that was verified, routing information and the IP
address from the email that was clicked on to verify. In other words, the system
will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt whether the email address in question
was verified or not.
Since our system has been in place we continue to get hundreds of spam
complaints from SpamCop, but, not one complaint has been legitimate. This is
because our verification system works. Timothy Lund, the Director of Above.net’s
Client Service Policies, has found SpamCop to be a nuisance and they have
stopped paying them anymore attention. In other words, our system has
destroyed SpamCop’s credibility. Timothy Lund now endorses our company and
systems and even sends business to us now. This is a 180 degree turnaround
because we have been able to disprove every Spam complaint 100% of the time!
The year 2,000 was a year that Spam Complaints became an all time high.
Uunet received over 200,000 spam complaints every month. Most complaints
were made against legitimate companies like Yahoo.com, Ebay.com,
Warehouse.com even Microsoft. Many companies were shut down, others were
financially hurt and the over all health of the Internet was hurt by this heightened
hue and cry against Spam. I believe the current financial condition we are in as of
this writing is partially due to this illegitimate attack on legitimate business by
reckless companies like SpamCop. Today, the US economy is undeniably tied to
the Internet.