It’s been almost 100 years since Lord Leverhulme made his famous pronouncement, and its logic has remained unchallenged. Until now…

For most small businesses, marketing amounts to one thing: placing advertisements in trade journals, the local and national press, Yellow Pages, local radio, billboards, etc.

Yet during the course of my work, I rarely encounter a small business owner who is able to quantify, with any accuracy, the return on these activities. They vaguely intuit that if they didn’t advertise alongside their competitors they would get left out of the race – which may or may not be true.

If I question the logic behind their strategy, the usual response is along the lines of, “Well I’ve got to get the message out there and build the company’s profile”. Now on one level this is correct, but generally it applies only to major brands, those with a business to consumer client base where brand awareness is a vital element of maintaining market share.

Brand advertisements are conceived at huge expense by big city ad agencies, and yet nobody knows for certain the effectiveness of a particular ad. OK, the marketing departments’ stats people have clever ways of quantifying market trends as they pan out during a particular campaign, but no one can tell for certain whether X, Y or Z customer bought a new pair of Nikes as a result of the latest ultra-cool ad campaign, or whether they’d have bought them regardless.

One thing the big global brands can be certain of, however, is that if they fail to keep their name creatively at the forefront of the public consciousness their market share will suffer.

But while this may be true for the likes of Nike, Coca Cola and L’Oreal, there is no mileage in small businesses squandering their fragile marketing budgets by following the lead of the big B2C brands.

Confusing brand advertising with direct response advertising is one of the main reasons why so many smaller businesses waste their fragile marketing budgets.

Direct response is the only cost-effective method of marketing a small business. If you aren’t already doing so, consider putting in place a revised marketing strategy that incorporates the following:

Scale back reliance on conventional advertising, unless you are able to demonstrate that it brings in a measurable ROI. Instead, concentrate your resources on low-cost, quantifiable direct response strategies, such as direct mail, email marketing, newsletter and article marketing, search engine marketing and telemarketing. By all means back this up with social media marketing, blogging, etc, but be aware that, although it’s an important part of the mix, it remains largely unquantifiable.  The aim is to arrive at a quantifiable, balanced mix of outbound and inbound marketing that supplies your sales funnel with a steady stream of prequalified leads.  If you aren’t doing so already, try it. You’ll never look back.

The post The two kinds of advertising, and which one is best for your businesses appeared first on copy-doctor.co.uk.

A good newsletter is a cornerstone of any business but get it wrong at your peril. Your database is a fragile asset. If you offend people with poor quality content, over-sell or peddle hype, people will simply unsubscribe or delete your emails en masse and your list will evaporate before your eyes.

Don’t expect too much of your readers. Place yourself in their shoes: they’re inevitably busy people; don’t ever kid yourself that your letter is high on their list of priorities, however great your content.  Most importantly, a reader needs to be won over. Remember that you’re on trial. Establishing a rapport of trust in the early days of the relationship will pay rich dividends down the line.

Length and layout

Keep your newsletter simple, brief and easy to read – between 500 and 1,000 words per issue is ideal. (If a reader wants more, they’ll always click-through to your website, which is exactly what you want them to do. Your job at this stage is to whet their appetites) Subdivide your copy into bite-sized segments; write in short, widely separated paragraphs and use clearly defined sub-heads when shifting between subjects.

You can include images of your products in your newsletter, but bear in mind that, for readability, a no-nonsense plain text email is hard to beat; many marketers swear by plain text and would use nothing else. Why? Because it’s easy and quick to read! But even more importantly, plain text exercises a curious psychological effect upon the reader: it’s more personal, intimate; less sales-orientated than a glitzy template. It’s more likely to be received and read enthusiastically, end to end, as if it were from a friend. When did you last receive an email from a friend embedded in a template with flashy graphics and gifs? Exactly!  Sending your newsletter in a flashy template just to look good can be counter-productive. Be guided by your product.

If you do send your emails via an HTML template, always insert a link at the top of the page to an alternative plain text version just in case the recipient is unable accept HTML.

Frequency

The ideal broadcast frequency for a newsletter is every four weeks. More often can result in overkill, and less often can have a marked impact on profitability.

There is, however, no hard rule governing frequency. Ultimately, it depends on your relationship with your readers. Some marketers contact their lists as often as two to three times in one day when they’re launching a product; but on other occasions you’ll not hear from them at all for three months.

Don’t be afraid to confound expectations by being unpredictable. Experiment with frequency and monitor your click-through rate. If it becomes clear that fewer of your emails are being opened due to a change in frequency then change tack.

Content

Give it all you’ve got. Work hard to make your newsletter so valuable and interesting that your readers open it with anticipation.

Wow them with your insights and pearls of wisdom. Don’t be shy about opening up and getting personal. Become a friend. And always resist the urge to sell. Get your readers into the habit of welcoming your emails because the ‘news’ they contain is valuable, useful and interesting, and not into the habit of deleting them on sight because they are self-serving sales pitches. Establish trust.

Don’t sell. PRE-SELL!

By all means use your newsletter to communicate information about your products, (that’s why we’re here) but save the hard sell for another place. If you have a great deal, write an article about it. For instance, if you’re selling a yoga DVD you can write a compelling piece about its health-promoting benefits and list some of the celebrities who practise yoga in their daily lives, etc. Finish with a direct click-through to the relevant buying page on your website. Within this framework, the content of your newsletter can be anything useful, entertaining or illuminating.

The post How to write a great newsletter appeared first on copy-doctor.co.uk.