Once you've obtained a quality marketing list, your next task is likely one of the most difficult: how to influence your target prospects effectively to be open to discussing your services with you through compelling and visually appealing marketing material. No matter how great we are in all things I.T. - most of us are less skilled when it comes to being creative enough and having the ability necessary to create visually appealing, compelling marketing material.
In order for marketing material to work effectively, it needs to evoke emotion from the recipients of its message, and the message needs to be delivered economically. Without these elements, I can guarantee that you will have wasted your money purchasing a great marketing list. No matter how great your leads are, if your message and collateral do not resonate with your target audience and evoke enough emotion as to the pain they are experiencing in their businesses and how you can solve it – they aren't going to respond to you.
How to Evoke Emotion
Your first challenge is to come up with a message that will evoke emotion from your vertical market. People make decisions based on emotions. Car salespeople know this better than anyone, and they use the emotions of car shoppers to close opportunities time and time again. The emotional response a person feels when seeing an advertisement or commercial about the car they plan to buy is exactly how you need your prospects to feel when reviewing your marketing collateral and its message – they need an emotional response to what they see, read or hear from you in order for you to succeed at scheduling an appointment with them.
Ask yourself the following questions about your vertical market, and what you your solution offers: Does it improve their efficiency? Does it save them money? Does it solve the pains they experience in their business? This is what your prospects care about, so you can leave out all of the technical details about “how” your solution works – they just don't care how it works as long as it WORKS!
Steps to Creating a Compelling Marketing Message:
Identify Pain Points: Determine what problems and pains the businesses in your target vertical market has.
Create an Emotional Message: Ask questions based on the pain and problems the vertical market has. For example, “Frustrating email problems got you down?” or “Having trouble getting to critical files in the office when you're at away?”
Add Testimonials: Insert short testimonials of happy clients in your target vertical for influence.
Call to Action: Let the prospects know how they can contact you. For example, “Call now for a free consultation to find out how we are uniquely qualified to alleviate your business pain and improve your productivity while saving you money.”
Use these steps to create a compelling marketing message for each and every one of your services and each of the verticals you focus on. Once you have a marketing message for each service targeted to each vertical, you'll have everything you need to begin creating postcards or email templates to begin a direct mail and email marketing campaign.
Erick Simpson
MSP University
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