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How to Get Your Marketing Materials Read

How to Get Your Marketing Materials Read

Do you enjoy reading textbooks?

How about software manuals, annual reports or thesis statements?

When you sit down in your favorite chair after a long day, do you pull out one of your old term papers for a little light reading?

My guess is, probably not—unless you’re suffering from insomnia. Because any of these would make an excellent sleep aid…But that’s about it.

Sure, you might plod through a manual or report because you know somewhere, buried in all that dry, boring text, is information you need. But if you’re like most folks you’re not going to enjoy it.

Unless I know for sure I’m going to get something I want or need out of it, you’d have to pay me a boatload of money to get me to read stuff like that (and I’m readaholic who happily browses the back of aerosol cans).

So what happens when you use this kind of writing in your marketing or advertising?

Absolutely nothing. No calls and no sales.

Why? Because most of the time it simply won’t get read.

This is a serious problem since the goal of your marketing is to make people take notice, take action, and in the end, buy something. That won’t happen if they don’t read your materials.

Unfortunately, the dull, dry style of writing most of us learned in school isn’t going to do the trick.

So what do you do?

Learn to write like you’re having a one on one conversation with the reader. To put it another way, you have to write like their best friend speaks.

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling to lawyers, doctors, or new moms. The same rule still holds true. Because no matter what you’re still speaking to one person reading your materials.

Of course, you might have to change your vocabulary a bit depending on the audience (after all, computer programmers use different lingo than pet owners). But anything you write needs to sound like a real person speaking—not like a textbook.

That’s not just my personal opinion. Years of testing by top copywriters and advertisers has proven that writing in a conversational voice gets better results every time.

Let me show you a quick example …

One of my clients came to me years ago with a flier promoting an upcoming networking event (I’ll call it XXXXXXX for the sake of anonymity).

Here’s the body text:

Organizations, in an effort to achieve overall business success, are coming together more and more to create synergistic strategic partnerships. (XXXXXXX) has been developed in order to identify, for and with, individuals and organizations that make natural referral partners and to more efficiently define each individual organization’s vision, resources, processes, and strategies leading to a more effective partnership within the strategic partnership group…

Whew! I swear I just had a flashback to my Economics class. And this is just a small sampling of the writing crammed onto one page.

Now here’s a taste of what I wrote instead…

Did you know referral leads close 50-80% of the time?

Even if you are unable to ask for business directly or you can’t pay for leads, you can increase your client base through referrals.

How do you create a quality referral network?

With XXXXXXXs

Not your typical networking events, XXXXXXXs give you plenty of time to share your thoughts, ideas and dreams and really get to know other professionals. Why? Because it’s hard to recommend someone you’ve barely met.


There was a good bit more to it, but I’m sure you can see the difference. Writing like this is engaging. And it is easy to read and understand because it sounds like a normal person speaking.

The result? Marketing that gets read—and makes more sales!

Ready to start writing like your prospects speak?

Try using these 3 nifty tricks to make your words come to life…

 Trade 50-cent for 5-cent words. A good rule of thumb is to find and replace words with 3 or more syllables with one or two shorter words wherever possible. So “better” is better than “preferable”. If you’re struggling here, grab a thesaurus.

 Studies have shown the average American reads at about a sixth-grade level (sad but true). So you want to avoid writing at more than an 8th grade level.

You can check the level of your writing using a neat little tool in Microsoft Word. Just click on Tools then Spelling and Grammar. Then click the Options button in that window. Now select the Show Readability Statistics box under grammar and hit Okay.

Run a spelling and grammar check and at the end a box shows up with your Flesch-Kincaid Reading Level.

 Read your writing out loud, or better yet, have someone else read it to you. Got a kid around the age of ten or twelve? Get them to read it to out loud.

If it doesn’t sound like someone having a casual conversation, it needs work. And anywhere you or they stumble needs to be changed.





How to Get Your Marketing Materials Read - To learn more about this author, visit Stacy Karacostas's Website.

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Stephanie Robey
Stephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals.

She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com   Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences.  Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University.

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John Power
John Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website

Dave Kurlan
Dave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website

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Joe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive coaching company providing no-nonsense direction in areas such as Lean Six Sigma Marketing and organized referral marketing. What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe’s ability to combine his expertise with “out of the box” thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with.” - James R. If you want to learn more about Business901, start a conversation with us. We can be found @ Web/Blog: Business901.com Web/Blog: FundingYourNonprofit.com LinkedIn Profile Follow me on Twitter - Visit Joe Dager's Website

David Acheson
David Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns.  David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website

Jay Kubassek
(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek)  In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.

 

As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)

 

Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. 

 

Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper.  Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website

John Alexander
John has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center.
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Stacy Karacostas
(Visit Stacy's Website) Practical Marketing Expert Stacy Karacostas—author of the 2-page marketing plan workbook “Putting Your Business on the Road to Success”, and “The Small Business Website Bible”—specializes in taking the stress, struggle and confusion out of growing your small business. For more down-to-earth, business-building wisdom grab a copy of her free report “The 7 Deadliest Small Business Marketing Sins…Are You Guilty?” at http://www.7deadliestsins.com.

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