Think about this...
When you write you know what you want to say.
The person you're writing to has to guess at your meaning.
The reason?
We've all got communication filters.
Our life experiences mean that the same words can mean different things to different people.
So when someone reads your letter they're interpreting it. That's the reason people can explode with rage over something a writer thought was a throw away line. Maybe even slightly funny.
If you're producing copy to send to more than one person this becomes an even bigger headache.
How can you stop people from ripping up your lovingly crafted direct mail letter or email?
You need to build a picture for yourself of the person who represents your target market.
Is that easy? It all depends on how close you are to your customers.
The picture you build isn't simply about what your client would buy from you. It's much more than that.
You want to know whether they've male, female, over 50, under 25, liberal, conformist, married, divorced, separated, widowed, with children, without children and so on and on...
All these aspects change the way people view their world.
Writing to people who have less than one thousand pounds in the bank about buying 10 thousand pounds of stock market investments would be a waste of time.
Writing to 80 year olds about reduced prices for extreme sports trips would be equally a waste of time.
I make the slightly silly examples so you see my point.
By building a character profile of Mr or Mrs Typical you get to ask them questions about how they would respond to your direct mail piece.
In fact interestingly enough I wrote a piece in my other blog where I assumed I knew exactly who my target market was. I wrote them another email on Friday because I'd assumed that because the offer had changed to give three FREE CDs from the monthly programme they'd dive in simply to get such valuable information.
It suddenly hit me yesterday that I just didn't do the exercise where I work out the typical profile of the market!
Why didn't I work out a typical customer?
Great question ...
The answer is that I thought I was doing everyone I knew a favour by letting them know about a CD programme I use myself.
Wrong.
Why would I think anyone was like me? They're not.
I should have drawn up a profile.
As it happens the people who are the market for this CD programme are actually split into two:
one who are in jobs and want to advance their careers and the other are in their own companies and want to improve their business profits.
As I hadn't worked that out I'd based my email letter on my own views of the importance of training and marketing. Views I know few other people share.
I should have stressed the benefits to each typical market. Instead what I did was simply explain the features of the programme because I was so sure people would benefit that they'd "obviously" understand for themselves.
Well of course they didn't!
So if and when I send another email encouraging people to sign up for this programme I'll make sure I address a detailed profile for the career person and the business owner. From that I'll get concrete benefits the target market will appreciate and want.
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