Elements of Successful Marketing Materials

Marketing materials consist of websites, ads, brochures, business cards, sig lines, and other elements that you use for propagating your marketing message.

Your materials need to look professional, and to present a unified message that reaches out to your target market. They need to have a feel that conveys the same message as the text on them does.

Many business owners will be able to make their own brochures and business cards. Fewer will be able to create a really good website, but some will. Most business owners can write a good signature line, and create short ads that get the point across.

No business owner will be able to do any of those things perfectly right off. All of them take practice. Creating literature and websites though takes not only practice, but a great deal of learning.

Templates can shorten the amount of learning you have to do, but a template is not a good option if you want a personal feel to your materials. A template is a starting place, not an end result. Templates work extremely well when they are used to generate an idea, and then customized to make them work well for the business in question.

I use business card and brochure templates for my own business, and even for clients. But I choose the template based on the layout, and how well I like the way the overall appearance will function for the business in question. I then customize the colors, and add unique images. By the time I'm done, the look and feel is quite different.

It is important that marketing materials be customized for the individual business. One size does NOT fit all. If you have a site designed by someone who does not understand what your business image is, the site will never quite work to bring customers the way it should.

If you use a business card template that 3000 other businesses also use, then your marketing message will lack the unique edge it needs to set your business apart from the rest of your competition.

At the least, change the colors when you can, and add your own images to templates that you use. If you can find other ways to customize them to give the message more impact, then do so, because that can often make the difference between something that is overlooked, and something that is remembered and used.

The message needs to be tightly focused at the people who are most likely to buy your product or service.

If you want to give an effective marketing message, you must identify with your target customer. That means first, you have to HAVE a target customer, and second, you have to learn to think like they do!

• Ever read an ad and got bored in the middle and turned away?
• Ever heard an ad and thought, “How utterly stupid!”?
• Ever heard a description of a “problem” from someone offering a “solution”, and thought, “Nope! Not me!”?

When you have a product or information which you feel can help someone, the last thing you want is for them to class you as an oaf who just doesn't get it! And if you don't understand who your target market is, and what they will respond to, that is exactly how they will categorize you.

There are tons of marketing instructional manuals out there about writing effective marketing materials. And to the last, they almost all recommend pushy hype, or what they call “hypnotic messages” for marketing. I don't subscribe to their theories! Because for me, hype turns me off. And when a seller tells me what to feel, or how to react, that just leaves me cold and I go away. It may work for the people they are trying to sell to, but it does not work for people like me, whom I am trying to sell to.

You see, I want to sell to people who like to take charge of their life. Who want practical information to help them do that. People like that don't like to be told what they think or how they feel! They are suspicious of hype, and will run at the sight of it. That is who I specifically choose to market to, so the techniques employed by many sellers are exactly what I want to avoid. I know this about my customers, so I use other strategies.

The marketing method that you use is not a right or wrong one, unless it fails to reach YOUR customer. You need to know what the most important aspect is for them – whether it be value, price, quality, special features, function, service, caring, etc. Your copy needs to be written to convey that aspect both in the words you SAY, and the feel of what you are saying.

• Impatient customers want you to get to the point.
• Intellectuals want you to prove your point and offer more information as an option.
• Frugal people want to know about VALUE, not just price.
• Cheap people want to know the price, and how much they get for it.
• Business minded people want to know how it will improve their bottom line, specifically, but concisely.
• Academics want to know not just WHAT, but HOW your product can help.

If you don't understand your market, you'll lose their interest, and perhaps earn only their scorn. You can't market anything to anyone without establishing some kind of relationship of trust. The more your message reaches out to their direct needs, wants, and personal style, the more successful you'll be at helping them understand why your product or information has value to them.

Good, effective marketing materials will present an effective message both in the things they say, and in their appearance. It will all coordinate together to make the viewer feel that the message is sincere.