Does Your Marketing Material Sell?
From Laura Schneider, Your Guide to Marketing. http://marketing.about.com/od/salestraining/a/writingforsales.htm

As marketing professionals we create collateral that emphasizes our brand and who we are, but do we use that material to sell our products and services? We often make the mistake of writing our material to be all about the brand rather than the benefits that we offer to our consumers. We then turn around and give these materials to our sales team in hopes that this will help them to land the next big client.

Do you see a problem with this picture? While for years we have treated marketing separate than sales, the exact opposite is true. The marketing that we do and the collateral that we create need to equip our sales team in selling the benefits of our services and products. They need to emphasis the need that our prospect has for what we have to offer. It's time to stop thinking it's all about "us" and remember that our prospective consumers want to buy.

Our materials should persuade our prospects and inform them that we have something valuable to offer them. It should then motive them to purchase that product or service.

You can do this by putting your materials through the following five point test:

• Question 1: Are you defining the nature of your product and/or service and enumerate all the features that would be of interest to the prospective consumer?
  
• Question 2: Have you positioned your product and/or service to define clearly why you are different from your competitor? Have you touched on the pain-points that your product and/or service eases? Why do they need you?
  
• Question 3: Did you write your market material with your target audience in mind? Do not write your collateral without doing a demographic study of your prospects.
  
• Question 4: Is your collateral easy to understand? Does it flow smoothly and rapidly without causing confusion? Does it contain a friendly and extroverted tone? Is it uncluttered, persuasive and involving?
  
• Question 5: Can your sales team distribute the material and know that it will peak the interest of your prospect or will it lose them in the egotistical paragraphs regarding your companies status and brand rather than the benefits that you have to offer them?

Keep these questions in mind when you are writing newsletters, advertising copy, websites, collateral and sales letters. Always remember people want to buy - they don't want to be sold.