Sam, My Border Collies Internet Marketing Advice! No 23

Sam (that's my 12 year old Border Collie) and I were walking again through the Bush (Australian countryside). Sam as usual was ranging out from me checking for the Eucalyptus trees that needed his marketing skills.

When we reached our usual rock beside the fallen log, we found that a whole gang of other marketers had gathered.

There was Ossie the Emu, Old Man Kangaroo, Platty the Platypus, that squarking Cockatoo, the Silly Galah and even the Barramundi were poking their heads out of the creek.

Sam said proudly (he'd trained her), "I think Trudi (that's our German Shepherd) is going to talk about writing Ads."

He was dead right, there was that lovely lass in all her glory expounding on the principles of a working Ad. About all we could do was to sit down and listen as she sallied forth about her favourite subject.

'Today' we could hear her say, 'I'd like to talk to you about the letters you place on your autoresponder.

I know that there is a lot of work and they do take a lot of time to write but if you really and truly want them to act as your primary salesperson (Trudi is a bit of a stickler for non-sexist language)I could give you a few pointers.'

The gathered crowd sang out in unison, YES!!

Ok. Said Trudi, 'here we go. I'll try and make it simple so that even Gordon and Sam can understand (these experts can be such drips at times).

Take a product or a program, any program and if you look at the Web-site you'll find that all the features and benefits have (or should have) been documented.

Now here's what you do. Print out as much of the information as you can find, then take a highlighter and go through the pages looking for the features and benefits of the product in question. Highlight all of them that you can find.

Now take all the features that you've found and convert them to benefits so that you have all the benefits in the program identified. The next part is important because it gives balance to the presentation you give throughout your set of letters.

Decide how many letters you can or are going to place on your autoresponder. Let's say seven letters just for arguments sake.

Then you count the number of benefits that you've identified and divide them roughly by the number of letters you are going to send out from the autoresponder. Now that you've done this go through all of the benefits and give them a value. e.g. number them according to the importance you feel each benefit would be to your target market (the person you'd like to buy your product).

When you begin to write up your letters you'll find it a lot easier if you know that you have to place three or four of the best benefits in each letter.

This way you won't forget to tell your reader about any of the benefits and you'll be able to place them in an order of importance to your reader. Also you'll be in a position to deliver with each letter solid benefits to the readers that will influence them to buy the product.

How you actually write your letters depends largely on your experience and the amount of time you have available to prepare them.

It's like everything else in Marketing, you need to write within the principles of AIDA directly to the person you envisage will be your most likely customer.

I think I've given you a bit of an idea about writing for your autoresponder and also some idea of the amount of work involved in this type of writing.

So without further to-do I'd better take Sam and Gordon home for a bit of lunch.' Thanks Trudi! yelled the crowd as they departed to their respective territories.

"About time too!" said Sam. Sam always has to have the last word.
©2000 Gordon Brownlie

About the Author

Gordon is an Internet Marketeer based in Australia. He specialises in helping newcomers to the Internet earn an Income from a position of integrity. You can learn more about his training course at:
empowerism.com/e/12025

:To contact see details below.


gbrownlie@turboweb.net.au
http://www.empowerism.com/e/12025