How many of you have one or more versions of a tri-fold brochure sitting on your shelf or in your closet? Every business needs a brochure, and tri-folds are simple and easy to put together. Salespeople need to hand them out. When you are exhibiting at a trade show or conference, you need something people can take with them.
How many of you have someone else’s tri-fold brochure anywhere in your office? If you’re like me, the answer is probably no, I don’t. Or if I did, it’s in a file somewhere and laying my hands on it would be sheer luck.
I don’t mean to pick on tri-fold brochures, but unfortunately they are like most marketing materials today — they try to sell. They are selling you, your products, your services and your company. That’s the reason their staying power is virtually non-existent. No one has a reason to keep them.
Your goal with marketing materials is to have them stay with your prospect so when they are ready to buy, your materials are at hand to remind them of you. To accomplish this, think of all of your marketing materials as education pieces. They are meant to inform and be of value, and the value is in the eye of the recipient, not the giver. Therefore, your marketing materials need to exist for the value of the prospect and the customer, not for selling you.
Underlying this principle is the one question every prospect asks: What’s in it for me? Your prospect is always consciously or subconsciously wondering: Why am I reading this? If you answer those questions with your marketing materials, then the staying power of your materials increases dramatically.
To be successful and sustainable with your marketing materials, educate, educate, educate. Impart some knowledge, success story, methodology, or information that helps the prospect while simultaneously and intimately linking you and your company to that knowledge or information. That’s the key. The education you provide distinguishes you because you provide the means to implement the solution, whatever it may be.
Stay focused while you educate. The focus needs to be on the differentiation you offer to the marketplace. Identify what you do that no one else in the marketplace does. What are the one, two or three unique things about your company that distinguish you from competitors? Once you know that, you interweave those distinguishing characteristics into your educational materials.
Methods to educate are varied. There are articles, white papers, checklists, do and don’t lists, financial analysis tools, blogs, newsletters, and yes, even tri-fold brochures. It is not the package that is important as much as the content in the package.
Consider stories and testimonials that highlight solutions and how your differentiation factors helped bring about that solution. Telling stories is a very powerful means of communication. We all like a good story and we learn well through storytelling. Have your existing client’s words educate your future clients.
So in educating prospects remember two principles. First, WIIFM (what’s in it for me?). Always market from the prospect’s point of view. Second, identify your uniqueness. Be clear on your differentiating factors, and focus on those factors and weave them into your education materials.
The net result of this two pronged approach — the prospect receives value, and they associate that value and potential solution with you. They raise their hand with interest because you are front of mind with marketing materials that educate.
Author Ken Cook is founder and managing director of Peer to Peer Advisors and developer of the Relationships First Business Development System. Reach him through the website www.peertopeeradvisors.com.
