Welcome to the January 2005 issue of Compositions, James DeKoven's column about strategic copywriting. This time around:
-- Your Own Liner Notes
-- The Most Important Questions
-- Informative Offers vs. Pushy Offers
-- Album of the Month

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Your Own Liner Notes
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Other than the actual music, the best thing about old jazz records are/were the liner notes on the back cover. Those eloquent missives, crafted by grizzled music critics, not only evoked a sense of the sound, they had a direct impact on album sales.

Your marketing materials should produce the same effect. Trouble is, some writers rely on general statements and puffy words. Please tell me, what does "Great" really mean? What about "Superior", or the three-headed "Flexible/Scalable/Paradigm Shift" monster made infamous during the dot com boom?

Adjective-heavy copy occurs when you have a vague strategy. And when you don't know your true intention, neither will your prospects.

Drill down and find the root benefit of your offering. For example:

Wrong: "We have an exciting offer for you."
Better: "This offer will save up to 30% on your annual office supply expenses."
Wrong: "We improve team performance by getting people more engaged in their work."
Better: "Our process allows teams to accomplish twice as much in half in the time."

Read more about copy and strategy at www.thecomposer.com/reads_strategy

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The Most Important Questions
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When beginning a project, I go through a worksheet of 57 questions. Below are my Lucky 13 - over the years, I've found these to be the most important questions. Feel free to use these when developing your next marketing or creative project:

1) What are the product's/service's key benefits?
2) What problem(s) do you solve?
3) What qualities do people typically seek from your industry category? What is the key decision maker's criterion?
4) What objections/fears will potential customers have about your company/ product/service?
5) How can you overcome those objections?
6) How can you establish credibility?
7) What is your objective: to generate sales leads, produce orders, build branding, enhance company image, reposition the company?
8) How can people identify themselves with needing your product/service?
9) What is the end-result of you product/service?
10) Where is the reader in the sales cycle?
11) What does your audience know about you?
12) What does your audience know about your industry?
13) What is the call to action?

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Informative vs. Pushy Offers
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Direct mail success is all about the offer. But what type of offer do you choose? Before you answer that question, you need to understand your prospects, which can be broken down into four categories:

Highly Qualified Leads: they're ready to write a check.
Interested: interested but don't have the budget.
Not Aware: they don't know a solution to their problem exists.
Blind: they don't even recognize they have a problem.

Obviously, everyone wants the qualified leads, but generating them takes considerable time and money. That takes us to answering the initial question.

Use an Educational Offer instead of a Pushy Offer.

An Educational Offer might be a report, a white paper, an article, or even a one-hour consultation. These offers give qualified leads valuable advice toward solving their problem. They also subtly imply, "By the way, we can do the solving for you."

Pushy Offers are..pushy. They push prospects to order a demo or product trial. They push to "take advantage" of a really big discount. These offers aren't bad in themselves; actually, they can produce a high response rate when paired with the right product.

But since Pushy Offers don't appeal to prospects that aren't aware of the problem, you miss out on a good chuck of future customers,

Educational Offers appeal most to the qualified leads, but they also appeal to other prospects (everyone appreciates valuable information). You increase overall response rates, lower the cost per sale, and add more prospects to the sales pipeline.

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Album of the Month
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My favorite holiday gift came from my friend Beata. It's "Peace: Live at the Blue Note", by the Kenny Werner Trio. It's a contemplative yet energizing set from one of today's most accomplished pianists. If you had a resolution to invigorate your workspace, this is a good start.


All the best,

James