Debbie Mayo-Smith: How to make people give a hoot

Three ways to improve your marketing success. Photo / 123RF

Do you have marketing material? Brochures. Website. Newsletter. Marketing emails? Want three ways to improve your success with them? Read on.

One of the many, many, many emails that came in a few days ago was one from a delegate from one of the conferences I spoke at.

He had prepared his very first online newsletter and sent it to me to review. I obliged. My quick tip newsletter was one of the first in Australasia, and it's still going strong - 16 years on.

I thought I'd share the three tips I gave him.

1. Them. Not You

Almost every piece of marketing material, proposal, sales presentation that I see has the wrong I/You ratio. I/You is the amount of I's, me's, us's, we's you have compared to the ýou, your's you have.

Your prospects care about themselves, not about you. Yet most marketing material focuses on how wonderful 'we' are.

How great we do. Take a look at your marketing communications now and compare the ratio.

Notice how this column started with "Do you"? Replace your references with a customer focused what's in it for them strategy. How will it make them more successful? How will it make them happier? How will it make them more money?

2. Quantify.

Following on from how you make them more successful - I have this saying: Money talks. Fluff walks.

Put a dollar value on how they'll benefit. Measure their rate of return.

This exercise is easier than you might think. Will your product/service save them time? Put a value on it by estimating how much time it will save per annum multiplied by the value of that person's time (their wage per hour, salary).

You can reduce stress? Does that lead to happier employees which helps reduce turnover? You can quantify the recruitment costs saved along with the productivity continuum. Help them make more sales or increase turnover? Take the average value of one sale (you can even factor in the life time value of that one new client) multiplied by the number of new ones expected.

You can get the base information any number of ways. Research on the Internet. Their Competitors. Annual reports. Talk to HR professionals about salary levels. Colleagues in that industry. Allies within that company.

3. Edit. Edit. Edit

Simply put - people are vastly overwhelmed with the volume of communications. No one has time anymore. Go through and edit out extra words. Take a newsletter with 10 articles and make it two newsletters of five articles.

Debbie Mayo-Smith is one of New Zealand's most sought after motivational speakers and trainers. Sign up for her monthly quick tip newsletter here. To have Debbie speak at your next event or train your team call 64 27 575 5359 or visit her www.debbiespeaks.com