Selling in person is a lot easier than selling in print, because you can use your personality, body language, and tone of voice to convince someone to buy from you. When you’re trying to sell goods and services in print, you lose all of these advantages. Your marketing materials must be very clear, because you only get one chance to make a good impression. If your ad is confusing, ambiguous, or insulting to a potential customer, there’s no second chance to fix things.
Selling in print is challenging, but you can succeed if you prepare yourself for the challenge. And besides, the challenge is what makes it FUN!
Step 1: Put your prospects at ease.
One technique you can use to do this is to ask the prospect to use their noggin’s and think. Here’s a good example:
When was the last time you really felt great in a piece of clothing?
I mean, truly great. You didn’t think about your flaws or wonder if it made you look bad. You just slipped it on and realized that you looked amazing. Can you even remember the last time this happened?
What type of clothing was it? What made it so special?
This is a really effective technique… worked for you didn’t it? 😉
Step 2: Engage the prospect in what you’re saying.
A great way to do this is quiz ’em. Test your readers, see if they’re keeping up. Most folks can’t resist seeing if they ‘know’ something.
Take this athletic quiz to find out how much you know about the risks of running.
Q: Running can cause the following medical problem:
a. Shin splints
b. Broken bones
c. Asthma
d. Emphysema
(Heck if I know the real answer, but for illustration purposes it gets my point across, right?) I take that back… I vote shin splints because I’ve had them and they HURT! 😛
Step 3: Make sure your prospects are like sponges… soaking up every word!
Get your prospects to slow down and read everything you have to say. We live in a ‘Give it to me NOW’ world. Attention spans are fleeting at best. You want them to slow down and take everything in. Using short paragraphs like this one is one excellent way to do that.
Relieving eye strain by bolding particular sentences or headlines here and there is also a good way to keep them going… especially if you bold pertinent sentences, not just filler words.
All of these techniques work well to keep your reader on point, and allows you to build that all important relationship or rapport with them. And remember, the more time they spend with you, the more they know you, the more they know you, the more they will like you, and the more they like you, well… you know the answer to that one, right?
