Carol Bentley

I’m forever going on about making your letters to clients and prospects interesting and information-packed. (Are you sick of hearing it yet? ) Well sorry, I’m not going to apologise for emphasising it (oh - I just did, sort of… didn’t I? )

No, seriously! Including useful tips, insider knowledge or understanding puts you at a higher level than your competitors, who do not do this, because you are giving value.

What’s better - is you are giving value without obligation because you are making it freely available without your prospect having to pay a single penny. And they come to regard you as the ‘go-to-expert’ when they decide to buy your type of product or services.

Adding Value

So what sort of thing is useful to your prospect; what gives your letter ‘added value’?

The actual content you can offer is different in your industry or profession compared to another. Let’s see if we can discover what would be useful for your target audience by going through a few questions:

1. When you have a face-to-face meeting with a prospect do they ask you questions? (What? Did I hear you say “Doh!” ‘course they do! )
   Alright, what questions do they ask?

   Are any of the questions generic to your industry or profession rather than specific to your product or service?

   Those are the ones you should be answering in your letter. And by doing so you are giving valuable information to your reader. (An added bonus is you might also be overcoming a possible objection the reader might have had).

2. Along a similar vein - what tips do you share with your staff and customers? Again look for the more generic gems. Include these in your letters.

   Remember, something very simple and obvious to you can be a real eye-opener to a person who does not have your experience or knowledge. Sometimes it’s easy to forget the wealth of expertise we accumulate over the years.

Offering free advice, from a position of knowledge, goes a long way towards encouraging people to decide in your favour when they decide to buy!

~ Carol Bentley

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Date: Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 10:00 am | Category: Copywriting | RSS Feed: RSS 2.0 feed.
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