The secret for super successful promotions and marketing

If you want immediate, strong, positive, profitable results from your promotional efforts (and who doesn’t?), master this secret:

Speak directly to your prospect as an individual. Directly.

Speak to his or her deepest NEEDS, CONCERNS, PROBLEMS, FEARS, PAIN and/or GREATEST SECRET DESIRES AND DREAMS.

How does YOUR product or program fill those needs, allay those concerns, solve those problems, end those fears, relieve that pain, bring to extraordinary life those desires and dreams?

This is the “What’s in it for me” principle.

It was drilled into me over and over during my days at Rodale — the world’s most successful health, fitness and holistic living publisher. During my years there, Rodale was a half-billion-dollar-per-year publishing empire that had been built on more than 60 years of masterful direct marketing.

The “What’s in it for me” principle was drilled into me over and over during my days with Murphy Organization, a large California advertising agency that test-marketed and introduced “salad bar” in California for Wendy’s in 1979-1980. (Aside: Salad bar went on to be phenomenally successful nationally for 15 years and nearly all restaurants and fast-food chains picked it up. Why, oh why, do Americans no longer want salad bar? It phased out in the late ’90s as we got fatter and fatter.)

Do not talk to your prospect as though she is a member of a group. Do not talk to him in formal language or the “jargon” of your industry, profession or trade. Talk as though you are sitting across from her shooting the breeze in a coffee house. And TALK ABOUT HER. NOT about YOU. NOT about YOUR BUSINESS. But ABOUT HER. HER NEEDS, CONCERNS, PROBLEMS, FEARS, PAIN, DESIRES, and DREAMS.

That’s the most fascinating subject in the world to her. That’s what she cares about most and is thinking about almost 24/7. That immediately CATCHES ATTENTION and SHOWS  that YOU DEEPLY UNDERSTAND HER, WHO SHE IS AND WHERE SHE IS COMING FROM.

If you don’t deeply understand your clients, who they are and where they are coming from, you have no business trying to sell them anything. How do you know that what you have is right for them? GET TO KNOW YOUR MARKET INTIMATELY.

We even did this in newspapers on the news side. I learned it from Lowell Blankfort when I worked with his chain of newspapers in San Diego in the 1970s. He insisted that every article we developed and wrote be written TO ONE PARTICULAR INDIVIDUAL. And he defined who that person was for us. We had a Mr. and a Mrs. Jones* as models. They each were “that person.” Mrs. Jones read, for instance, at the 8th grade level–so we were never to write above that. We knew that Mr. and Mrs. Jones’s ages, the type of work Mr. Jones did (Mrs. Jones was taking care of four kids — including a baby — at home — it was still that era). We knew what Mr. and Mrs. Jones most feared, were most concerned about, most desired and so on… And we had an amazingly successful newspaper that swept state-wide awards over and over for years.

HOW DO YOU SPEAK DIRECTLY TO YOUR TARGET PROSPECT?

Use my  “What’s in it for me” Exercise and you’ll find yourself doing it in seconds.

* Clarification: I think Lowell had some distinctly funny-sounding last name that he favored when refefrring to “Mr. and Mrs. Jones” but I don’t recall it, so I’m using “Jones” for illustrative purposes.