Successful Direct Marketing The Essential Ingredients

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Successful Direct MarketingThe Essential
Ingredients

• John Grain, November 2007

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What we will try to do

• Stay awake
• Learn something
• Have a bit of fun
• Together, come up with the ingredients to make a
  compelling marketing proposition for your audience

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Our ingredients

• Like baking a cake
• The right ingredients combine to produce the
  perfect outcome
• So, the better the ingredients the better the
  cake - each has its own important part to play

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First - what kind of cake?

• Have a clear objective
• Know exactly what action/outcome you desire
• For example do you want to
• Raise money?
• Recruit new supporters?
• Campaign on an issue?
• Communicate a brand message?
• Launch a new service?
• Gain information?
• Invite to an event?

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Our ten ingredients

• Planning
• Technique
• The Seven Questions of Proposition
• Protagonists, Hooks, Interest, Conflict, Brevity,
  Emotion, Clarity
• Execution Delivery

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Planning

• Who are you talking to?
• Know your audience
• Demographics
• What can they tell you that helps

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Technique

• How will you reach them?
• What is the most appropriate way of communicating
  with your audience

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Proposition

• Why does it matter?
• The most crucial element
• Telling the story to prompt the action
• Decision time - will you be unputdownable or
  cant get into it?
• 7 key elements (in no particular order)
• We all love a good story

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Whos the Protagonist?

• A car needs a driver, so do stories
• They drive the action
• They tell the story
• Make them honest
• Make them personal

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Whats the Hook?

• Like a good book you need to hook your audience
  from the start
• Begin your story where the audience can
• identify with the situation
• Identify with the protagonist
• Identify with the goal
• Make it specific

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Something happened today that really made me
think. Something that I felt I had to share with
you. Something that seems quite unbelievable in
21st century Britain.
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Keep it Interesting

• Predictable is boring
• Push your USP
• Throw in some barriers surprises
• Statistics - handle with care
• Numbers numb, jargon jars, and no-one marched on
  Westminster because of a pie-chart
• Use humour if appropriate

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Wheres the Conflict?

• There is no drama without conflict
• Heighten heroism when juxtaposed against villainy
• Be good v bad
• Or conquer heroic odds

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The Telling Details

• Brevity is your God - worship at the altar of
  conciseness
• Pick a few well-chosen details or highlights that
  bring your protagonists story to life
• Vividly paint a picture of the world you are
  portraying

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Whats the Emotional Hook?

• Your audience are giving you their time and
  attention
• so do more than just recite the facts
• Make it an emotional experience that makes their
  time worth while
• Make them feel, empathise, understand, and care

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The Call to Action

• Dont just give information
• Give a story
• Make the reader know what it means and how they
  fit in
• Are they clear and convinced about what you want
  them to do
• Urgency? Why do they need to do it now?

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Delivery

• Proofing and copy-checking
• Printing and packing instructions
• When do you contact them?
• Seems simple, but for whatever medium you are
  using there are bad, good, and best times to
  contact your audience
• So make sure you find out what they are

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The finished product

• You should now have the plan for a marketing
  campaign where you know exactly
• What you want to achieve, who you are contacting,
  with what, in what format, with a unique and
  compelling story and a clear call to arms sent at
  exactly the right time

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And finally

• Questions?
• Thank you
• Visit www.johngrainassociates.com
• for free downloads and articles