Are You Promoting or Educating?

Adam Urbanski's been teaching marketing for several years now and each time Denise and I are exposed to his wisdom, we come away with something new. This time, at his Attract Clients Like Crazy(tm) Boot Camp in Irvine last week, I learned more about writing advertorials. Adam calls this his Edumercial(tm) technique because it employs some of the powerful tips from late night infomercials.

If you are a service professional like a coach, consultant, speaker or author, you know the problem. It's a little different than pitching a widget or a thing that solves a problem. You need to sell without seeming to sell - you need to educate and inform rather than promote.

Learning sales letter writing and copywriting skills might not be the answer. For higher end sales such as your consulting services, you need first and foremost to build relationship with readers. And to do that you need to educate and inform, even over-deliver content that is useful and relevant to your readers.

Here is an outline for advertorial style persuasive copy:

1. Grab attention with a list of 3 or 5 horrible mistakes people make
    
2. Explain the problem
3. Explain why most solutions fail
4. Present your solution
5. Address objections
6. Provide proof
7. Make an irresistible offer
8. Clear call to action
    

I'll explore each section in blog posts this week.

Comments

[Jean Tracy, MSS]

Dear Patsi and Denise,

I agree that sales copy needs to be educational. I get hooked into signing up for newsletters because of the good information in the first few newsletters. After that, the newsletters lack good information and focus only on selling. I get annoyed and leave them unopened.

Thanks for sharing.

Jean Tracy, MSS

[Denise aka The Blog Squad]

I believe you cannot ignore the sales letter and copywriting skills. Everyone doing biz on the Internet needs these skills regardless of the type of business they are in. However, using an advertorial, or edumercial, format can greatly aid in the writing of a sales letter.

[Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad]

Denise is right: you still should learn copywriting and sales letter writing techniques. What I wanted to emphasize, however, is that you can't always apply what they teach about writing sales content to you and your service business - it has to be adapted so that you build on relationships through educating rather than pure promoting.