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ALL THINGS TO ALL PEOPLE Question 5: The correct answer is e) All of the above. "Our materials have been produced entirely in-house by marketing experts who have twenty years or more experience executing marketing strategies for consumer, trade and industrial markets selling products/services worldwide. So why doesn't anyone read them and contact us?" - Client E Because your experts are wrong. We have had nearly every client ask us at one point or another to produce a generic brochure. We hesitate to meet the demand. What exactly does the phrase "generic brochure" mean to you? To us it sounds like the "one size fits all clairvoyant content drives unbridled purchases". We call it the "magic elf fix." By producing this piece the company can recycle them over and over, ad infinitum saving lots of money. Unfortunately they also create paltry results. There is no such thing as a successful generic brochure. The internet today comes as close to fulfilling this need as any medium ever has and for most businesses even online materials are a dismal failure. Why? The generic answer is that if I put out a mailing to every household in America regarding a specific product or service (given excellent materials) I will get the same respondents purchasing my product had I just targeted those consumers in the first place. The same holds true for business-to-business contacts. Those potential customers you want to reach are in that generic pool. They just have not been culled. If you ever wondered why a good mailing list costs dollars per qualified lead versus pennies for the blanket lists here is the reason: Those are the people you want to contact. The rest don't want your product. So why bother with them? The saying "you get what you pay for" holds true. There is a valid reason for having image building materials available during the sales cycle. Their use is necessarily limited and they can only serve as support for more detailed, targeted pieces and the personal sales networking needed to create relationships. With the cheap availability of online space, having a non-traditional web brochure (or a series) makes financial sense. Not to be used as a direct point-of-sale, but as a passive method by which many technical questions can be answered. Education about your product, methods, terms and history can go a long way to making a deal happen. But, education alone won't sell the product. It will only raise the comfort level. Use generic materials sparingly. Target content and clients for better results. |