What if you prepared your marketing the way an attorney prepares a case?
In 1997, I was studying Gerry Spence’s How to Argue and Win Every Time, and I can see in my journals how much it influenced the way I approached marketing.
Before I ever thought about writing an ad, I spent a lot of time thinking about the person I was trying to reach.
For example, I wrote:
What reasons would people have to sell their homes?
They might be moving up.
Relocating.
Downsizing.
Retiring.
Getting divorced.
Having money problems.
Dealing with a death or health change.
Those are all people who might sell a house.
But they’re not the same prospect.
You wouldn’t talk to someone dreaming about a lakefront house the same way you’d talk to someone going through a divorce.
Then I asked an even more interesting question:
What are they going to think about first?
Someone moving up probably isn’t primarily thinking about selling their current house.
They’re thinking about the house they want.
The lakefront house.
The bigger house.
The house in the country.
Selling their existing home is simply the mechanism that gets them there.
That distinction changes the conversation completely.
And then:
What do they want to know?
How much is my house worth?
How much will it cost me to move up?
What do buyers look for now?
What should I do before putting my house on the market?
Those questions are the raw material for great marketing.
The same thing applies whether you sell houses, decks, financial advice, consulting, or anything else.
Before you start writing…
prepare your case.
Get inside the conversation already going on in your prospect’s mind.
Get inside the conversation already going on in your prospect’s mind.
That’s where the best ads come from.