Ballyhoo from Pinsonnault Creative: How Do You Create Perfect Marketing Materials?

It's a trick question. There's no such thing as perfect marketing materials. I guarantee you that 2 minutes after you drop your promotional piece in the mail, you're going to think of something that you left out, got wrong, shouldn't have included, (insert your own 20/20 hindsight here).

So How Do You Create Perfect Marketing Materials?
If it's a trick question and it can't be done, why ask the question?

Because I want to warn you. I want you to know that Any Promotion is Better Than None. Okay?

Here's a little story about Joe and Bill, good, hard-working and intelligent people. Bill and Joe both need to market a new service. They both start working on it the first week of January and both have about the same budget.

About Bill
Bill is serious about business and considers things carefully before acting. He makes sound, deliberate decisions. He's a responsible sorta guy.

He talks to all his employees, talks to his friends to get their opinions, asks his family what they think. They all tell him things they think he should include. After a couple weeks he decides to do a brochure to tell people all about his company including the new service.

He wants to be sure that he covers everything. He gets more opinions, worries over the look and the colors. He's not going to miss anything. He wants to be sure people know all about the company and all about the new service.

Finally, Bill has "the perfect brochure." It has everything you could ever want to know about his company. It's very impressive and makes Bill feel really good about his company. The brochure is mailed the first week of June.

"The time to hesitate is through." -- Jim Morrison

About Joe
Joe is not quite as serious as Bill. His business is important to him and he works hard. He makes considered decisions but he doesn't deliberate or worry over them for long.

Joe met with just the staff who will be delivering his new service. Then he called a few customers and asked what they thought about it. From that he figured out the benefits they perceived in the service. He created some simple postcards with ONE MESSAGE about the new service and its benefits and a number to call for more information. The postcards were mailed at the end of January.

In February, Joe got a few calls from potential customers. He learned that some of the perceived benefits of the new service were different than he thought, and that there was other information prospects really wanted. He got feedback on how to improve the service. So he made another postcard, this one a little bigger, and included the new benefits he learned about and highlighted the improvements.

The next month, he had few more calls and learned even more. He was starting to get clients for the new service, more accurate information about benefits and more feedback, which helped him make a bigger postcard that he mailed to a bigger list. He continued this for the next few months. By the end of June, he had a steady stream of prospects for the new service.

"He who hesitates is a damned fool." -- Mae West

Hesitation comes in many forms and waiting for something to be perfect is one of them. On the surface it sounds reasonable. Better to make a careful decision than a rash one. We all want to get the most out of our marketing efforts and we don't want to waste money, time or resources. But no matter how perfect (read the first paragraph again) your message is, if you don't get it out, it's not doing you any good.

The tricky part
It's an attractive deception to think we can accomplish everything with one grand effort. So we debate and decide and change and want it to be perfect. This makes the cost go up, delays getting it out, and therefore, delays getting any reaction or benefit. Then after this huge effort, we're disappointed by a reasonable response that seems small compared to the effort, and then we don't do anything to follow it, because it cost too much and didn't get overwhelming response.

Bill put everything into one brochure: his whole budget, every idea, everything about the company. For the same overall budget, Joe got things moving almost immediately. He wasn't careless about it. He stuck to one message, got feedback quickly and modified the message based on the new information. Then he just kept repeating the message to more and more people.

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