Acknowledging the Message v Medium

There is more to business success than just having ideas and tips about what types of marketing you can undertake. Here you will gain an insight into the importance of ‘how’ you describe your therapy business.

Before you get into the contents of this practical book on marketing, it is important to know about an aspect of marketing that will make or break your efforts.

All the tips in this book are very practical. The book’s aim is to offer such a broad spectrum of ideas that any therapist who is based in or near any reasonably sized town or city, should never be short of ideas on how to market their practice.

Yet some therapists, despite having these 101 client-attracting ideas, will still not enjoy enough business to survive financially as a therapist. Even if this book had 1001 ideas some therapists would still struggle to get enough fee-paying clients each and every week. There is a very good reason for this as you will soon discover.

The purpose of this chapter is to explain for example why a therapist in Leeds will fail and yet another therapist offering the same therapy and who is also based in Leeds will succeed.

Believe it or not, the difference between those two therapists will not be that one has a bigger marketing budget or is a more skilled therapist than the other, although these factors do make a difference of course. But that is not the reason for the difference in the success of their individual practices in this example.

REJECTING MARKETING IDEAS THAT DON’T WORK

As therapists and enlightened human beings, you will know that if you want something new to happen you need to do something new. A well-known and well-worn NLP phrase is ‘if you keep doing the same old thing, you tend to end up with the same old result’. This is of course true.

The problem is that some therapists will ‘throw the baby out with the bath water’. In other words they will discard something that looks ineffective with something that has the potential to be effective. To elucidate; they may dismiss a marketing idea as ‘not working’ when in fact it may have the potential to be just what their business needs: a source for attracting clients.

Too often a therapist will hear from a colleague about how well a method of marketing has worked for them. Their colleague will state in glowing terms how many clients they have got through their campaign.

As an example, let’s say that this successful marketing idea is a classified advert in a local newspaper.

Having heard that a classified advert worked so well for their colleague, our therapists will probably decide that they will do the same in their local newspaper. Unfortunately that is often where the similarity ends.

The classified ad. falls flat. It just doesn’t deliver anything like the number of clients required to make the cost worthwhile.

Then a decision is made which goes something like this ‘classified ads do not work for my therapy’ or ‘tried that and it doesn’t work for me’.

Now of course there is a possibility that the two comments above are accurate. However, the therapist who made them will never know for sure because they stopped doing any more classified advertising in that newspaper after just one or two attempts. Let’s face it; if we stopped doing something after just a couple of attempts we probably would never have learnt to walk or ride a bike.

SHOOTING THE MESSENGER

Have you heard the expression ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’ before? I am sure you have. It stems from ancient times when communications were delivered by a messenger and sometimes the messengers were put to the sword if the message content displeased the recipient.

Nowadays, if we have to inform someone of bad news and the reaction we get from the recipient is unpleasant we might say in our defence, ‘Don’t blame me, I was only asked to give you this message.’

So how does this apply to the previous classified advert example, you might ask? Well, the newspaper is the ‘messenger’ and the advert itself is the ‘message’ in this example.

The wording you use in the advert or the ‘copy’ as it is referred to in marketing circles, will make or break that advert’s success.

The newspaper (or messenger) may offer the best and most cost-effective way of promoting your therapy service. It may have the highest potential to bring you numerous clients but, if you get your copy (or message) wrong, you will never know what you missed. You may mistakenly decide that classified adverts do not work for you, just like that therapist did.

Now a caveat is required here. No therapist, unless they have limitless funds, can afford to continually experiment with a marketing idea like classified adverts. Only the large corporations have the vast sums required to experiment with their marketing to the nth degree.

What this means is that you need to get your copy as perfect as possible the first time. However, if you think your first attempt at writing is going to be good enough, you probably need to think again.

Even the most talented copywriters will never be satisfied with the first copy they produce. They will keep refining and changing and playing with words until they are happy with just about every single word they have used. This is why you should always be as meticulous as possible with the words you use for any marketing medium. This includes your brochures, leaflets, websites and business cards too.

INTRODUCING THE ELEMENTS OF COPY

‘Copy’ refers to any words, sentences and descriptions you use to market your business. It can even include punctuation and any part of the written message. The term ‘copy’ applies to all your marketing media.

Depending on whether you are crafting a sales letter, website, leaflet, flyer or other marketing medium, typically, copy will consist of one or more of these elements:

1. Pre-heading – A sentence in a smaller size font than the headline that gives a lead into the heading.

2. Heading or Headline – this is what the eye will focus on first because it has the biggest font and is meant to stick out from the text around it. The headline does the job of acting as bait. It must intrigue the reader in 3 seconds or less or risk losing the reader. Often the ‘problem’ is stated here, for example, ‘Finding Life A Struggle? Are You Always Feeling Stressed?’

3. Sub-heading – A sentence that supports the headline and contains more words than the headline and again encourages the reader to keep reading.

4. Opening salutation – things like ‘Dear friend’ or ‘Hello, fellow entrepreneur’ or other salutation if you can’t address the reader by name. This is only used usually with a letter, ezine (a magazine sent via email) and sometimes a website.

5. Body text (words, sentences, paragraphs) – always err on the side of less words. Keep sentences short as they convey a sense of energy to the reader. Keep paragraphs short so that reading does not seem like hard work

6. Body text sub-headings – where possible give paragraphs a subheading to break up the text. Some readers will skim read by using these sub-headings.

7. Questions – ask questions when you can because it forces the reader to answer them mentally. A question should lead to an answer that makes the reader want to find out more. However, don’t overuse this as it will seem like an interrogation and turn the reader off.

8. Slogans – a well chosen slogan may well stick in the memory more easily than many other parts of your copy.

9. Quotes – enclosing sentences in quotation marks gives a sense of authority to that sentence. Such as ‘Excess stress can lead to premature death’. Use quotations sparingly to retain their power. Interestingly, you can make up your quotations and they will still maintain an aura of authority and substance.

10. Cases histories – if you have the space, write about a client of yours who had a problem and how you helped them to overcome it. Unless you have your ex-client’s permission, change the details so that no one is able to recognise them from your description. The reader will often be convinced by this case history because they will see similarities between themselves and the person you describe.

11. Bullet points – a way of making what you want to communicate to the reader as easy to read as possible. Used in the right way bullet points can create an overwhelming sense of so many reasons to take up your offer. Use bullet points to summarise what you have already said. Repeating what you have said in another way helps memory and emphasises important points.

Use bullet points for the emphasising the problem. With the stress example you could say:

Prolonged stress may lead to:

- physical ailments such as ulcers and IBS

- sleep disturbance and insomnia

- difficulty in personal relationships

- short temper

- premature death

Likewise, use bullet points to highlight the positives of the service you offer, for example:

Regular meditation can lead to:

- a feeling of harmony and balance

- more restful sleep

- better relationships with partners, spouses, children

- feelings of calmness and control

- a longer and healthier life

12. Testimonials – if you can include even one testimonial it really can make a big difference. The nearest thing to a personal recommendation for your service is to be able to publish a testimonial. Just make sure that you have the permission of the client to do this if you show their name.

13. Guarantee – this is useful to deal with what is known as ‘buyer’s remorse’. It’s the moment of doubt that a buyer of a service or product might have before and sometimes after a purchase. Before the purchase happens you can help prevent this by offering some form of assurance. This is not so easy as far as a therapy service is concerned because unlike with a product the customer cannot return something for a refund.

Having said that, some ‘stop smoking’ therapists offer a guarantee. The guarantee is not necessarily about getting a refund, but is more likely to be the promise of having access to unlimited free sessions if the customer starts smoking again.

14. Bonuses – this is where you lay out anything extra you can offer. It adds extra value and attempts to convince the reader that they will miss a great opportunity if they don’t take up your service. An example might be offering a free 15-minute Indian head massage with every full massage session.

15. Call to action – this is often the aspect of the copy that the inexperienced will omit. A call to action tells the reader what to do. You will be amazed at how much we like to be led at times. By clearly stating the step that is needed you ensure that there is no confusion in the reader’s mind.

Examples of a call to action are:

- To Reduce Your Stress Today Call 0800 0000 00 Now!

- Call Now To Book Your Massage Session!

- Phone Me Now Before All The Sessions Go!

- Contact Me Before August 30th To Get Your Discount!

16. Closure – this is how you sign off and close your copy. In a letter it would be something like ‘Yours faithfully’ or ‘Yours sincerely’. Nowadays such old-fashioned forms of closure are no longer considered obligatory. Many people use closures such as ‘Best wishes’ or ‘Warm regards’ and other more informal word combinations.

In many instances when any marketing medium other than a letter is being written (an exception may be a website), this is not used.

17. Post Scripts – this is great way of jogging the memory such as:

PS – Don’t forget that this offer ends on 31 March 2010

In fact some people will use more than one postscript to quickly remind the reader of several benefits or what they will lose if they don’t take up the offer.

18. Pictures/Photographs/Images – just as the song states ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. Sometimes rather than trying to communicate a feeling or emotion an image can save you a headache and convey more than words could do.

Also an image breaks up any text and the idea is to encourage a potential customer to read your message and not to be turned off by a feeling that all those words look like too much hard work.

Even though one image can say it all, sometimes you might want to direct the reader’s imagination by giving the image a caption. A caption is simply four to six words immediately under the image. If you need ideas look at newspaper or magazine images and captions.

Those are the main elements of copy that you can use or need. Do remember it is never about using all of them.

As with anything that you want to communicate, think about a start, a middle and an ending.