Before you sit down to write, think about the people you want to reach. Then narrow that down to just one of them. Picture that person in your mind’s eye…

What will they be doing when they get your message? What will they be thinking / worrying / dreaming about? That’s what you want to discuss with them.

Now pretend that you’re sitting across the kitchen table from them, sharing a cup of coffee and perhaps a plate of cookies – and just talk.

The message you write will be much more natural. Your words will flow easier and you won’t be tempted to throw in any “$40 words” for emphasis. (You wouldn’t do that in person, would you?)

The best part – people will enjoy reading what you write, and they’ll respond… What could be better? (The cookies, maybe??)

The rule is: Remember that it isn’t about you.

Your marketing, if it’s to be effective, HAS to be about your prospective customers/clients and what they want or need.

Test each of your marketing messages (including web pages) by checking to see what the first sentence is about. If it says “we” or “I,” rewrite it.

Then count the number of times you say “we” or “I” or any variation thereof. Next, count how many times you use some version of the word “You.”

Unless you’ve used “you” at least 3 or 4 times as often as you’ve used “I,” – rewrite it.

The first step is to pass the “glance test” and to create a friendly feeling in the minds of your readers.

First pay attention to the “from” line: Make it clear that the message is from you. Use your name and/or your agency name, not just some address at gmail or yahoo.

Then consider the subject line: Make it interesting, but true, and make it relevant to your message.

Consider your own reactions. When the subject line is clearly an attention getter to make you look at the message…and has nothing to do with the message… doesn’t it make you cranky? It does me!

Take a little information out of your message and turn it into a hook to draw your reader in. If you’re telling about a new listing, say so. The people who are looking for a home will read it, but the ones who are hoping for an offer on their short sale probably won’t. That’s OK, because they’re not your target audience.

If you have interesting news about a political or social development, don’t say “news.” Say something specific like “HR 345 passed! Here’s how it affects you.” You have about 40 spaces, so use them!

Every day my mail… and probably yours… is filled with e-mail from people who are trying to trick us into reading their messages. I get mad. That means that even if I wanted what they offered I’d ignore them.

Now pass the second “glance test.”

What about the look of the copy? How many times have you started to read an e-mail message and stopped because it was too much work?

A long block of copy might work in a book or a magazine article, but on the screen it’s difficult to keep your eyes on the right line when there are too many lines.

Copywriters call it a “gray wall” and it is a wall. It’s a wall between you and your intended readers, because many people simply won’t bother to try.

The answer is to use short paragraphs with blank lines between them. Break it up, make it easy to scan, and use bullets and sub-heads to draw your readers to the most important points. If you want your message read and understood, present it in bite size pieces.

The bottom line is that you need to do everything possible to create trust in your reader, and to make it easy for him or her to read and comprehend your message.

One of the easiest ways to accomplish that is to put yourself in the reader’s place… If you got that e-mail would you read it or delete it? If you’re not sure, ask a friend to read it before you send it.

One of those details is flow… how the words roll through your reader’s minds, carrying them onward through your message.

You know what I mean. Sometimes you try to read something and an awkward sentence acts like someone pulled the emergency brake. You come to a screeching halt, re-read the sentence a couple of times, and then haltingly go forward. The momentum is gone, along with most of the enthusiasm you had for learning what the writer had to say.

When it’s something you’re required to read, research on a subject of importance, or new news that could affect your life, you struggle through it. But when it’s a marketing message, you’re more apt to just move on, deciding your time could be better spent doing something else.

The Rule of Threes:

Copywriters use all sorts of flow techniques that would make their high school English teachers cringe – and hand out an “F.” Things like beginning a paragraph with “and,” using plenty of ellipses and dashes, and writing incomplete sentences. We do that because that’s how people talk in real life. (Probably even that English teacher.)

So what about the threes? When you’re giving reasons why your prospects should choose you as their Realtor, three seems to be the number keeps the copy moving forward while still offering enough information to be convincing.

I know, you may have 15 reasons, but you can probably pare them down to the 6 or 9 most compelling, divide them into logical groups, and space them throughout your message.

If you try to list all 15 in one paragraph, your readers may not make it past number 7.

Note: If you do have a long list of features or benefits that should be placed together, put them into a bulleted list. That sets them apart visually and makes it easy for your reader to skip through and catch the ones most important to him or her. And that’s all any of them are searching for.

Check your work! Before you send an e-mail, print a letter, or send any promotional material off, read it aloud. See if it flows easily. If it does, wonderful! But if you stumble in a spot or two, take the time to re-write that section until it does flow.

The very last thing you want to do to any of your prospects is cause them to disregard your message!

He wants me (and everyone else on his list) to promote his books and to invest in his new marketing company. He says he’s an expert marketer.

But I have good reason to doubt that.

The copy he uses to try to convince me is filled with “I” and “we.” In fact, more than half of the sentences begin with one of those words. And then, it doesn’t include a single benefit to the reader. It’s all about him and what he’s doing and how wonderful he is. Ugh.

This isn’t marketing. It’s ego stroking – his ego, that is.

What is good marketing copy?

Copy that answers the reader’s question: “What’s in it for me?”

An expert marketer – or even a good apprentice marketer – focuses on the reader, not the writer.

And just as soon as the page loaded, it started talking. It wasn’t just an introduction, either. It was a 15 minute video. I didn’t want to take the time right then to watch a video, so thought I could “turn it off” and come back later.  Nope.  It was going to play until I exited.

So I exited.

If I don’t lose track of the email over the course of the day, I might go back tonight and click again.

But if I’d been given a choice of when to watch that video, the page would be sitting at the bottom of my screen, waiting for me. I probably would have come back to watch it when I needed a break from writing, or even after dinner.

As it is, I may never get back there – and in that case, they will have lost a customer.

Three reasons why your website shouldn’t automatically play sound.

1. It is annoying, so sets the wrong tone for your sales message.

2. Insisting that visitors hear your message right now is disrespectful of their time, which again sets the wrong tone.

3. Consumers who are checking out your web page when they’re supposed to be working will click away at the speed of light.

Yes, some of your would-be customers are at work.

I know – any employer would say that they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. But we all know that a good share of employees are cheating their employers by doing online shopping, using Facebook, searching for a new home, writing personal emails, etc. while they’re being paid to work.

It’s not good, but it is true. And those folks would prefer not to be “caught” doing it.

If you want to exclude them as customers, audio will do the trick.

Think about that. I recommend that you give your visitors a choice of when to hear your audio.

Usually, it’s when they’ve been complaining about lack of business and someone is throwing out suggestions for improvement.  In most cases, the person doing the suggesting is someone who has gotten results with whatever marketing tactic they’re suggesting.

Now I realize there ARE some ideas that won’t work in some markets. For instance, when I was in real estate, open houses didn’t work. People here just aren’t in the habit of attending open houses, so they don’t. Agents who try it had better take along a good book or some paperwork to do while they sit there.

BUT – the reason I know it didn’t work is because we tried it – several times.

Other marketing practices wont’ work for certain people – but it has to do with the person and the way they do it, not with the method.

For instance, cold calling. Some people can call and get a great response, while others hear a lot of slammed down phone receivers. (Or, today, clicks.)

Yesterday I wrote an Active Rain post about using web capture forms on your website to gather leads – and then drip marketing to them.

While most either wrote “I need to try that” or “I do that and it works,” some wrote and said “That won’t work in my market.”

How do they know if they haven’t tried it?

I’m not going to say everyone should do it, but I do think none of us should reject a marketing idea without giving it due consideration. After all, people are people and human nature is the same no matter where you go. So a marketing method that works in one market should be worth a try in another – even if you think your customers are “different.”

That’s kind of like looking at the food on your plate and saying “I don’t like that” without even tasting it!

You can probably see exactly why they didn’t sell…Most likely it was one of these four reasons:

• The wrong price
• Ineffective marketing
• Poor presentation
• Lack of follow up

But – if you charge in and start telling those homeowners the reasons why, you’ll insult them, and that’s no way to win friends and influence people!

Why will that insult them? Because they chose that agent who didn’t do right by them. If you tell them the agent was no good, you’re telling them they made a bad choice.

Instead, show them how it should be done, and let them draw their own conclusions about their last agent.

How can you show them? With carefully prepared drip marketing letters, such as the ones I have available for your use.

Available in both a 4-letter or a 10-letter set, these letters lead the sellers through the steps in successfully selling a home, and let them see for themselves where they or their last agent went astray.

The 4- letter expired listing letter set contains the following:

Letter #1 outlines the 3 components necessary to receiving a purchase offer:

• Price
• Presentation
• Marketing

Letter #2 discusses presentation, including the need for de-cluttering and staging.

Letter #3 explains marketing, and the fact that hanging a sign and entering a listing in the MLS is simply not good enough.

Letter #4 talks about negotiation, and introduces the final component of a successful sale: follow through.

Each letter has been written, edited, revised, and condensed to impart a powerful message in just one page. And of course, each letter invites the reader to call you.

The 10-letter set goes into further detail, with these letter topics:

• The “Why Didn’t it Sell Report
• Selling A Home in 2011
• How to Price a Home to Sell
• Curb Appeal Creates Expectations
• Declutter Now!
• Presentation Can Make or Break a Sale
• Staging Your Home for a Quick Sale
• Marketing to Attract Buyers, and Agents With Buyers
• Your Agent’s Reputation Matters
• Negotiating a Real Estate Sale
• Preventing Escrow Fall-out
• The Seller’s Checklist

And when you visit my site, you can see a sample of letter #8 – Your Agent’s Reputation Does Matter!

Use my letters or write your own – but be careful not to tread on the sellers feelings!

If you have questions about these or any of my other real estate letter sets, please do feel free to write me: marte@copybymarte.com.

And, if you’d like to recieve a copy of my weekly real estate marketing ezine, just click the button:

A spiritual marketer is one who doesn’t compromise his or her beliefs to sell a product, and who does seek to add benefit to the lives of those who purchase the product or service being sold.

He or she sells not only for profit, but to enrich lives by making people aware of the products and services that can add value to their lives.

As a beginning copywriter, I learned to seek out the underlying benefits of any product I wrote about. Not just the benefits that would serve the obvious and visible needs of my prospects, but the deeper wants and desires that the prospect might not even speak aloud. I learned to subtly reference those benefits so that the prospect could recognize them without being “hit over the head” by them.

I also quickly learned that many marketers were not honest in their claims to meet those needs – and those are definitely not spiritual marketers!

Not long ago I read a good email that listed the commandments of spiritual marketing. One of them stood out: “Selling is not about what you do TO someone, it is about what you are doing FOR someone.”

So I ask again: “Are you a spiritual marketer?”

If you believe in your product, or you believe in your service, and you present it honestly, you are probably a spiritual marketer. If you hope that by reading your message and taking advantage of what you offer, someone’s life will be enriched, you are probably a spiritual marketer. If you refuse to misrepresent anything in order to achieve financial gain, you are probably a spiritual marketer.

And if those things are true, you are also probably on your way to great success.

They’re taking a 200-300 word article and breaking it into 6 or 8 small pieces – each on it’s own page, surrounded by ads.

Some entrepreneur sites are doing much the same. They give us part of the first paragraph, then stop in mid sentence with “…” to tell us to click to read more.

I’m curious – do you keep clicking?

I tend not to. When I click on an email link and land on a page, I’m hoping to see the promised article. When I see a few words and an arrow showing that the message is in 6 or 8 parts, I generally click away rather than onward. If the subject is of great interest to me, I might click once to see if it’s worth my time. But then it had better be good or I’m gone.

One reason is that I’m a skimmer - I want to skim down the post to see if I really want to take time with it before I commit.

The other reason is that I’m always in a hurry. And since my Internet connection is via satellite, I have to wait a while to get to a new page. According to a Huffington Post survey, about 40% of all U.S. Internet users are in this same boat – living without high speed.

Are they all as impatient as I am, or are they willing to take the time to see if the article has value?

Tell me your opinion…