Your marketing will achieve higher response when you combine powerful content with direct response copy.
I always encourage companies to add value to their marketing…and they achieve better, higher results.
One of the best ways is creating a powerful content marketing campaign sent to your database.
Take Chevron.
They asked me to solve a marketing problem. My recommendation was content and information/valued-added marketing.
When you have thousands of employees, how do you communicate to them key issues of insurance, health plans, safety issues and more?
That’s where my team at Creative Direct Marketing Group (CDMG) created the content and design for a regular employee newsletter… that was unique and impactful.
 

To make this two year-long campaign successful, we:
 
1) Set objectives. What do we want to accomplish? How do we measure the results?
2) Use headlines that command attention. Headlines can be 75% of the success of content marketing. For a newsletter, every headline has to intrigue and generate curiosity and desire to read. The headlines are not necessarily short, but they are powerful.
3) Use direct response copy. We used direct response copy – meaning copy that is designed to enhance readership with a ‘you’ orientation, all the features turned into benefits, and a conversational style. That way the prospects feel that the newsletter is not talking down to them but with them.
4) Use direct response art. The key to success is creating artwork that is functional and readable, designed not to draw attention to itself but to the words. This means that the art is designed so the eye flow would be carefully crafted and the type font easy to read. That includes avoiding reverse type and utilizing a caption for every image to enhance readership and increase curiosity.
5) Call-to-action. Every article has a purpose to call the readers to certain actions so that the content is measurable for feature evaluation.
6) Value-added marketing. Chevron discovered that the power of effective marketing, and in this case to employees, was with what we call VIVA – Valuable Information Value Added – so that the reading creates anticipation for the next issue to read.
 
One of the reasons CDMG has won 86 awards for its powerful, results-producing campaigns is using informational, value-added content in digital, direct mail, landing pages, TV, and native ads.
If you need help with the content of your native advertising, let us know and we’ll be glad to talk about it. Email me at [email protected] or call me at (310) 212-5727.
 
Here are the rest of this week’s articles:
3 Must-Know, Transformational Reasons Direct Mail is Working So Well in an Online World
Copy Tip: How to destroy customer trust with one simple mistake
Testing Corner: A shopping cart icon test?