Ensure everyone in your company sings from the same sheet of music when it comes to communicating a consistent brand message.

Imagine one of your customers calling six different people in your company. The customer asks why they should consider purchasing your product. What do you think these six people would say? Would their explanation be consistent?

That’s where brand messaging comes into play. In the audio book, “Sound Advice on Brand Marketing,” author Tom Miller says brands need to speak with a single unified voice in every communication with customers and prospects.

“Brand messaging is a formalized document that captures the most important points about your brand,” says Miller. “It is then used to create all of the various brand communications, such as ads, press releases, web sites, literature, and so forth.”

The best place to begin the brand messaging process is with the elevator pitch. “Think about getting on an elevator with a senior executive from a great prospect company. He asks you to tell him why your product or service is so special and better than all the others are. You’ve got 30-seconds. Go!”

Distilling your brand message into a short, memorable description or value proposition sets the stage for the rest of the brand messaging to flow in a logical, informative fashion. “It may take a little hard work now, but it pays big dividends in the future,” says Miller. “Not only is your message consistent, you should also realize major time savings in developing communications pieces. The heavy lifting from a messaging perspective has already been done.”

Tom Miller offers brand marketing advice each week in the free audio newsletter from What’s Working in Biz – http://www.whatsworking.biz/full_story.asp?ArtID=92 – and is president of the branding firm, Miller Brooks.

About The Author

Richard Cunningham is a principal of What’s Working in Biz, http://www.whatsworking.biz, a publisher of business audiobooks and online audio programs on marketing, sales, and small business strategies.

Whether it’s your business card, tagline, article title, web site title and description or ad, just the difference of a few words can either pull in prospects and clients or push them away. Getting it right can determine whether your phone is ringing off the hook or you are twiddling your thumbs hoping someone will call.

Just by changing a word or two or combining a couple of phrases, you can increase your response rate dramatically. Book publishers know that a book’s title can make the difference between it becoming a best seller or a loser. Wouldn’t you like your service and products to be best sellers?

In the past if you wanted to be sure you’d found the best name for your business or the right phrases to use in your marketing materials, you needed to hire a marketing research firm to get a reliable answer. Using phone surveys and focus groups, a market research firm can tell you which names turn prospects off and which make people want to buy your services and products.

While marketing research firms may still be the best answer for mid to large businesses, most independent professionals and small business owners, don’t budget tens of thousands of dollars for this type of in-depth analysis. So how do you find out which key words and phrases will attract clients to you?

You can research and test words and phrases to dramatically increase the response to your marketing. Thanks to the development of the internet and a couple of free and almost free online tools you can easily research which words pull in prospects and which push them away. Use the steps outlined below, to refine the words you use in your marketing.

START WITH A FOCUS ON CLIENT’S PROBLEMS

Don’t make the mistake of marketing your services and products by focusing on your name, professional label, your credentials or processes. Your prospects are concerned about their own problems, issues and needs. For example, the phrase "back pain" is searched for on the internet one and a half times as often as "chiropractor".

If you’re a chiropractor, your marketing materials should focus on the pain that your clients’ experience. Start with words that focus on prospects’ problems. If you can’t think of any, use words that describe the solution to their problems. What problems and solutions are your clients looking for?

USE ATTENTION GETTING WORDS

Everyone knows that certain words like "sex" attract attention. The problem is "sex" won’t attract clients for 99.9% of small businesses. It’s not going to help a lawyer, cleaning service, caterer, etc. Other words that get attention are how to, secrets, and free. The title of this article contains at least two attention-getting words. Can you identify them?

FISH WHERE THE FISH ARE

Certain category phrases exist to describe most types of businesses or tasks. If you are a web designer, the phrase "web design" is one. If you sell pyrotechnics, the more commonly used term is "fireworks"; by a factor of twenty-two. Improve the response to your marketing by using the common phrases people use to search online, the same ones used commonly in association with the services and products you sell.

Overture and Wordtracker provide free online tools to help you find the words and phrases your prospects are interested in. Make a list of all the words and phrases you think people associate with your services whether or not have a web site. Then test each phrase to find out which words attract the most attention.

The easiest tool to test word or phrase popularity is Overture’s at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ Type in possibilities from your list and look at the how many times it was used in a search in the last month. Write the number down next to the word or phrase on your list and continue testing until you have a clear winner. Make sure the keywords you use to describe yourself, and the ones you use on your web pages to help the search engines find your site are ones your prospects use, too.

ALMOST FREE MARKET RESEARCH

Once you know the category phrase that best describes your services and products, the next step is to develop your tagline, or the copy you use in your web site description or even yellow page advertising copy. If you are a lawyer you might have a listing in the yellow pages under attorneys, but what should you say to prompt people to call your office? Do you know which of the following phrases is most likely to pull in prospects?

• Free consultation for serious injuries
• Need legal help?
• Find the right attorney
• Maximum cash compensation

Without doing some market research you won’t know which phrase, if any of these, is the most effective. Thanks to www.Google.com/adwords it’s easy to test out your ideas. Depending on the popularity of your key words and how long you run your test, it will cost twenty to fifty dollars or more at Google. You can sign-up, put up as many variations of your ad as you want, and see which ones people respond to. You may be surprised that changing a word or two can increase your response by factors of five or more. Once you see which phrases are working, try combining them to improve your response even more.

Even if you never run an ad, researching which phrases pull in prospects can help your business grow. Use the results on your business card, in your tagline, as the title to your web site or as the title to an article and pull in many more clients and customers.

2003 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

About The Author

The author, Marketing Coach, Charlie Cook, helps independent professionals and small business owners who are struggling to attract more clients. To get the free marketing guide, ‘7 Steps to Get More Clients and Grow Your Business’ visit www.charliecook.net or write ccook@charliecook.net

Your Value Proposition, or as I usually call it, your Core Marketing Message, is still misunderstood by most professionals. It’s not just a tagline, sound bite or even an "Audio Logo." It goes way beyond that.

It really is the expression of the essence of your business. It’s the foundation of all your marketing messages. It’s what makes you stand out and be memorable in an overcrowded marketplace of look-a likes. And it always is more about your clients and their businesses than it is about you and your business.

A great Value Proposition has several elements that, combined together, pack a powerful marketing punch that’s hard to ignore. These elements include the following:

1. Your ideal target client - Who exactly are your services designed for? It certainly just can’t be just "medium or large companies." You need to zero in on much more specifically. What industry, department, technology, values?

2. Their problems or challenges - What are they struggling with? What’s not working for them? What opportunities are coming up that they may not be meeting successfully? What keeps them up at night? You need to know this in your head, heart and gut.

3. The solutions or results - Where do they want to go? What do they aspire to? What are they excited about and committed to? After they’ve solved their problems, where are they going to put their attention and resources?

4. The unique angle - What have you got that nobody else has? And how is this an advantage to your clients? What can you do faster, better, smarter than every other competitor out there? You need to know this with a high degree of certainty or you’ll just blend in with everyone else.

When you approach a buyer, whether through a call, an email, an article, or your web content, this Value Proposition needs to pop out vividly and urgently, letting them know you are worth paying attention to.

If you are going to express your Value Proposition verbally, you can usually do it in two well-structured sentences. These statements can be used in a wide variety of situations, from meeting someone at a networking event to calling a big company prospect on the phone.

Audio Logo: We work with companies who have large, widely diverse teams of workers and who are frustrated with high attrition rates and reduced productivity. (Target market plus problem)

Follow-Up: Our clients are interested in both cutting costs and increasing retention and appreciate that our "guaranteed worker program" results in the very best workers that stay 295% longer than the industry average. (Solution and uniqueness)

If you can develop a concise Value Proposition that is more than just words but is something you can really deliver on, you will find it much easier to get the attention and interest of buyers in big companies. Here are some of the biggest mistakes I see made in developing a Value Proposition.

* Thinking that it’s not important - You’ve go to make this a *Big Deal* because it’s really the key to it all. Sure it sounds complex and abstract. But the turning point in your business is likely to come when you "see the light" and start "preaching your message."

* Not researching and testing - It’s not going to come to you in two minutes (unless you are very lucky). It usually takes a fair amount of research, brainstorming, testing it on clients and associates before it really clicks and you know you have something that works.

* Not truly differentiating - Often a Value Proposition only gets as far as the target market and the problem. That’s good but it can be too generic. Only when you get into your solution and your uniqueness will you really stand out and be noticed.

* Not having enough depth - A Value Proposition needs to go way beyond those four points and two statements outlined above. It needs to permeate into every nook and cranny of your marketing. Every expression of your business, large or small, needs to reek of your Value Proposition.

* Not having stories - Stories are the most persuasive marketing tools you can use. Take your Value Proposition as the central theme around which you’ll build your case studies and other stories that make a compelling and emotional case for your services.

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding Research firm in Boston, MA.

Brand Identity Guru specializes in creating corporate and product brands that increase sales, market share, customer loyalty, and brand valuation.

This Article may be freely copied as long as it is not modified and this resource box accompanies the article, together with working hyperlinks.

Over the course of his 15-year branding career, Scott White has worked in a wide variety of industries: high-tech, manufacturing, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, banking, restaurants, fashion, healthcare, Internet, retail, and service businesses, as well as numerous non-profit organizations.

Brand Identity Guru clients include: Sun Life Financial, Coca Cola, HP, Sun, Nordstrom, American Federal Mortgage, Franklin Sports and many others, including numerous emerging growth companies.

The internet offers you the opportunity to seek out jingle companies and listen to their jingle samples online. Your success depends upon a thorough evaluation of as many companies as possible. You don’t need to be a musician to know what you like.

There are things to look for in a top jingle company and a few red flags that can help to weed out the bottom feeders.

When listening to jingle samples online, here are a few things to look for:

1) Look for: Overall quality of the all the samples on the site as a whole. (Red Flag: If one or two samples sound boring, bland or poorly done, why are they being showcased on the site?)

2) Look for: Diversity of voices. (Red Flag: If there is just one male and one female voice singing all jingles on the site)

3) Look for: Diversity in styles of music, production, instrumentation & vocal arrangements. (Red Flag: If it all starts to sound the same to you)

4) Look for: Overall quality of the writing. Each sample should demonstrate creativity & imagination, lyrically and musically. (You’ll know it when you hear it)

Just as a casting director chooses talent, a great jingle company will find the ideal personality, voice, musician for your project to capture your company image and marketing message most accurately and effectively.

You have every right to expect the company that you hire to create something spectacular/exciting/compelling… Don’t settle for less.

Barry Volk is a former Staff Songwriter/Producer with ABC and Screen Ems/EMI Music Publishing, Musical Director of the West Coast Theater Company and National Director of Marketing for Metro Networks (Westwood One). Barry is the owner of Sound Advantage (A Musical Identity Company Since 1993) - http://www.soundad.com

If you have a computer and a printer, preferably one that can print in color, then you can make your own brochures and business cards that are very professional-looking! Be sure to use good quality paper (that is available at any office supplies store like Office Depot or Staples) for anything that you are going to hand out or send to potential customers and clients.

Writing Text for Your Brochure and Business Card

The very best thing to do is to get a few examples of business brochures and business cards, preferably from the same type of business as the business you are starting. If you can’t find any, then think about the type of customer or client you are trying to attract.

If you are starting a professional service as your at-home business (such as accounting, bookkeeping, proofreading, etc.), then the text and graphics used in your brochure and business card should be minimal, crisp, easy to read, and contain only the most vital pieces of information. “Clutter” is not very professional. Pick paper colors that are monotone (one color) or that have a nice edging in a complementary color. State what services you have to offer, describe your business in professional-style precise terms, and make sure that your contact information (name, phone/fax/cell number, and email address) is easy to locate.

If you are going to start up something like a children’s birthday party service or another “fun” type of business, then you definitely want to think about bright colors and graphics that grab people’s attention! Remember though, don’t “clutter” your brochure or business card with too much information! Make sure your prospective customers can find your name, phone number, and email address easily—make them want to contact you right away!

Creating Brochures

Most brochures are either bi-fold (one fold, four printable sides or “areas”) or tri-fold (two folds, with six printable areas). You need to decide on which format you want to use, and then shop for good-quality paper that comes pre-scored (or “creased”) so that it folds with a sharp edge. Brochure paper is heavier than printer paper (called “stock” or “card stock”).

Your computer probably has a few built-in templates for creating simple brochures. Many “print shop” type software programs offer a variety of templates that you can use to create more professional-looking brochures. Regardless of which you use, it should require very little effort to create your first business brochure! (I was able to use a template provided in my Hallmark Greetings! software to create a brochure that was professional-looking and had a little bit of “personality” to it!)

Follow the instructions for the template you are going to use, and write the text for your brochure as described above. If you are going to insert pictures or graphics, make sure that you are not violating any copyrights (if you are taking graphics from another source). Using the guidelines given above, make your text simple and clear and be sure that your contact information is easy to locate on the brochure.

Business Cards

Just as for the brochures, your computer will either have a few easy templates to use, or you can use any print-shop-type software that has templates for business forms. Using the guidelines as given above, write the text for your business card.

I do suggest that you buy business cards that are “laser-perforated” so that when you separate the business cards after you print them, you will get nice sharp edges.

Flyers

If you have the type of business that you can promote by tacking up flyers, then you need nothing more than your word processing software. Flyers are generally printer paper sized, and you can be as creative as you like!

You might want to invest in card-stock-weight paper for your flyers. This paper is a little heavier and will be a little more durable than printer paper.

Things to Remember When Printing Your Business Brochures and Business Cards

About The Author

Jan K., The Proofer is freelance proofreader and copyeditor. Visit http://www.janktheproofer.com for more information about Jan’s services; http://work-at-home.janktheproofer.com for work at home articles and free printables; and for work at home moms, visit Jan’s sister site http://work-at-home.momsbreak.com for articles, free printables, and work at home T-shirts and other fun products.

© Copyright 2004 All rights reserved.

Without a powerful headline, your message stands little chance of being noticed in an increasingly competitive marketplace. If your headline doesn’t capture attention and pull prospects into your sales copy, than your marketing effort is a total waste of energy and resources.

Nothing is more important to getting your message noticed than your headlines. If you’re not allocating a sizable percentage of your time and creative effort to the headline used on each page of your website, you could be losing out on a large chunk of business.

Top copywriters understand this concept well. They know how essential it is to capture attention by literally stopping pre-occupied prospects in their tracks.

Here are five good reasons why your site headlines deserve greater emphasis and attention:

1) Headlines Are Natural Attention Getters. The majority of online prospects are quick scanners. No one reads the body copy of a page without first reading and being pulled in by the headline. Headlines are the first thing your visitors see. They jump out visually and command attention. Headlines are leads set distinctly above the rest of the text. Often the typeface, size, and style used for headlines contrasts with that uses in the body copy. It’s a proven approach that naturally attracts eyeballs, virtually forcing interested prospects to grasp the message of the headline and to read on.

According to advertising legend David Ogilvy, 5 times more people read headlines than body copy. Although Ogilvy was talking about print advertising in general, the observation is certainly applicable to websites as well.

With 5 times the readership, headlines have the power and capability to make any message many times more successful.

2) Site Headlines Serve As Valuable Guides To The Busy Surfer. Headlines reveal key details. They tip off readers as to what follows. They provide clear signals to help readers decide whether they should stick around for the full message, or dash off to something else – something better suited to their own special needs and interests.

As a quick summary of the entire piece, headlines either attract continued interest and readership, or they repel it. Without a headline, the reader is forced to wade through a portion of the text to understand the meaning. Forcing readers to do this is to risk losing them altogether. It’s sales suicide. In effect, having no headline will cost you at least 80% of your potential audience.

3) Headlines Prepare The Reader For What Is To Come. Headlines stimulate interest. They captivate, arouse curiosity and stimulate the desire for more. It’s the headline that starts the reader’s motor running. A good headline sets up a feeling of expectation as the reader anticipates discovering more — and can’t wait to get it!

Successful headlines address specific audiences. They open prospects minds to new possibilities and expand their level of enthusiasm and interest. The best headlines involve prospects, virtually guaranteeing their sustained attention for the time being.

4) Headlines Simplify The Learning Curve. Every headline serves to introduce whatever follows. As an opening or lead-in, the role of the headline is to succinctly communicate the essence of the message it precedes in a n interesting and compelling way.

Effective headlines and sub-headings reveal key bits of information — often with the added power of emotion. A review of the various headings alone can often provide one with the gist of a given message. This makes it faster and easier to understand, remember, and review.

Use your headings to generate emotional involvement and you increase the chances prospects will go back and read more of your copy. When you make it easier to read and comprehend your messages, you increase the chances of making the sale.

5) Headlines Allow You To Deliver Your Biggest Bang Right Up-Front. Capture attention and interest at the outset, by using your most appealing selling point. If your strongest, most desirable product attribute (benefit) fails to pull prospects in, surely nothing else you could ever say would do the trick, either.

The stronger and more compelling your headline, the more readers are likely to read on and spend more time at your website. Create every headline to grab attention and inspire interest. The more alluring and irresistible you can make it, the more genuine prospects you’ll attract and ultimately, the more sales you’ll record. Headlines are powerful marketing tools when used effectively. Take a good look at your site headline. Could you add more intrigue, curiosity, or interest?

Test different headlines by trying various appeals and offer combinations. Keep an eye out for additional headline opportunities throughout your sales letters, as well as on other pages on your site. Make your headlines impossible to miss and difficult to ignore… then, watch your results soar!

About The Author

Robert Boduch is the author of Great Headlines Instantly! — How To Write Powerful, Attention-Grabbing Headlines That Pull In More Prospects, More Customers And More Profits, NOW! This full-length manual features hundreds of helpful tips, techniques, strategies and hands-on formulas for writing successful headlines of every kind.

Visit the author’s site at: http://www.headlinesecrets.com

Or email him at: behappy@total.net

One of the main problems people find with marketing, is the actual selling. How can you create ads which sell?

Well there are tons of articles, and pay for e-books to help you create ad copy, but there is a free and easy way to create your own ads which sell, sell sell.

Swipe them

I don’t mean word for word, not even close, but keep your eyes and ears open to ideas. We are all bombarded with adverts daily, and these are a goldmine to anyone trying to sell something.

The hard work’s already been done, ad men have been paid small fortunes to make an ad which will sell something, all you need to do is modify it to your own product.

Don’t feel guilty about it either, even those highly paid advertising companies do it, it’s not unusual to see one company using anothers successful campaign to piggy back their own ads onto giving them an instant boost.

As someone looking for ads which will make sales you have a myriad of resources to swipe from, just keep your mind open, and if something catches your eye make a mental note (or physical one) and see if you can’t adapt it to your own products.

Before long you’ll find yourself looking at newspaper television and magazine ads in a whole new light. No longer are they getting in the way of your passtime, now they’re the beginnings of new ideas for you to use in promoting your business, or products.

All the best advertising and marketing men have their swipe files, start your own today.

Doug Titchmarsh runs several sites including http://www.cashinonline.info and http://www.titchmarsh.com and publishes an e-zine for marketers online and off which you can get by sending an email to douglastitchmarsh@getresponse.com

You labor long and hard trying to create the perfect advertising piece but only about 20% of your copy is going to get read. The rest will simply be scanned. After all your work, your potential customers won’t even read every one of those well chosen words. Is your genius lost on them?

While it might sound frightening or frustrating, it’s a fact of advertising life. So what do you do next? There are some sections of your copy that potential customers are practically guaranteed to read. If you know what these are, you’ll see your sales increase dramatically. There are six key sections of your marketing copy to focus upon for success.

HEADLINES

Headlines have always been and will always be the most important section in any copy.

They are the first thing potential customers will see. They have the greatest impact on whether any of the other copy gets read. Your headlines must be enticing. Think of them as your opening line. If people aren’t intrigued, they won’t read any further.

Use strong active verbs (like slash, chop, quit, etc.) in your headlines. These words clearly demonstrate actions as opposed to more passive words (like reduce, think, consider, etc.). Most of the time, buying is an emotional action. The more you stir the emotions, the more you cause movement toward your ideal customer response.

Pay a lot of attention to your headline. It’s the powerhouse of your copy.

SUB-HEADLINES

If your headline has captured your potential customers attention, they will scan the sub-headlines. Think of sub-headlines as chapter titles. These sub-headlines, when read with the headline, should tell your reader the whole story. Always begin writing your advertising copy by outlining using this headline and sub-headline format.

Headlines and sub-headlines are designed to make the sale. Barring that desired outcome, they can guide your visitors to read deeper into your copy. If you set up a structure of progressive sub-headlines, you’ll have a better shot getting your point across.

Where do your prospective customers read after the headline and sub-headlines? Typically, they will read any captions you have under pictures in your ad copy.

CAPTIONS UNDER PICTURES

Newspaper journalists were the first to use captions. A caption is a few words below a photograph to explain what the picture is.

People are in the habit of looking for the captions in order to relate the importance of the image with the information they are receiving. Captions in advertising pieces are highly read. Don’t waste the space! Don’t just use the caption to explain the picture. Use the caption to sell the product! Use descriptive benefit-oriented words in your captions for maximum impact.

So, they’ve looked at your headline, sub-headlines, and at the captions under your pictures. They might have already made the purchase decision. Congratulations! For those readers that haven’t made the purchase decision yet, let’s flesh out the advertisement with some choice sentences.

FIRST SENTENCES

When you scan a newspaper, what do you read? Almost everyone reads the first sentence or two of each paragraph. These sentences are vitally important. To get your potential customers interested enough to keep reading, add the punch here! Unlike a novel, advertising does not build to the climax. Great ads start with the climax and support its claims in subsequent sentences.

If you create exceptional first sentences, your potential customer will be more likely to continue reading the copy. And, as an added benefit, the first sentences in each paragraph may be enough to convince him/her to buy your product.

Now that you’ve captured their attention and they are reading further, use bulleted lists for benefits.

BULLETED LISTS

First, use bulleted lists when describing features or benefits. A bulleted list will leave more white space around itself and therefore look less intimidating to your reader.

Secondly, as with the first sentence in each paragraph, people also almost always read the first entry in a bulleted list. If it’s on target, they might keep reading. Make sure your first bullet point is extremely powerful and enticing. To keep the potential customer reading, make certain you are writing the copy with their concerns in mind.

The last, but not least, power spot in your copy you probably won’t even use. It’s the call to action.

CALL THEM TO ACTION

The very bottom of your ad copy is the last chance to close the sale! Take advantage of this valuable area. This is where your call to action should reside. What is the call to action? Telling your potential customer what to do next is critical to getting the sale.

A call to action could be “Visit our website today!”, “Call Today for your FREE estimate”, or “Call to Secure Your Seat Today!”. Tell your prospective customer what they need to do to move the acquisition of this beneficial product or service you sell into their home or office.

Time spent on your advertising copy will never be wasted. If you haven’t done it before, now is the time to review your copy to be sure you’re making the most out of these opportunities. Your ad copy is a one-way conversation. You must anticipate their questions and objections. These must be answered in your copy before you get the sale.

Michele Schermerhorn calls herself a “Corporate Freedom Fighter” dedicated to freeing cubicle prisoners to experience their own successful online business. She has over 30 years experience in the business world and over 12 years running her own successful online businesses. She is President of Online Business Institute Inc. (http://www.obinstitute.com), authors a sassy marketing blog (http://www.imarketblog.com), and regularly conducts free online seminars. Online Business Institute Inc. exists to “Create Successful Online Business Owners One Person At A Time”.

Your print ads should do more than just get noticed. Their job is to bring you business, and if all they do is lay around and attract attention, they’re no different from the lazy employee who does nothing all day but look busy.

You wouldn’t give him more hours in the hopes that one day something productive will happen. And you shouldn’t keep running those “name recognition” ads in the hopes that one day sales will happen, either. You should fire those non-responsive ads and get some that pull their own weight. Here’s how:

1. Grab prospects with your headline. The single most important part of your ad is the headline. If yours is the name of your business, you are wasting your time and money by running it. Make it shout about the biggest benefit if buying your product or service, and you could increase response by as much as 300%.

2. Don’t talk about yourself. Talk about the benefits your prospect will enjoy by using your product or service. Focus entirely on your customer, not yourself, your history, your anything. It’s all about what’s in it for them.

3. Include a photo. Don’t make the photo the entire ad with only minimal copy, but do include one that supports what your ad says. Pictures in ads are like body language: they convey your tone and intention, and if done right add to your credibility. But they do not persuade by themselves. Only words can do that.

4. Ask for response. People won’t call if you don’t ask them to. Tell your prospect what it is you want her to do. Call for a free quote. Visit our web site. Come in today and stock up. Send in this coupon. You get the point.

Changing your ads from “name recognition” to “direct response” can not only increase your business, they can lower your advertising bill. Because they don’t have to be run over and over and over to be effective.

So “fire” your old ads today, and “hire” new ones that really produce!

Does your marketing forge an emotional connection with your prospects? It can. Lisa Packer delivers persuasive, targeted copywriting that dramatically increases your business. Unleash the power of words on behalf of your business by visiting http://www.dramatic-copy.com today.

The success of a business plan stands or falls on its ability to get potential investors to take a moment to read it. Nothing works better for doing this than well-written headlines designed to interrupt and engage investors. Here are five fundamental rules for writing and incorporating headlines into your business plan.

1. More important than anything else, try to get investors’ self-interests into every headline you write. Make your headlines suggest to investors that there is something about your business plan or venture they want. This rule seems so obvious. Yet, absent omitting headlines entirely, it is the rule most often violated. Replace overused one word headings like "Company", "Products", "Market", Financials" with headlines that appeal to investors’ self-interests like making money, protecting their investment, or building trust.
2. Be sure to get news worthy information like new products, new uses for old products, or technological breakthroughs into your headlines whenever possible.
3. Avoid “curiosity” headlines. Marketing and advertising professionals have proven through testing and experience that the effectiveness of the average curiosity headline is, at best, doubtful. For every curiosity headline that succeeds in getting an investor to read further, a dozen will fail. Instead, combine curiosity with news or self-interest to create a single, more compelling headline capable of drawing investors into your plan.
4. Take a positive angle with your headlines. Avoid headlines that paint gloomy or negative pictures of your business venture or markets. For example, if you are targeting a market with millions of suffers, emphasize in your headlines how the business venture can benefit them.
5. Demonstrate through your headlines that here is a business plan that will generate results and is backed by evidence. Let your headlines educate investors about the opportunity, risks, and the available options.

Of course it goes without saying that in using any of these rules be sure to make your headline believable. In most cases, “too good to be true” headlines will not draw experienced investors into your plan.

Mike Elia is a chief financial officer and an advisor to venture capitalists and leverage buyout specialists. His business plan ebook "Business Plan Secrets Revealed" shows how to make your business the most appealing investment choice to venture capitalist, bankers, and other business investors. For his free business plan guide visit http://www.business-plan-secrets-revealed.com/free-business-plan-guide.html