[Part II]

Client-Centered Marketing Communications

The other key component of your dealer program is the client-centered marketing communications, the materials that the buyers will see. These must obviously be made as enticing as possible. That means including

an offer
benefits
testimonials
complete order information.

Your job as prime source is to create the most client-centered and motivating marketing package possible, to make it as simple as possible for the dealer to use, and to keep all materials absolutely up-to-date.

A motivating client-centered marketing package must include an offer.

An offer

What have you got that is designed to motivate faster prospect response? When you're on the Internet, or anywhere else, you're in a situation of cut-throat competition for limited bucks. Client-centered offers are what help your buyers decide to take action now to acquire what you're offering, as opposed to what someone else is offering.

Offers can include:

more product for the price
special price
some value the customer gets by acting now that she won't get by waiting, etc.

The point of an offer is to stimulate faster response, which is just what both you and the dealer want. One way of stimulating this kind of fast response is to date an offer, "Sale ends Thursday." Unfortunately, this doesn't work well on the Internet. People simply forget to change the dates and the minute an offer has expired, it must be removed. Otherwise, it dates your material and actually becomes a detriment. Thus, instead of using a date, use some other limiting factor like, "First 25 people receive...." Note: provide your dealers with new offers from time to time. If you and your dealers are going to succeed in marketing, on and off the Web, you must succeed in the offer game. Offers must always be perceived as offering value that will, however, be gone soon; certain-to-be-gone value stimulates faster prospect response.

However, if offers are perceived as old hat, or if they never change, they actually undercut your marketing effectiveness.

Benefits

The key to benefits is to make them specific and credible. Here much marketing fails, usually because the "marketers" don't actually know much about the specific benefits their products deliver. I have now dealt with literally thousands of businesses in my consulting career, and I can assure you that one of the most astonishing things I find is how little people actually know about their own products, about the benefits these products deliver.

To succeed in marketing, wherever you want to market, you must really know your product and must be ABSOLUTELY CLEAR on the benefits it delivers.

Once you've got these benefits, hammer them home in a series of sentences beginning "You get..." "You" is the prospect. "Get" is what that prospect wants.

The Internet is ideal for giving you the space you need to hit the prospect with every conceivable benefit. The idea, however, is not to throw just anything at the prospect, but to enable you to present every benefit about what you and your dealers are selling. If this takes two screens, three screens, so be it. So long as everything you provide is client-centered fact and not just fluffy hyperbole.

Client-Centered Testimonials

Your prospects want to know what they get for acting NOW (that extra motivating offer)... they want to know all the benefits they get by using your product... and they want to know what benefits people just like them have gotten, or are currently getting, from USING the product.

Everybody knows the effectiveness of word-of-mouth advertising. Businesses that offer value succeed to a significant degree because of satisfied people telling other people about the value they have gotten and which the new prospects will get by using the product in question.

Client-centered testimonials will work for you because they use the words of real people, the benefits received by real people, to stimulate prompt purchase.

Thus, testimonials must be composed of:

real benefits received
how long it took to get these benefits
how much it cost to get these benefits
how these benefits compare to other benefits (or lack of same) the client may have received when using other products
an attribution to a real person.

In other other words, "Here's what I got. Here's what it took to get it. Look how much better off I am!"

How many testimonials should you include? Well, one good rule of thumb is to include a testimonial for every product benefit you're presenting.

Other Helpful Marketing Communications For Your Dealer

Your dealer marketing materials can be enhanced by also including:

complete product description
commonly asked questions and answers
tips for more effective product use.

Let's look at each.

Complete Product Description

In traditional marketing, you may well limit the details of what you say because of cost. Not to worry on the Internet. Here you should provide the most complete description imaginable of your product, including precisely what it is, what it does, and appropriate graphics.

Be sure to include details on what makes your product superior. Consider a product comparison with other products offered by competitors, so long as you are scrupulous about factual reporting. You don't want to get into legal difficulties by distorting the picture!

On the Internet, there is absolutely no reason why you cannot include every single fact about your product, so long as you make it clear that you're not just listing product features, but doing everything you can to present the benefits that derive from these features.

Commonly Asked Questions & Answers

As your product's prime source, you've probably heard every single possible question about it. And, over time, you've developed effective client-centered responses to these queries. Now's the moment to share this information with your dealers, by creating a "Commonly Asked Questions & Answers" communication that your dealers can present along with the rest of your material. Put questions in the order most frequently asked. Try to limit them to between 10-15.

Tips For More Effective Product Use

Again, you should know how to use your product more effectively, to get the maximum value from it, to use it in new and better ways. Develop a marketing communication designed to stimulate a user's imagination. To keep this section fresh, keep asking users about how they used the product, and include their (fully attributed) responses.

All The Dealer Should Do Is Add Her Dealer Number And Personal Follow-Up Information

How long should it take a dealer signing up today to post all your materials on the Internet, ready to promote them and start making money? It should all happen today! To start, a dealer should have to do no more than add his company I.D. number and personal follow-up information, including phone, fax, e-mail, URL, fax-on-demand, street address, etc. If you're really client-centered, you'll do all this, giving your dealer, within the course of the business day she signs up, the complete package, even posting it to her web site. In other words, doing what's necessary to get the dealer off to a good start, being truly dealer-centered!

Keep That Good Beginning Going

By this point, you will have spent a good deal of time and money creating your dealer program and getting your dealers off to a good start. Don't blow it now! Keep things going by:

keeping all dealer training materials and the communications used by dealers to make sales up to date. Let dealers know where they can find updates and be clear about the need to return regularly to check for them. Make sure you are clear about when updates are made.
providing marketing tips for your dealers. Your job as prime source is to create the best dealer materials available... then to keep providing guidelines on how to get the best results from them.
constantly motivating, prodding, pushing. This is always and forever your responsibility, and you must never forget it.

Last Words

Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the Proprietor of the 10 Worldprofit Malls at http://www.worldprofit.com, now visited by over 1/4 MILLION monthly visitors. You can become a Worldprofit Mall dealer, profiting from the sale of web sites, banners, links and domains, and a JLA Book Dealer, profiting from the sale of over 200 of Jeffrey's books and special reports. Get details on each by e-mailing webmaster@worldprofit.com, visiting http://www.worldprofit.com/surefire, calling fax-on-demand (403) 425-6049 (document #7), or calling (617) 547-6372. To get a web site in or link to the Worldprofit Malls, profiting from the huge traffic, get fax-on-demand doc #1 or call (403) 425-2466. To get a free subscription to Jeffrey's quarterly 32-page Sure-Fire Business Success Catalog, call (617) 547-6372 or write JLA Publications, P.O. Box 38-2767, Cambridge, MA 02238. To get UNLIMITED FREE ADVERTISING for your web site, visit http://www.worldprofit.com and click on CashQuest. Your FREE advertising starts at once!.