No one wants to play a supporting role in their own life. So why does your marketing make your product the star of the show, and your customer an extra in the background? That’s exactly what you’re doing if your direct mail marketing strategy focuses on what you can give, and not what your customers need.
Lester Wunderman, a founding partner of the advertising firm Wunderman, Ricotta & Kline, is known as “The Father of Direct Marketing.” What did Lester know that you don’t? “The consumer, not the product, must be the hero.”
In his list of “19 Things All Successful Direct Marketing Companies Know,” the overarching theme is this: Marketing is not about you, your business, or even your product. Marketing is about speaking to the customer in the way they can best hear what you’ve got to offer.
A Society of Constant Shoppers
Over 100 billion spam emails are sent every day. Internet users are bombarded with sales with every click. Then they arrive home, where they are confronted with junk mail addressed to “current resident.” America can’t escape shopping — whether they like it or not.
How do you make sure your strategy isn’t lost in the crowd? Answer: Stop trying to be the hero, and instead show your customer how your product can make them the hero of their own story. That’s the heart of customer-focused marketing.
Where You and Your Customer Meet
What does that mean in practical terms? Think of your sales strategy as a Venn diagram. Within one circle is what you want to say. You know your 
product is amazing, and you’ve got a whole lot to say about it. But in selling to today’s savvy consumer, yammering on about all the features of your spectacular product is all vanity talk.
In the other circle is what your customer is interested in hearing — DIY tricks, hacks for making their world a better place, ways to make their life easier. And in the center of these two circles, you’ll find the tiny strip where those two pieces overlap — this is where you sell. If you increase the overlap of your interests and your customers, you also increase your sales.
Show Them You Get Them
So how do you do make your marketing customer-focused? If you can show them you understand their problems, they’ll trust you to create solutions. Chiropractic patients don’t want to read about bone structure. Rather, they want to read about how their desk chair is affecting their posture and overall health. Show them how your product will benefit their life.
There is a difference between junk mail and direct-mail marketing that actually helps the customer. If junk mail had a voice, it would be yelling “BUY! BUY! BUY!” The product is the star of the show. But countless companies still send junk, because direct mail marketing has value, even when done wrong. Done right, it can be a treasured help to the consumer — in a physical, tangible form.
In a direct mail piece such as a newsletter, you can share valuable knowledge of which your product seems like a natural extension, rather than a sale.
Don’t spend all your time talking about how wonderful your product is. Focus on being the magic mirror that shows your clients how great life can be — with your product.
Learn more about how to share valuable knowledge through newsletters by clicking the button and requesting a copy of our Amazon bestseller, The Ultimate Guide to Newsletters!
