for What Ails Your Customer?

A spoonful of Entertainment helps the medicine go down,
medicine go dowwwwn,
medicine go down.

The public will give you their time if you offer them entertainment.
They will give you their money if you offer them hope.

But don’t ever call it hope.

Don’t accuse your customer of being hopeless. Just let them know exactly how you can make tomorrow different than today and let them know it in an entertaining way.

Go do that.

Go. Get started.

“Be entertaining” and “make tomorrow different” is easier said than done, right?

We want your customer to have a new perspective, a new attitude about you and what you sell. But if your customer doesn’t give your message a moment of their time, your message might as well have never existed.

You paid the postage but they didn’t read the letter.

Entertainment is the currency that will buy you their time. How might your message entertain them? I’m not just talking about being funny.

Humor is nitroglycerine.
Handled correctly, it moves mountains.
Mishandled, it moves things you didn’t want moved.

We often remember the humor but don’t remember the product, right? This is what happens when the humor is gratuitous, disconnected from the essence of the ad.

“Entertaining” is simply what we call the most interesting thing that’s in front of us at any given moment. Sometimes the bar is lower than at other times.

My friend Brian Alter is a jeweler who’s about to send a catalog to his customers. His excellent cover letter below will accompany each catalog. Take a look and see what you can learn.

Next week we’ll talk about PowerNaming.

Now get some rest. Christmas is coming.

Roy H. Williams 

If you’re not among that lucky bunch who will hang out with Jeff Sexton and Chris Maddock this week during the Writing for Radio and the Internet workshop at Wizard Academy, here is some consolation: Jeff Sexton is Dean Rotbart’s guest on this week’s edition of Monday Morning Radio. Whether you’re writing your own web copy or hiring someone else to do it for you, this interview – like the two-day course itself – will open your mind to a brave and lucrative new world where words make all the difference. MondayMorningRadio.com