Remember, the number one marketing sin is being boring! So one of the fastest ways to make your ads and promotional pieces better is to add passion and drama to your sales copy. But you gotta do this with CLARITY as well (I’ll get to that second, after adding passion).

I guess I should ask you now, are you passionate about your work? Do you get excited helping people solve their tax problems? Do you get a rush out of doing something for someone that they couldn’t do and then having them PAY you for it?

Well, that’s what you are doing when you prepare tax returns for a living. (And I’ll go ahead and tell you now, if you can’t get excited about what you do for a living, do something that does get you excited!)

The excitement should come out in your ads and in all of your promotional material. When you are excited about what you are doing, other people (like your clients) will get excited, too.

You say people will get excited about taxes? No, what I’m saying is people will get excited that they are doing business with a tax practitioner that loves what he or she does. And if they see you are really “into it,” then they will feel more comfortable with you taking care of their tax situation.

Passion helps get your prospects’ attention and it’ll help keep it. And when in doubt, throw a little DRAMA in there to keep the ball rolling! The famous mystery writer, Dashiell Hammet, once said, “When in doubt, have someone come crashing through the door with a gun.”

This is very true in a mystery novel, but even MORE IMPORTANT FOR YOUR ADVERTISING AND SALES COPY.

Once you get someone’s attention, it’s hard to always keep it. Injecting the added passion and drama will increase your readership, which will translate to more sales in the end. One way I do this is add a warning phrase right in the middle of my ad copy.

The prospect would be reading along and then I’d say,

“WARNING: [ABC Tax Service] won’t be responsible for spending the money you’re gonna save by using us instead of some national tax franchise!” 

It’s my way of “crashing through the door with a gun” and keeping the reader interested in my “story” or my sales message.

You’ve got your own passions and you can come up with your own drama to make your advertising come alive, so use them.

Because your competition will still be promoting “vanilla” or boring ads, the passion and drama in your marketing will stand out even more!

Clarity Too…

One huge flaw that I see in new “eager beaver” tax business owners learning the skill of marketing is they try to be too “cute” with their message.

They see these big time brand name companies using MASS MEDIA to “blanket” every corner on the earth with their marketing message. They see the TV ads, the internet ads, the full page glossy magazine ads, the multi page ads in USA Today etc., and those ads are all “slogany” and kind of “cutesy” sounding. (For instance, think about Budweiser commercials. I rest my case.)

So if huge advertising agencies getting paid millions of dollars to produce ads with a message, you sort of have to figure out what they are saying because they are being cute. Or you sometimes have to look hard to even see “WHO the advertiser is” (or what they are even advertising) when you’re reading and viewing an ad.

Why is that? Many reasons, but here are the main ones. First of all, “Madison Ave.” ad agencies have no clue how to really market anything! (By that I mean measuring ad expense to actual sales and turning a profit.) These agencies want to do everything possible NOT to measure the results so the client won’t be able to see how much money they are actually flushing down the toilet every month.

They do this (and get away with murder) by selling to the client on the importance of “brand awareness” or “getting their name out there,” and over a period of time the product or service will “sell itself.” (These are some of the biggest lies in marketing.)

Second, by NOT having the message clear or easily understandable, the ad is “cool” or “hip” and has a chance to win some stupid advertising award at the end of the year. (The only award you ad should win is a financial one. DID IT MAKE MONEY? Or did your marketing investment “RE-ward” you with a profit?)

These large worldwide companies can afford to lose millions each year building “brand awareness,” you and I can’t! That’s why you DON’T MODEL YOUR ADVERTISING MESSAGE AFTER THESE RIDICULOUS ADS!

For this reason, you should concentrate on making your message clear, readable and easy to understand. That means from the headline, all the way through your whole sales message. If you have a son or daughter in middle school, you should get them to read over EVERY piece of marketing material you’ve got! (If they can read and understand it, you are on the right track!)

NEVER OVER-ESTIMATE THE INTELLIGENCE OF YOUR TARGET MARKET

(If your target market is high income executives, then you should be writing on about a sixth grade level. If you don’t have a middle-schooler in your house to read over your sales copy, go watch four or five old episodes of “The Simpsons” on your local Fox channel. Pay attention to HOMER SIMPSON. Watch, listen and learn from everything he does, says or thinks.

Now go change your sales material so he’d clearly and easily understand your message.

Why? Because in “reality,” Homer Simpson is all of our target market. Even the “high end” client. (You think I’m wrong? YOU’RE reading this right? Well, I “sold” you using Homer-Talk!)

If Homer gets it…they will too.