Part 5: The Anatomy of an Ad: Body Copy

What Is your Sales Story?

Many of the marketing pieces of martial arts school owners start with egocentric descriptions of their businesses and credentials, instead of the information that prospective students and their families need to solve their problems.

This is a common copywriting error that is often discussed during NAPMA Peak Performers and Inner Circle meetings.

“What’s In It For Me?”

Represented by the acronym, W.I.I.F.M is the question prospects ask themselves when reading your ad, flyer or Web site. “Is this worth my time to read and, once I read it, is it worth my time to investigate further, to call the school for these benefits?”

This is a distinction that is much more important than any technical components of creating an ad. Always, write and design ads that address your customers’ wants, needs desires and pains, not yours.

It’s an all-too-common mistake for a school owner, with a very professional résumé, to list those credentials, as the major message of ads and other marketing materials. The average consumer doesn’t understand those descriptions of your career advancement, and they don’t answer the question of what you can do to solve their problems.

“Write and design ads that address your customers’ wants, needs desires and pains, not yours.”

The size and beauty of your school and its state-of-the-art equipment are also unimportant in your marketing. It may become more meaningful when prospects visit your school, but, even then, it doesn’t mean much.

To connect with your prospects and demonstrate that you are in business to solve their problems, you want all of your marketing messages, especially the first paragraph, to be benefit statements.

For example, an attorney graduated from prestigious Yale University, could write ad copy that focuses on the fact he is a Yale law school graduate (egocentric), or why that fact is a benefit to prospective clients.

“You can be assured that your case is in the very best hands because this firm hires attorneys that are board-certified and graduated from the top law schools, such as Yale University.”

To write benefits-driven copy, you must know your prime prospects. Too many small business owners often ignore the research necessary to know their prospects thoroughly.

You must learn to think like your prospects. Your body copy should “speak” to them directly, and describe all the reasons that they will benefit from being students at your school. Make a list of all the benefits a student should expect to acquire from training with you. Each of those benefits will become the major themes of your ads, flyers, sales letters, postcards, Web site and all other marketing piece.

You can then expand those messages to describe how students and their families’ lives will change or improve, as a student at your school. As you craft your marketing messages, you’ll know you are off the track, when you start writing about you…rather than them!