It goes without saying that sales and marketing is the cornerstone of any business whether it is photography based on not. Although very few of us have had any formal training in these key areas we find ourselves writing letters, designing adverts and any other sales copy we think will help us to attract new clients or retain longstanding ones.
I have spent countless hours crafting sales copy only to find it falls flatter than a very flat pancake. On top of that I have spent countless hours reading books and online tutorials telling me how I can turn myself into a copyrighting genius in three easy steps.
Out of all the books I have read there are only two that stick in my mind as being especially helpful. The first of these is Ogilvy on Advertising, by David Ogilvy. The second is Does Your Marketing Sell by Ian Moore.
Both books offer a slightly different perspective. Ogilvy on Advertising tends to paint a bigger picture. I found this useful for formulating advertising ideas. There are some great examples in the book and it does not take too much effort to come up with ways in which you can weave some of these ideas into your own advertising. Not all of the book is relevant if you are looking to simply improve your sales letters with chapters based around running your own advertising agency, but there is more than enough in the book to make it a worthwhile read.
Having previously tried to promote a one day training course with very little luck there was one suggested headline in the book that really made me sit up and take notice. The headline asked "What Could You Expect to Learn in One Day?" The answer it gave was "The Absolute Essentials". This would have been the prefect headline or title for the training course I had attempted to promote.
Ogilvy on Advertising is a book that has been in print for many years and must be one of the biggest sellers of all time in its field. Even though it was written long before the Internet came into being I am sure that many of the principles discussed in the book can be applied to your website as well as to any off line marketing campaigns you run.
Does Your Marketing Sell digs much deeper. It discusses advertising campaigns in considerable depth and you certainly need a pen and paper handy to note down all the little ideas and suggestions found in the book. When I have discussed some of these ideas with other people they have commented that a lot of the ideas were simple commonsense, but for me it certainly me think more deeply and helped me to fine tune my adverts. The fact that a lot of the ideas are based around common sense means that they can be very easy to grasp and put into practice.
One such example from the Does Your Marketing Sell book is if you are using a picture of a person in your advert then make sure the person's face is tilted towards your advertising copy. This makes them is appear the person is pointing at the words and entices people looking at your advert to start reading the copy. This may sound like a minor detail and indeed it may be commonsense, but there are plenty of other simple, yet sound ideas covered by the book.
Probably the most important point the book makes is to use your advertising copy to explain your product rather than fill your pitch with superlatives that cannot be substantiated. This certainly struck a chord with me even if it does go directly against what I have read in other sales and marketing courses elsewhere.
Both books are available at a very reasonable price and if you are not sure where to start with your sales and marketing campaigns then they are a good as place to start as any I can think of.
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