Marketers and insiders in the industry might be familiar with the term Point of Difference. It’s a system professionals use to establish what sets their brand and products apart from the competition. POD has helped countless business owners and marketers develop efficient marketing campaigns. The POD system can be implemented in other aspects of marketing as well. This article discusses how to use the POD system to easily create attention-grabbing headlines or email subject lines to that will encourage people to open your emails.
Getting Customers to Open Emails is a Challenge
Your prospects are bombarded with information from various avenues, so they’re very picky about what they read and which emails they open. If your subject-line and email heading aren’t compelling and informative, your prospects won’t open your emails and might even delete it straight away.
Unfortunately, it’s not easy to create compelling email subject-lines and headlines in this increasingly competitive world. You need to be to the point and create a subject-line that will provide prospects with all the information they need to know about the contents of the email.
The Three-Step System to Get People’s Attention
If you use the right strategy and implement it well, you can catch your prospective customers’ attention immediately and compel them to listen or pay attention to you. This three-step strategy is simple, effective, and versatile. You can use it to generate sales, create good emails, create attention-grabbing headlines for your marketing campaigns, and even to help improve products and services. You need to consider your products and services carefully and determine the answers to the questions mentioned below:
#1 What Problem Do You Solve?
All products and services are designed to fill and vacuum in the market and solve a problem. When business owners and inexperienced marketers plan their campaigns, they often focus on how exciting their product is, what their service does, how much they love what they sell, or how passionate they are about their company. When you focus on these aspects of your products and services, you don’t focus on what your customers will really connect with.
Your first step is to determine how your product can help your customer and what kind of problems it can address. Everybody’s product or service solves a problem in some way, shape, or form; you just need to consider yours carefully to determine how they do that. Bear in mind that a single product or service can address different problems for different people.
For example, an SEO professional might help a new business owner develop and establish a new business presence online. That same person can also help a business owner repair a poor reputation and recover from marketing gaffs; a single service addresses two different kinds of problems. Before you create a headline and an email or a marketing campaign, list all the potential problems your products or services can help resolve.
#2 What is Your Ideal Outcome?
Once you have determined the kind of problems your products and services will resolve, you would have to determine what kind of outcome your prospects should expect. So, if your problem is poor reputation and marketing mistakes, the ideal outcome will be a restored reputation and a more appealing brand.
The “results” are what your customers will concern themselves with. For example, if you run a skincare line, you might address problems like dry sensitive skin, pigmentation, lines and wrinkles, etc. In this case, your customers will only concern themselves with results like gentle hydration, faded marks and pigmentation, and less visible lines and wrinkles. When you know the best or ideal outcome provided by your products and services, you can determine the answer to the next question:
#3 What is the Obstacle?
Once you know the problem and the ideal outcome, you need to consider all the obstacles in your path. If you’re a skincare brand that addresses dry skin with gentle moisturising products, your biggest obstacle is the effectiveness of the moisturiser itself. As you can see, once you determine the obstacle, you clearly understand the relationship between your products and services and your customers.
You know what your product does, how it should help your customers, and how it can fail to reach its potential. Based on this information, you can create a precise and concise subject-line or a headline for your marketing campaigns and address all of the relevant points.
If you provide SEO services, handle the problem of poor reputation due to marketing mistakes, and want to restore a brand reputation, your biggest obstacles are negative reviews and feedback. In this case, your subject-line could be, “Restore your brand reputation by drowning negative feedback.” In one sentence, your customers get all the information they need. This process can help you create similar headlines.
About the Author
Ben Fewtrell is a sought-after Business Coach, Keynote Speaker and trainer who has featured in Virgin’s Inflight Magazine and Entertainment Portal, SKY Business and “Secrets of Top Business Builders Exposed”. He is also the host of the popular Business Brain Food Podcast where he interviews leading experts on anything and everything business.
