Real Estate Investor’s Insider Secret #19: Think of your copy as a jigsaw puzzle
Granted, this is not advice you’re about to hear every day when you embark on a postcard mailing. But it is, in my experience, some of the most valuable experience around. I adapted this very clever idea from a journalism professor I had in college who had worked for The New York Times. I figured if it was good enough for him (as well as The New York Times); it was definitely good enough for me.
The idea is simple. The premise rests on the fact that most of us know what we want to say. And we can say it, but we don’t always say this in the proper order.
To implement the jigsaw method of copywriting, you start by simply writing your copy. Write why your customers should use your service, what benefits they’ll receive and provide them with an offer they simply can’t refuse. Follow the standard formula of AIDA. Attention. Interest. Desire. Action.
Make sure to include sub-headlines in your real estate direct mail. And when you are satisfied with the completeness of the content, print a copy.
Now take a pair of scissors and cut the document into “paragraph size” pieces. Make sure that each piece you cut contains one – and only one – paragraph on it. (This assumes that you’ve been writing in short bursts of paragraphs all along!)
Now read through these again. And now that these are separate pieces of paper, decide if you want to keep these paragraphs in the same order. You may decide that you’ve mentioned your offer to early in your letter. Take that paragraph and others dealing with the offer and place them behind others.
The idea is to put these paragraphs into an order from first to last that will create a complete postcard mailing for you. Once you have every paragraph and subhead in its proper order, rearrange them on your original document in the computer.
So rework the copy until you are happy. You can even make another printout and start the whole process again. This method has been proven effective for copywriters to have that ‘flow experience’ while working on their real estate direct marketing materials.
Go ahead. Make all the revisions you need to. If after that you think your copy would benefit from another printout and another round of jigsaw puzzle working, and then by all means do so. Before you know it, you’ve painlessly and nearly effortlessly, created an effective postcard mailing.
Making your copy has never been more easy and trouble-free. This is how anyone would want to experience making his own effective real estate marketing materials.
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