This section of the web covers the planning for the marketing of the Supportt series of products, starting with Arthritis.
The object here is to plan, initially, one or more direct mail campaigns, using a "piece" that could be a post card, a "tri-fold" or even a brochure. No matter what the format or the list is, there are some basic principals, originated by L. Ron Hubbard. I am not seeking issue authority on these pages because I am restricting access to them for only a small number of collaborators with me on this -- all Scientologists who must realize that I am NOT the source of any material here which originates with LRH.
These involve understanding and using part of the Awareness Scale:
Ruin
What is it that is ruining your life? A person could have many ruins, some having more impact on his life than others. We look at what solutions we will be offering, such as "relief of pain" and move backwards on this scale to what is the RUIN for which the "relief of pain" could be the solution.
Our remedy could be "relief of pain without drugs" with an obvious ruin for that.
Pain, indeed, is undoubtedly a key concept within the ruin part of this scale, and to explain quickly the use of this scale, any brochure or mailing piece would have to punch up, as one of the first things a person sees, "PAIN," or some particular pain.
The concept is that this brochure is aimed at people for whom this ruin is real. If there were a subscription list to the "Arthritis Monthly Woman's Journal" (or some such) then the simple word, "pain," would be too general. This subscription list would be made up of people all of whom have "pain" as a common ruin. This group already has plenty of messages, in the magazine, about pain -- different types of pain, even. So, for this subscription list you would, instead, have a ruin such as "the pain that lasts," or "eliminate pain without drugs." This last one would be "combination ruin -- of both pain and drugs. There can be hundreds of different "ruins" selected with many different wordings.
Selection of the ruin is probably the most important part of the planning for a direct marketing campaign.
Effect
This part of the scale simply takes the ruin concept and asks the question, which is also answered, "what is the effect (on your life) of this (ruin)?
The brochure, of course, would try to use "effects" found to be real for the people who have the ruin.
This is not particularly hard to do. Picking the right "ruin" is the most skilled part of this -- and would be done separately for each different public you want to address.
Fear of Worsening
The next factor is to ask (and answer), "Could this get worse?"
In a personal, one-on-one interview this could be done as a question. In a brochure you can use a question approach, but generally would also answer the same question with some text, or testimonials, or whatever.
Need of Change
The next factor to be covered in a brochure would be to raise the level of awareness of the person to the level of recognizing that he 'needs change."
Demand for Improvement
The next factor to be covered in a brochure would be to raise the level of awareness of the person to the level of recognizing that he MORE than "needs" change, but that he "demands" improvement in whatever condition or effect we have identified earlier.
Hope
The next factor is to acknowledge that the person may have risen all this far on this scale, yet have no hope that there is any remedy. Simple use of the word "hope" with some positive context may well be sufficient.
Help
The next factor is to acknowledge that the person may have hope for a remedy, but not know how to find help. He obviously needs help since he would have, by now, already acknowledged that he has the ruin, etc., so the next awareness he needs is that "help is possible!" or "help is available!" or even that "help is here!"
With these seven sequential recognitions achieved, the person who has read the brochure is ready to buy the remedy == or at least to get enlightened about and consider it.
Part of the planning would include consideration of what mailing list might be used, and what might be the reality level of people on that list. Typically this reality level would be discovered through a survey of that public. In our case I am going to estimate reality levels on the basis of the characteristics of the list we use.
In the absence of what should be done -- a survey -- we then guess, and test, then measure and revise and test again, arriving, finally at a list and at "guessed at ruins" that work.
For this purpose we would probably want a list (public) who is older, and perhaps already interested in alternative health subjects. The normal drug-using public would be a much larger public and could also be used to design the mailing piece -- and guess at a ruin.
Here is where the initial collaboration among Karl, Babu and Bruce can take place.
Another attractive public to consider is a mailing list of people who have some knowledge of "Ayurvedic Medicine." Some of these may be such purists that they would never consider anything beyond the "pure Ayurvedic" use of a single herb, or some by-the-book combination.
But in general this public already has some knowledge about Ayurvedic remedies, and presumably some of them also have arthritis pain.
So, for them the ruin might well be "Even Curcumin Doesn't Solve My Arthritis."
In other words the ruin has to do with some level of the failure of Ayurvedic remedies.
References