Tear Sheets, also called advertorials or "J letters," are a wonderfully intriguing marketing tool that completely engages your customer.

By stripping away all signs giveaways of the traditional marketing piece, your customers are left with only a pure and clean presentation of your unique value proposition. Your customers are drawn into the effective copy in much the same fashion as a reader is drawn into an article in a popular publication. Your customers find themselves steeped in your advertorial message, free to judge your offering based on its validity and content alone.

The inherent allure and mystery of the piece creates a "read every word" mentality that gives tear sheet marketing a distinguished advantage over other forms of direct response marketing.

As we build your advertorial tear sheet, we carefully construct a visual experience taking your customers through their emotional triggers while overcoming objections in this carefully choreographed composition.

What do they look like?

All of our tear sheets are printed on 100% genuine newsprint. Unlike other companies who perforate the edges before "tearing" their article, our tear sheets have the same rough edges as if it were torn from the Sunday paper.

The advertorial tear sheets are delivered in 100% handwritten envelopes with a sticky note placed on the front of the newspaper article. Everything we do uses real people writing your envelopes and your sticky note messages.

How do you create my piece?

As a published columnist, sales trainer, and marketing consultant, Tom Richard will personally interview you to discover not only your unique value proposition, but will get inside your customer’s heads. Tom combines his copywriting expertise with his graphic designer’s design capabilities to produce a tear sheet guaranteed to get a response.

Why do they work? What is the secret?

The secret to an effective tear sheet is to remember that you can never be "a little bit pregnant." Tear sheets are designed to be an article torn from a popular publication. Most tear sheet designers fail to keep their articles "newsworthy." If you cannot see your tear sheet article actually appearing in a popular publication, then your prospects will not believe it was actually torn from a popular publication.

Advertorial tear sheets fail when they are literally nothing more than an advertisement of current specials sent in a tear sheet format. While these obviously still work, when you use our services you have the ability to tap into many new waves of emotional marketing. When you are able to bring somebody into a story, you are able to get him or her to visualize the communication points you would otherwise have to try and communicate with flashy graphics. Combining these carefully constructed selling points with the fact that he or she believes somebody they know sent them this, you have complete prospect engagement as they evaluate the message at hand.

As your prospects receive this type of marketing piece, they will find themselves starting AND finishing the article. With the deliberate absence of a hard-sell advertising message, we allow the intrigue of the tear sheet to remain in tact long after the prospect opens the envelope.

Most of our advertorial tear sheets use a storytelling style, written in the same style as most newspaper stories. Our stories are written in a style that plays into the inquisitive, "what happens next," appetite of your highly-qualified, reality-television-watching prospect. As you dissect the story, you will notice that it defines the problem clearly and factually. With some help from our initial interview, we tighten up the message and hit all of the emotional trigger points.

Our stories then move into agitation through identification with the main character. The agitation layers of the story stir up emotional responses from the reader, creates the "this has got to stop" mentality, lends itself to the "well, what can I do" stage, and lead up to the "if only there were an answer" stage.

Finally, the story tactfully reveals the solution. The entire story is designed to create empathy with the main character while also allowing the reader to connect with the main character’s situation on a "gee, I’m glad things aren’t that bad" level. Your prospects, and our readers, like to hear a story worse than their own. By allowing them to focus on somebody else, you are able to penetrate their defenses while still creating the necessary vivid visualization.

When the reader actually can feel and visualize a situation, they reach a level of understanding not able to be reached through traditional advertising.

Overcoming Objections

Our advertorial tear sheets deliberately try to overcome objections before they are raised. With this type of marketing piece, you truly can construct a conversation in the same manner as you would construct a sales presentation. The advertorial tear sheet tries to articulate the "I’m glad I checked this out" objection, as well as answering the questions the reader will likely have (without giving them too much information).

The Hook

The only thing more important than the call to action in a tear sheet is the hook. If you cannot draw the reader into the article, then the tear sheet has been wasted. The second the reader identifies your piece as a marketing piece, they stop reading and they will never reach the call to action.

Tear sheets are not like traditional sales letters, you must be able to maintain the "who sent me this article" façade from beginning to end. Therefore, the article itself must be as engaging as a beautifully written news story, other the reader will drop off. A well-written piece will hook the reader at the beginning and not let go until they are good and hungry (ready to call you NOW).

The Sticky Note

The strength of the advertorial tear sheet comes from the message on the sticky note. Successful advertorial tear sheets can go beyond the "you should check this out" message.

In order to create the perfect stick note message, you must picture yourself standing at a cocktail party. At this party, a good friend of yours walks up to you and pulls out an article from his pocket. As he hands you the article, and intends on you keeping it, he says���������. What? The words that he would need to say for you to immediately take action, are the words you should have on your sticky note message.

Being fully aware of human tendencies, even those recipients who are generally interested in the offering may lose the piece, put it aside, or simply don’t know what to do with it. A potent sticky note message takes away all of the guessing and gives the recipient a clear path to take that comfortable next step. In essence saying, "Oh, you’re hungry? Eat this sandwich."

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