Imagine your competition breaking in to your encrypted network to steal your strategic business plan. But if your marketing was doing things right, all your competition would need is your best sales letter. Why?

Because good copy will laser-focus into the heart of your business strategy revealing who is your highest value target audience? What is their exact profile and buying process? What psychological triggers will not only cause them to buy your product -- but to do so as soon as they can scramble for their wallet or get PO approval? What features will position your product or service beyond the reach of your competition? Where exactly is the sweet spot in the market that will attract the most valuable customer segments for maximum ROI with long-term competitive advantage?

And yet your competition couldn't really compete despite all that insight. The reason is insightful and helpful to business strategy. The reason is that successful copy will draw out and highlight and play on the fact of your company's genuine strategic competitive advantages. Things that your competition will find hard to duplicate. At least for now. And so you stay one-step ahead through the help of your copywriter.

So begin from your marketing objectives. Your copywriter can quickly develop punchy copy for quick gains and easy improvements to your current campaigns. But the real advantage of using a worthy copywriter is to create a sustained competitive advantage through irresistible marketing. In Marketing Due Diligence, McDonald, Smith and Ward explain: "Market definition should be described in terms of a customer need, in a way which covers the aggregation of all the alternative products or services that customers regard as being capable of satisfying that same need."

Gene Schwartz had this to say: "Your markets sophistication depends on how many similar products, and how many competing ads... the goal is to be at exactly the right place, at the right time, with the right gadget or gizmo - To discover, intensify, and revitalise the desires held by a market. To focus those already existing desires onto a particular product."

Giving your copywriter an accurate market definition and product description will help him or her hit the bulls eye in the copy they write for you.

Here's where marketing and copywriting come together. Your copywriter must understand the essence of your company and product to build brand preference and response 'inside the mind' of your target audience.

"Positioning starts with a product. A piece of merchandise, a service, a company, an institution, or even a person. Perhaps yourself. But positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect." - Positioning - The Battle For Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout

The history of beer starts with 'just beer' and then came Miller Light to create a new market category of calorie conscious beer drinkers. How can you create a new market category? Your copywriter can help.

Fill in these blanks to determine your positioning statement: My product help [target] do [what?], [when?], better than other products because [how?]. With strong positioning your copywriter can write copy of significant value to your long range success.