Build a Bigger List With Basic Math
The great Gary Halbert once said direct marketing at its core is nothing more than psychology and arithmetic. And while the arithmetic isn’t as ‘sexy’ as the psychology it’s just as critical to succeeding in this business.
Keep a close eye on the math in your marketing or your client’s marketing and you’ll consistently find ways to be more profitable.
For the simple reason that …
Your ability to generate massive amounts of new customers is directly determined by your ability to do simple arithmetic.
Let’s look at this in terms of return on investment. For this example we’ll use a simplistic online new customer acquisition banner ad campaign that looks like this: Read more »
Dangers of the Blind Pursuit of Higher Response Rates
- How over-hyped sales copy built a $5 million business in 2 years, and killed it in five …
- Why the promotion you THINK is your biggest winner could be cause of your falling profits …
- The principle that proves “Nice Guys Finish FIRST” …
- And much, much more!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
And in direct marketing your numbers are your eyes.
Without understanding them you could be blind to the fact that the biggest winner you’ve ever had is actually killing your business.
And after months or years of throwing good money after bad you’ll be forced to close up shop, scratching your head and wondering what the heck happened.
Don’t assume you’re immune, it even happens to sophisticated marketers.
Direct mail guru, Denny Hatch, once revealed how a postcard “control” for a magazine subscription was really a loser from the perspective of a year down the road. Read more »
Direct Response Growth Strategy Part 5: Backend Marketing
At the core of any direct response marketing growth strategy is what you do with a customer AFTER you get him.
Because the backend is your primary profit center. If you think about it you realize your #1 hard cost is the media you buy to generate leads & customers. Once you have the customer it’s time to milk the proverbial cow.
The funny thing is is that this is one of those principles everyone “knows” but almost everyone is miserable at applying to their actual business.
Let me drive this home.
Close to twenty years ago a very well known financial publisher who now generates well over $60 million a year was at the time barely making $4 million a year in sales. That’s pretty good but a far cry from where they would end up.
An outside copywriter came to them with a proposal – he’d craft a promotion and product of considerably higher-price point than they had been selling – and they’d mail to their existing customer base. He’d even offered to do it for purely a % of sales – so the only hard cost was printing & postage to send out the promotion to their house file.
The publisher thought is was worth testing. Read more »
How to tell if your discounts & coupons are making you money or losing you money
This comes up over and over again with various clients.
They do a special promotion – a discount or coupon or some such thing – and it increases sales on the promotion. So they get excited and start turning every promotion into a discount promotion. Hey it worked once it’ll work again, right?
Here’s the funny thing that happens, yes, their “response” is higher on the promotion.
But their profits start to tank. Read more »
My mentor Clayton Makepeace publishes his 1000th issue of copywriting gold
I had the great fortune to apprentice directly under one of the all time great direct response copywriters, Clayton Makepeace.
He got me started in this business when he awarded me Grand Prize in his Power Copywriting Challenge and I started freelancing for his agency where I earned my first royalties and had my first real winners.
Then he called me up one day out of the blue and offered to move my wife and I down to the mountains of Western North Carolina so I could be his first ever in-house copywriter. (Good timing too – we sold our house near the top of the real estate bubble too back in early 2006 before the market went into the tank.)
I jumped at the chance to work with the man who’d help build four separate $100 million direct response businesses. I knew you couldn’t buy that type education and boy was I right.
I learned more than I could’ve possibly imagined about crafting sale copy, structuring marketing campaigns and building direct response businesses. Read more »
Why good businesses fail
I believe something about your business, about every business in fact.
And it’s something I’m sure, in your heart of hearts, you believe too …
In short, your prospects and your customers will be loyal to you, pay premium prices to you, and refer their friends and family to you in direct proportion to how much value you bring into their lives.
And that value has to be more than just a good price on a good product.
You have to show, through every contact with your prospects and customers, that you care about them. By proving you are looking out for their best interests.
That you will fight for them – at every turn.
I believe every time someone markets their product or business in a way that goes against their customer’s best interest, that person is slowly killing their business.
No traffic strategy, no sales-funnel, no brand-building, no advertising campaign, no marketing plan and no business strategy can make up over long haul for putting your customer’s experience on the back burner.
I believe championing your customers is a fundamental key to your business’s success.
But I DON’T believe that alone
is enough to build a terrific business
Putting customer first DOES NOT mean putting smart business last. Read more »
A steaming pile of marketed crap
Hey, I’ve got a killer, downright irresistible offer for you.
I’m going to give you a giant, steaming pile of horse-crap – fresh out the horse. It’s all warm and crumbly with that fresh-off the farm assertive nose present in only the highest grade horse-crap.
And you’re getting 50 pounds of it.
All for $1 – a screaming deal considering this isn’t just any horse crap it came out the rear end of a Grand Prize winning Arabian Read more »
He told Warren Buffett the secret ingredient to products guaranteed to sell in good times & bad…
It’s the holy-grail of product positioning.
It’s not easy to uncover.
99.9% of products fail miserably to deliver it. I can guarantee you will only uncover it after a long, arduous search.
Warren Buffett said selling products with this quality “Is like selling needles to addicts.” Read more »
He didn’t expect to make $12 million in 4 days…
He didn’t expect to make $12 million in 4 days.
His info-publishing business was already thriving, doing close to $4 million in sales a year.
When he was approached with an idea to increase sales he thought it was reasonable. Maybe it could bring in some good numbers.
But $12 million in four days?
That wasn’t even on his radar.
They put the promo together, sent it to their list, and sat back in disbelief as $12 million in sales flooded in over the next four to five days.
It was a watershed moment and changed the way they sold products forever. Read more »
