In Part 1 of this how-to to supercharge your marketing with a direct-mail program, I presented four proven methods for grabbing prospects attention. Now that you have their attention, today, I’ll share four proven ways to make them take action.
5. Mail regularly. Once is never enough. The first mailings in even wildly successful campaigns will net nothing. Over time, however, more eyes will see the promotions, and your brand and message will gain prominence (yes, even in the mail).
6. Limit the offer with a deadline or a set number of first responders. Create urgency wherever you can. Your offering will eliminate his pain. Encourage him to make the right decision in a timely manner.
7. To increase your response, give something of value for free. I’m not talking about tchotchkes, but something that has worth to the prospect – a white paper, an e-book, an hour’s consultation, a webinar or access to the members’ section of your site. Of course, you’ll want to capture contact information, but just for what you must have. If you’re going to mail, you need their mailing address, not their telephone number or email address. You can capture that info a little at a time as the relationship builds.
8. Test and track all responses, and adjust your campaign accordingly. This is a must. If you don’t test your message or call to action, and it’s ineffective, you’ll continue to fire bullets in the air with each campaign. One of the easiest ways of testing is to mail an initial small sample with different messages to see which draws the better response. Then, you can make educated adjustments to the copy.
That’s it, the eight rules that will get any direct-marketing campaign successfully off the ground. Once you have this foundation in place, you’ll be able to evaluate the myriad of other options with a more strategic eye.
After you’ve implemented a couple of these ideas, let us know below how it went and share some tips.
Thanks to Péllo for this chance to share what I’ve learned and I hope that it’s been helpful. You might want to submit a blog also? If so, just give Péllo a call.
Even the seasoned direct marketer can become confused with all of the promotional options available today. If you’re just expanding your promotional program to take advantage of direct-marketing, you’re likely not just confused, but chin deep in a quagmire of indecision and uncertainty. Where do you start?
This cornucopia of options enables direct marketers to more personally, memorably and compellingly fix their key products and services messages into prospects’ minds. They need to be adopted into programs already built on a solid foundation. So, start with the basics – a program built on proven methods – and build from there.
Here are my top eight essential steps to developing any successful direct-marketing program. These will get your program running successfully.
1. Develop a hook that gets responses. This is your key message, designed to speak to the prospect’s pain points and differentiate you from the competition. It’s about the customer, not product features or benefits. This is your prospects’ vision of how his life should be. That’s why he’ll call you.
2. Offer a trial. The idea is to eliminate the fear of risk. Department stores with easy return policies do far better than those with you-bought-it-you-keep-it policies. The stores know that people keep good products. They just don’t like to take chances.
3. Success stories and testimonials work magic. Everyone knows that. However, I’m frequently told that it’s difficult to get customers to endorse products. More often, I find the difficulty is not in customers’ lack of willingness, it’s really the seller’s reluctance to ask. As I was once told, Go ahead. They can’t eat you.
4. Offer must be easy to understand and obtain. To most seasoned marketers, this means writing in plain English. No jargon. No acronyms. Writing simply is very important. However, writing briefly is just as important. You want to capture the customer with your single key message, not explain everything about your offering. Pique his interest and he’ll call you for the details.
These first four steps alone solve the most common hurdles direct marketers face. They whet prospects’ interest in your offering, and then resolve their chief concerns risk free.
In Part 2, I’ll show you the final four steps, these aimed at keeping your offer in front of your potential customers and then providing an irresistible call to action.
Meanwhile, pull out your most recently completed direct-mail project and examine it against steps 1-4. What would you change? Let us know what jumps out at you – good and bad.
In Part 1, I discussed the failure of “plain English” and precise English in getting your message across. So, if precise scientific language loses out to meaningless French and corncob logic, it seems like determining the right language for an audience really requires thinking outside of the box.
Well, maybe some low-hanging fruit will save us from re-inventing the wheel. I’m speaking, of course, of the wealth of existing expressions and catchphrases that make up a big part of the business vernacular.
Colorful, witty, meaningful turns of phrases are the bread and butter of business titans and journalistic luminaries. These clever, smart expressions that can be used in myriad of situations.
We’re all aware of pundits’ aversion to clichés. Yet, they aren’t above dropping a phrase from Shakespeare. Therefore, it seems a snobbish not to borrow from Clint Eastwood or Yogi Berra when it helps make a point. Plus, these passages come easily, regardless of writing skill. Few of us have time to re-imagine new analogies and metaphors for every sales letter, email promotion or leave-with piece.
If you can work the Bard into your work, do it. Beyond that, no matter how often you feel the urge to shrewdly work “Go ahead, make my day!” into your blogs or boost spirits with “It ain’t over ‘till the fat lady sings” – DON’T! This is where the rules you were taught are right.
Clichés are bad-writing commodities and classify your writing and, worse, your ideas as such. Be known for your originality, not someone else’s. Win a sale with sincere thoughts, not banalities. Maybe you can’t write like Ernest Hemingway, but you can achieve success with your own ideas told in your own words than you can with clichés that virtually guaranteed to go in one ear and out the other.
So, where does that leave us regarding how we communicate? It boils down to having your signature on your ideas. You don’t have to be eloquent. Your words will stand out and carry weight because they’re yours.
Try it today. Take your last e-newsletter, press release or direct mail postcard, and edit it for these guidelines. You’ll find yourself much more interesting, persuasive and, yes, eloquent.
As always, we encourage guest bloggers. If you’d like to share your expertise, contact either of us.
I’m sitting in a waterfront Starbucks writing this blog. I didn’t understand a single word my order taker said when she told the barista what I wanted, not even the size. And, since I’m Starbuckese challenged, I’m not sure the order I grabbed really doesn’t belong to the agitated dockworker at the pick-up counter.
At one time or another, a professor or seminar instructor has told us to communicate so ninth-graders, our grandmothers or everyone else can grasp our thoughts. Otherwise, confounded prospects will refuse to buy or will plunk down top dollar for swamp land as long as every aspect of the fraud is explained the simplest terms. It suggests that Starbucks would be even more wildly popular if it translated its caffeinated banter into plain English.
I’ve never bought into that theory. I know a tax consultant and a psychologist with more business than they can handle for exactly because people can’t and don’t want to understand their offerings. OK, the logic’s a bit skewed, but it raises the question: is dumbing down your brochure, newsletter or direct-mail postcard all that’s required for good communication, or are there other things in play.
Writing to the lowest denominator lowest common denominator makes no more sense than replacing caviar with tapioca to broaden appeal for something crunchy to complement the champagne. While everyone will “understand” the tapioca language, it lacks emotion, logic and interest that would entice someone to buy your products over your competitors’. So, while plain English is a good foundation for messages, don’t be afraid to top it with some tasty Beluga.
So, if plain English is lacking, how about making it scientifically precise? I’ve discussed technical language with countless engineers. We’re communicating with our technical peers and high-tech professionals who use the same terminology, acronyms and product specifications. So, shouldn’t we speak in their language to make our case?
That’s a good argument. After all, every industry has its own language. It makes sense to pitch your products and services in the native tongue, and it shows you’re one of them.
Nonetheless, whenever I’ve tried to write an article, video script or product brief in tech speak, it comes out boring, emotionless and not the least compelling.
Think about the language that drives you to action. French, even though I don’t understand a word, has a poetic lilt that makes anything I’m offered sound good. At the other end of the language spectrum, comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s backcountry jargon entices me so much that I’m convinced I’d love noodling.
In Part 2, I’ll show you a treasure trove of ready-made quips that will make your day. Meanwhile, look over the most recent promotional work you wrote. Is it persuasive? Is it Jeff Foxworthy? Is it you? Send us your rewriting questions. If we can’t help, we’ll see if others in the community can.
As always, we encourage guest bloggers. If you’d like to share your expertise, contact either of us.
These rudiments will be most useful in helping those of you who are beginners to sales leapfrog to new levels of success. They also provide a foundation for you veteran businesspeople who, commonly because your expertise lies in another field, have never been exposed to any sales systems.
For experienced salespeople, this is a refresher, though I frequently find even the best let a rule or two slip over the years.
You can apply these rules in many selling situations. Whether you’re pitching Fortune 500 vice presidents in their offices or designing a mailer aimed at community dog owners, these steps will work for you.
These are just the basics. To refine your skills, there are countless books, websites, webinars and conferences devoted to selling. You’ll also find qualified professional coaches in most communities. If you’d like some recommendations, reply at the bottom or feel free to contact me directly.
Here are the six steps you should check off in every sales situation:
Demonstrate a strong value proposition based on the applicable six areas wired to prospects buy buttons – costs, revenues, ROI, productivity, customer satisfaction and strategy – covered in my previous blog.
Show you understand prospects’ businesses to generate confidence. If the industry is foreign to you, review “About Us” and “Products” on prospects’ websites, then browse through a couple of the prominent industry sites for relevant trends and issues. Don’t pretend to be an expert if you’re not. Instead, use your research to show prospects you understand them, and bring up examples of similar situations where you’ve succeeded as proof-points.
Leverage data to demonstrate the merits of your offering. Provide hard proof-points – a 30-percent improvement in clients’ sales, reduction of a similar business’s expenses by $10 million or study results reflecting significantly improved customer satisfaction.
Overcome objections with facts that will refute concerns. Ask questions to get to the bottom of prospects’ fears and respond to them with concrete evidence. If you frequently hear the same objections, bring them up yourself early and handle them so they don’t become an issue when you’re trying to close the deal.
Conclude with a compelling call to action. It’s crucial to guide prospects toward what you want them to do next. Never walk away leaving the next step up in the air. Can I show you a demo next week? Take a look at the data I’ve given you in the next couple of days, and then can we meet on Monday to cover any final questions you may have? Click here to see exactly how much you might save.
Be persistent whether you’re talking to a prospect in person or sending flyers to 10,000 businesses. By persistent, I don’t mean be a pest. Propose next steps that keep the prospect moving forward and that advance prospects’ agendas. With direct mail, PR or email programs, only persistent repetitive efforts will yield desired rewards.
Bookstore shelves are filled with various methods of selling. Some work well overall. Some work with specific audiences or in particular types of sales. Some don’t work at all and are just plain silly.
Let’s hear from you. What’s the best and worst sales advice you’ve ever been given?
As always, we encourage guest bloggers. If you’d like to share your expertise, contact either of us.
Layout or desktop publishing is a primary task for many of us in preparing printed promotional materials. It’s often a challenging puzzle that tests our creative and communication abilities as we precisely weave graphics, photos, charts, pictures and text into an attractive page design that perfectly articulates our message. Normally, our job is done.
But what happens to that work if in addition to its domestic purpose in the U.S., you’ll use it in other countries – maybe a product brief for a trade show France, a request for information from a Japanese conglomerate or sales collateral for your reps located throughout Europe?
When faced with this dilemma, companies frequently turn to language agencies to get their pieces translated and laid out for their foreign audiences. It’s crucial that both the companies and agencies act in a single coordinated process.
Translation has the least impact the layout for Chinese and Korean. Their character strings are usually shorter and require less space than English. Japanese too can be shorter, though sometimes it can be longer than English if it’s a translation in a very honorific style.
The big challenges arise for European languages. German translations often require about 10 percent more space than English. Layout gets tougher in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, which take 20 percent more words to get the message across.
There are three solutions for these languages: build extra white space into the design; use a large English font to be replaced with a smaller, but still adequate, foreign font; or eliminate page-count restrictions. These scenarios afford ample space for language expansion, although the original English design may flow over onto additional pages.
What happens when the English page design is already tight? Or, when it just barely fits into the allocated two, four or eight pages? Now what do you do with the additional translated text?
In these cases, your language localization company needs to draw from a variety of skills as well as exercise some creativity. You’ll need to work closely with your agency to assure that the methods used still achieve your communication and graphic objectives.
Here are a few of the methods that our Auerbach team has developed over the years that you and your agency might add to your practices to avoid losing anything from your original design:
Reduce the point size of the type…as long as it is still legible.
Use a smaller or tighter font on the translated versions.
Reduce the top, bottom or side margins to expand the print area.
Reduce the kerning, the space between letters and lines.
Add an extra page or two. (Note that this can increase print costs and change the design.)
Shrink one of the graphics or pictures.
Eliminate one of the graphics or pictures, assuming that the words are more important.
If all else fails and the page count must be maintained as is, cut the extraneous English text by 10-20 percent, providing sufficient space for the translation to expand.
Conceiving the foreign layout in advance when you design an English template is just one of the many issues you’ll confront in a global business strategy. In future blogs, I’ll address more of these issues.
Are there some problems you’re currently wrestling with? Let us know with a comment below and I’m sure the combined know-how of the community can solve your problem.
In Part 1 of this series, I showed you how to develop a persona, a composite, which we called Donald T., that reflects the pertinent characteristics of your target customer. Today, I’ll begin showing you how to find and contact all of those who exhibit the characteristics of Donald T. or any other persona.
When you’ve rounded up their contact information on a spreadsheet or customer relationship management program, you can communicate with them as if they were a single person, who shared the same needs, pain points, buying habits, budgets, etc. Armed with such a list, personalizing direct-mail or email marketing programs, for example, becomes a snap. More important is the vertical direction the line takes on your response-rate chart.
2. Begin your search online free. A friend’s father advised him, If their free, take two. Well, here are five places to start searching for specific people free. Simply apply the information from Step 1 in my previous blog. Popular resources include Jigsaw.com to find specific names and contact information, Manta.com to locate small businesses, and ZoomInfo.com for contact information of people and companies.
Yahoo! Directory is great for discovering websites for thousands of businesses by industry categories. LinkedIn enables you to search its database for individuals and companies (and what individual or company is not on LinkedIn?) according to a number of parameters. If you search about, you’ll find other free resources online.
3. When to buy a list. Man, this is a lot of work. Why don’t I just buy a list? The best lists are always home grown. Always. However, sometimes you have no other choice than to purchase a list. In that case, describe your customers’ persona very specifically. You want to buy a sniper’s bullet, not a shotgun shell.
Is your offering for businesses or consumers? City or zip code? Age range? Sex? Income or revenue? Job title? Industry? Car model? Own or rent? Belong to a club? A ballet regular? Address? Telephone prefix? You’re after a list targeted for the sweet spot. Be specific, but know when to quit. More criteria tighten the focus, but increase the cost. So, request only what you need.
In Part 3 I’ll take you from in front of your computer to research a couple of places that are often overlooked. You have a few days until then – yep, here comes the homework – during which to take the characteristics from your persona and build a list or two using at least two of the five online resources in Step 2. Then, share with us how it went and any tips you discovered.
If you already have experience in this area, consider becoming a guest blogger and share your know-how with the rest of us. If you’re interested, contact either of us.
Whenever I meet clients for the first time, I ask them to describe their ideal target customer. I’m surprised how often I hear, “I don’t know. I sell to everyone.”
Marketing to everyone is a doomed effort. If you don’t know who and where your potential customers are, you can’t sell them anything. Marketing and PR promotions will never influence them.
If you can’t reach them, they must find you. Cross your fingers that they stumble on your company before they find your competitors.
Identifying your customers isn’t complicated. Your objective is to identify those with the highest potential. Once you know who they are, you can communicate with them as if the conversation was one on one. If you can handle more business, target the second-highest potential market segment in the same manner.
Don’t worry. The walk-ins will still find you. If you’re the best at therapeutic beds that eliminate back problems, others will assume that you’re likely a good person to ask about beds that induce sleep.
Here are five steps to guide you in identifying the sweet spot in your market. You’ll be amazed at the fantastic response you get when you’re marketing “face to face.”
1. Draw a picture of the ideal customer. Use traits and characteristics common to buyers in the market segment you’re targeting, frequently called a “persona.” Let’s randomly call our persona Donald T. What do you know or are able find out that would help you communicate and convince this typical persona. A place to start is to conduct an evaluation of your existing best customers.
Things that could help create the persona for Donald T. might include: his industry, company size, geography, location, title, role, sex, wants, needs and cares-abouts – to start.
How does he make his purchase decisions? Does he buy entry-level products or is he an early adopter of the latest technology? How does he most often find you? Which model and feature set of your product does he most often buy? Is he partial to a certain class of travel? Is fussy about his hair stylist?
This takes a bit of thought. Pretend you’re prepping for a one-on-one meeting with Donald T. When you know enough that if he walked in the door you could greet him with a slap on the shoulder and hand him the exact product he’s looking for before he asks, your ready for the next step.
In Part 2 of this series, we’ll begin address the entire market segment as if it is Donald T. and learn how to find him. Meanwhile, give some thought to your own Donald T., Bill G. or Warren B.
What other problems are you facing? Are you expert on a topic that will interest this community? Contact us. We’re always looking for what interests you and for expert guest bloggers.
In part one of this series aimed at showing you how to avoid the most common mistakes in publicity campaigns, I explained the right way to invite reporters to a promotion, coordinate the presentation process and avoid superfluous press releases.
Today, I’ll tell you how to handle the two biggest perceived demons in promotional marketing – villainous self-ware demos and those reporters who are out to get you.
4. Assume a demo of your new product will work right out of the crate. It may have worked back in the lab, but like HAL in “2001: Space Odyssey” they are self-aware and programmed to destroy your press event. No matter, there are never enough electrical sockets to set it up anyway.
Your only hope is to plan for every contingency: pack two working demos, have technicians on hand to fix it, check on all your site requirements in advance, bring extension cords and, most important, arrive at least two days early (so you can overnight what you wouldn’t need from the office).
5. Be afraid of reporters. Many people watch “60 Minutes” way too much and have an irrational concept of what reporters are after. Reporters are working stiffs, just like you and me. They want to do their jobs well and be home in time to see their kids play soccer.
You should have two goals when meeting a reporter. First, help them do their jobs. Tell your story so it will be relevant and understandable to their audiences. You also must work in your message while not confusing press interviews with a sales calls.
Second, consider this an opportunity to take the first steps toward establishing a relationship. Strive to be an expert and a resource.
I talk about PR and marketing communications a lot, but other areas of marketing have their perils as well. What would be your top mistakes to avoid?
What other problems are you facing? Want to guest blog? Let us know.
Earlier this month I posted a three-part series demonstrating how to develop a plan that gets the PR electricity streaming through your press and customers. The more carefully you plan, the less likely a misstep or surprise that could damage or even destroy your efforts.
To help you spot Murphy when he steps through the door, here are the five most common mistakes I see.
1. Send your invitation to the press and assume they will attend. Once is never enough. Begin three weeks ahead with emails every 2-3 days. After the third email, begin calling recalcitrant invitees. Follow up with email reminders four days in advance. Two days before the event, call those who didn’t respond to the reminder. The night before, email everyone, the details and directions “so it’s handy.”
Or, be more creative to capture their attention. Send the initial invitation by U.S. mail (yep, where you use a stamp) printed on a sample of your new product or on some handy gadget for their desks. Imagine their surprise, when they get something from a mail carrier.
2. Entrust speakers with developing their own presentations. Most will come with 50 disjointed slides and promise that they’ll “go quick.” None will be past slide 5 when their time expires. It will go unnoticed, however, because the audience fell asleep on slide 2. Instigate a mandatory presentation review process going from outline through the final. Conduct a minimum of one live practice session. 3. Schedule weekly press releases; subject TBD. New hires and promotions are news, right? No, but that’s generally where these projects end up going for grist. While I see this resolve to “get our name out there” frequently, press releases are always a waste. Thousands of press releases are issued each day. Even industry publications only cover the top few. Be creative, there are better ways to get your company’s name in the spotlight.
Tomorrow, in part 2 I’ll tell you how to handle the two biggest perceived demons in promotional marketing – villainous self-ware demos and those reporters who are out to get you.
What other problems are you facing? Want to guest blog? Let us know.
