14KB
The Direct Mail Solution — Chapter-11: Why You Should Be an Information Marketer
- Source: /library/The Direct Mail Solution/source-file.pdf
- PDF pages: 216–223
- Pages without text: none
195
Why You Should
Be an Information
Marketer
By Dan S. Kennedy
NE OF THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF A DIRECT-MAIL PIECE OR
package to elicit response is an offer. In seeking response
from new people, new prospects, and leads or first-time
customers, the nature of the offer is critical. A common approach is
the irresistible offer directly involving the goods or services of the
marketer, often featuring a huge discount or even a free trial, exam,
consultation, etc. A more interesting approach, far less hazardous to
your price integrity, is the irresistible information offer.
A financial advisor client of mine, under my direction, switched
her lead-generation advertising in print, on radio, and by direct mail
to offering relevant, interesting information “widgets” (reports,
book, CD, online video, etc.) in place of “call for appointment” or
“attend my workshop.” The results?
O
CHAPTER
11
196
THE DIRECT-MAIL SOLUTION
CHAPTER 11 / WHY YOU SHOULD BE AN INFORMATION MARKETER
- Fewer leads,
- higher cost per lead . . . BUT
- higher conversion of prospects to clients,
- better, more valuable clients,
- more easily sold to and managed, and thus
- more money from fewer clients and less work. Direct mail is the perfect vehicle for offering information. Proof: The entire newsletter industry, a thriving, multibillion-dollar industry revolves around direct mail for securing new subscribers. Proof and important news: In almost every category where businesses sell products or services, there are excellent mailing lists of consumers who have paid to get information about that subject matter. If you own an organic grocery, there are lists of people who’ve paid for information about healthier eating and cooking. If you own a sporting goods store, there are lists of people who’ve paid for information about playing better golf, rock climbing, or running marathons. People who pay to get certain information are very likely to respond to an offer for interesting free information of the same nature. This is how you build a bridge on which a customer can walk to you and then buy and become a customer, rather than asking them to leap. Direct mail does something interesting in the book business, too. In 2011 through 2012 there were over 200 books about diabetes published traditionally, for sale in bookstores, via Amazon, etc. Many were nearly dead on arrival, never even selling their small first printings. Fewer than 10% topped 15,000 copies sold. Average price: $10. In that same time period, a friend of mine sold over 200,000 copies of his diabetes book at about $50, at a profit, entirely and exclusively via direct mail, using the kinds of lists I described in Chapter 7. This is called Direct-to-Consumer Publishing. It bypasses all agents, editors, publishers, interference with the author, distribution, forced discounting, and, by showing up alone, all competition. And by creating a mailing list, it provides a basis for
THE DIRECT-MAIL SOLUTION
197
CHAPTER 11 / WHY YOU SHOULD BE AN INFORMATION MARKETER
a business behind the book. This is but one example of thousands
that prove people will respond to offers of relevant information about
health offered via direct mail, and that should fascinate any dentist,
chiropractor, medical doctor, psychologist, child psychologist, hospital
administrator, etc.
There are similar examples in home improvement, gardening,
fitness and exercise, weight loss, planning vacations, travel, investing,
and hundreds more.
Yet, faced with these facts, the overwhelming majority of merchants,
marketers, and professionals insist on advertising and selling their
products or services instead of (first) offering information. The example
of the diabetes book should tell every hospital executive and every
doctor how to successfully use direct mail to attract top quality patients.
But instead, most advertise and promote emergency rooms, having the
number-two top-rated heart surgeon in Kansas, providing back-pain
relief or dental implants, and so on. Opportunity is knocking, and they
are stuffing cotton in their ears.
This is a perfect example of having profitable facts staring you in
the face and refusing to acknowledge them, let alone capitalize on them.
Sad, really.
Even when it is clearly shown and explained to people, demonstrated
with examples upon example, laid out bare, no secrets concealed, as I
frequently do, businesspeople quite literally turn their back on it and
return to their selling of their products or services just as they’ve been
selling them all along. Despite declining results and diminishing returns,
they ignore all just told to you here and every example shown to them.
The author of Think And Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill, cited
“habit-force” as the most powerful of all forces, and I suppose he
was right. People are blinded and made deaf, trapped and imprisoned,
and intellectually retarded by their habits of thought and habitual ways
of doing things. Just as I pull somebody out of their “like everybody
else” advertising and selling of the cars or chiropractic care or whatever,
their habit-force pulls them back in.
198
THE DIRECT-MAIL SOLUTION
CHAPTER 11 / WHY YOU SHOULD BE AN INFORMATION MARKETER
How to Break the Chains of Habit-Force
and Escape the “Like Everybody Else” Prison
Maybe you are ready for a radical replacement of the “like everybody
else” advertising and marketing rut. Some people, by the way,
advertise and market like everybody else, but scream “Better.” Others
advertise and market like everybody else, but scream “Cheaper.”
Others advertise and market like everybody else, but try trickery:
“This Weekend Only.” But they are all still advertising and marketing
like everybody else. IF you are ready for a radical replacement for the
“like everybody else” advertising and marketing rut, and you actually
follow through, break the chains of habit-force, and do something
authentically different, know—and take pride in the fact—that you are
the rarest of rare birds.
If you are such a bird, here is what to do.
STOP advertising, marketing, and pitching your company, your
products, your services, your prices, your sales event—whatever it
is that you have habitually been pushing.
CREATE relevant, appealing information and put it into an
information “Widget” that your potential customers will want
to get, have, find out about, and know.
ONLY advertise, market, and promote that Widget. Nothing
else. Just it.
USE DIRECT MAIL to offer your Widget to the most qualified
potential customers you can identify.
Then—and only then—after someone has stepped forward and
asked for your information Widget, and you have used your Widget
to demonstrate expertise, trustworthiness, and whatever other factors
would make someone prefer to do business with you and rule out all
other alternatives—may you invite the potential customer to a next
step, leading to a sale. Until then, you may not wave your brand flag
or cute logo or clever slogan. Until then, you may not even mention
THE DIRECT-MAIL SOLUTION
199
CHAPTER 11 / WHY YOU SHOULD BE AN INFORMATION MARKETER
your product or service. Until then, you may not show your product,
mention awards won, show your store or office, refer to price,or
guarantee or any product features or benefits. You can not promise
coupons or discounts.
If, for example, you own a fine restaurant and you plan to mail
a letter to married men in your area two months in advance of their
wedding anniversaries to offer them a free guide for “planning the
most amazing anniversary date your wife has ever had and will never
forget, for under $300,” your letter cannot mention your restaurant, its
views, its wine cellar, its five-star rating, its Kobe beef. None of that.
Understand that habit-force will tempt you to muck this up. This is an
unfamiliar road less traveled. I get that. It involves what I teach as The
Strategy of the Delayed Sale. You can find additional information about
it and examples of it in my book No B.S. Sales Success in the New Economy,
and in a book I co-authored with Chip Kessler, Making Them Believe: The
21 Lost Marketing Secrets of Dr. J.R. Brinkley.
If you are going to take this approach, and take it seriously, you will
study actual information marketers in relevant categories—those selling
books, courses, newsletters, etc., direct to consumers by direct mail (and
other media as well). You will stop studying and copycatting your peers
and trying to somehow advertise as they do but incrementally better.
You will become an information marketer, with the only difference
on the “back-end”: where their back-end businesses are more books,
subscriptions, seminars, etc., yours is a restaurant or a gym or a
financial advisory service. But on the “front-end,” you and they will
be indistinguishable cousins. To get started, I suggest buying some
books and subscribing to some newsletters from Direct to Consumer
Publishers in your category. If you aren’t on its mailing lists now,
you can back in through online media. Use search, find its sites, buy,
subscribe. You’ll quickly be on a mailing list rented to many mailers.
Also, check out the Information Marketing Association at www.info-
marketing.org.
200
THE DIRECT-MAIL SOLUTION
CHAPTER 11 / WHY YOU SHOULD BE AN INFORMATION MARKETER
The Low-Threshold vs. High-Threshold Secret
In the book Uncensored Sales Secrets by Sydney Barrows, which I
contributed to, we introduce mall developer Arnold Taubman’s concept
of “threshold resistance.” In retail, he means it to describe how inviting
or how off-putting the front of a store or restaurant is and what can
be seen immediately inside it. He says many retailers set up too much
threshold resistance.
Many marketers do the same thing with the reason and means
of response they offer. High thresholds require a person to call,
knowing they will talk to a (dreaded) salesperson, or to come into
a store or showroom where she will be confronted by a (dreaded)
salesman. High thresholds make the response about buying the
product or service. One of the lowest thresholds is “let me send you
information about.”
Elsewhere in this book, Craig talks to you about list segmentation.
I want you to understand that it is linked to the allocation of
financial resources. If you have, for example, $10,000.00 to invest,
you can spread it wide and thin, with outreach to 5,000 people at $2
each. Or to 500 people who are somehow known to be much more
interested, at $20 each. Or to just 100 known to be hyperinterested,
at $100 each. Clearly, the more invested in each prospect, the more
impact you can have. By first advancing a low-threshold offer, you
carve a segment out of a big list (or create a list from advertising
in other media) so that you can then invest in those who have
demonstrated interest.
In the book Buy Now, infomercial industry peers of mine, Rick
Cesari and Ron Lynch, explain the making of the multimillion-
dollar Juiceman-brand countertop juicer business this way. When
spokesperson Jay Kordich did thousands of radio interviews and
the breakthrough TV appearance on The Today Show, he didn’t pitch
the juicer or offer literature about it. He offered free healthy-eating
recipes. People who took the trouble to write in and request those
THE DIRECT-MAIL SOLUTION
201
CHAPTER 11 / WHY YOU SHOULD BE AN INFORMATION MARKETER
recipes identified themselves as very interested in healthier eating and
curing health problems naturally. Those were the prospects to invest
substantially in marketing to. They built their list with a low-threshold,
perceived high-value, free offer of information.
If you would like to see the low-threshold offer used at GKIC,
available to you as a test-drive of all the marketing resources and
support offered, refer to Craig’s GKIC affiliate site www.dankennedy.
com/DirectMailSolution.
If You Are Going to Do Direct Mail,
You’ll Be Fighting for Response
Direct mail reveals—painfully—a truth about all advertising and
marketing that a lot of other media hides: Only a tiny, tiny percentage
of people give their attention to your advertising or marketing. Most
ignore you. With a lot of ad media, you don’t realize how much you
are being ignored. But with direct mail we know. Because there’s no
ambiguity about the investment being made, we must fight for every
response.
In the football movie On Any Given Sunday, the coach played by
Al Pacino gives a locker room speech about inches. About fighting
hard for each and every inch, for victory or defeat is not really the
result of a dramatic big play that covers half the field. If such a play
appears to win the game, it was made possible by winning the battle
of inches, and it mattered because the battle of inches was won.
Success in business in toto works the same way. Success with direct
mail profoundly works this way. Each headline choice, each photo
choice, each graphic choice, and each list choice matters even if it
affects only one person per hundred reading it (the rough result of
10,000 getting it).
Your decisions about the height of the threshold and the amount of
threshold resistance your offer engenders must be the best they can be.
At times, you will want to discourage mass, poorly qualified response.
202
THE DIRECT-MAIL SOLUTION
CHAPTER 11 / WHY YOU SHOULD BE AN INFORMATION MARKETER
But know that the response you do get will have been fought for and
hard won. Be careful not to ask too much of your direct mail or of your
brand-new prospect or first-time customer, client, patient, or donor.