The
15 Page Direct Marketing Action Plan
by Jeffrey Dobkin
If
the thought of writing 15 pages of material doesn’t scare you,
pick up your pen and complete a tremendous segment of your
marketing.
Here
are the pieces. The material you’ll write is a press
release, a cover letter, and a short series (2 or 3) of selling
letters to people who respond to your magazine or newspaper
write-ups. In addition, you’ll need an introductory
letter to better accounts, plus a slightly longer series of
letters to send to them over time. This is how all the
pieces fit together:
The
worst mistake you can make with a high quality lead is to send a
letter and a brochure, call a week later, and when there is no
immediate sale, file the lead - never to see it again until you
go through the drawer years later to clean it out. Ugh.
If your marketing programs sound like this, you’re missing
some of the easy sales you can get from minimal, inexpensive (33¢)
second and third efforts.
While
I don’t encourage clients to further beat a dead horse,
usually more than one piece of communication or advertising is
necessary to convert a a prospect into a sale that involves any
substantial amount of money. The basis for this principle
is what I call Multiple Exposure Marketing. Everyone has
their own favorite number of exposures for this: five sales
calls, seven ad exposures, 4 INTERNET page views, three phone
calls - I don’t care which number you chose as long as it’s
more than one. It simply takes more than one contact to
make a sizable sale. The larger sales really do go to the
people making these additional efforts.
To
separate real potential buyers from the universe of everyone who
may have any possible interest in your product, including your
competitors, you need to get a list of qualified names.
This is accomplished most commonly in several ways in the direct
marketing arena: first, you can buy a list: all possible
suspects by business, title, industry, market, age, income,
location, etc., narrowed down as far as possible by creative
list procurement, and whittled down further by database
enhancements to the list. So call a list broker (phone
book, INTERNET search), and make him or her work for their
money. Keep digging until you find the best list possible;
a little extra work here will be well worth it in terms of
increased response percentages.
The
$10,000 Plan
The second way to get suspects is to subscribe to the trade
journals sent to the industries or locations where you are
marketing. Either buy their subscription list, or take out an ad
in each of them, and place those who express an interest in your
product or services on your house mailing list. With this
method you’ll find you’ll need to invest about ten grand for
what you hope will be a great bunch of leads. Right. OR -
for most of my clients, it’s go to plan B. The 25 dollar
plan.
The
$25 Plan
Luckily, I happen to have a copy of Plan B in my file.
Here’s plan B. (For the money conscious, and the rest of us
mortals who drive old cars.) Go to the library, find the
magazines that serve the industries you are marketing to in the
SRDS Directory of Periodicals, or the new and nicely put
together Burrelle’s Media Directory, or Oxbridge
Communication’s Directory of Magazines, or Bacon’s Magazine
Directory. You can find your markets - and the magazines
that serve them - in less than an evening with any of these
fantastic marketing tools. These directories make finding
the trade journals and consumer interest-specific magazines
easier than ever.
Get
the magazines (for free) by calling their advertising
departments and requesting a media kit. This is the kit
publishers send when a potential advertiser calls and needs the
magazine’s advertising rates. The magazine people know when
media kits go out, the money comes in… and they send them
promptly - via First Class Mail. While you’re on the
phone with the magazine folks, ask if they print a directory or
annual reference issue and ask for that, too. Usually the
publishers sell their annual directory, but if you request it at
this time under the umbrella of “We may buy advertising space
in this,” it’s always sent for free. It’s a powerful
industry resource to find the major players.
As
they arrive, read through the magazines looking for
competitor’s ads. If you see a competitor’s ad, call the
magazine and find out how often your competitor runs it.
This will tell you how well the magazine is working for them.
Assess
the market fit of each magazine: assign each particular magazine
a letter grade between A and F of the likeliness of having an ad
work profitably in that publication for your product.
Write this letter grade on the cover, along with the cost of a
full page ad, and a 1/4 page ad. Finally, 3. note if there
is a column or department devoted to new products or product
briefs. This will appear as a spread of small product
photos, each followed by a one or two paragraph write-up.
This is the way press releases appear in print. Write the
name of this column on the cover, too.
Now
throw out the plethora of brochures, rate cards, and other
extraneous material the magazine folks sent you. Boy, they
sure like to write, don’t they? Save the magazines in
which you are considering placing an ad, and also the ones that
may accept your press release. Just save the covers of the
other magazines - so in 6 months when you can’t remember which
magazines you reviewed and what they looked like, you’ll have
a record of it. A thin record.
Read
through the remaining magazines that are applicable to your
markets. Write a one page press release as described in my
books, How To Market A Product For Under $500!, and Uncommon
Marketing Techniques. Send the release to the ones that
accept releases, along with a cover letter that mentions how you
enjoy their magazine, and that you have included a release for
their column entitled “xxxx,” and specifically name the
column. This alerts the editor you are serious about being
in their industry, you read their magazine, and you did your
homework by being familiar with their new product column.
This increases your chances for receiving a free press write-up
by about 25%.
If
you really want to increase the chance of having your press
release published - by about 80% - call the editors of the top
10 or 12 magazines on the top of your hit list, and ask “Are
you the correct person I should send this release to?”
Make sure you have a quality one minute spiel about your product
ready. When they say yes, send them your press release,
and be sure to include a cover letter that lets them know it was
nice speaking with them even if it wasn’t. This reminds
the editor you are the one that called and spoke with them
personally. This “personal contact” reminder is
invaluable in ensuring your release will be published.
Send
all your press releases with personalized letters, and include
clear crisp black and white product photos (5” x 7”).
It will take about three months before the releases get printed
in magazines and start to generate leads for you.
Newspapers are much faster - you’ll receive leads in under two
weeks. You don’t get this time off. While you’re
waiting for the magazines to publish your release, get busy with
the next part.
Part
Two
Create a sales letter campaign you’ll send to people
responding to your magazine press release. Make sure you
write about the BENEFITS of your product and what’s in it for
them. Include reasons to “buy now.” Offer
something special to close the sale immediately - a premium or
free gift works well here. If possible include a business
reply envelope they can enclose money in when they send an
order. And include an order form to increase the
likelihood they understand they are to order now! Create a
second sales letter and data sheet (black and white brochure),
mail two to three weeks later. If it’s a hot list or the
initial response is very good, mail a third letter. As
with all approaches, test this 2 and 3 part mailing for
profitability.
Scour
the magazines and directories for the names and addresses of
better prospects. Make calls to large firms in your
markets to find out the names of big purchasers at each firm.
No need to talk to them just yet, this is merely an
information-gathering call and pretty easy to do. The rest
of the writing comes to seduce your absolute best magazine
prospects and your hand-picked prospect list of about 100
people. Write a series of sales letters - maybe 6 or 7 -
and send them to these “best of the best” prospects every
three to four weeks. This is a short campaign to win
the hearts and minds of your newly acquired prospective customer
base.
Create
a winning direct mail campaign - with a hard hitting
benefit-rich letter, data sheet (or brochure if you have one),
BRE, and order form. The letter is the key to selling
through the mail, make sure yours is benefit heavy, and asks for
the order (the objective of the piece) several times and again
in the PS.
Start
out the first of the letter series like every other sales
letter, with an interest-arousing short opening paragraph, then
dive right into benefits, benefits, benefits. No need to
be pushy here, you still have 5 or 6 more letters to go.
Second letter: still casual and friendly, “In my last
letter to you on May 9th, I mentioned several benefits we offer
over our competitors’ models. There are several
additional benefits I’d like to highlight that will save you
quite a bit of time and work.” Now feel free to mention
additional benefits.
Over
the next 5 letters create a friendly dialog and rapport with
your prospect. All letters are personalized and no
prospect knows anyone else is receiving the series besides
himself. A letter is a powerful sales vehicle, and the
most effective personal marketing tool you can buy for under a
dollar. Each letter gets progressively harder selling.
Ask for the order. Cajole. Plead. Be frank.
Be sincere. But be friendly… and be persistent, and the
sales will come.
If
you decide to call these people after this multiple exposure
letter campaign, I guarantee recipients will all know who you
are at the first mention of your name. If the letters are
constructed to be friendly and persuasive they’ll all feel
good about purchasing from your firm. Yes, from just a few
letters. From just a few 33¢ letters.
© 1999 Jeffrey Dobkin
Jeffrey
Dobkin, author of the incredible 400-page marketing manual, How
To Market A Product For Under $500! and
Uncommon
Marketing Techniques Both
books are available directly from the publisher. The books are
filled with tips and techniques to make small business marketing
faster, cheaper, more effective and fun. You never learned this
stuff in college! Mr. Dobkin demonstrates practical how-to
direct marketing techniques. He’s also a speaker, a direct
mail copywriter for both large and small firms, and a marketing
consultant. To place an order, or to speak with Mr. Dobkin
call 610/642-1000. Phone orders welcome - Visa, M/C, AMEX.
From The Danielle Adams Publishing Company, Box 100, Merion
Station, PA 19066. Satisfaction Always Guaranteed.
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