The 15 Page Direct Marketing Action Plan
by Jeff Dobkin
© 1996 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 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 (32¢) 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 suspect into 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 strikes, 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 two ways in the direct marketing arena: first by buying a list of all possible suspects, narrowed down as far as possible by creative list procurement, and whittled down further by database enhancements to the list. So call your list broker, 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 second way to get suspects is to subscribe to the trade journals sent to the industries where you are marketing. Then 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.
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. 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. The magazine people know when media kits go out, the money comes in and they send them promptly. 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 it’s working for them.
2. 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 ads, 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, send 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 a free press write-up by about 25%.
If you really want to increase the chance of having your release printed - by about 80% - call the editor 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 you send your press release, be sure to include a cover letter that lets them know it was nice speaking with them even if it wasn’t. This reminds them you are the one that called and spoke with them personally. This reminder is invaluable in ensuring your release will be published.
Send all your releases with personalized letters, and include clear crisp black and white product photos (5Ó x 7Ó). It will take about three months before the releases get printed and start to generate leads for you. 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 Deux. 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. If possible include a business reply envelope they can enclose money in when they send an order. And an order form to increase the likelihood they understand they are to order now! Create a second sales letter and data sheet, 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 very 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 series like every other sales letter, with an interest arousing short opening, 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 them but themselves. 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 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 32¢ letters.
Jeffrey Dobkin, author of the incredible 400-page marketing manual, How To Market A Product for Under $500 ($29.95) has a second book, Uncommon Marketing Techniques ($17.95) - 33 of his latest columns on small business marketing, exactly like the one you just read; and now a 10-audio course on marketing through classified ads called "The Intelligent Testing System". His informational products are available directly from the publisher - 800-234-IDEA. His writing is completely filled with tips and techniques to make your marketing faster, cheaper, more effective - and fun. You never learned this stuff in college! Dobkin cut through the theoretical crap and demonstrates a wealth of practical how-to direct marketing techniques. He is also a speaker, a direct mail copywriter, and a marketing consultant. To place an order, or to speak with Mr. Dobkin call 610/642-1000. Fax 610/642-6832. Phone orders welcome - Visa, M/C, AMEX. From The Danielle Adams Publishing Company, Box 100, Merion Station, PA 19066. Or visit him at www.dobkin.com. Satisfaction Always Guaranteed.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
More Website Marketing Articles
More By Developer Shed
 developerWorks - FREE Tools!
|
This whitepaper presents the benefits of successfully introducing static analysis into your organization using IBM Rational Software Analyzer. Additionally, it identifies some common pitfalls that can hinder the effective use of static analysis tooling as well as presents 10 simple strategies designed to help you quickly realize the value of static analysis using Rational Software Analyzer.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Build secure Web services with transport-level security using IBM Rational Application Developer V7 and IBM WebSphere Application Server V6.1. Follow this three-part series for step-by-step instructions about how to develop Web services and clients, configure HTTP basic authentication, and configure HTTP over SSL (HTTPS). This first part of the series walks you through building a Web service for a simple calculator application. You generate and test two different types of Web services clients: a Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) client and a stand-alone Java client. You also handle user-defined exceptions in Web services.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Download the Rational Application Developer (RAD) v7.5 open beta code and start developing applications for the JEE5 standard which features EJB3.0, JPA, JSF 1.2, JSP 2.1 and Servlet 2.5 standards. When you use this beta you will see how you can increase developer productivity for already existing applications with improved support for refactoring, as well as adding new features to existing applications. In addition, the beta provides tooling for JD Edwards, Oracle, SAP, Siebel and PeopleSoft to improve the developer productivity with these enterprise systems.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial of the latest release of IBM Lotus Sametime Standard V8.0. Lotus Sametime Standard V8.0 is a platform for unified communications and collaboration that combines security features with an extensible, open solution including integrated Voice over IP, geographic location awareness, mobile clients, and a robust Business Partner community offering telephony and video integration.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
This tutorial shows new users of IBM WebSphere Business Monitor Version 6.0.2 how to perform the "Hello World" equivalent for monitoring business process applications. It is intended to help you get familiar with the capabilities of the product.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Manage, govern, and share services across your organization by using WebSphere Service Registry and Repository. Follow the hands-on exercises to learn how to navigate the Web interface to publish, find, reuse, and update services.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Rational Build Forge Express Edition is an automation framework that packages the latest enterprise-grade technologies into a reliable, flexible and robust configuration designed and priced specifically for small to midsize businesses. The new Rational Build Forge Express eKit provides you with valuable resources – including a case study, podcast, demo, and articles – to help you increase staff productivity, compress development cycles and deliver better software, fast.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Join this Rational Talks to You teleconference on December 4 at 1:00 pm ET to discuss how Rational Method Composer can help meet your compliance objectives. Get your questions answered!
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Whether you are creating new applications or modifying existing ones, managing integration of new components with traditional z/OS elements is a critical part of building and deploying modern applications. Listen to this webcast to see how IBM can help you optimize your development process using an IDE like Rational Developer for System z that integrates with management tools, such as ClearCase to manage your application development on mainframes.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
User communities play an important role in communication and collaboration around products, solutions and other areas of special interest to members. Successful communities are able to provide the right mix of content and services to deliver a value proposition that resonates with each audience. Join Tom Inman, VP of Marketing for Information and Platform Solutions as he introduces the new LeverageINFORMATION community. During this webcast, learn about the value provided by the community and how customers and partners derive value from the community in addressing their own technical and business challenges.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!
|
