Insider’s Secrets For Making Direct Mail Work

This is the first in a series of weekly articles dedicated to helping you take contol of your own marketing in the "New Economy" both on and off line.


Direct Marketing has components that are easy to teach and are based on principles of testing and retesting, such as placement of headlines, sub heads, and the use of a “Johnson Box” or two. However, there is a huge variable and that variable is your customer. How well you know your customer base and how in-tuned you are to the desires and needs of your customer are crucial.

To teach someone how to avoid writing an unsuccessful direct mail piece is much easier and more predictive of success than teaching someone how to write a guaranteed winner. Even professional direct mail copywriters who earn big bucks cannot guarantee all of their direct mail pieces will bring the desired response.

An effective direct mail marketing piece, whether a post card, letter, or a brochure, must encompass the secret ingredients. Each must include the secret ingredients and each must be able to convince your customer to buy based on its own merits. To begin with your direct mail piece needs an opening headline or short paragraph that accomplishes at least one of these three things:

*Communicates your offer
*Stresses the premier feature of your offer
*Targets your reader

By beginning with these key elements you prepare your customer for your offer by grabbing their attention immediately and “warm them up” to your offer.

Look for more marketing nuggets in the days to come.

The Marketer of Marketing,
Pete Swartz

Marketing Campaign , Big or Small…?

I hope everyone is taking some time to reflect on 2008. It has been quite a year and hopefully there has been lessons learned.

I know I have taken away a whole new prospective on what it will take to market a business in the “New Economy”.

The world of marketing is changing right before our eyes. We are seeing the decline of newspaper media advertising and the explosion of Social Media/Web2.0 advertising.

What does this mean to you? Well as before you needed a well rounded marketing plan to be on top of your business and that included paper and ink. Well now you don’t need as much hard copy and you need to deliver your message virally.

If you know how to do this you have the advantage of the slight edge which will let you survive in the “New Economy”. Ignore these principles and you will go by the wayside.

So, it’s your choice! Join us at the Oakland County Chapter of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle and see what a New Economy Marketing Plan looks like. We will give you two complete campaigns, one small, one large that you can implement in your business immediately. Hint, neither one contains Detroit Freepress advertising!

So, see you there on January 28th at the Marriot Residence Inn, 2600 Livernois Rd., Troy at 6:30pm. We will provide dinner, beverage and dessert. Your first meeting is FREE!

See you there!

Think and Grow Rich

Here it is Saturday night and I am still thinking about this months meeting we had last Wednesday evening. Napoleon Hill was with us in that meeting in spirit.

We experienced his observations that all of the successful entrepreneurs he studied had one thing in common, they all had a mastermind group. Well we had a Hot Seat session at our meeting that turned into a great mastermind experience. Our Charter member, Dave Miller, got an absolute boatload of great ideas to enhance his automotive delivery software business.

On top of that, I spoke with him this morning and he has secured a joint venture with another software company to distribute his software. All from one Oakland County GKIC Chapter meeting.

If that wasn't enough content for one meeting, we had an extraordinary guest speaker, Lisa Lapides Sawicki. She bowled them over with her expertese and ideas on how to get publicity. Mainly on how to develop your angle and get your press release published. She is truly a professional. www.lapidespublicity.com

The cat is out of the bag! We have been working on a major enhancement to the Oakland County Chapter of Glazer-Kennedy Indider's Circle and we let it slip last Wednesday. The finished product will be unveiled at the December 17th meeting so don't miss that live event.

Keep in touch and please keep Marketing!

The Marketer of Marketing
Pete Swartz
www.oaklandcounty-gkic.com
989-312-1140

The New Economy

What are you going to do with your marketing plan as the New Economy unfolds?
Well as I see it, when everyone is pulling in their horns and slashing the marketing budget, you should be strategically target marketing to swoop in and coral their customers.
The method of choice for such a smooth move is direct response marketing. By strategic I mean calculated spending of marketing dollars so you know your ROI for each campaign.
You should use multiple medias and repeat your message on each one. The target customer is determined by segmenting your existing customer base and marketing to more of the same.
You need to grasp the concept of working on your business more and in your business less. Marketing is the real business you're in not what your shingle states.
To learn more about these strategies and how to implement them, you should join us at our local marketing meeting, October 22nd at the Courtyard Inn, 1525 E. Maple, Troy, MI at 6:30pm. Come check us out, it's free for first timer's and we'll even feed you.
Register now at www.oaklandcounty-gkic.com or call me direct at 989-312-1140.

The Marketer of Marketing
Pete Swartz

The Most Incredible Free Gift Ever..!

How To Turn 42 Cents Into A Customer

Dan Kennedy Archives
Successful Marketing Strategies-

I am not a great fan of the United States Postal Service. Overall there's no doubt in my mind that it is a poorly managed, inefficient, financially troubled operation sadly in need of reform. But in spite of all its faults that system gives you a powerful and effective sales force at a bargain price.Using the postman as your salesman via direct mail advertising is a great bargain and one of the most effective marketing strategies available to most businesses. Direct mail gives the marketer tremendous control over the sales process. You can do direct mail marketing cost effectively in relatively small quantities. You control who gets your advertising and who does not. You can control to a great degree when they get it. You can test and evaluate a promotion very inexpensively before committing a big budget.There really is no other media that gives you all of these advantages for the delivery price of a postage stamp. There have been many studies done to determine the average cost of sending a rep out to make a personal sales call, getting an ordinary business letter done and out of the office or making a telemarketing call.My observation is that the bigger the company, the higher the cost. But even in well run cost efficient situations, these marketing methods can easily cost from ten dollars to a hundred dollars or more per prospect contacted. At that cost they are not the way to prospect for new business.Advertising in newspapers and magazines, radio, TV and cable TV also has a cost factor problem, mammoth waste. When you buy this type of advertising, you're paying for distribution outside your market area, copies that never reach readers and circulation to recipients who have no possible interest in what you have to offer.Most businesses can benefit tremendously from the more controlled targeted process of direct mail advertising. In the Success Marketing Strategies emails that follow, I want to give you some insight into the three aspects of success in direct marketing advertising and introduce you to the two most common, most successful formats you can use in direct mail advertising.

Dedicated To Multiplying Your Wealth

The Marketer Of Marketing
Pete Swartz
http://www.oaklandcounty-gkic.com/
From Dan Kennedy Archives