This might sound like an easy question but I often get various responses.
I just want to get my message out there or I’m trying to let people know what we do and my all-time favorite, branding.
There is nothing wrong with any of these responses per se but none of them are very specific.
It would be like saying I want to lose weight this year.
Sounds great to say it but if you lost one pound have you succeeded?
Marketing, like goals, needs to be specific.
If it’s vague you can’t measure it and if you can’t measure it, it’s not worth spending money on it.
Marketing is one of the most important things you can do in your business, with the only thing being more important than marketing, sales.
When the cash register rings, that is the most important thing to happen in your business.
Nothing carries more weight or importance and the number one way to make sales is through good, specific marketing.
Marketing with a direct response.
Direct response marketing has been around for many years, many believe it was perfected by Claude Hopkins.
Hopkins discusses direct response marketing in his book My Life In Advertising which was published in 1927.
I’ve read it multiple times and I can tell you much of what Claude was doing back then is the same things that work today because deep down, people are still people.
People buy for two main reasons:
- They believe your product or service will solve their problem.
- They believe your product or service will make their life better.
Sometimes both.
The most important aspect of direct response marketing is, the marketing itself requests a response from the reader.
The desired response from 1920’s through 2000 might have been to make a purchase, but that typically does not work as well today especially if you sell high ticket items or you are a service business that is on a more “as needed” basis.
But what hasn’t changed is the way the marketing works.
One of the best structures for marketing today is similar to law.
You present your case, “the problem” if you will.
You want to make sure the reader or listener clearly understands the problem and if they have the problem you want them to keep reading or keep listening.
If your product or service is designed to make their life better you need to show them how their life is incomplete now when you present your case.
Then you want to tell show them how to solve the problem or make their life better.
You don’t have to solve the problem in your marketing, but you do need to make sure that they understand that it can be solved and during this stage of marketing you want them to understand that you are really good at solving this problem or you are really good at making their life better in that area.
An expert if you will.
It’s also really important to understand you do not need to be the only one who is good or who is an expert at solving this problem you just need to be the one they know about.
The next step is to make sure they understand that you want to help them solve this problem. You want to present some type of offer of assistance.
This allows the reader or listener to come to you if, and only if, they want the problem solved and are ready to do something about it.
Here’s a sad reality, many people have problems but they never do a damn thing about them. They never take any action to solve their problem.
They just keep on trucking day after day thinking it will fix itself.
I have worked with thousands of people and have spoken to many more.
What amazes me more than anything else is how many people tell me they want to fix a problem really bad and they are almost ready to fix it but then they take no action to fix it.
The list of excuses I have heard is many.
They have a major problem that, if they will just fix it, they won’t have it any more.
Don’t get hung up on these types of people, they will always have problems and they are not the customer you are seeking anyway.
You want a customer who is willing to take action right now.
How many doctors do you think have told people that they have to lose weight, eat a certain diet or stop doing something detrimental to their health, but those people never change?
These are not and will never be your ideal customer so simply move on and find the ones who are.
The final step in good marketing is you want to ask for a response from your customer.
The response in the days of Claude Hopkins might have been to take out your purse and send money in an envelope and wait.
Today the desired response can be many.
You might want them to download something, listen to this, watch this, sign up for a class and the list goes on and on.
Understand that in good marketing you never have to sell anything. Each step allows you to find out if the customer has a problem they need solved, or that will make their life to be better in some area and as they move through your marketing funnel, eventually they will either purchase or move on.
The process to the sale can sometimes take years but does that matter if you have lots of people, who would be your perfect customer, moving through the process?
Most don’t take that long so you get sales today and down the road.
Too many people make marketing out to be something it is not.
Marketing requires a response and the number one way to build a marketing system is with a direct response customer acquisition system.
I help entrepreneurs to set up a direct response customer acquisition system.
Once built, you have new customers coming in week after week month after month.
A direct response customer acquisition system works in any economy and you need to understand the best time to get your marketing right is in a good economy, not after the market turns.
Once the market turns the casualties are many.
But it’s never too late to start but by all means start.
Right now I believe the best platform on the planet for getting new customers is LinkedIn.
It’s not the only place but simply one of the best to kick your business into high gear.
Once you learn how to use your direct response customer acquisition system with LinkedIn you can then branch off to other platforms.
If you would like to learn how you can set up your own direct response customer acquisition system, you can attend a live webinar on Thursday, where I will cover this very subject in depth.
To sign up just click this link.
I’ll see you on Thursday.
To your lifelong prosperity,
David Mulvaney
P.S. If you would like to learn more about what you can do to make your business more profitable check out my blog at DavidMulvaney.com