Just like mom told you… “Say the magic words.”

How many truly great television commercials have you seen in your life? I can probably count on one hand the ones I judge as great. Most television commercials give credence to a favorite – but slightly altered – quote by P.T. Barnum: “You will never go broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” Originally he used the word “intelligence.”

The most dismal television commercials are those that show a person doing something really stupid, making the person appear stupid. Then the ad shows that person buying the product being advertised. My take-away from the commercial is that only stupid people buy this product. I’m not stupid, so I won’t be buying this product.

Maybe they feel they can get away with that approach because most commercials, after all, are just advertising. TV advertising, in particular, is designed to change attitude while attempting to entertain. Direct marketing, on the other hand, is designed to change behavior. The big difference is that most brand advertising has no call to action. The sad fact is, however, that a frightening amount of direct marketing I see has no clear call to action either.

Your prospects are not stupid, but that doesn’t mean they are able to instantly guess what you want them to do.

• Do you want them to download your white paper? Say it.

Download your copy of “5 Ways to Survive and Thrive in Today’s Economy” now.

• Do you want them to opt in for your eNewsletter? Say it.

Sign up now for critical alerts via email.

• Do you want them to call for a personal assessment? Say it.

Call now for your personal assessment of your disaster readiness.

• Do you want them to sign up for your upcoming Webinar? Say it.

Register now to hear industry analyst Robert Smith reveal this new technology.

Not only do you have to tell them what you want them to do, but you have to tell them when you want them to do it. “Now” or “Today” are magic words in marketing. Do they make a difference? Companies in the direct marketing business have tested this and found that the addition of the words “Now” and “Today” do make a difference in response.

So just like you were told as a child to say “please” and “thank you,” the words “Now” and “Today” are a marketer’s magic words.

Doing marketing math avoids painful experiences.

The wonderful gentleman who recently gave us a tour of the Seamen’s Bethel in New Bedford, Massachusetts gave us a look into some interesting history of the area. It was about the poor, often uneducated farm boys in the mid-1800s who were wooed into signing up for a whaling voyage with the promise of riches amounting to (what sounded like) a substantial share of the money that voyage produced.

Often 18 to 36 months in length, these voyages meant long hours of backbreaking work that ultimately wore out the seaman’s boots and clothes, which they had to replace with purchase from the on-board “slop shop.” These purchases used up the seaman’s entire take, leaving him with nothing upon his return.

If these poor boys had had the ability to do more than simple math, they could have realized how little they were being promised and could have avoided the painful experience altogether.

In marketing, doing the math also avoids painful experiences.

Marketing campaigns require a lot more than knowing your budget and how many sales that budget needs to generate. When planning a marketing program, it’s critical to run these numbers:

1. Is the universe large enough to deliver the numbers you need? Say, for example, you are marketing to Fortune 1000 companies and ultimately want the campaign to produce 30 sales or 3%. If, on average, your sales force closes one sale out of 10 meetings, then you need 300 meetings to close 30 sales. Is this reasonable? Or do you need to broaden your prospect universe?
2. Can your sales force handle the inquiries your program will generate? If you are inviting a prospect base of 10,000 to participate in a survey (which can generate 5% to 25% response rates) and you want your sales force to personally contact each participant, can they handle that kind of volume?
3. What do you have to spend to generate those leads? Reaching CEOs usually requires the use of a more costly delivery method such as FedEx® or a dimensional mailer that can get past the gatekeeper and grab attention.
4. Are you prepared to spend what it takes to reach this target group effectively?
   How many inquiries will you generate?
5. What is your cost per inquiry?
6. How many of those inquiries do your sales force typically close and what is your cost per sale?
7. What are the average response rates from the channels you plan to use?
8. What is your average profit per sale?
9. What is the average lifetime value of a customer?

No marketing plan is complete unless it addresses all of these critical numbers.

For the formulas and proper calculations, I recommend Direct Marketing: Strategy, Planning, Execution by Edward Nash. This classic direct marketing book does an excellent job of covering the math of direct marketing. Although it primarily addresses direct mail marketing, the concepts apply no matter what channels you use.

The cost and time of reviewing your numbers will be well worth your while and can avoid a long, painful voyage that ends in disappointment.

edcqs5xrgi

5 Biggest Marketing Design Mistakes

I love direct marketing. I love it for one big reason:

Direct marketing is a discipline built on the testing and measurement of marketing lists/channels/URLs, offers, copy and design to let the market tell you which approach produces the most response. This ability to learn what works and what does not gives each new campaign the potential to be more successful than the last — and it makes marketers smarter. (We need all the help we can get.)

Direct marketing has been around for over 100 years, so those marketers who have come before us have tested EVERYTHING. Granted, different products and different target markets can produce different findings, but there are some findings that are pretty much universal. That’s because human nature is universal. So, whether you are selling a subscription to Golf Digest or Enterprise Resource Planning software the basic rules of design remain the same.

So if you are a designer, or you are working with a designer, and you want to eliminate as many barriers as possible to getting your message read and acted upon, follow these five TESTED design rules:

1. 

   Reversing body copy reduces readership by 30%

   Never reverse body copy (online or off) out of a dark background. It reduces readability by over 30%. Web pages, ads
   or mailers with all-black backgrounds and light copy are the worst. Reversed headlines are OK, but not body copy. Dark type against a light or whitebackground is the most readable.

2. Never treat copy as purely a design element. Words laid out in a cute shape or design manner are unreadable. Yes, you want your design to reflect your company brand and style, but the purpose of marketing design is to make the message as inviting and readable as possible.
3. Use pictures whenever possible. Pictures of people are the best. Using people on your Web site, landing pages, printed materials, and email make your company look human and add a level of comfort to those thinking about responding to your offer. A visual that directly supports what you are saying makes your message stronger.

4. 

   Long lines of copy from left to right are difficult to read

   Keep lines of text short from left to right. The eye moving across a computer screen or printed page from left to right can easily lose its place. The harder you make people work to read your message, the faster those people will stop reading and move on. In fact, in email, experts say the rule is to put no more than 70 characters, including spaces, on a single line.

5. Don’t hide your call to action. Presenting links online are pretty easy. But if you want a response to your printed material — letters, sales sheets, data sheets, and brochures — make your call to action prominent and clear. Prospects need to see the 800 numbers, URLs and/or email address quickly and clearly so that they know instantly what you want them to do.

Yes, you can break these rules all day, but know that the minute you do you are reducing readership and the effectiveness of your marketing messages.

More insight on design no-no’s:
In the November 09 issue of Target Marketing Magazine, Denny Hatch, author of the e-mail newsletter, Denny Hatch’s Business Common Sense, addresses this same subject. Read “Fire the Agency — Now!” and learn even more reasons why breaking design rules will diminish the readability and effectiveness of your marketing.

Winning new customers when you’re not the leading brand.

An accepted principle in B2B lead generation and nurturing is offering free information. The approach works because it does exactly what successful sales people do. It positions the company as a reliable, trusted resource that your prospect can turn to with confidence to help them do their jobs better and overcome their challenges.

Rather than sell your product or service, you build a reputation with your prospects as a problem solver. They rely on your company for “advice.” Then, when it’s time to evaluate solutions, your company has already begun building a relationship of trust that will ensure your strong consideration in the buying decision — even if yours is not the “leading” brand.

B2B marketing letters — how long should they be?

In 2007, an Associated Press story reported that American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year. “The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries.”

This was in 2007, BEFORE the economy tanked. With every company cutting back on its workforce, those still on the job are working harder and moving faster than ever before.

So if you want to get these folks to stop for a second and read your message, it had better be quick and to the point. That’s why I limit most of the marketing and sales letters I write for clients to a single page.

On the other hand, there is an old but true rule in direct marketing:

If there are 10 different benefits to responding to your offer, i.e. 10 things to learn, 10 ways to save, 10 advantages gained from using your product or service, you’d better include them all in your message. If you leave one out, it could be the one that would motivate a response in some prospects. Leave it out and you lose those responses.

So, one page or more?

Your best bet is to keep your B2B marketing letters to one page. But if letters must go onto two pages, make sure that the most critical information, including the call to action, is on page one.

A quick return to Marketing 101 — as some B2B marketers appear to have missed it.

When contacted to do B2B marketing copywriting by a prospective new client, the first thing I do, of course, is check out their Web site. It’s then that I often see this dreadful word. Not only do I see it, but it is often the first word in the first paragraph on the home page.

 

The word is “we.”

 

Even though Marketing 101 teaches that all marketing messages should answer the potential customer question “What’s in it for me,” I still see the use of “we” a frightening amount of time. In fact, whether they use the word “we” in their copy, or focus on the “you,” it tells me instantly about this prospective client’s level of marketing sophistication.

 

I rarely use the word “we.” If a message requires a reference to the company, I use the company’s name. That way the name gets more brand exposure and it doesn’t appear as if the company is focusing on itself.

 

The time that leads really care about a company is when they begin making buying decisions and want to know the track record, reliability, and stability of the company with which they are planning to do business. Until then, marketers should do their best remove the word “we” from their vocabulary.

Being a “control freak” is good for B2B marketing.

Way too many marketers out there are making my job much too easy. That’s because, in spite of the information being discussed on informative blogs (like this one), in Webinars, by opt-in marketing publishers, content syndicators and even books, they don’t have a clue.

 

My job is easy because all I have to do is make one simple recommendation and clients, if they follow that recommendation, can see a measurable difference in the results of their marketing.

 

The recommendation I make is to NOT send prospects directly to their Web site (no matter how good it is) but to direct them to a special landing page that is specifically part of the campaign. That way you can track their response, get their contact information and provide them with a secondary offer after responding (more about this in a future post).

 

Using a campaign landing page as the primary call-to-action on your emails, banner ads, search ads or even from your direct mail marketing is a fast and direct way to increase your campaign ROI. It furthers the story you began in your initial message and gathers contact information. This approach has also been shown to increase conversion rates, as the more prospects interact with your company/brand the stronger their connection to you.

 

These days, of course, when you first connect with new prospects, many of them will take it upon themselves to go into Google, type in your company name, find your Website and check you out. They may or may not make it back to your offer.

 

But the more you can control their actions, the more trackable leads you add to your nurturing and sales pipeline. This is when being a “control freak” can be a good thing.