You’re probably in the same boat. Because your mailings and ads are drawing minimal leads. Or making very few sales. And they’re not generating the kind of profits you need to keep your business healthy.

Are you ready to turn that around completely? Are you ready to put an end to the costly mistakes that flatten your sales and profits? Great because I’m going to show you precisely how to do just that right now!

In this report, I’m going to show you which mistakes are killing your profits. And precisely what to do to correct them. Once you’ve completed this report, you’ll have a powerful new set of weapons to make sure all of your direct marketing efforts are cash generators.

The 13 Most Costly Direct Marketing Mistakes –

And What to Do to Make Sure You Conquer Them!

 Mistake #1: Marketing To The Wrong Audience

 If you go wrong here, your entire campaign is doomed. It doesn’t matter how exceptional a product you have, how convincing your copy is, or what incredible price you’re offering.

If you try to sell this amazing widget to the wrong people, I guarantee you that you’ll flop.

On the other hand, if you offer an average product promoted by pedestrian copy and bearing a median price, but offered to precisely the right people, it will always pull in some orders. Not that this is your goal. I’m only mentioning this to show you the difference caused by properly defining your audience.

What can you do to make sure you’ve selected the right market? You have to start by defining precisely who your product appeals to. Your objective is to find the largest possible market who wants and can afford your product.

At the same time, you want to make sure that your focus is tight enough that you aren’t trying to appeal to too broad a range of interests at once. If you do, your marketing can easily become so watered down, it won’t really appeal to anyone. If you’re fortunate enough to have a product that appeals to multiple markets, you’ll need to develop distinct variations of your sales pieces for each specific market.

Here’s how this works. A client recently contacted me to help him determine what was “wrong” with his direct response advertising. His product was a small container of tear gas that could be carried in a purse or glove compartment.

The first question I asked was who he was trying to market to. His answer was female college students who were concerned about the rising crime rate on our nation’s campuses. His initial campaign pulled a dismal response.

What was wrong here? My client had made a fatal error. He had picked a market that had only a minor interest in his product and very little discretionary income.

Think about it. College students have very little money to spend, and what they do have goes toward clothes and entertainment. And despite the rise in crime, college students are at the age when they generally feel invincible. They don’t believe that they will personally be affected by anything negative. You can’t change this. And trying to market against these known facts is suicidal.

A little research would have revealed that my client’s actual market was senior citizens. These folks are truly concerned about their personal safety and would be willing to spend $20 or so to gain some peace of mind. He could then market to senior citizen groups, neighborhood watch program members, and other similar markets.

One more thing. If he did decide to pursue the colleges as a secondary market, a more accurate target audience would be the parents of college students. They are the ones who are truly concerned about the problems on campus. This campaign would make use of much of the same marketing information used to sell to seniors, but it would require focusing on those problems and benefits that distinctly appeal to this very different group.

Mistake #2: Assuming You Know What Products Your Customers Want The Most

This is one of the most costly errors you can possibly make. And one of the most common errors made by companies of all sizes. Although smaller companies and start-ups are more prone to this type of critical error, the big guys still make this mistake with regularity.

Look at the “New Coke” of a few years back. I doubt that little, if any, test marketing was done. It was more a reaction to the competition than a true desire in the marketplace. And the results were a swift, spectacular flop.

If you’re going to be successful in direct marketing, it’s absolutely essential that you have a product that your customers need. And it’s even better if they need to replenish their supply regularly.

How do you come up with such a product?

There are two key ingredients. The first is to develop only those products that your market demands. This is so simple, you’d think it was obvious, but based on the problems my clients present me with on a daily basis, I can assure you there are very few market-driven products being developed today.

Here’s what you must do to make sure your products are of real value to your market. And, as a logical consequence, produce the kind of profits you really want. You must connect with your typical customers and find out from them exactly what kind of problems plague them or what vital goals they’re burning to achieve.

 There are many ways to do this. Call up some of the people you do business with on a regular basis. Go visit a few more, and get to know exactly what their needs are. Mother excellent technique, and one I’m particularly partial to, is the short questionnaire.

Here’s what you need to make sure your customer questionnaire succeeds in gathering the critical information you need. Create 5-8 simple questions. True/false or multiple choice where you provide specific choices are the most effective.

Mail this questionnaire out to a couple hundred of your customers. Offer them a special discount, free booklet, or some other incentive for responding.

Then listen to what your market has to say. Develop new products based on the common themes that are revealed by your customers’ answers. Create products that solve their problems or help them achieve important goals. This is the critical first step to ensure that your products generate sizable sales.

The second key ingredient is to test carefully and prudently. I’ll never cease to be amazed by how many companies bypass the testing phase and go straight to full-blown production. This makes no sense at all – and it can be dangerous to your financial health.

Once you’ve developed your product based on your market’s most critical needs, the next step is to invest as little as possible in developing as few pieces as necessary to test market. Forget about the money that might be saved by producing in volume at this stage. You’re testing your product’s marketability. No amount of savings on 5000 units can possibly be justified if you only sell 100 of them.

Savvy direct marketers get rich by starting with small tests and increasing volume in stages. Here’s a working rule of thumb:

Never increase your next stage quantity by more than 5 times.

 This means if your starting quantity is 500, your next production run shouldn’t exceed 2500 – - unless you have signed orders to support a larger quantity.

Mistake #3: Focusing Your Copy On You, Your Company, Or Your Product

 This is a mistake that’s made by companies of all sizes, but larger corporations are frequent offenders. Look, everyone likes to see their name in print. I’m sure that you’re rightfully proud of your company and the products you sell. But I urge you to resist the temptation to stroke your ego in your marketing.

Here’s why. Customers don’t care. They don’t care about you, your company, or your product. That may sound cruel, but it’s a fact of business life.

Customers care about themselves, their problems, important goals they’d like to achieve, and the things that will make their lives easier or better. That’s just human nature.

I’m sure that the last time you bought a book through the mail on reducing your taxes, you didn’t think, “Oh boy, here’s the perfect opportunity for me to give McGraw-Hill more money and to help Sally Author get on the best seller list!” Instead, you were thinking something along the lines of, “Alright! Here’s something I can use to hang onto a few more of my hard-earned dollars!”

In order to get someone to dip into their wallet and part with their hard-earned currency, you’re going to prove that what you have to offer is worth so much to them, that parting with the money is insignificant. And that, my friend, is a tall order. To accomplish this, you must talk directly to their needs, wants, desires, problems, and goals.

This means you’ve got to drop down and get personal. Use a lot of “you” language. Kill all of the technical babble. Get rid of anything that makes you sound like a pompous, marble encrusted institution.

What’s that? You say you re selling securities, gemstones, or some other high-ticket, upper echelon item and you need to sound sophisticated? Sorry, but you’re disillusioned – and you stand to compromise your potential profits. Even the upper-crust are people and respond (quite strongly, I’m happy to report) to being treated personally.

Successful marketers understand this. They consistently use it to build their fortunes.

Mistake #4: Assuming You Know What Benefits Your Customers Value The Most

 Here’s another presumptuous error that can cost you dearly. Too often, companies think that since they created a product, they are the ultimate authority on that product and its benefits. This gets them into trouble.

While your market may remain the same, its needs are volatile and prone to change during the life of a product.

When a product is new, its very newness may be the most appealing factor. As it becomes more common and other competitors enter the market, price, quality, and additional features take on more importance. Also, the problems that your market faces today may be solved tomorrow. Then you’re faced with having to reposition your product to offer solutions to other problems.

Now, where you may ask, do you get all of this crucial marketing data? You go to the source: your customers. You must constantly poll your customers to find out what their most critical needs, aspirations, problems, and objectives are. Once you’ve found out, you seize the opportunity and adjust the benefits in your copy accordingly.

Mistake #5: You Think That Your Ad Or Your Product Are Important

 Well maybe they are, but not to your customers. It’s important to you, your family, your friends, and your employees. But that’s as far as it goes.

Customers don’t care. They don’t wait eagerly to get your sales pitch in the mail. Chances are they’ll pass right by your ad in a newspaper or magazine. They might have a mild interest in your product, but you’d better be able to seize their attention, to reach out and grab them by the throat in order to make your case.

You accomplish this by featuring a benefit in your headline that is so potent, it can’t be passed over.

This benefit headline should be as subtle as a jackhammer. Look, you have only a few seconds to stop someone and pull them into the detail of your ad or sales letter. If you can’t grab them here and now, you’ve lost them forever. The page gets turned or your letter hits the trash.

To avoid this, you’ve got to roll out your biggest, loudest gun right away. Feature it as prominently as you can. Make it so irresistible that only an idiot would pass it by.

This is a radically different approach than most ads take. They focus on a clever, catchy headline or eye-popping visuals. To the detriment of the people who use them, these techniques don’t work. They’re pure window dressing.

If you want to win more leads and sales, forget about your ad and its fancy layout. Forget about being clever or creative.

Concentrate instead on hitting your customers right between the eyes with the most potent benefit you have to offer.

Mistake #6: Blindly Accepting That Your Mail Will Actually Reach Its Destination

 There’s bad news on the mail front. Studies by both the Direct Marketing Association and the United States Postal Service reveal that huge quantities of mail are being dumped in trash bins instead of being delivered. Estimates run as high as 30 percent of all third class mail in some regions of the country.

flut that isn’t the only place you can take a direct hit to the pocketbook. Their are some lazy and unscrupulous employees working in mailing houses. Even in the best of them, and that could easily include the mailing house you’re using right now. These people are dumping your precious mailings and gefling false receipts from the post office. That’s right, from the same dolts who are already dumping your mail.

Airight, so we both agree that the picture is bleak. But ygij don’t have to be a victim of these sleazy, fraudulent practices. Here’s what you do to protect your investment.

First off; you stop mailing third class. The studies that were conducted revealed that the object of the vast majority of this fraud is third class mail. Nearly all first class mail was delivered. Of the first class mail that didn’t get delivered, much of that was due to incorrect addressing by its mailers.

You can’t afford to risk having your mail dumped in the trash in exchange for the savings that third class offers. It isn’t a justifiable risk. Instead, do everything you can to cut creative and production costs. But don’t mail third class.

As for the mailing houses, the answer is simple. Don’t let them deliver your mail to the post office. Deliver it yourself And exarnine every tray or bag for accurate counts before you leave the mailing house. This is the only way you can be sure that you get a full count and your mail gets to the post office.

One more thing. If you’re mailing 5000 or more pieces, it’s a good idea to drop your mail at 2 or 3 different post offices. This helps reduce the odds of your mail getting durnped, even for first class.

Remember, if your mail doesn’t reach its destination, you can’t sell your products!

Mistake #7: Blindly Accepting That Your Mail Will Get Opened Once It’s Been Delivered

 If you think this way, once again you’re a victim of your own ego. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you’re a raging egomaniac with no interests other than yourself. But I am saying that your pride is distorting your view of reality. You falsely believe that your customers are wildly enthusiastic about hearing from you.

To prove my point, I’m going to use a very important person as my example. You. Think about how you open your mail. You sort it into piles. Personal letters in this pile, bills in that pile, some junk mail to review in another pile, and the rest of the junk mail straight to the trash! That’s reality, folks.

So what words of wisdom can I offer you to make sure that your mail gets opened even though it may not seem to be of much interest to your customer? Precisely this:

Make sure that your mail gets put in a pile that isn’t predestined to the trash.

 Here’s how you achieve this most desirable of goals. Remember, you just proved that the mail you value the most is (1) personal mail; and (2) bills. Then, if it piques your interest, you may look at some of your junk mail.

Your path, then, is clear. To make sure your mail gets opened, make it look as much like personal mail or a bill as possible.

To make it look like personal mail, follow these steps:

1.   Avoid mailing labels.

2.   Always use a first class stamp – avoid postage meters.

3.   No teaser copy.

4    Use your first initial, last name, and address for the return address not a company name or logo.

To make your letter look like a bill:

1.   Use a window envelope.

2.   Use a stamp or postage meter.

3.   Use just a return address without company name or logo.

4.   Make it look as official as possible.

The third – and riskiest – way of striving to get your mail opened is to offer a power-packed benefit on the envelope, which is called a teaser. “New Fall Catalog Inside” doesn’t cut it. You must be able to offer an extremely powerful benefit. A benefit that nobody in their right mind would pass up. Something like, “Here’s 3 Simple Ways to Save $246 On Your Heating Bills This Winter”. If you can’t offer a powerful, hit-them-between-the-eyes benefit, don’t even think about using teaser copy.

Mistake #8: Assuming You Have Your Prospect’s Undivided Attention

 The truth is you have very little, if any, of your prospect’s attention. You must remember that people are bombarded by hundreds, even thousands of ads daily. Ads in their mail, on radio, on TV, on billboards, in movie theatres, in magazines, in newspapers, being hauled across the sky, on benches, on the back of buses and taxicabs, on shopping carts, even in restroom stalls. All of this is your competition.

Don’t kid yourself. You aren’t just competing against other companies within your market. You’re competing against everything that vies for your prospect’s attention – including nonadvertising interests like work, family, and hobbies.

You must be clear about this going in. Only then can you hone your sights and get serious about the job you really have to do. The job of creating hard-hitting marketing that will succeed in winning your prospect’s precious time.

To do this, you have to create the kind of marketing pieces I’ve already emphasized. Hard-driving, persuasive pieces packed with so many benefits, your customer can’t help but be interested.

Mistake #9: Lying, Being Deceitful, Or “Standing Too Close To The Shade”

I sincerely hope this mistake doesn’t include you in its ranks. Unfortunately, some marketers get swept away by their own greed and wind up stretching the truth beyond its natural range of flexibility.

Lying and being deceitful are not only immoral, they’re bad business. You can’t build a long lasting, profitable business by cheating people. Successful business depends on repeat customers. If you start cheating people, they won’t continue to do business with you. And if there’s any justice, you’ll go to prison.

Now let’s talk about “standing too close to the shade”. Many years ago, I took a real estate investment class. At a certain point in the class, the instructor winked and announced that he was now going to teach some very creative ways of getting people to sign their property over to you. He went on to declare that these methods weren’t necessarily shady, but from where you stood you could definitely see the shade.

I can’t give you any hard and fast rule on this kind of approach to advertising. All I can do is make a heartfelt recommendation. If you feel like what you’re selling or how you’re selling it is getting too close to the shade, I urge you to reconsider.

I just don’t believe that it’s right. I can also assure you that if you get caught, it can ruin your business. There’s far more consistent money to be made by solving your customers’ problems, helping them achieve vital goals, and delivering more than you promised.

And, as an added benefit, you’ll sleep well at night!

Mistake #10: Failing To Track Your Results And Use  What  You’ve  Learned  To Compound Your Profits

 If you really want to cash in on direct response, this is one mistake you should correct as soon as possible. One of the greatest advantages of direct marketing is that it’s completely measurable. By keying your ads and sales letters (with a unique department number, suite number, person’s name, or other identifier), you track precisely what kind of response you get from every ad, list, or advertising medium you use.

Being able to track your results gives you a strategic benefit:

CONTROL. Your results tell you what’s working and what isn’t. And exactly how well things are working. This let’s you know which marketing efforts to stick with and which to modify or abandon. It also tells you which product lines are effective, what geographical areas to hit harder, and which media and lists outperform others.

With all of the advantages to be gained from proper tracking, you’d think that everyone would do it routinely. Not so. Just watch your mail for the next week. when you see how many of the letters you get aren’t keyed, and therefore not traceable, you’ll be shocked.

Here’s my own personal rule on this critical issue:

Every marketing piece you create should be keyed for tracking.

 Everything. All ads, all sales letters, all news releases. You name it, it should be keyed. If not, you’re unnecessarily limiting your income.

Mistake #11: You Don’t Have A Profitably Planned Follow-up Campaign

 This is a crucial point to consider. Why? Because when run properly, an effective follow-up campaign can double or triple your profits.

The fact is that it’s much easier and less costly to sell to someone who’s already bought from you than it is to bring in new business. This means that the greatest rewards can be gained from working your house list.

But think about it. When was the last time you bought something and then received a follow-up offering from that same company? I’d wager that you can’t even recall the last time.

The companies that are consistently making big profits in direct response have well-oiled follow-up programs in place. Get your name on the mailing lists of American Express and the American Management Association. These companies run follow-up programs as well as any I’ve ever seen.

Here are a couple of hints on how to get the most out of your follow-up program. Always include a follow-up offer with every order you send out. Offer a discount on 3 or 4 recommended items. Strike while the iron is hot. It’s the best and easiest time to make another sale.Send follow-up mailings at least every quarter. Every other month is even better. Keep your products in the forefront of your customers’ awareness. The more you sell to someone, the more trust they build in you. And the more inclined they’ll be to buy again. It’s a wonderfully perpetuating cycle.

Mistake #12: You’re Trying To  Sell Unrelated Products

This is closely related to the previous point. You can’t followup effectively with unrelated products. Direct response is very different than general retail marketing. Unless you are Sears, it’s virtually impossible to offer a wide selection of products that aren’t related. Smart marketers realize that the big money is made by offering closely related products.

For example: a catalog that specializes in computer books is more likely to be successful than a catalog that offers computer books, cookbooks, general fiction, and diet books. By specializing, you eventually become known as an expert, reliable source in your market area. People place their trust in you because they know you’ll deliver what they need. And trust generates sales.

Also, if you focus on and carry a wide variety of computer books, you know precisely who your audience is and what to feature in your follow-ups. So you can concentrate your efforts on marketing to a single, large audience rather than spreading yourself thin over a variety of markets.

To cash in on direct response, pick an area to specialize in and offer the best group of related products that you can.

Mistake #13: Changing Your Marketing Out Of Boredom

 Eventually, you’re going to get tired of any marketing piece you use. Either you’ll get bored with it, your family or friends will, or your employees will get sick of seeing the same old thing. And you’ll want to change it – to give it a fresh new look or perspective.I have one word of advice for you. Don’t! Don’t change any of your marketing because you’re sick of seeing it. Don’t change any marketing piece to give it a fresh new look or a little more pizzazz. The only time you should ever change a marketing piece is when it starts to lose its effectiveness. Then you should carefully test alternatives and see if they up your response. If you can increase your response and profits, then by all means, change your marketing. But if the market continues to respond to your promotions, you’d be a fool to change. I don’t care how sick you, your friends, your family, or your employees are of seeing the same old marketing. Don’t change it! The only person who should ever dictate a change in your marketing is your bookkeeper. When your bookkeeper tells you that sales are starting to drop off then you have a valid reason to change your marketing.

Conclusion

You’ve just taken a giant step toward getting the most out of your direct marketing. You’ve seen which mistakes can have the most disastrous effects on your marketing. And you now know precisely what to do to keep these mistakes from killing your hard-earned profits. But just knowing what to do isn’t enough. You have to take action to remedy the errors that are hurting you. If you don’t, you’ll continue to put your business at risk. Fortunately, none of these mistakes are particularly difficult to correct. All it takes is a little diligence to make sure you carry out these solutions. And there’s good reason to. Once you rid yourself of these debilitating mistakes, your sales and profits can grow like crazy!

Bookmark to:

9 Remarkable Ways to Increase Your Sales and Profits!

Everyone wants to make more money. Everyone wants to make their marketing more effective….to get better results….to convert more leads.…to make more sales….to increase their profits as much as possible.

But few people know how. Few people really understand how to force every marketing dollar to work harder – to do the job of 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 dollars. In fact, of all the clients I’ve worked with in the past year, and all those who time wouldn’t permit me to work with, only one came even close to achieving their full marketing and profit potential.

Even this client, as admirable as his efforts and results were, only realized 70% of the profits he could be reaping. Most of my clients, which includes some very savvy marketers, are only realizing 50% or less of their full profit potential!

You’re probably in the same boat. That’s what motivated you to call for this report. Because your marketing is getting lukewarm results. You aren’t getting the number of qualified leads you need. You aren’t increasing your customer base. Sales are in a holding pattern. And you know you aren’t generating the kind of profits you really need to keep your business healthy.

Well, that’s all about to change. Right here, and fight now!

I mean it. It’s far easier to do than you ever imagined. In this report, I’m going to show you exactly which factors are limiting your profits. Then I’ll give you 9 simple, inexpensive, powerful steps you can take to leverage your marketing. I’ll show you everything you need to know to make each of your marketing dollars work as hard as they possibly can to increase your effectiveness, boost your profits, and cut your expenses.

By the time you’ve completed this report, you’ll have a comprehensive set of powerful new tools you can use to make sure your marketing is firing on all cylinders and doing what you really need it to: generating more leads, winning more sales, and shooting your profits through the roof!

What Marketing Leverage Is And How It Can Make Your Business Much More Profitable!

What exactly is leverage? For our purposes, it’s the ability to improve a component part of your marketing resulting in the increase of your sales and profits many times. Now, that might sound a bit technical or complicated, but in actual use, it couldn’t be simpler. Leverage is merely the ability to make more money for exactly the same amount of time, effort, and expense.

Here are a few real life examples. The most widely understood use of leverage is in real estate. In most real estate transactions, you can get 100% of the use and financial benefit of a property for just 20% down. So you’ve leveraged your investment by 80%.

Now, let’s look at how leverage applies to your marketing. If I can show you a simple sales technique to get your customers to increase their average purchase amount by 20% with no additional cost or effort on your part, I’ve just leveraged your sales staff. I’ve increased their productivity and your profits by 20%.

Here’s another example. If we change your copy and the new ad outpulls your old ad by 35%, that’s 35% more profit in your pocket for exactly the same cost and effort. In actual application, I’ve seen slight changes in copy increase profits by as much as 300% to 400%. And in his classic book, Tested Advertising Methods, John Caples documents examples of simple copy changes that improved response by as much as 2100%!

There’s one more concept you should understand about increasing your marketing leverage. There are so many areas of your marketing that can be leveraged, the results can be phenomenal. These include ads, headlines, mailing lists, media, prices, offers, publicity, in-store sales, field sales, average purchase amount, repeat sales, referrals, new customer leads, lead conversion and on and on. Taken alone, each of these components may increase your sales and profits just a few percentage points. But get them all working together, and they can shoot your profits through the roof!

9 Fast Ways To Leverage Your Marketing Success!

Now that you understand what marketing leverage is, let’s look at the nine fastest, easiest ways to use it to boost your sales and profits.

1.   Leverage Your Mailing Lists And Advertising Media

I’m going to cover this point first because lists and media are the most critical components of any campaign. I don’t care how great your product is, how powerful your offer is, how low your price is, how well written your copy may be, or how striking a layout you’ve used. Mail to the wrong list or advertise in inappropriate media and all of your time, effort, and money is completely wasted.

Here’s the hard, cold truth. A mediocre piece mailed to precisely the right people or run in the right media will get significantly better results than the most powerful piece sent to the wrong list or run in the wrong media.

Leveraging your list and media usage isn’t difficult. Here’s how to do it. For mailing lists, always use a list broker. In fact, use 3 to 5 list brokers. Once you have your package together, send it to 3 to 5 list brokers and ask them to recommend lists they think will respond well. To start, test those lists that are recommended by more than one broker. Once you’ve had good results with a broker or brokers, test other lists they recommend.

Always ask your brokers what fields they specialize in and try to find brokers with experience in your type of business. By the way, it won’t cost you anything to use as many brokers as you’d like, since the list owner, not you, pays their fees.

For advertising, always use media brokers exactly the same way I’ve advised you to use list brokers. Just keep in mind that media brokers usually specialize by the type of media rather than by type of business. Print, radio, and television are usually represented most effectively by different media brokers. But I’ve also seen good brokers who handle more than one type of media. As with list brokers, media brokers’ fees are paid by the media, so they cost you nothing.

List and media selection are time-consuming, sophisticated activities. A good broker keeps a finger on the pulse of what’s working. Take advantage of list and media brokers’ expertise to amplify the results of your ads and mailings.

2.   Leverage Your Credibility – The Key To Making More And More Sales

After the right list and media, credibility is the next most significant factor in selling more of your products or services. If your prospective customers have never heard of your company or your product, you face a tough, uphill climb.

You see, people are generally creatures of habit. Once they’ve found a product and become comfortable with it, it’s difficult to budge them out of their comfort zone.

Think about it. How many different restaurants do you go to on a regular basis? How many different brands of cars have you bought? How often do you change your brand of toothpaste? If you’re like most people, you tend to stick to a fairly limited range of products.

Secondly, most customers are naturally skeptical. Everyone has been burned more than once by products or services that didn’t perform as promised. When neither your company or product have any credibility with your prospects, the amount of education and persuasion it takes to get them to buy can kill you.

So one of your major tasks as a marketer is to increase your company and product credibility By the way, of the two, company credibility is more important to have than product credibility. If people know and trust you, they’ll usually take a chance on a new product that you’re offering. But you’ll encounter much more buyer reluctance if people know about your product but have no basis for trusting your company.

Here’s how you get the credibility that’s vital to your business:

ü  Offer a powerful, money-back guarantee. Make it unconditional and make it cover a long period of time. Six months minimum, but preferably a year. The longer your guarantee period, the more serious you appear to be about your products. Also, tests have conclusively proven that the longer a customer has your product, the less likely they are to return it. So a short guarantee period can actually increase your returns!

ü  Give your prospective customers testimonials from other people just like them. Get specific testimonials from your satisfied customers that tell what benefits they’ve gotten or what problems were solved. “We cut our taxes by 13% annually using your advice”, is much more believable and effective than, “We saved a lot of money on our taxes”.

Also, get permission to use a satisfied customer’s full name, job title, and company name whenever possible. Specifics compound your credibility.

If you don’t have any testimonials of this type, drop a short note to some of your better customers. Tell them exactly what you want. Ask them to give you a specific testimonial and permission to use it in your marketing. A great way to increase the number of testimonials you get is to offer some type of reward. A discount off their next order, a copy of a special report, or extending a warranty period are all effective ways of showing your appreciation.

ü  “Borrow” another company’s credibility and use it to sell your products. This is a tremendous way to eliminate much of the risk of launching a new product or a new company. If you don’t have much credibility, go to a business that sells related products to your market and strike a deal to sell to their customers.

Here’s how this works. Let’s say you sell hand-made gourmet chocolates by direct mail. A great way to increase your sales and profits would be to contact a business that sells fine wines by mail and suggest a joint venture. In return for a percentage of the profits, the wine seller would send a letter to his customer list endorsing your chocolates and offering a special deal to try your product.

Because his customers know and trust him, the likelihood of them accepting his endorsed offer is high. You would “borrow” the wine seller’s company credibility to make far more sales than you could by mailing to outside lists.

The percentage of profits you’d offer would vary depending on how much you make on each sale. Usually, it would be from 15% to 30%. The key is to make the deal very attractive for your joint-venture partner. Your increased sales will more than compensate for the costs of the profit sharing. Plus, you gain a lot of new customers who you can turn into steady, repeat buyers.

Also, I recommend that you pay all costs for the mailing. You’d have to pay to mail to an outside list anyway, so there’s really no additional expense. Actually, your expenses will probably be reduced. Mailing an endorsed offer to 20,000 house customers is nearly always more profitable than mailing cold to an outside list of 100,000 prospects.

3.   Leverage Your Headlines

Of all the components of your ad or sales letter that you can change to improve your results, the headline carries the most weight. The headline is the most crucial component of your copy. It bears the responsibility of pulling people into your ad or sales letter. If you can’t attract peoples’ attention and convince them to read further, you won’t make any sales.

Here’s how to leverage your headlines to get maximum results:

ü  Always test different headlines. Testing is the key to consistently improving your results. I’ve seen one headline outperform another by as much as 4 to 1 with differences of that magnitude, you’d have to be incredibly foolish not to test multiple headlines.

ü  Be sure to change only the headline when you’re headline testing. This same logic applies to any kind of test. If you change more than one component of your ad or sales letter when you test, you won’t be able to tell which change caused the difference in results.

ü  Keep a swipe file of powerful headlines. Whenever you see a headline that really makes you want to read an ad or sales letter, be sure to clip it or write it down. Review your swipe file whenever you need to write headlines. You may be able to alter a great headline to suit your needs. Or at very least, great work has a way of stimulating your creative juices.

ü  A headline should have all the subtlety of a hand-grenade. Look, you have only one brief chance to capture your reader’s attention. Don’t waste it. If you’re clever, cute, or vague, you’ll probably lose the reader.

ü  The type of headline that gets the best results focuses on the most relevant benefit your customers get by doing business with you. A powerful, meaningful advantage, clearly stated, will always win you a strong share of qualified prospects.

4.   Leverage Your Offer

Your headline and your offer are closely connected. In fact, many times you’re best headline is a compelling statement of your offer. “Cashmere Sweaters At 30% Below Our Lowest Prices” is a powerful example.

In order to leverage your offer, first you must create a powerful offer. This might sound obvious, but think about it for a minute. How many ads and sales letters do you see that carry a lukewarm offer? Or worse yet, no offer at all? Take a look at your newspaper today or your mail, You’ll see that very few marketers have even the foggiest notion of how to craft and present a powerful offer.

Here’s the secret to formulating an irresistible offer. Use your offer to shift the risk from your customer to your own shoulders. If you can assure your customers that they have absolutely nothing to risk, and a whole lot to gain by purchasing your product, you greatly increase your odds of making the sale.

“Now you can get the finest Cashmere Sweaters at 30% below our lowest prices. You have to feel this exquisite material to fully appreciate it. So here’s what we’re going to do. Wear one of our luxurious sweaters for 30 days for FREE. Postdate your check until a month from now. If you aren’t in sweater heaven after wearing one of these remarkable garments, just send it back and we’ll return your check. No questions asked.” Now that’s an offer few sane buyers could refuse!

The next thing you need to do is feature your offer right up front. Unless you’re an extremely experienced and sophisticated copywriter, burying your offer in your sales piece severely weakens your chance of making the sale. Place your offer within the headline or first couple of paragraphs of your piece. Then watch your orders soar!

5.   Leverage The Price Of Your Product

When it comes to pricing, testing is the name of the game. What’s the best price for your product or service? It’s impossible to know without testing.

Sometimes raising the price of a product can actually increase your sales. Or increase your gross revenue even if the number of sales drops off. Here’s an example. Let’s say you sell a newsletter for $79. And you get a response rate of 3%, which means you sell 30 subscriptions for every 1000 letters you mail. Your gross sales are then $2370.

Now, if you raise your price to $169 and your response rate drops to 2%, you’re only making 20 sales for every 1000 letters mailed. But your gross revenue increases to $3380. Also, you’re fulfillment costs are reduced. And, you may experience a lower rate of cancellations when your perceived value is greater.

Here’s another tip for making more sales when you increase your price. The additional revenue allows you to offer other bonus items as an incentive to get your customers to buy. These bonuses can increase the perceived value of your package and result in many more sales.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the only way to adjust your price is up. Sometimes lowering your prices can result in a significant increase in sales. It’s been my experience though, that most companies tend to under price their goods.

Bottom line, the only way to determine your optimum price is to test and test some more.

6.   Leverage Your Copy

Copywriting is a very broad topic and I can’t possibly cover it all here, but I’ll give you a number of solid techniques to leverage your copy for maximum sales.

ü  Test different focus points. Strong copy tends to have one major focus and a couple of minor focal points. When you clearly define the main point to focus on, the task of writing persuasive copy becomes much easier.

Focus points that can have a significant impact on your sales include your offer, your strongest benefits, your price, and your credibility. For example, you may try to sell the same product with two different letters – one that focuses on your benefits and the other that focuses on your credibility.

The credibility copy would open with powerful testimonials and be written in a testimonial style. It could be in the form of a personalized case history of one customer’s success caused by using your product. The second piece would focus on a powerful benefit tied to an iron-clad guarantee. Either focal point could prove to be much more effective than the other. The only way to know for sure is to test.

ü  Always write from the customer’s point of interest. Customers don’t care much about you, your company or your product. All they really care about is what they get from using your product. If you fail to show them a distinct, powerful advantage, you can’t expect strong sales.

Show your customers beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly how their lives will be better or easier by trading a sum of money that’s insignificant compared to what your product gives them.

ü  Use benefit-rich sub-headers to break up your copy. There are two reasons for this. First, it makes your copy easier to look at and to read, which ought to help your sales. But more importantly, a lot of people don’t just start reading your letter. They browse it first. Benefit laden sub-headers give your readers a stunning overview of what to expect. By keying on special hot points, you can lure a great number of browsers into the body of your ad or sales letter.

ü  Always tell your customers precisely what you want them to do. Or, stated another way, if you don’t tell people what to do, most of them will probably do nothing.

Get right to the point. Tell your prospective customers to call you, to send in their order right away, to write for more information now, or whatever it is you want them to do. Tell them more than once. And offer them an incentive to do it now.

The majority of results are won at the point of initial reading. If your readers put your ad or sales letter down, the chances strongly increase that they won’t pick it up later and won’t take any action. To avoid this, tell them clearly and directly what you want them to do. And that you want them to do it now.

7.   Leverage Your Repeat Sales

I’m going to let you in on a major secret. If you want to increase your profits by 25% to 75% quickly and easily, concentrate on repeat sales. Concentrate on selling more products to your existing customers.

I’m going to show you why you should concentrate on repeat sales and how to generate the maximum volume of repeat sales. But first, I need a minute to mount my soapbox. Accept for a moment that what I’ve just told you is true – that you actually can increase your profits substantially by putting more effort into repeat sales. My question then, is why don’t more companies do just this?

I have to tell you, it absolutely baffles me that very few, if any, companies reap the easy profits available from repeat sales. In the last year, of all the clients I’ve consulted with and all the others who wanted to hire me, only one of them was doing what they should to collect these windfall profits! O.K., enough of my lecturing. Here’s what you need to do to get your fair share.

First, it’s important to understand why repeat sales are so easy to make and so profitable. It gets back to the issue of credibility. Once you’ve made a sale and you’ve delivered the benefits you promised, you control a tremendous amount of credibility. Your customers now believe in you.

Offering them other products that you stand behind completely is the easiest way possible to make more sales. You can even offer the same product you’ve already sold them. They now know how good it is and may want another. They probably want more for their family and friends too.

You don’t have to spend a cent convincing your existing customers to take a chance on you. You’ve already cleared that hurdle. And you don’t have to spend the kind of money it takes to find new customers, because you have all the information you need.

You couldn’t come any closer to a sure thing!

How do you go about consistently making repeat sales? It’s simple. All you do is systematically contact your existing customers at least once every month. Offer them great prices, special selection, stronger guarantees, or bonuses to do more business with you.

You’ll be amazed at the response you get. Customers love to do business with someone they can trust. They’ve been taken advantage of so many times, all you have to do is treat them fairly and deliver what you promise and you can sell them over and over again for years.

Without exception, businesses today spend far too much time looking for new customers and neglect the gold that’s buried in their existing customer list.

Try this out. It isn’t unusual to make more profit off repeat sales than from any other area of your business.

8.   Leverage The Average Dollar Amount Of Every Sale You Make

Another tremendous way to generate more profit is to increase the average dollar amount that your customers spend whenever they do business with you. You’d be surprised how easy it is to increase your profits by 15% to 40% just by making a minor change or two to the way you do business.

Here’s how it’s done. First, it’s important to remember that the easiest person to sell more of your products to is an existing customer. But to extend this concept one step further, you can really make some serious money when you realize that the easiest and most convenient time to sell more to your current customers is right at the time that they’re buying from you.

Look, you already have the person in your store or ordering from you if you’re selling by mail or phone. They’ll never be more willing to dig a little deeper into their wallets than at this point of sale. All you need to do to capitalize on the situation is offer your customer a strong incentive to buy more right now.

Getting your customers to spend a little more at the point of sale is a snap. The way you do this is by using a technique called the upsell. Here’s how the upsell works. Essentially, you offer your customers the opportunity to buy even more of what you sell at an attractive discount once they’ve made the commitment to buy something else at the regular price.

If you own a retail store, you set up a special selection of items close by your cash register. Whenever your staff rings up a sale, they tell the customer that because they’ve purchased X dollars worth of goods, they’re entitled to certain items in the special section at a discount of 15% (or whatever figure you choose).

Now the items you feature in your special section should be very popular, quick moving items. They should also be items that have a fairly high profit margin so you can give a liberal discount and still make a decent profit.

Successful upselling is a function of numbers. You’ll find that 15% to 40% of your customers will take advantage of your special offer. But in order to reach these levels of additional sales, your sales people must present the upsell opportunity to every customer at the point of sale.

Using the upsell in direct mail or telephone selling is done in a similar way, but it’s usually limited to just one upsell item. Offering people too many choices by mail or phone can backfire and actually dilute your sales. Also, when upselling by mail or phone, the upsell item should be related to the original item.

For example, if you sell cookware by mail, a good upsell item would be a cookbook. Another would be a set of kitchen utensils. Again, the upsell item is offered at an attractive discount, but only when the customer buys the original item you’re offering.

Upsells are simple, they require almost no additional effort or expense, and they work like wildfire!

9.   Leverage Your Profits By Participating In Joint Ventures

Joint ventures are an exceptional way of adding sizable profits to your bottom line. You can use joint ventures to sell your products to the customers of other businesses. By doing this you’ll not only profit immediately, you’ll also add new customers to your list. This is called a Host Endorsed Joint Venture.

Or you can use joint ventures to sell other companies’ products to your own customers and virtually add or test additional product lines without risking a cent of your own money. This type of deal is called a Guest Endorsed Joint Venture.

For a Host Endorsed Joint Venture, you need to connect with another business that sells products that appeal to the same type of customers who buy from you. This host company will be sending a letter endorsing your product to their customers. You’ll create the mailing and pay all the costs of sending out this offer. In fact, your host incurs no expense whatsoever. In exchange, the host receives 15% to 30% of the net profit. It’s up to you and the host to determine what’s fair to both of you.

By endorsing your offer and playing off of his credibility, the host can easily generate response rates of 10% to 40%. The money you make can be tremendous, plus you get to add these new customers to your list for many more years of repeat sales.

All orders are received by the host and forwarded to you for fulfillment. There are two reasons for this. First, it’s essential to make the offer appear as if it’s being made by the host. It’s the host’s credibility that carries the weight here. Second, this allows the host to accurately track the number of orders generated.

Considering what you’re getting, trading a percentage of profits to play off all of the time, effort, and money it took to build the host’s customer list is an exceptional deal. You can use deals like this to build a substantial list of your own in a fraction of the time it would normally take.

A Guest Endorsed Joint Venture is similar, but here you act as the host to endorse your guest’s product to your own house list. The guest should pay all expenses and reap the lion’s share of the profits.

In a Guest Endorsed Joint Venture, you’re gaining ancillary profits with very little effort and no cost on your part. It’s purely found money. At the same time, it gives you a risk-free way to test other products you might want to consider adding to your business.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’re now on the road to becoming a direct marketing leverage expert. You’re now ready to start compounding the results of every marketing dollar you invest.

I’m sure you’re pleasantly surprised by the broad selection of marketing areas you can leverage significantly. Ads, headlines, prices, publicity, mailing lists, advertising media, new customer sales, average purchase amount, repeat sales, upsells, lead generation and conversion, referrals, offers, copy and more! The opportunities for improving your profits are nearly endless.

But there’s one thing I must warn you about. Don’t let yourself get confused when considering the wide variety of areas you could possibly leverage. Don’t get bogged down by all the possibilities and all the details of each. Start small. Pick one area to get started on. Pick the one that looks like it will provide the most return for the least effort. Then kick it into gear.

The important thing is to get started. Once you’ve seen the results you’ll get by actually leveraging a single area you’ll be highly motivated to take on a few more.

One final point. Leverage can have a profound affect on your business. If you increase the response to your ads and boost your average sales amount, and increase the number of times each customer buys from you annually, and extend the number of years each customer stays with you, the leveraged affect is exponential. It can easily double or triple your profits and increase both the size and value of your business!

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I want to help a lot of people get very clear today on
something very important.  In fact, I’d like to reprogram
this entire industries expectations so we completely separate
the ‘opportunity seekers’ from the REAL *Entrepreneurs*.

Because it’s that ‘opportunity seeker’ mindset that has so
many people failing miserably, and not doing what they REALLY
need to be doing if they want to create success.

So let me tell it to ya like I see it, ok?

This industry is down right competitive.  You have TENS OF
MILLIONS of people competing for the same 150,000 new people
who start a home bus’ness every week.

You have the vast majority of people running around acting like
business owners yet applying ZERO real business principles to
anything they are doing.

Seriously…what the heck business do you know makes a list
of their friends and family and actually thinks that’s how they
are going to build a 6 figure annual income?  Not too many right…

And we’re not done yet folks…

You have the vast majority of people being taught ‘DINOSAUR’
network marketing tactics that haven’t changed in 50 years!!

Is it just me…or has the world changed very much in the past
50 years?  What was that thing called again…techmenology…
or something like that?

And the Ironic part is…it’s NO ONE ELSE’S responsibility
for your success other then your own!  It’s no one Else’s responsibility
to teach you how to be a real entrepreneur.  It’s no one Else’s
responsibility to teach you how to market.  It’s no one Else’s
responsibility to create in you the desire to GROW.

The drive for ALL OF THAT has GOT to come from within you…
or you’re walking on thin ice my friends.

Other people CAN absolutely help you, teach you, and further
your growth…but they can’t instill in you the NECESSARY drive
you need to make USE of all that knowledge.

Your success absolutely has to come from the fire you have inside
that *can not* be extinguished by ANYTHING. 

And here’s the truth…Starting YOUR OWN BUSINESS is not like
getting a job.  Business IS competitive.  Business *TAKES SKILLS*. 

It takes 10x MORE then working for someone else EVER WILL.

It will demand from your spirit a relentless persistence.

It will demand from your intelligence a relentless APPLICATION.

It will demand from your emotions PATIENCE and GROWTH.

And it will certainly demand your time, energy, and effort
if you want to see a shred of success manifest in your life.

A ‘business opportunity seeker’ gets involved with a business
and HOPES they will be successful.  They fantasize about what
it would be like to have all this money. 

They spend more time in fantasy land then in actual reality
learning how others who MAKE TONS OF MONEY actually do it.

And guess what…anyone who is making tons of money in this
industry right now IS NOT sitting around ‘hoping’ or ‘fantasizing’
about what their future might be like. 

Enter the real *ENTREPRENEUR*.

The entrepreneur is sitting around MARKETING his business.

Learning new skills.  Developing new talents.  Increasing his
value.  Studying under successful people.  Practicing, persisting,
GROWING…all the time.

The real entrepreneur looks at a challenge and says, “Ok, no
problem, I just need to figure out a way around it.”

The real entrepreneur sees his competition and says, “That’s
all they got?  Please…I’m going to eat them alive.”

The real entrepreneur SEEKS the real information they need to
move them closer to their goals…and they stop at NOTHING
to get there.

NO EVENT can deter them.  NO FAILURE can extinguish their fire. 
No negative person can possibly persuade them any differently
of their ‘SHEER POWER’ to create the reality they want for themselves.

The real entrepreneur is a juggernaut that can not be stopped.

So I ask you…which one are you?

And more importantly…which one do you WANT to be?

The same road to success is in front of every single one of us.
The same knowledge We’ve used to create a 5 figure monthly income
in under 12 months on the Internet is AVAILABLE to YOU.

Your success will be a result of how EARNEST you are about
growing a real business.  It will be the result of how much
energy you put into LEARNING and DEVELOPING new skills, talents,
and abilities that will make you money.

Your success will be the result of how dedicated you are to
‘GROWTH’ in all areas of your life.  Business and personal.

So the choice is yours my friend.  But after today there is
no more disillusionment about who is successful and who isn’t
when it comes to owning your own business.

The real entrepreneur mines the gold out from the ground the
business opportunity seeker is standing on. 

So get out of our way or grab a shovel …

The funny thing is…there’s a heck of a lot of gold to go
around…and most people don’t have a clue how to use a shovel!

Hopefully you took this message to heart today, and are ready
to make your choice once and for all…

Opportunity seeker?  or…

Entrepreneur?

It’s on you…

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Sad feeling isn’t it when your website is not productive?

More importantly, why did you get your website up and running knowing your site may or may not work? Maybe it was because:

What adds to the wound is that you have friends who are on the Internet and are making money hand over fist.

Why are they so successful with their website and you can’t?

Wouldn’t it be good to have a website that is not only getting a huge amount of traffic but is making a ton of money for you as well?    

I have a friend who put up his website and once day I saw his website stats. I was shocked when I saw the amount of hits he was getting per day.

The numbers were lousy. Obviously, he was doing something wrong.

Do you know what is even worse than what my friend was doing? It is that most of you people are in the same boat.

You aren’t doing the right thing and that is why your hit counter is just sitting there staring at you, waiting to turn.

You may have bought books to help you learn to optimize your website for better ranking. You may even have hired someone to optimize your web pages for you.

The result is not good. You wasted your money in books that didn’t teach you anything.

You wasted your money paying to have your web pages optimized, only to see your ranking has not improved.  

So you need not…

Blame Yourself For Your Misfortune!

Do you know what is even more discouraging? Those books were written by someone who didn’t even know how to optimize web pages. He just did the research and wrote the book.

Most of the text is research material that is based on theory but was never tested.  

It really frustrates me when I see people spend needless money on something that is not going to help them.

I can say this because at one time I was also doing the same thing. I tried to optimize web pages to get high ranking but failed.

I tried every trick in the book to get traffic to my website but failed. Why did I keep failing?

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