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Overcome Your Targeted Marketing Reservations

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

The evidence is conclusive. Marketing and copy that targets specific segments of your customer population gets significantly better results than marketing and copy that targets "everybody". This is because marketing that targets "everybody" is so generalized and non-specific that it actually targets "nobody".

If marketing and copy don't speak to the issues and motivating circumstances that influence an individual, then that individual can't be motivated to buy. But everyone has different issues and circumstances than everyone else. While it's impractical to hand-craft sales and marketing to target each individual, we can successfully group customers according to what they have in common.

So, while both the stay-at-home mom in rural America and the Silicon-Valley CEO both have need of email, they have very different uses for it. You can't write a sales copy for your email service that will address the needs of both without significantly watering down your response--you'll lose many potential customers in both markets. But you can run one campaign for the stay-at-home mom and folks with needs similar to hers and another campaign for the technology CEO. The result will be a better response from both sectors.

Why we don't get it. . .
Despite the clear-cut advantage to running multiple targeted campaigns, many marketers are still trying the shot-gun approach and trying to hit "somebody" by aiming at "everybody".

For a handful of marketers that occurs because they're not aware of the advantages of targeted campaigns. But for most it's an issue of perspective. Running multiple campaigns targeted at different market segments requires more work and more investment than a single campaign. Therefore multiple campaigns appear to be an unnecessary waste of time and money. Therefore, we need to re-examine the perspective.

There are three main reasons that targeted marketing is a smart financial move:

1. A non-targeted campaign typically costs more to acquire a certain number of customers than a targeted campaign, because you have to shoot wider and market to a higher number of prospects in order to make your sales goal. With targeted campaigns you can usually reach your goal with smaller outreach. So you spend less to acquire the same number of customers.
   
2. It's usually also true that different campaigns often share resources, so your second and third campaigns don't really cost as much as the first campaign. For example you don't really need to develop a whole new web site for every customer segment, just and additional page or two. Both of these factors mean you get a better return on investment by running multiple campaigns at targeted segments than you do by trying to hit everyone.
3. Lastly, targeted campaigns help you identify the most profitable market segments. Once you identify those markets, you can focus your marketing resources on those segments and decrease your cost per sale because you're acquiring a higher-percentage of profitable customers.
   

Does sedgmenting your marketing involve higher costs up front? Probably. But it also yields higher returns and profit margins on the back end. A good way to start segmenting your marketing is to keep your non-targeted campaign going while you target just one segment of your customers with a small campaign. If you see success with that campaign, you can increase its size. If you don't see an advantage to targeting that segment, you can target another. As you identify market segments that yield a higher ROI than your non-targeted campaign, you can cut back on the non-targeted campaign and put those resources into your targeted campaigns and increase your overall customer acquisition rate while decreasing your cost per sale.

Labels: Advertising, Copywriting, Direct Mail, Direct Response, Marketing, Marketing Campaign

posted by John E Fike @ 8:49 AM, ,

Announcing: Our Who’s-Afraid-of-the-Big-Bad-Wolf-Anti-Recession Event to Celebrate 5 Years in Business

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Labels: Advertising, Articles, Brochure, Content, Copy, Copywriting, Direct Mail, Direct Response, E-Mail, Fikopy, Internet, Marketing, Marketing Campaign, News Release, Press Release, Web

posted by John E Fike @ 2:53 PM, ,

Direct Mail/E-mail Secret #4: Include a Response Mechanism That Tracks Response for Testing and Follow-Up Promotions

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

This component is highly critical in any promotion, but it’s the one that’s most commonly missed.

In this series I’ve been talking about essential components of successful direct mail and e-mail campaigns. But I’m going to expand this installment to include all promotions, because you can include a response mechanism with any promotion—even commercials and print ads!

So, what is a response mechanism and why do you need one?

A response mechanism is anything that allows you to tie the activity of your prospects and customers to your promotion. A response mechanism allows you to track which promotions and ads are working and which are not. This will save you money, because you can stop running promotions or ads that aren’t generating an acceptable response. You can also determine whether a certain mailing or e-mailing list generates better response so that you only spend money on the more successful list.

You can also improve your promotions by testing headlines, leads and other components. If you see that a new headline generates better response than your old one, then you can start using the new headline on all your promotions and, ideally, improve the return on all your mailings.

In a direct sales package in which the customer is asked to place an order via order form or phone call, the response mechanism is built in—it’s the order form or phone number. You can track how well your direct sales promotion does by counting the number of orders you receive. In a direct e-mail campaign, your response mechanism is the link they click on to place an order.

Outside of direct sales campaigns, including a response mechanism is a little trickier. Well, it’s not exactly trickier, but it’s less obvious. If you’re trying to get customers to come into your store or office, including a coupon or promotion code number directly tied to a discount or other offer is a very successful response mechanism. If you’re trying to drive traffic to your web site, include a unique web address that takes the prospect to a unique page on your site. In a commercial, you can include a phone number or a web address (make sure it’s one that’s easy to remember).

In order for a response mechanism to work, you need to have the following four components:

• A reason to contact you—This is everything from placing an order, to requesting information, to entering a sweepstakes. Make sure that your prospect or customer gains something of benefit or potential benefit by contacting you.
  
• A call to action—If you don’t tell your prospect to call, fill out a response card, or go to your web site, then they won’t. Your prospects won’t take any action that you can track if you don’t have a call to action.
  
• A method of contact—This is the phone number, order form, web link, etc. that I talked about above.
  
• A unique identifier—You need to be able to identify each promotion individually so that you can track results accurately.
  

Let’s talk about that last component a little more, because this is something that most marketers miss.

It is impossible to know whether a particular promotion is successful if you include the same phone number, web link, order form, or promotion code on every promotion. What if you want to test whether one headline works better than another or which publication gets the best response with your ad? If you place the same ad with the same promotion code, web address or phone number in five different publications, you won’t know where the responses are coming from. In direct mail and e-mail you could keep track of which addresses and e-mails you send different promotions to, but it’s a lot easier to track this information with a unique identifier of some sort.

A unique identifier is as simple as assigning a unique promotion code or web address in the advertisement, on the order form, or in the letter/e-mail. A unique phone number is particularly effective if you have the budget for it, because you can hide the unique identifier (most people won’t check to see if you are using the same phone number on each promotion, they’ll just call the number in front of them).

In an e-mail campaign or online campaign, most service providers who handle these campaigns will automatically include unique trackable links. If you’re handling the campaign in house, ask your web programmer set up trackable links in your e-mail, banner ads, or AdWords ad.

However, in print ads or snail-mail campaigns, it’s a little trickier. Many marketers solve the problem by using the company’s main web address followed by a slash and a unique page name or identifier code. Here are two examples:

http://www.proclaimstudios.com/Fikopy/johnefike.html
http://www.ironballwarrior.com/?affid=8434

However, your prospect may think it’s too clumsy to type in a long URL like that and either not bother or just type in the main web address without the tracker information. My favorite way to deal with this is to spend $10 on a unique domain name and forward that domain name to a campaign-specific landing page.

For example, I might use “www.FikopySolutions001.com” for a promotion that gets people to download my Marketing Solutions manual from my web site and I would forward that domain name to a special sign-up page on my web site. If I wanted to run a test and see if a different subject line gets better results, I would use something like “www.FikopySolutions002.com” for the test promotion.

Another way to handle long links is to use a short URL generator like www.tinyurl.com, which creates a short URL that forwards to a web address that may be excessively long. For example, I’ve shortened http://www.proclaimstudios.com/Fikopy/fikopy.html to http://tinyurl.com/5pajnk.

All right, that should give you a good idea of how to use a response mechanism in your promotion and get better results. Next time, we’ll look at Direct Mail/E-mail Secret #5: An Excellent Product or Service That Excites Customers and Offers Many Benefits.

Talk to you then.

John E. Fike
www.fikopy.com

Labels: Advertising, Copy, Copywriting, Direct Mail, Direct Response, E-Mail, Internet, Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Web

posted by John E Fike @ 7:52 AM, ,

Direct Mail/E-mail Secret #3: An Outstanding Offer That Is Difficult To Reject

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

No matter how good your copy is, a bad offer will kill response rates.

Your offer is not just the end of your letter or e-mail where you tell the prospect how much the product or service costs. Your offer is everything you are giving your customer and everything you are asking your customer to give you or concede to you in return.

Don’t make the mistake that thinking the only thing your customer is giving up is their money. They are also giving you their trust and, in many cases, their time. Many customers, especially in the B2B arena, are also putting their credibility or reputation on the line when they recommend your product or service to someone else, like a boss.

Your offer includes both the tangible and intangible.

Most marketers do a decent job of including the tangible elements of an offer, such as price and features. But only exceptional marketers also include the intangible elements—the things that can’t be measured or counted.

The key to a good offer is providing more value than you are asking for in return. The mistake most people make here is believing that they have to slash their price point or give away the house in order to accomplish this. But that is not the case.

Fortunately for you the biggest elements of value are intangible and don’t have to impact your price point or cause you to give away more than you can afford to. Let’s take a look at the principle components of an offer:

KEY COMPONENTS OF AN IRRESISTABLE OFFER
Risk Reversal
How can you make your prospect feel that they have nothing to lose by trying your product or service? What are you willing to risk instead? The money-back guarantee is the most popular form of this, but you can eliminate risk in other ways as well. For example, my unlimited revisions policy states that I’ll revise your copy as many times as you require so long as it doesn’t constitute a change in assignment. It assures customers know that they will get what they want. The tangible benefit is that their money isn’t at risk, but the intangible benefit is peace of mind knowing that I’m not going to stick them with copy they don’t like. Don’t underestimate the power of peace of mind.

Price point
The price you’re charging for your product or service is a key point of value for many customers. But instead of lowering your price, show how you offer more value per dollar than your competitors or show how much lifetime value you offer and how small your price is by comparison. For example, a client of mine who is a coffee retailer sells coffee in 1-pound (16 ounces) bags while her competitors sell it in 12-ounce bags. Her price is higher, but only because she sells more coffee in a package. I recommended including this phrase on all her bags: “LOOK! FULL 1-POUND PACKAGES! Leading competitor only 12 oz. Pound-for-pound, KaffeeScape gives more value!”

Unique Selling Position
What sets you apart from your competitors? What will your customers get from you that they can’t get anywhere else no matter what the price? Sometimes just being different or having a name that’s associated with a particular concept is enough to ensure the sale—that’s part of a good branding. But if there is something unique about your product or service that addresses a real need creates even more value. A great example of this is Market Leader Solutions. This executive and sales headhunter takes a step beyond its competitors by guaranteeing the performance of new hires for an entire year instead of just 90 days.

Payment options
How many ways can your customers pay for your product or service? How can you make payment easier for your customers? Internet retailers usually find that sales go up when they offer purchase by both credit card and PayPal (or similar), but sales are pretty meager for Internet retailers that only accept check or money order—it’s a trust thing. Another option that works well for high-ticket items is offering a payment plan. If customers frequently turn away because they can’t afford a lump-sum payment, try breaking it into monthly or weekly payments.

There are many more ways to add value to your offer, but these are the key points to consider when working on your next campaign.

If you’d like to talk about ways to increase the value of your offer, I’d be glad to schedule a FREE, no-obligation 15-minute consultation. Just give me a call at 419-371-2302.

Next time we’ll move on to Secret #4 in the Secrets to Generating Huge Response and Outstanding Profits in Direct Mail and E-mail Campaign series. Secret #3 is A Response Mechanism that Tracks Response for Testing and Follow-Up Promotions.

Talk to you then.

John E. Fike
www.fikopy.com

Labels: Copy, Copywriting, Direct Mail, Direct Response, E-Mail, Internet, Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Web

posted by John E Fike @ 6:22 PM, ,

Direct Mail/E-mail Secret #2: Research That Identifies the Desires and Fears and Uncovers A Fresh Marketing Approach for Your Campaign—Part II

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Yesterday I explained that good sales copy in direct mail and email campaigns requires research to be successful, because it provides details that your prospects need in order to make a purchasing decision and it reveals fresh, unique marketing angles.

Today let’s talk about what kind of research you should be doing and what you should be looking for in order to achieve these objectives and motivate more customers to buy.

Features & Benefits
One of the first kinds of research I do in preparing for a direct mail or email campaign is uncovering all the features and benefits of the product or service that I’m selling. Features and benefits help the prospect understand what your product or service does and how his or her life will be improved by it.

Features include all the technical details of a product or service, including shape, color, functions, purposes, who made or provides it, how it is made or provided, how it does its job, how or why it was invented, etc. Benefits are all the ways these things make life better, easier, simpler, or more exciting than it is right now.

Uncover the features and benefits of your product or service by looking at the product or service itself and experiencing it with your hands, eyes and ears (and any other sensory organs that may apply). You can find additional features and benefits by sifting through customer feedback, examining how it is made or provided and why it is made or provided that way.

If you sell computer software, for example, your features are all the things the software does and the experience that it provides. I’ll use Achieve Planner by Effexis Software for an illustration. Two of Achieve Planner’s features are that it allows time mapping and automatic product scheduling (based on the estimated time it takes to complete the project). The benefit of these features is that the user can organize and take control of his schedule by designating certain times of the day for certain kinds of activity, such as client work or marketing efforts. Then the user can easily see how long it will take to complete a project based on how much time is available for the type of activity that the project falls into. It cuts down on scheduling confusion and reduces estimation errors so the user experiences fewer headaches.

That’s sort of an obvious example of features and benefits. A less obvious example is how Achieve Planner is delivered to the customer. The feature is that Achieve Planner software is downloaded off the Internet immediately after purchase. The experience-based benefit is that the customer doesn’t have to wait for a CD-ROM to arrive in the mail and can immediately begin experiencing the product’s benefits, like reduced scheduling stress and fewer headache-causing errors.

Don’t ignore features and benefits that are shared by competitors. Copywriter Claude Hopkins took Schlitz beer from the fifth best selling beer to the first by being the first copywriter to describe why Schlitz beer was pure. All the other brands claimed to be pure and made their beer pretty much the same way. But Hopkins’ Schlitz ad was the first to explain it all. By providing proof that it was pure, Hopkins gave Schlitz the competitive advantage.

Use the features and benefits of your product or service to prove the claims and promises that you make about it.

Identify new marketing angles
I’ve already covered this a bit in the Schlitz example above. In researching your product or service, you can uncover new ways of thinking about it that will increase your prospect’s interest. Hopkins’ ad got beer drinkers to think of Schlitz as The Pure Beer because Schlitz can prove its purity.

Going back to the Achieve Planner example, most of Achieve Planner’s features are available in other software-based planners. But those planner systems typically sell for $250 to $300, while Achieve Planner sells for only $89 (at the time of the posting). So Achieve Planner is positioning itself as the planner system that delivers $300 of value for less than $90.

So far we’ve talked about research involving the product or service and how it is produced and/or delivered. Another way to uncover new marketing angles is to research your prospects and their needs and desires. This assumes you have good information on who your prospect is. As mentioned in a previous post, you probably aren’t going to sell Omaha steaks to a vegetarian.

Let’s assume that you do sell steaks (not necessarily Omaha steaks). What do your customers want out of a steak? They probably don’t care that the steak is delivered to their door by truck. In fact, that feature may seem a little weird—wouldn’t it be easier to just drive to the market rather than wait for a truck to arrive? Wouldn’t the meat be fresher that way, the customer thinks.

But your customers probably do care that their steak is thick and juicy and so tasty that it practically melts in their mouth. Perhaps you found a survey or series of customer testimonials that support this idea. So you’ll play up the thick, juicy and tasty aspects of your product. You could also use this desire of your customers to eliminate the weirdness of having steaks delivered by truck by explaining that the only way to get a steak so fresh tasting and mouth-watering is to deliver it directly from the farm to the customer’s door.

Lastly, do research outside of your product/service and market as well. Keep abreast of headlines and surf the Internet using key words about your product/service. While this is harder to systematize, many times an unrelated topic can give your product or service a fresh marketing angle that none of your competitors had thought of previously.

Just yesterday I read a sales letter for a wealth-generating information product that compared Houdini’s failure to escape from an unlocked safe to the close-mindedness people often have in regards to wealth-building schemes. I won’t say that this is the best example, because it didn’t get me to buy the product. The letter also had some other issues that prevented it from being successful. But you can see how tying in an apparently unrelated topic can put a fresh spin on your marketing.

So, research is absolutely critical in developing fresh, unique marketing angles that get your prospects’ attention and proving to your prospects that your product or service actually lives up to the promises and claims that you make about it. Without the research, all you have is hype.

All right. Next time we’ll move on to Secret #3 in the Secrets to Generating Huge Response and Outstanding Profits in Direct Mail and E-mail Campaign series. Secret #3 is An Outstanding Offer that is Difficult to Reject.

Talk to you then.

John E. Fike
http://www.fikopy.com/

Labels: Advertising, Copy, Copywriting, Direct Mail, Direct Response, E-Mail, Internet, Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Research

posted by John E Fike @ 5:21 AM, ,

Direct Mail/E-mail Secret #2: Research That Identifies the Desires and Fears and Uncovers A Fresh Marketing Approach for Your Campaign--Part I

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

We’ve been talking about the 5 Secrets to Generating Huge Response and Outstanding Profits in your direct mail and e-mail campaigns. Today I want to address secret #2—which really ought to be secret #1, because this is the thing that is lacking from 99% of all unsuccessful direct-response campaigns: RESEARCH.

There is a lot of copy out there that relies on an over-abundance of emotional superlatives and shock-factor headlines to sell products and services. Emotional superlatives are words like Awesome, Great, Fantastic, Out of This World, Dynamic, etc. They are supposed to make the prospect feel that the product or service is so wonderful that they absolutely must buy. Unfortunately, it rarely works. Audiences are becoming immune—no, they’re becoming annoyed by these marketing tactics and choose not to buy.

While shocking headlines and superlatives have their place in their copy, they cannot be relied upon to make the sale. Without facts, figures, details, and other ingredients that prove you can deliver on your promise, all you have is hype. Once upon a time, hype was fairly successful at making sales. Today, however, your audience demands to know why you think your product or service is so great.

Research does two things for your copy that will dramatically improve the response you get from your campaign:

Research provides the information your prospects need to understand why your product or service is exactly what they need and why yours is better than better than any competing products or services.
Research helps you identify a fresh, unique marketing angle that eliminates the need for hype and shock and hard-sell tactics.

Ok, that’s all I have time for today. Next time I’ll get into more about what I mean by “research” and what kind of research you should be doing for every marketing campaign. After that, I’ll get into how to use that research to develop a fresh marketing angle.

So long for now.

John E. Fike
http://www.fikopy.com/

Labels: Advertising, Copy, Copywriting, Direct Mail, Direct Response, E-Mail, Fikopy, Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Research

posted by John E Fike @ 7:11 AM, ,

Successful E-mail and Direct Mail Campaigns: 5 Secrets to Generating Huge Response and Outstanding Profits

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Direct mail and e-mail campaigns can generate higher return on your investment dollar than any other form of marketing—when done correctly.

But if you’ve tried putting together a campaign for you business without the guidance of a direct mail/e-mail expert, you probably got dismal results from your campaign. When I look at failed campaigns—especially email campaigns on the Internet—they are missing 1 or more of five ingredients essential for a successful direct mail or e-mail campaign. Most failed campaigns lack 2-3 of these ingredients and some are missing all five!

Without these five ingredients your campaign efforts are wasted because you will not reach an audience that desires your product or service with a marketing message that appeals to them and motivates them to buy. Nor will you be able to test various parts of your campaign to make it even better and generate more response and more revenue.

The 5 Secrets to Generating Huge Response and Outstanding Profits are:

1. A highly targeted list to people who desire your product, service or information
2. Research that identifies the desires and fears and uncovers a fresh marketing approach for your campaign
3. An outstanding offer that is difficult to reject
4. Response mechanism that tracks response for testing and follow-up promotions
5. Excellent product or service that excites customers and offers many benefits

Over the next week or so, I will be blogging about these 5 Secrets to Generating Huge Response and Outstanding Profits so that you will understand how to make your next direct mail or e-mail marketing campaign a huge success.

As I get the blog entries posted, the each of the five secrets above will become a live link to the appropriate post.

Make sure you subscribe to this blog so that you don’t miss any of the five secrets.

At any time, if you wish to get more information about making your next direct mail or e-mail campaign a success, give me a call at 419-371-2302 or email me at john@fikopy.com for a free 15-minute consultation about your campaign.

John E. Fike
http://www.fikopy.com/

Labels: Copy, Copywriting, Direct Mail, Direct Response, E-Mail, Fikopy, Marketing Campaign, Product Quality, Research

posted by John E Fike @ 12:32 PM, ,

What Your Direct Response Copy Requires to Be Successful

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Direct response copy is marketing copy that gets readers to take action and contact you or order your product or service. You see direct response copy in your mailbox every day and it is equally present on the Internet.

Direct response copy includes sales letters, direct mail packages, web site sales pages, requests for e-zine subscriptions and advertisements that ask for a reply from the reader. It can be used to generate leads or generate sales.

Direct response copy isn't as easy as it may seem. Making a sale through writing requires that the writing evoke both an emotional and logical response from the reader that creates a desire to buy the product/service or contact you. Achieving this is difficult, because many of the conventions for direct response writing run contrary to the instincts of most people.

I've been trained in direct response copywriting by the American Writers and Artists Institute in order to provide you with the valuable resources you need for an effective direct response marketing campaign. Call me for a free consultation on how to get your direct-response copy and sales letter to be more effective and generate greater response.

Labels: Advertising, Copywriting, Direct Response, Marketing

posted by John E Fike @ 3:53 PM, ,

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