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A Mini-Direct Mail Strategy that Works

We often recommend a direct mail campaign for our clients, as our response rate averages 20% and ROI about 10% for a first buy within four months of beginning the campaign. Assuming a lifetime of purchases by those customers results in ROI unmatched by other strategies. Here are the steps for the direct mail campaigns that we produce for our clients:

1. Narrowly and accurately identify the ideal customer profile.
2. Buy a list that matches the profile.
3. Write and design a sales letter, a thought paper with useful information the customer can use today, and an over-sized post card. Each collateral piece is about the customer's business, not the sender's.
4. Hire a mail house to attach first-class indicia to letterhead, print the contact information (never use labels) and mail each piece on time.
5. Mail the sales letter and thought paper.
6. Seven working days later, mail the post card.
7. Seven working days later, our telemarketer company calls each person on the list, asking if they would like our client to call them. There are no sales pitches. The telemarketer's job is to get to yes or no, not to persuade. We are only aiming to establish qualified leads that indicate an interest in purchasing.
8. The qualified leads are given daily to our client, who then must call either within 24 hours or when the lead asked to be called.

The campaign works because it is carefully scripted, with everyone--vendors and clients--working toward the same goal: create qualified leads. However, the cost of such a campaign can scare some clients, even though we guarantee they will break even and begin earning a profit within four months of launching the campaign. For those clients with smaller budgets we recommend a mini-campaign that works like this:

1. Narrowly and accurately identify the ideal customer profile.
2. Each month identify 5 - 10 potential clients who fit that profile.
3. Write and design a sales letter and a thought paper with useful information the customer can use today.
4. Each month mail the letter and paper to those 5 - 10 clients.
5. Follow-up with a phone call.

Although the ROI pales in comparison to a full-blown campaign, the costs/profits ratio meets our clients wants and needs.

Five Secrets to Marketing--Really!

I just returned from San Diego where I gave a 90-minute presentation on marketing to a room-full of HR consultants. While other presenters focused on marketing how-to's, I took a different approach. The one that says "clients don't buy products and services; they buy us."

Tools and strategies are necessary, and every client deserves a solid marketing plan that contains goals, strategies and tactics. But I don't believe that potential clients purchase a marketing plan, although they expect, and we must deliver, results based on the (measurable) goals within that plan. And while the headline above might seem over-the-top, the secrets to marketing aren't. At the end of the day, whether or not we get the job comes down to who we are.

If you want to grow your business, create loyal customers and keep the new customer pipeline full, I urge you to do the following. They are tried and true and they work:

1. Be yourself. Be authentic. Don't be who the client wants you to be. That is a recipe for disaster. Sooner or later the true you appears and then the client feels duped, frustrated and angry.
2. Know your ideal client. Not every potential client is your client. If we approach new business as if every business represents a potential sale, we will fail to grow a strong and long-lasting business based on matching our business to another business's wants and needs. To create great word of mouth and to fill our pipeline with leads and referrals, every business transaction should be seen as a partnership. We must only offer our products and services to those businesses that are a great fit. Otherwise, we doom ourselves to a place where we can never do more than satisfy our customers, when we should be striving to exceed their expectations.
3. Be Honest. Never Persuade. Persuasion may result in a sale, and if all you care about is a short-term win, use that tactic. I prefer honesty, as my consultancy is not after a sale; it's after retainers and long-term relationships with my clients. In the end, my phone rings because of relationships, not persuasion techniques.
4. Passion. Be passionate about yourself, your business, your clients, their businesses, and their wants and needs. Passion breeds passion and that breeds great business relationships, strong partnerships and excellent results. Besides, who wants to work with a bore?
5. Great Experiences. This goes back to my comment about satisfying customers. A satisfied customer is one whose expectations are met. Anyone can do that. It is when we exceed our customer's expectations by providing solutions that work better than expected (exceed the measurable goals) and create a great experience for the client that makes them happy they are working with us. Remember, business is a series of relationships that grow stronger day-by-day. Business is not a series of disconnected sales opportunities.

The above works best when you have an ideal number of current clients who will grow your business for and with you. Obviously, if you have but one or two clients, you must combine these characteristics of success with marketing tools that get new clients. At first, the tools may represent 50% to 75% of your marketing efforts. But your goal should be to change that ratio around.

To be completely honest with you, the above represent 75 percent of my marketing efforts, Occasionally, I use direct marketing, and I do send out monthly thought papers and use this blog to stay in front of clients and potential clients and to share my ideas with peers, who should never be seen as competitors but as good folks who also do good work.

Oh! There is a 6th secret: It is "be where your customers are." Meaning,

• Belong to the associations and groups they belong to.
• Attend conferences seminars and webinars they attend.
• And communicate with them the way they want to be communicated to.

Okay! Your turn. Build your business. Start building at least one new relationship this week. Any questions?

Read More: Check out Seth Godin's Not so grand. Here is a snippet: "The best time to promote something is after it has raving fans, after you've discovered that it works, after it has a groundswell of support. And more important, the best way to promote something is consistently and persistently and for a long time. Save the bunting for Flag Day." 

Social Media: Back to the Future

Most marketers agree: Meet your customers where they live--home, business, third place--and then listen to their wants and needs so that we can meet or exceed their wants and needs, all the while creating great customer experiences. It's a heck of a challenge. And, frankly, social media has made our jobs both easier and more difficult. Here's why.

The way to converse with customers first comes from knowing the above and then using the means that our customers want us to use--direct mail, telemarketing, PR, ads--you know the list. So we segment our customers and talk to them when, where and how they want us to talk to them. We know the when, where and how by asking them and by using the data we collect to learn their wants, needs and desires.

Now come social media tools and social networking. We add them to our marketing tool box. But they come without the accompanying and necessary customer data. So we step back and ask questions we thought we knew the answers to:

• Who wants to read blogs and talk with us through that communications device?
• Who wants to watch video or listen to a podcast or meet us a LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse or Facebook?

We have to learn the answers so that we can effectively move into the future of marketing. More tools require more listening, more learning and more reaching out to people in ways they want to be touched so that we can discover and respond to their wants and needs.

Many of us have spent the past two years or more finding those answers, which can be discovered through the data we access by understanding who our blog readers are and who our social networking connections are, and then reaching out to them. The other tools--video and podcasts--present more of a challenge.

My question to you is how are you using social media, what are you learning from it, and is it helping you reach old and new customers? What is the social media bottom line and how long will it take us to understand it and use it effectively by integrating social media and social networking into our marketing plans?

Economy Down: Sell to Needs not Wants

No matter whether we call what our economy looks like today a recession or simply "down", consumers and businesses are cutting back.

My mantra for success is to always put people first by meeting their wants, needs and desires. Each qualifier carries a different result:

• Wants: I could use it and buying it would make my business more efficient (add your own reason here).
• Needs: I have to purchase this because without it my business will suffer (must have).
• Desires: I would love to have this (no reason needed).

The above examples work the same way for consumers. Here's the bottom line: In the current economy, most are buying only what they need. Are your strategies aligned with your customers' needs?

Sales and Marketing that Work

Here is the truth most of us don’t want to hear: Without marketing and sales, there is no business. We don’t want to hear that, although most of us believe it, because performing marketing and sales tasks is scary. We have to communicate with other people. That’s what we do when we market our business and sell our products and services. Sometimes we do it by telephone (telemarketing). Sometimes we do it using mail (direct mail). Sometimes we use newspapers and magazines to tell our story (public relations). Sometimes we buy space in publications or online (advertising). And sometimes we use online tools (web sites, blogs, podcasts).

Marketing gets the word out about our business. It gets us noticed. It gets customers in our doors. It is the step that leads to sales, when a customer buys our products and services. If we don’t get noticed, and sell our products and services, there is no business.

Done the right way—with complete honesty and integrity—those who work in sales and marketing strive to increase happiness by making sure that the business creates products and deliver services that meet people’s needs. Everyone involved in the business should treat all people with respect and dignity, and talks with their current and potential customers, not at them. Versions of the truth are unacceptable. Communication is black or white and honest or dishonest. When done correctly, sales and marketing tasks are meant to educate, inform and reach out to certain people (our market) with news and information that people need to know about your business.

Here is the bottom line: Sales and marketing care about people and their needs and shares the information people need to make good choices in their lives. This is what we define as leading with the heart and creating happiness.

Think about it: If we are to manage a business for success, we have to create a business built around sales, marketing and innovation. In other words, sales, marketing and innovation are the most fundamental and most important tasks in our business. Every person in our business has some responsibility for sales and marketing results, and their pay should be tied to those results. It doesn’t matter whether or not the employee is in the accounting department or the marketing department. Every time we communicate with a customer, we are performing a marketing and a sales task.

CSO Insights' Sales Performance Optimization—2007 Survey Results and Analysis for the most current sales performance benchmarks provides data that tells us we are not doing great work in sales and marketing:

• Only 60% of sales reps are making or exceeding quotas.
• Only 37% of firms report they have implemented a formal sales process.
• 85% of those who do have a formal sales process report it has a positive impact on sales performance.

The first two numbers represent failure; however, the good news lies in the third number, which gives us a great clue as to how to solve the challenge.

Change the Face of Sales and Marketing

We can increase marketing and sales performance in several ways:

• Sales and marketing staffs should be in one department and should work closely together on every step of the process, from understanding the customers, to strategic marketing and sales planning, to closing sales.
• Traditional sales compensation packages should reflect bottom lines and margins, and sales staff pay should be tied directly to the average margins achieved through their sales. Today, sales are usually passed based on the revenues they bring in, which encourage discounting and lower margins.
• Sales’ first goal should be to provide solutions rather than to sell a product or a service.
• Sales and marketing people should never promise anything that the business cannot deliver.
• Sales should be part of ongoing customer service and customer satisfaction. Working with the marketing staff, sales should keep in touch with their customers.

Here are some of the keys to a successful integrated sales and marketing campaign:

• Target your market based on the behaviors, emotions, demographics, psychographics, and specific wants, needs and desires of those key customers who want your product or service.
• People choose products that work for them: those products that resonate emotionally and have personal meaning.
• The key to sales and marketing is to connect our products and services with people wants, needs and desires so that they tickle people’s emotional and personal touch points.
• Know as much about the who within your audience as possible.
• What elicits the emotional, psychological and intellectual responses that motivate that audience to buy from us and to build a sustainable relationship with us?
• What will make your customers and clients happy?
• We must differentiate our customers and recognize that they are individuals who can be segmented into large audiences but only if we understand what their needs are, what their buying potential represents and how they rank based on a scale that identifies their long-term value to you and your long-term value to them. Segment your audience by buying habits and purchasing behaviors.
• Rank customers by their value, from 1—meaning extremely likely to buy and to buy often—to 5—meaning, they wouldn’t buy from us if we were the only game in town or they buy products for rebates, only to return the product one the rebate check is cashed.
• Sales and marketing success is directly proportional to understanding customer needs, serving those needs, establishing relationships based on trust and credibility, and building, implementing and managing happiness.

If you focus on the who instead of the what and develop an integrated campaign, your response rates will deliver return on your investment.

Create Your Web Site for Your Customers

One of my most important responsibilities as a marketing and communications consultant is to provide my clients with good advice about web site development and then to create and execute on strategies and tactics to drive customers and potential customers to their web site.

The web site remains one of our best marketing tools to drive business to our doors and to make our  telephones ring. Here is what I recommend to my clients, although be aware that every client has different wants and needs and one size does not fit all:

1. Keep it simple and easily navigable.
2. Avoid introductory pages, as they are more likely to drive customers away than impress them. In fact, avoid anything that doesn't motivate and inspire a customer to want to learn more about your business.
3. Remember, web sites should be about your customer's wants and needs. They should not be about your business, except for pages labeled "Products and Services," "About Us," and your "Customer/Client" page. There may be other exceptions, but the rule of thumb is to write content and include visuals that relate to your customers.
4. Avoid the pronoun "I", infrequently use the pronoun "we" but use the pronoun "you" often.
5. Avoid adjectives.
6. Avoid self-serving comments of any kind (i.e., as soon as you say how wonderful your products and services are, you raise credibility and trust issues with readers).
7. Let other's speak about you through testimonials and real case studies.
8. Include your value proposition, your two or three key messages and why readers should care about your business (i.e., what's in it for them) on your home page. It is a good idea to include a testimonial or two on the home page (or landing page), as well.
9. Keep content at about an 8th or 9th grade readability, so it can be scanned and understood quickly. Short sentences; bullet points; numbered lists; photos and videos that show, not tell; great headlines; and subheads help readers navigate a page.

There suggestions are the basics. I would be interested in knowing what you advise or do to drive people to a web site that works to grow a business.

Marketing Using the Rule of Thirds

As is so often the case, Drew challenged his readers with a marketing story and question that goes like this:

This is one of the sticky wickets we don't talk about very much in marketing. You can do all the right things, aimed at the right people...and still not win their business. Unless you understand the hooks.

What are the common hooks in your industry?  If you know -- what are you doing to remove those hooks? If you don't know -- how could you find out?

My simple answer is always know and understand your customers by being where they often are to  observe their behavior and always have an ongoing conversation with them. But here is how I take a more complex look at the answer to Drew's question: I use the rule of thirds.

1. A third of your ideal customers aren't going to leave their current provider for a variety of reasons.
2. A third of your ideal customers aren't going to buy because it isn't the right time (the wants, needs and desires principle).
3. A third of your ideal customers are ready to buy from you.

If you have developed an excellent profile of your ideal customer and a list that precisely fincludes only customers with that profile, your marketing strategy should achieve a 33 percent ROI as measured by qualified leads who are ready to buy. Now you have to close the deal.

For example, this past year we exceeded 33 percent ROI by 22 percent on average, assuming the rule of thirds. Here's an example of how it might work:

• If we use Direct Mail and guarantee (we guarantee to meet or exceed goals or you get some money back) 30 qualified leads (i.e., 10 percent of a third of a 900 name list), we achieve on average about 37 qualified leads.
• We define qualified as responding "yes" to the question, Do you want XYZ Company to call you about this product (or service)?
• Furthermore, the DM campaign always achieves qualified leads from those businesses that call before we begin the telemarketing phase.

Not bad ROI based on the usual returns of DM (about 1 percent to 3 percent without telemarketing; up to 10 percent with telemarketing). And I believe most of that return starts with the rule of thirds, which can only work if we first precisely identify the ideal clients we want to reach, and then create a list that does that. The real value of using the rule of thirds lies in the process:

1. Spend as much time as necessary defining the ideal customer.
2. Set realistic goals using the rule of thirds.
3. And, very important, refine the list by always asking the potential customer, Why don't you want XYZ Company to call you? and capture that data.

Key to Success: At the end of the day, it is about execution and conversation.

Note: The rules of thirds is a term I first heard 40 years ago in a photojournalism class. I have never heard another consultant discuss the rule of thirds, but I have the data and most important the results to support its use in marketing and communications. However, remember, success never exists in knowing the what; it only comes from knowing the how.

Who Advertises Online & Why?

In a story posted by Carol Krol on January 18 in BtoB Online, the "U.S. online advertising market will reach $50.3 billion in revenue by 2011, more than double the figure for 2007, according to research company Yankee Group.”

Here are the report's highlights:

• The Internet currently accounts for about 20% of overall media consumption in the U.S.
• Advertisers currently invest 7.5% of their budgets online.
• By 2011, nearly 25% of all media consumption will be online, drawing 15% of the advertising budget.

What is the significance of this to our businesses? How do we respond to such research, like lemmings or like skeptics? What, if anything, does this say about revenue potential for social media?

I wonder who is buying this advertising and who is being targeted? I serve mostly small to mid-sized businesses serving other businesses. I never recommend advertising as part of the marketing mix, as other tactics deliver better ROI and are more easily used to reach the right customers.

My guess is that most of the ads purchased are done so by B2C businesses and the money is being spent on sites such as Facebook to reach the 18 - 34 age group. Does it work? I have a presence on most social media sites and have yet to notice an ad. They are they, I know, because I hear my colleagues complaining about them and saying that they are intrusive.

Is it because of my age that I never notice these ads? After 50 plus years of advertising perhaps I am immune. But it still begs the question in my mind: Do these ads work? How do you measure their success? And who are the advertisers?

Marketers: Stop P'ing

Marketers want more say. They want respect and dignity. They want power. They want more control. How do I know? I hear marketers write and say these things every day. And I understand that; however, marketers will never get their wishes granted, if they continue to believe that good marketing is about power and control. And most of the blame for falling into this trap goes back to their college days. Here's a history lesson that explains what I mean:

In the '60s, Professor Neil Borden at Harvard Business School identified what he called a “Marketing Mix.” He believed that this mix influenced consumer decisions. Professor E. Jerome McCarthy at the Harvard Business School followed that up by identifying the "Marketing Mix" components, what came to be known as the 4Ps: product, price, place and promotion.

It was McCarthy's intent that we marketers recognize that marketing is customer-centered. In 2001, Idris Mootee developed a new 4Ps model made up of Personalization, Participation, Peer-to-Peer and Predictive Modeling.

Both model's creators had good intentions. But both models are flawed because they focus on marketing products and services instead of creating experiences in which marketers and consumers talk with each other instead of at each other. I want to suggest a new model that puts people first, not a business's products and services. Here is my model. It might need work. Feel free to flesh it out.

Its working title is PEWS:

People: We serve people, internally and externally, not products and services or price.

Experiences: Our job is to create great experiences for people.

Wants: We create great experiences by understanding people's wants, needs and desires and then meeting or exceeding people's experiences around their pursuit of wants, needs and desires.

Social: We understand people's wants, needs and desires by engaging them socially, in conversation, in which we listen more than we talk.

Finally, it is no accident that the acronym spells PEWS, which carries a larger message. For many of us, a Pew is experienced only in church. And church is not about a place, a product, a price, a promotion or a predictive model. A church is represented by its people, who are there to serve and be served. They come to have their wants, needs and desires met or exceeded, and when that occurs, they become evangelists. And evangelism is about passion. When business leaders, employees and consumers are passionate about an experience served up by a company, they, too, become evangelists. And that, my friends, should be marketing's first goal, to inspire evangelism. And if we do that consistently, a chair will be placed at the table with our name on it.

Note: 4 Ps history sourced at Wikipedia.

Further Reading: Check out Seth's take on Ps and read Five easy pieces.

Not Only are They Watching You, They Are Tracking You

Did you go online recently to find a restaurant, to book a hotel, to buy a book or a computer? If you did, there's a good chance Yahoo and/or Google know where you live and at least some of the things you are willing to spend money on. And they learned this information without asking your permission directly or telling you that they just mined some information and what they plan to do with that information. It's no secret to most of you that Facebook users are loudly complaining that the site went too far in their tracking activities. Some are deactivating their accounts because of Facebook's behavior.

According to a CNN.com article, Ad targeting improves as Web sites track consumer habits, your buying habits likely are being tracked "and major Internet portals have bought companies to expand their reach and capabilities for "behavioral targeting" -- all so advertisers can try to hit you with what they believe you're most likely to buy, even as doing so means amassing more data on you."

"'When you are online today, you've been labeled and tagged as this type of consumer in milliseconds,'" said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. 'All of a sudden you are exposed to a vast number of invisible salespeople who are peering over your personal details to figure out the best way to sell to you.'"

The Network Advertising Initiative has begun a study to clarify the boundaries. But is this too little too late? Has the horse fled the barn and run amuck? How does data mining affect your internet use, if at all? How do you feel about having your online preferences tracked? What would you do about data mining, if you were King or Queen of on Online Practices?

Note: Read Seth's take at People don't truly care about privacy.