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9 Critical Mistakes That Can Destroy Even The Most Powerful Marketing Materials

Aaron Corson
Aaron Corson

This document provides 9 critical mistakes that can destroy the effectiveness of marketing materials. These include: 1) Mailing to the wrong list without properly targeting the intended audience. 2) Failing to target the top 20% of customers who will spend 80% of revenues. 3) Not continuing to market to existing customers who are the easiest to sell to. The document emphasizes the importance of testing marketing materials to determine the most effective strategies.

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pec ial S epo rt R 9That Can Destroy Even Critical Mistakes The Most Powerful Marketing Materials 314-432-7774 w w w. M a r k e t Pa t h O n l i n e . c o m
MarketPath is a division of NJC Printing 1257 N. Warson Rd. St. Louis, MO 63132 314-432-7774 Reproduced with permission ISBN 0-9549570-1-6 Copyright 息 Nick Devine 2007 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise (other than for purposes of review) without the written permission of the author. Disclaimer This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information regarding the subject matter. The author / publisher does not assume any re- sponsibility for errors, omissions or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. The author / publisher cannot be held liable for any success or failure of the readers business that is directly or indirectly related to the purchase and use of the information herein.
9 Critical Mistakes That Can Destroy The Sales Effectiveness Of Any Marketing Piece 1. Mailing your marketing piece to the wrong list: There are thousands of different kinds of lists you can purchase and the world is full of mailing list brokers desperate to sell them to you. A good list broker can be worth his weight in gold, but a bad one can cost you a ton of cash. A good It is important that you know that there are three basic kinds of lists: List broker A.Subscriber Lists: can be These are people who subscribe to different magazines, newsletters or other periodicals. You can usually get these worth his sorted by a variety of data fields including geography, past weight in subscribers and current subscribers. There is also a field called hotline subscribers. These are the newest subscribers and these gold, but a are important because they have an active interest in their bad one chosen topic now. can cost B. Purchaser lists: you a ton These are people who have purchased from a particular of cash. supplier. For example, I might ask for a purchaser list from Nightingale Conant, of people who have bought business related programs. As with the subscriber list, the recent purchasers are the best. C. Compiled List: For most companies, this is the list they are most familiar with. This is generally a list of companies or people complied from different sources. So you might simply want all the accountancy firms in a particular area or all companies with revenues over $5 million. In marketing, people talk about message to market match. It has to do with the correct targeting of your message to the most
likely buyers. To illustrate this lets take a ridiculous example. Imagine I have designed the worlds worst marketing piece for fishing rods. Its scribbled on crumpled paper but it does say I have stock available which I can dispatch immediately at a reasonable price. My target market is a group of Eskimos who have had all their fishing rods stolen. How successful do you think I will be? Id invest money in that campaign! Now lets say I take my profits and get a New York agency to design an award winning marketing piece for me. I mail this with the same offer to a group of desert nomads. Would that be a fast way to get rid of a pile of cash? You can creatively use mailing lists to your great advantage. Carefully For example, if you are selling personalized luxury vacations, you might buy a list of Lexus and Mercedes buyers. target Carefully target your market so you have a strong message to your market match! market so you have 2. Not targeting your best buyers a strong Every market has one group of buyers that spend way more than everyone else. Using the 80/20 principal, these are the 20% of message your market that will spend 80% of the money. They have the to market potential to dramatically increase your revenues. match! Not only must you target them carefully, but you must creatively market to them sequentially. 3. Not marketing to your own customers The easiest person to sell to is one you already have a relationship with. They already trust you. They know what you offer and are willing to give you their money. Unless you market to them, 33% of your customers will leave you in the next five years because of perceived indifference. You must market to them all the time. You should have a monthly marketing calendar with different promotions to continually entice them back to your business.
4. You have not checked that your contact details are correct A number of years ago I worked in a company who invested thousands of dollars printing a series of new full color brochures. When they arrived back from the printers, the phone number was wrong. You need to discover that before it is too late. Ive seen another example where an advertised web site did not work. These are silly and avoidable mistakes. 5. You have not sent a sample Whenever you are sending direct mail, you must always send a sample first. Ive witnessed samples where the piece did not arrive in In marketing the anticipated state of quality. Envelopes got jammed within the Ive seen only postal system, ink got smudged in the posting process, the inserts one strategy were placed in the envelope incorrectly. Send a sample piece to that cant miss yourself first! - and that is to market to your best customers 6. You have not put your contact details first, your on everything best prospects second and the I see examples of this nearly every week. Just yesterday, I rest of the wanted to subscribe to a magazine, but could I find a subscription world last. form, contact phone number, web site or email address? No! Thats just stupid! John Romero Your best piece of advice is to put your contact details in a variety of places. If you have separate items in your promotion, make absolutely sure you have contact details on everything. I regularly throw away or lose the main piece and have only an order form or second testimonial letter and it wont have a contact number. Thats money going down the drain when it should be going into your bank account. 7. Failure to test This is a BIG one. You must test. This takes effort but it is well worth it. I recently mailed a series of four postcards to different parts of a list. Two of them out performed the other two by a factor of
five. Isnt that useful to know for the next time? You can and should test different elements. Test your offer, guarantee, P.S., headline, price, opening, color of paper, type of enve- lope, grabber (the little gimmicks you stick in the envelope), date you mail and what ever else you can think of. TEST! TEST! TEST! 8. Dont try to be too clever Heres a simple rule. Dont try to be clever in your marketing pieces. Most of your prospects wont get it. They dont have the same sense of humor, intellect or background as you. Being too clever costs you money. Keep your clever stuff for dinner parties. I know half 9. Failure to have a sane civilian check the money I your masterpiece spend on By the time you have gone through your promotion for the advertising 67th time, you have lost ALL objectivity. You are now far too close is wasted, to what you wrote to read it effectively. but I can What you wrote and what you intended to write can easily end never find up being miles apart. Here are a few delicious blunders that Clayton out which Makepeace revealed in a recent newsletter. half. John Wanamaker
_________________________________________________________________ FastPath is a turnkey, integrated marketing program that combines the power of personalized direct mail, personalized email messages, unique personalized web- sites and online response tracking, into one powerful and highly effective direct marketing package. _________________________________________________________________ Improve direct marketing response rates Develop more qualified prospects Convert high quality leads into profitable customers Measure results in real-time _________________________________________________________________ Marketing programs similar to FastPath are becoming commonplace among many of the largest companies in the world. These market leaders spend tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, developing integrated market- ing programs that include many of the same features as FastPath. These complex, multi-channel marketing campaigns often take months to de- velop and implement, usually requiring the coordination of multiple service pro- viders. These include but are not limited to; graphic designers, web developers,
advertising agencies, printing companies and direct mail houses. With the FastPath Program, you get all of the features and benefits of these big budget marketing programs all from one single provider. Until now, highly effective integrated marketing programs like FastPath have been out of reach for small and medium sized businesses that dont have the six figure marketing budget of the market leaders they are often competing against. The FastPath Integrated Marketing Program is big budget, world-class mar- keting for a fraction of the cost! _________________________________________________________________ The FastPath Program uses proven, cutting edge digital imaging, web and email technology to reach out to prospects and convert them into new, profitable cus- tomers for your business. Using the available personal information about your prospects, you will be able to break free from the clutter of traditional direct mail and seize their attention on a more personal level. FastPath does this by combining print, web and email with the prospects personal information to drastically increase response rates by as much as tenfold. Whether your marketing objective is lead generation, brand awareness, building loyalty, event promotion or something else entirely, we can customize the Fast- Path program to meet and often times exceed those objectives. The FastPath Team will walk you through every step of the planning and design process. Then all you have to do is wait for the new business to start pouring in. _________________________________________________________________ MarketPath is an innovator in providing personalized marketing materials, inte- grated communications and related marketing services to companies nationwide. MarketPath is a division of NJC Printing in St. Louis, MO. Mike Corson 314-432-7774 800-432-5662 Mike@MarketPathOnline.com www.MarketPathOnline.com References and case studies are available upon request.

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9 Critical Mistakes That Can Destroy Even The Most Powerful Marketing Materials

  • 1. pec ial S epo rt R 9That Can Destroy Even Critical Mistakes The Most Powerful Marketing Materials 314-432-7774 w w w. M a r k e t Pa t h O n l i n e . c o m
  • 2. MarketPath is a division of NJC Printing 1257 N. Warson Rd. St. Louis, MO 63132 314-432-7774 Reproduced with permission ISBN 0-9549570-1-6 Copyright 息 Nick Devine 2007 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise (other than for purposes of review) without the written permission of the author. Disclaimer This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information regarding the subject matter. The author / publisher does not assume any re- sponsibility for errors, omissions or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. The author / publisher cannot be held liable for any success or failure of the readers business that is directly or indirectly related to the purchase and use of the information herein.
  • 3. 9 Critical Mistakes That Can Destroy The Sales Effectiveness Of Any Marketing Piece 1. Mailing your marketing piece to the wrong list: There are thousands of different kinds of lists you can purchase and the world is full of mailing list brokers desperate to sell them to you. A good list broker can be worth his weight in gold, but a bad one can cost you a ton of cash. A good It is important that you know that there are three basic kinds of lists: List broker A.Subscriber Lists: can be These are people who subscribe to different magazines, newsletters or other periodicals. You can usually get these worth his sorted by a variety of data fields including geography, past weight in subscribers and current subscribers. There is also a field called hotline subscribers. These are the newest subscribers and these gold, but a are important because they have an active interest in their bad one chosen topic now. can cost B. Purchaser lists: you a ton These are people who have purchased from a particular of cash. supplier. For example, I might ask for a purchaser list from Nightingale Conant, of people who have bought business related programs. As with the subscriber list, the recent purchasers are the best. C. Compiled List: For most companies, this is the list they are most familiar with. This is generally a list of companies or people complied from different sources. So you might simply want all the accountancy firms in a particular area or all companies with revenues over $5 million. In marketing, people talk about message to market match. It has to do with the correct targeting of your message to the most
  • 4. likely buyers. To illustrate this lets take a ridiculous example. Imagine I have designed the worlds worst marketing piece for fishing rods. Its scribbled on crumpled paper but it does say I have stock available which I can dispatch immediately at a reasonable price. My target market is a group of Eskimos who have had all their fishing rods stolen. How successful do you think I will be? Id invest money in that campaign! Now lets say I take my profits and get a New York agency to design an award winning marketing piece for me. I mail this with the same offer to a group of desert nomads. Would that be a fast way to get rid of a pile of cash? You can creatively use mailing lists to your great advantage. Carefully For example, if you are selling personalized luxury vacations, you might buy a list of Lexus and Mercedes buyers. target Carefully target your market so you have a strong message to your market match! market so you have 2. Not targeting your best buyers a strong Every market has one group of buyers that spend way more than everyone else. Using the 80/20 principal, these are the 20% of message your market that will spend 80% of the money. They have the to market potential to dramatically increase your revenues. match! Not only must you target them carefully, but you must creatively market to them sequentially. 3. Not marketing to your own customers The easiest person to sell to is one you already have a relationship with. They already trust you. They know what you offer and are willing to give you their money. Unless you market to them, 33% of your customers will leave you in the next five years because of perceived indifference. You must market to them all the time. You should have a monthly marketing calendar with different promotions to continually entice them back to your business.
  • 5. 4. You have not checked that your contact details are correct A number of years ago I worked in a company who invested thousands of dollars printing a series of new full color brochures. When they arrived back from the printers, the phone number was wrong. You need to discover that before it is too late. Ive seen another example where an advertised web site did not work. These are silly and avoidable mistakes. 5. You have not sent a sample Whenever you are sending direct mail, you must always send a sample first. Ive witnessed samples where the piece did not arrive in In marketing the anticipated state of quality. Envelopes got jammed within the Ive seen only postal system, ink got smudged in the posting process, the inserts one strategy were placed in the envelope incorrectly. Send a sample piece to that cant miss yourself first! - and that is to market to your best customers 6. You have not put your contact details first, your on everything best prospects second and the I see examples of this nearly every week. Just yesterday, I rest of the wanted to subscribe to a magazine, but could I find a subscription world last. form, contact phone number, web site or email address? No! Thats just stupid! John Romero Your best piece of advice is to put your contact details in a variety of places. If you have separate items in your promotion, make absolutely sure you have contact details on everything. I regularly throw away or lose the main piece and have only an order form or second testimonial letter and it wont have a contact number. Thats money going down the drain when it should be going into your bank account. 7. Failure to test This is a BIG one. You must test. This takes effort but it is well worth it. I recently mailed a series of four postcards to different parts of a list. Two of them out performed the other two by a factor of
  • 6. five. Isnt that useful to know for the next time? You can and should test different elements. Test your offer, guarantee, P.S., headline, price, opening, color of paper, type of enve- lope, grabber (the little gimmicks you stick in the envelope), date you mail and what ever else you can think of. TEST! TEST! TEST! 8. Dont try to be too clever Heres a simple rule. Dont try to be clever in your marketing pieces. Most of your prospects wont get it. They dont have the same sense of humor, intellect or background as you. Being too clever costs you money. Keep your clever stuff for dinner parties. I know half 9. Failure to have a sane civilian check the money I your masterpiece spend on By the time you have gone through your promotion for the advertising 67th time, you have lost ALL objectivity. You are now far too close is wasted, to what you wrote to read it effectively. but I can What you wrote and what you intended to write can easily end never find up being miles apart. Here are a few delicious blunders that Clayton out which Makepeace revealed in a recent newsletter. half. John Wanamaker
  • 7. _________________________________________________________________ FastPath is a turnkey, integrated marketing program that combines the power of personalized direct mail, personalized email messages, unique personalized web- sites and online response tracking, into one powerful and highly effective direct marketing package. _________________________________________________________________ Improve direct marketing response rates Develop more qualified prospects Convert high quality leads into profitable customers Measure results in real-time _________________________________________________________________ Marketing programs similar to FastPath are becoming commonplace among many of the largest companies in the world. These market leaders spend tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, developing integrated market- ing programs that include many of the same features as FastPath. These complex, multi-channel marketing campaigns often take months to de- velop and implement, usually requiring the coordination of multiple service pro- viders. These include but are not limited to; graphic designers, web developers,
  • 8. advertising agencies, printing companies and direct mail houses. With the FastPath Program, you get all of the features and benefits of these big budget marketing programs all from one single provider. Until now, highly effective integrated marketing programs like FastPath have been out of reach for small and medium sized businesses that dont have the six figure marketing budget of the market leaders they are often competing against. The FastPath Integrated Marketing Program is big budget, world-class mar- keting for a fraction of the cost! _________________________________________________________________ The FastPath Program uses proven, cutting edge digital imaging, web and email technology to reach out to prospects and convert them into new, profitable cus- tomers for your business. Using the available personal information about your prospects, you will be able to break free from the clutter of traditional direct mail and seize their attention on a more personal level. FastPath does this by combining print, web and email with the prospects personal information to drastically increase response rates by as much as tenfold. Whether your marketing objective is lead generation, brand awareness, building loyalty, event promotion or something else entirely, we can customize the Fast- Path program to meet and often times exceed those objectives. The FastPath Team will walk you through every step of the planning and design process. Then all you have to do is wait for the new business to start pouring in. _________________________________________________________________ MarketPath is an innovator in providing personalized marketing materials, inte- grated communications and related marketing services to companies nationwide. MarketPath is a division of NJC Printing in St. Louis, MO. Mike Corson 314-432-7774 800-432-5662 Mike@MarketPathOnline.com www.MarketPathOnline.com References and case studies are available upon request.