So you want to grow. What’s it take?
If you analyze any successful company that uses direct marketing, you’ll find four critical components. Without these key pieces at work, it’s impossible to reach your ultimate earning potential.
Before we dig in, I’m not claiming these are unique or new. They are old as dirt, and you’ll find these concepts in any decent marketing text. The question you need to ask yourself as you read isn’t “Do I already know this?” but “Have I implemented these in my company, and if not, WHY not?”
1. Have a USP
USP Stands for Unique Selling Proposition. Put simply, this is the answer to the question “Why should I buy from you instead of your competition?” Imagine someone asking you that question at a networking function:
“Oh, you’re a business owner? Why would I want to buy from you instead of someone else?”
What would your response be? Would your answer have the words “quality”, “service”, or “price” in it? If so, you’re in big trouble.
Without a strong, powerful USP you’re at the mercy of the market and will struggle to maintain your margins as people grind you down on price or worse, ignore you altogether.
If you find yourself constantly justifying your prices to prospects, lay awake at night worrying about your competition, or fantasize about bigger margins but fear raising your prices will get you slaughtered in the marketplace… your USP needs work.
2. Know Thy Customer
Great marketers are close to their customers. They talk to them regularly. They know, in detail, what their customer’s fears and desires are. Good marketers also get advance warning when the tides of the marketplace are shifting because they have a two-way dialog with the people who buy from them.
Most companies only have contact with clients when there’s money changing hands. How do you feel when you know the only interest a business has in you is to separate you from your money?
Talk to your customers regularly. Ask them questions. They’ll appreciate it and become harder to steal away from you. Discover what they like and don’t like about doing business with you. What are their dreams, fears and frustrations? Spend the time to get that information and you can use your newfound knowledge to supercharge your messages and dominate your marketplace.
3. Use Powerful Messages
Learning how to strengthen your messages is one of the most dramatic steps you can take to drive income.
This is the realm of killer sales copy, the words on your salespeople’s lips, the attitude of your customer service team. They’re all sending a message – and if the message isn’t irresistible, your customers will just wander over and see what the competition is doing.
Here’s a fun test, walk up to a stranger and start talking to them. You’ll immediately notice that if what comes out of your mouth isn’t instantly relevant and interesting, they’re going to start looking around for an excuse to walk away.
(Imagine you knew the stranger was shopping for an engagement ring and you were a diamond expert. Would that information help you strike up a conversation? This goes back to the previous topic.)
If your marketing is designed to get new customers, you’re facing the same challenge. Any marketing message you put out must be irresistible enough to capture and hold the undivided attention of a stranger. Not only that, your messages must convey enough trust and credibility to talk that stranger into pulling out his wallet and handing you his credit card!
If you’re marketing to existing customers, don’t think you can skip the “compelling” part. Every customer you have is being seduced and romanced by hundreds of messages sent by your competition.
Your messages include phone conversations, ad copy, your website, emails, the packaging on your product. Every communication with your customers and prospects must either close a sale or build loyalty. If your messages aren’t strong enough to do those two things, change them.
This gets painful when you spend thousands or tens of thousands on ads, websites, brochures, that are as compelling as fish wrappers. They all cost money, and if the messages they contain aren’t strong enough to close a sale or build loyalty, they are worthless.
The sad part is, companies who struggle or are under-performing their potential usually don’t even know if their messages are working.
Which brings us to the 4th critical element of successful direct marketing:
4. Measure Your Results
It’s a tested fact that changing a headline on an ad can increase sales up to 1400%. That means the same ad you’re paying $1000 to run suddenly makes you 14 times more money for the same cost. If that kind of instant profit boost were within your grasp, wouldn’t you want to know about it?
What if you didn’t measure or test the results of those headlines? What if you just kept blindly running your ads without tracking the amount of cash each ad produces for you?
If you don’t know how much money your ads, website, brochures, salespeople are making you, what are you basing your decisions on when it comes to your marketing budget and strategy? Which ads do you repeat, which ones do you pull?
Measuring is the ugly stepchild of marketing because it’s tedious and boring. Its only redeeming value is that it can make you RICH.
If you think you can maximize your earnings without testing and tracking your marketing, you’re deluding yourself. At best you can get lucky and stumble across a system that works for a while, never knowing if an extra six figure income is passing by, waiting for you to reach out and grab it.
There you have it, the four essential components to making a fortune with direct marketing.
Nothing earth shattering here, right? But can you see how missing even one of those components will hamstring your marketing efforts?
It’s simple:
- If you don’t know why someone should choose you, what are you going to say in your ads except “we’re the cheapest around, and proud of it”?
- If you don’t know what your customers want, what their desires, fears and frustrations are, how can you possibly be effective when you talk to them?
- If your messages are weak, you’re going to struggle to make sales and waste a LOT of money paying for ads, websites, brochures etc that do nothing for your financial future.
- And if you don’t track and measure your marketing, you’re just shooting in the dark, flushing away money because you have no clue what’s working. There could be a fortune staring you in the face but you’d never know it.
4 Concepts, 4 pillars, 4 “core elements” – whatever you want to call them. You can’t make a company work to its potential if they aren’t ALL active in your business.
Let me ask you, which of these would you purposely choose to leave out as you build your company?
“We don’t need a stinkin USP! We like razor thin margins because competing on price builds character.”
The bottom line is if any one of these 4 components are missing in your business, you’re trying to run the Kentucky Derby with a three legged horse.
Pointing out these 4 areas could be helpful to you. Maybe you weren’t aware of them before you started reading this.
More likely this is familiar ground. And even if you now have more information, you’re still left to struggle as you try to implement these and other marketing ideas in your business.
This is where High-Performance Training comes in.
We’ve taken these four fundamentals and built a direct marketing training program unlike any other.
This isn’t a “seminar”.
And it isn’t for you if all you want is more information.
Instead, our unique training system actually forces you to implement each of these steps in your business. When you join one of our groups, you will finally ACT on this information and begin laying the foundation for an exciting financial future.
Once these four pillars are supporting your business, there’s really no stopping you. You can rollout campaign after campaign and watch the money pile up. You’ll be in control of your income, with push-button marketing systems that create ongoing, predictable streams of cash flow.
These core ideas, once implemented in your company, give you the ability to follow through on ALL the great marketing ideas out there. You’ll know how to setup Joint Ventures, build websites that are crazy cash machines, write powerful copy, and track your results to make one smart marketing decision after another.
Our training walks you step by step through the process of creating your USP, Getting to know your customers, building irresistible messages (the copywriting secrets and shortcuts revealed in this module are worth the entire price of the course), and gives you the tools to track and measure your marketing.
We leave nothing out. You get worksheets, questionnaires, face to face instruction, and the support to guarantee your success.
Plus there’s a lot more. Too much to mention here. If you’re interested in more information about our training program, send an email to training@highperformancemarketing.com and we’ll send you a PDF Document with all the details.
Now, what if you’re ready for the next level?
If your company has a solid direct marketing foundation already in place, yet you still can’t seem to get the marketing payday you know is available – there’s one more option.
You can have us do it all for you.
For a hefty up-front fee and a significant portion of the increased profits generated as a result, we will take on the task of implementing all your marketing.
You don’t lift a finger. We write the copy, manage your software, build and maintain your websites, engineer joint ventures, measure and track your results, project manage, graphic design, produce video, and work with you to develop and implement strategies that will double or triple your profits in 18 months or less.
To even consider this option you have to have a solid business that can scale. You must have the respect and loyalty of your customers and be committed to outstanding customer service. There must be some money in your bank account and you need to be ready to hang on for the ride and see this through. If bold, outrageous marketing scares you, this won’t work.
We turn away 90% of the companies who want to work with us at this level because most of them aren’t prepared to handle the kind of growth that happens when marketing is implemented on this level. Their systems would break down and their staff would freak out and jump ship from the increased workload.
But if you’re one of those elite entrepreneurs fully committed to seeing how far you can go, how much money you can make if your marketing was fine tuned and implemented at a world class level, send us an email and tell us why you think we’d be a good match.
Send your email to implement@highperformancemarketing.com.
We’ll respond within 24 hours to either schedule a phone call or break the news that we’re not right for each other.
We only work with 3 clients at a time at this level, and our next available opening is 6 weeks out. If you think we’re a good match, send your email to implement@highperformancemarketing.com and we’ll go from there.
Regards,
Eric Ondrick and Kory Basaraba
Founders, High-Performance Marketing, LLC