That Can Destroy Even The Most Powerful Marketing Materials

Special

Report

9CriticalMistakes

3 1 4 - 4 3 2 - 7 7 7 4w w w. M a r k e t P a 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 © 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.

It is important that you know that there are three basic kinds of

lists:

A.Subscriber Lists: These are people who subscribe to different magazines,

newsletters or other periodicals. You can usually get these

sorted by a variety of data fields including geography, past

subscribers and current subscribers. There is also a field called

hotline subscribers. These are the newest subscribers and these

are important because they have an active interest in their

chosen topic now.

B. Purchaser lists: These are people who have purchased from a particular

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

A good List

broker can be

worth his weight in

gold, but a bad one can cost you a ton of cash.

“

”

likely buyers. To illustrate this let’s take a ridiculous example.

Imagine I have designed the world’s worst marketing piece for

fishing rods. It’s 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? I’d invest money in that campaign!

Now let’s 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.

For example, if you are selling personalized luxury vacations, you

might buy a list of Lexus and Mercedes buyers.

Carefully target your market so you have a strong “message to

market match”!

2. Not targeting your best buyers

Every market has one group of buyers that spend way more

than everyone else. Using the 80/20 principal, these are the 20% of

your market that will spend 80% of the money. They have the

potential to dramatically increase your revenues.

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.

Carefully target your

market so you have a strong message

to market match!

“

”

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.

I’ve 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. I’ve witnessed samples where the piece did not arrive in

the anticipated state of quality. Envelopes got jammed within the

postal system, ink got smudged in the posting process, the inserts

were placed in the envelope incorrectly. Send a sample piece to

yourself first!

6. You have not put your contact details on everything

I see examples of this nearly every week. Just yesterday, I

wanted to subscribe to a magazine, but could I find a subscription

form, contact phone number, web site or email address? No! That’s

just stupid!

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 won’t have a contact

number. That’s 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

In marketing I’ve seen only one strategy

that can’t miss - and that is to market to your best customers

first, your best prospects second and the

rest of the world last.

John Romero

“

”

five. Isn’t 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. Don’t try to be too clever

Here’s a simple rule. Don’t try to be clever in your marketing

pieces. Most of your prospects won’t get it. They don’t have the

same sense of humor, intellect or background as you. Being too

clever costs you money. Keep your clever stuff for dinner parties.

9. Failure to have a sane civilian check your masterpiece

By the time you have gone through your promotion for the

67th time, you have lost ALL objectivity. You are now far too close

to what you wrote to read it effectively.

What you wrote and what you intended to write can easily end

up being miles apart. Here are a few delicious blunders that Clayton

Makepeace revealed in a recent newsletter.

I know half the money I

spend on advertising is wasted, but I can

never find out which

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 don’t 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.