I was reading Success Coaching U Blog and the other Joe wrote an article about Ready, Aim, Fire. Good headline, you already can guess what the headline is about, Target Marketing. I remembered a piece of advice I received from another Duct Tape Marketing Coach on targeting your direct mail, which I call the Machine Gun approach. For obvious reasons, I won’t disclose the source, but the following statistics were shared:
I don’t have a success story, I have a sobering story. Here it is:
Number of pieces mailed: 10,000
Response rate: 1%
Number of inquiries: 96
Number that you manage to reach by phone to qualify: 70
Cost of qualifying by phone, per inquiry: $30
Number who turn out to be qualified leads (20%): 14
Total cost of qualifying ($30 X 70): $2,100
Campaign cost of $10,000 + phone qualifying cost = $12,200
Total cost of $12,200 divided by 14 qualified leads = $871.42. In other words, you must spend $871.42 to get to each lead who needs your product or service, can afford it, has authority to buy, and is ready to buy now. Not so good for a small business….
I will call this method Machine Gun Marketing. Another method of Machine Gun Marketing is the Marketing Idea of the Week. You have an Ad Rep call on you and they have this special 3 for 2 deal. Plus, they will be attending and handing out another 1,000 pieces of whatever they are selling. Oh yeah, you will also be exclusive to your area of expertise and they will even create the ad. What a deal! But….you will have to do something by Thursday, this being Tuesday. Sounds like a great idea?
If it is not part of your overall marketing strategy, if it not targeted, and I mean really targeted, and you don’t have extra cash in your marketing budget that you were just clueless on how to spend it and you don’t have collateral material supporting it and you cannot create the ad yourself(a two-step ad, by the way), and you already know how you are going to measure it and….. I have told Ad reps, that I do not respond to this type of marketing, many have stopped calling. I wonder why…has their machine gun jammed or just ran out of bullets?
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