The BIGGEST Mistake Every Firm Makes in Marketing,
and What You Can Do to Correct It in Your Firm, for $2.04.
©2001 Jeffrey Dobkin
      Here's the mistake.  One of your 500 absolute best and most qualified prospects calls or writes for information.  Maybe the BRC comes back from your mailing.  Or perhaps his name comes in as a lead from an ad you've placed in a magazine.  What do you do?
      You send him a brochure and a letter, you wait a week, and you call.  When there is no immediate sale, you place his name in a file - to be contacted again somewhere between later and never, and the lead eventually winds up getting lost or thrown out.  Some people call this marketing.  It's wasting money.
      For most industrial sales, it's necessary to have several personal sales calls to a client before they make a purchase.  Why the heck do you suppose anyone would think this will happen any sooner through a mail campaign?  Do mailings defy the law of industrial marketing that states one contact is not enough for a sale?  I don't think so.
      A campaign is not a single ad or a single mailing.  A campaign is not a single effort of anything - why do you think they call it a campaign?
      Enter the phrase Multiple Exposure Marketing.  It's a philosophy of marketing.  Simply stated, you need to contact your prospect more than once to make a sale.  Whether it's by ads, phone, or direct mail.  Yes, it's true for direct mail, too.
      The Most Effective Marketing Campaign You Can Create
      The MOST effective sales campaign you can use costs just about $2.  It's a series of letters.  In direct mail, a letter is a portrait of the sender.  You can send some mighty pretty pictures of your company for just 34 cents apiece.  Besides constituting the most effective campaign, letters are the most underused marketing tool of the decade.
      To separate your firm from the pack, send qualified prospects a few more letters.  It's cheap insurance to get them to notice you and respond.  The letters are now a real campaign.
      For a short campaign, write 5 additional letters.  These letters are all written up front, then placed in a file - waiting for people to not-respond to your initial contact.  I can't think of anyone better to write a tight sales campaign to than your best prospects.  Can you?
      As campaigns go, let's see how a letter campaign stacks up:
       · Personal Sales Calls: $175.  Nope.  Too expensive.
  · Telephone Contact: $24.50.  Not that, either.  And
   ouch, sales rejection; and ugh, call reluctance.
   Plus, what a waste of time when they're not in.
  · Letter: 34˘.   Hmmmm.
      A letter is an incredibly powerful marketing tool.  With a single page, you can get the attention of the world's busiest magazine editor.  You can capture the eye of the president of American Airlines.  And you can instill a confidence in hundreds of thousands of consumers that will make them order your products.  Hmmm.  All this for just 34˘?  Yes.
      A letter is the most effective part of a direct mail package.  If you mail potential customers just a brochure and no letter, you're missing most of your sales, and all of the goodwill you can generate with a letter.  In fact, a well-written direct mail letter can be so effective, it can be mailed by itself and still draw a terrific response.  Ask any fundraiser.
      Have you noticed that almost every piece of direct mail you receive from any major mailer contains a letter?   Actually, there is something in it that looks like a letter.  A letter is a personal correspondence you write to one or two people.  When you send it to ten, ten thousand, or ten million people, it isn't a letter.  It's a highly stylized ad designed to look like a letter.  In your direct mail campaign, your letters are really highly stylized ads.  Yep.  People read them (as opposed to just looking at your brochure) and take them personally.
      For a letter campaign to be easy to implement, it all has to happen fairly automatically.  When the letters are already in the computer, they're easy to personalize and drop in the mail in a programmed sequence.  Send them at regular intervals - two weeks for the first one, three weeks to a month after that for the rest.  Sooner if you're in a hurry.  You will prove your diligence and give up-front proof of excellent customer service.  You and your company will look like a million dollars - and I don't mean green and wrinkled.
      In the first letter, say it was a pleasure speaking with them, even if it wasn't.  Certainly thank them for their inquiry.  Mention several of the benefits of your products or services.  Don't forget, no one knows you are going to send them five more letters.  The second letter explains, "The brevity of the first letter didn't allow me to tell you of this benefit...."  Now feel free to address additional benefits.  Each letter contains benefit-oriented copy and gives additional reasons to do business with your firm.
       Letter two always says the exact same thing to each person.  Letter three the same.  Benefit-rich copy.  Courier or typewriter- style type.  Make sure they look like letters.  Flush left, rag right.  No paragraph over seven lines.  Underline occasionally.  Bold sparingly.  Sign legibly.  Show lots of white space around the type to make it look easy to read.  And have a PS that repeats the offer in a nutshell and directly asks for the action you'd like your prospect to take. Don't forget a BRC.  But mostly orient your copy to generate a phone call; that is the objective of the letter.
      The letters get progressively harder-selling.  You should make the sales call (if you don't mind making sales calls) after your fourth or fifth letter.  Think how much more effective this is than making it earlier.  By then your prospects all know you: they know your name, your company, your product.  The letters pre-sell your call.  And since your letters are benefit-heavy, prospects know the benefits of using your products.  They also know you'll be a good person to work with. Everyone likes to work with a responsive firm.
      Multiple exposure marketing.  A letter is the most effective you can be in marketing for 34˘.  Six letters really are six times as effective.  A letter series like this is much more effective than a fancy four color brochure mailed once, don't you think?
      Outside of your mailing list and your current leads, those old leads in your files are the most valuable pieces of paper in your entire office.  Don't you think it's time you mailed to them again?  And again?