If you were asking what people really want from a marketing campaign, most people would say generating high quality leads. 2-step marketing is designed purely to generate high quality leads.

2-step marketing is a good way of establishing your authority. I’m a marketing consultant like 1,001 other marketing consultants that are around, but say, because I’ve written a special report on how to double the sales of photocopiers, if someone in the photocopy industry is particularly interested in that report, I come across as having some authority within that area. I am not just “another consultant” but a consultant who’s written something that is very specific and of interest to that particular business. It is a very good way of quickly, easily and inexpensively establishing authority by producing a reasonably authoritative work which will be of interest to people.

You must remember that this is not about selling straightaway, but about getting a foot in the door. It’s about people raising their hand and gathering the names of people who have said that they are potentially interested in finding out more about what it is you’re talking about. They are not ready to buy but, they are interested.

We offer a 1 hour FREE consultation, if you would like to see what we can do for your business contact us 01858 445 543 or email alastair@idealmarketingcompany.com

The headline should be lively, relevant to the subject that follows and imply a benefit. Look how newspapers use headlines. They use them grab our attention and make us want to find out more.  They also signal the type of stories that you will find inside. The headlines they use actually sell the papers. (It’s the same with magazines – the right photo and headline combination can double sales of a title).  A good headline will stop you as you cross the petrol station fore-court or pop in to the corner shop when you buy your milk in the morning. Then once you have bought the paper, each story headline sells each individual story.

This is one of the ideas covered in the book – “the Marketing Launchpad” by Alastair Campbell available now from Amazon – order your copy today.

2-Step marketing is designed purely to generate high quality leads. By that, I mean people who are in the market for buying the product or service that you have to offer. That is what two step marketing is all about. Even better than that, the leads tend to be quite warm.

Why does two step marketing work so well?

For those of you who haven’t read it, there is a fantastic book I would recommend called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini.  It talks about lots of different factors that influence people and help them make buying decisions. One of the key things that he talks about is something called the law of reciprocity.

An example that he gives is this: there is a temporary member of staff that goes into an office. He works quite hard, goes out to lunch, comes back from lunch, and says to the people who work in office “By the way, I’m running a marathon for charity, would you sponsor me?” He gets some interest from some of the people in the office, but not very much. Another temporary member of staff goes and works in the morning, goes out to lunch, and when he comes back from lunch he buys a bottle of Coke for everybody in the office. He says “It’s very hot outside so I just thought everyone would enjoy a Coke.”  Then an hour later he asks people if they would mind sponsoring him. The results are incredible.

If you give somebody something for nothing, they feel a moral obligation to return the favour in some ways. So it works on the basis of that. If you give somebody something for nothing that is of value and helps them, they feel obliged to return the favour in some way. That might be by passing on a lead to someone else, by writing a testimonial, or it might be by buying something extra from you.

 To find out more about the ideal marketing company, and what we can do for your business contact us on 01858 445 543 or email alastair@idealmarketingcompnay.com

This is probably one of my favourite marketing subjects because it gets to the absolute core of what people look for marketing to achieve. If you were asking what people really want from a marketing campaign, most people would say generating high quality leads. They want leads from a person who are potentially interested in buying from the company and that is exactly what two step marketing is all about.

Why does two step marketing work so well?

 It focuses on the right people. If you send out a direct mail campaign to a hundred people, which of those people are you going to follow up on?  By using 2-step marketing, if ten of them have replied to you using the reply mechanism that you’ve included and asked for their free offer, free report or CD then those are the ones to follow up. They are the ones that are clearly interested. Those who have not responded are probably less interested. If you’ve done everything right, you’re first going to follow up with the ones who have already raised their hands. Imagine you were talking to a room full of people and you ask the question “Who in this room owns a Mercedes?” The people who put their hands up are the ones that are interested in what you’re selling and that is exactly what two step marketing does. You ask people to raise their hands: they are not saying they want to buy a Mercedes, but they are interested in finding out more. Those are the ones that you focus on.

For more advice on PR & Marketing contact us on 01858 445 543 or email alastair@idealmarketingcompnay.com

Make your offer as eye catching and imaginative as possible. Make it time sensitive and difficult to say ‘no’ to. Make it believable and above all make it easy to understand. To assess whether you’ve achieved that understandability, show your letter to a stranger; they should be able to say in about five seconds what you are telling them about if you are to have a chance of winning over people with your direct mail letter.

This is one of the ideas covered in the book – “the Marketing Launchpad” by Alastair Campbell available now from Amazon – order your copy today.

With e-mail, a cold list tends to elicit a poor response so it is more worthwhile to send it to people who have opted in – agreed to receive messages from you either in person or by signing up via your website. It is astonishingly fast to send out and free or very low cost, but response rates are generally far lower as people get inundated with e-mails every day. At the moment for every letter you receive, you are likely to get around 20 e-mails. In order to make an impact with e-mail, it’s best to make it look as much like a ‘normal’ e-mail as you can.

This is one of the ideas covered in the book – “the Marketing Launchpad” by Alastair Campbell available now from Amazon – order your copy today.

Don’t confuse what we’re discussing with junk mail or SPAM, which are inefficient methods of ‘spaying’ a message to everybody in the hope that it will appeal to somebody out there. This is not something that you should engage in. The better targeted the message and the better crafted the offer, the better the results you will achieve.

This is one of the ideas covered in the book – “the Marketing Launchpad” by Alastair Campbell available now from Amazon – order your copy today.

This is one of the ideas covered in the book – “the Marketing Launchpad” by Alastair Campbell available now from Amazon – order your copy today.

This is one of the ideas covered in the book – “the Marketing Launchpad” by Alastair Campbell available now from Amazon – order your copy today.

Sales Growth

Direct Marketing simulates Sales: Survey

With majority of recipients making a purchase, Direct Marketing remains one of the best ways of generating sales as figures suggest.

Almost three-quarters of people who received direct mail advertising from a business responded while the success rate for television was ten per cent lower according to ExactTarget’s 2009 Channel Preference Study.
Print media channels such as direct mail is more popular among younger people.

Robert Keitch, chief of membership and brand at the Direct Marketing Association, told the website: “Direct mail has long been the most effective of all direct marketing channels, which explains why the medium still accounts for 25 per cent of all direct marketing spend.”

Also the consumers are more likely to respond to direct mail promotions.

PMDG Marketing Communications is launching a direct mailing campaign to encourage more Mexicans to cross the border to shop in Texas, according to Business Wire.

I still think that direct marketing is the most effective of all marketing channels and is still popular among the youth. This survey shows further proof that it still works for improving sales.