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29.10 20100

How to Avoid Losing Advertising Money

By: Lee Collins Categories:Hybrid Marketing

The way you lose advertising money is by not having a plan and letting ad agencies come in and make decisions for you or making decisions on what an ad rep happens to tell you that day. I see it happen every day and this is a big mistake. Many businesses follow what the Yellow Pages advertising rep tells them to do and, quite honestly, most of them don’t know what they’re talking about. Even if you do good ads that get responses, not boring ones that just try to build the image or get your image out there, you still need to have a plan and that’s part of your marketing plan. You can’t just wait around for the next ad rep to come around and tell you how to put together a newsletter or Yellow Page ad or brochure. You’ll be another victim of wasted advertising. They will tell you to do what everybody else is doing. If you look in the Yellow Pages, you’ll see that everyone looks the same and most of them aren’t getting the response they want. That stuff just doesn’t work. Everyone has tried it over and over again, and it fails over and over again. They get nervous if you say, “Let’s put a number in there and check our response”, because it’s not traditional advertising that they’re used to and they also know it will convince you not to continue doing what they asked you to do. They’ll tell you it won’t work. They’ll tell you it’s non-traditional. They’ll tell you anything so you won’t use direct response advertising. Why do they tell you this? Because it will tell you the results of their advertising. The results will show that it doesn’t work. Don’t listen to them. Direct response advertising works. What you don’t want to do is, after it works and they come back to you, don’t spend the time saying, “I told you so.” Don’t convince them that direct response or your Yellow Page ad, newsletter or sales letter worked, because if you succeed in convincing them that it works, they will tell your competitors and try to sell everyone on it so they too will be successful and the ad rep will garner more business. Just tell them, “It’s working okay.” Some places will even raise your prices if your advertising is working better. Just be lukewarm about it. Continue running the ad if it’s working great. They won’t figure it out. They’ll just think you’re crazy and wasting your money because that’s what everyone is doing - running ads without help. So, let them think what they want, but don’t be an advertising victim.

Do you have any advertising horror stories? Share them below...

-- Lee Collins

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08.08 20100

Sell Them What They Want, Give Them What They Need

By: Lee Collins Categories:Hybrid Marketing

There’s an old saying that you should find a need, fill it, and you’ll get rich. It’s not really true. You need to find a want and fill it. People often do not want what they need. They need to eat right, but they don’t. They need to stop smoking, but they don’t. They want to be more healthy, but they make unhealthy choices. You want to stand out from the crowd. You want to sell them what they want, but give them what they need. Your prospects and customers are people just like you and me and they’re going to respond to messages similar to ones we might respond to.  They’ll get turned off by the same things and exaggerations that we do. Filling their needs and wants typically involves things that we’ve talked about - convenience, long-lasting, time-saving, better-looking, more functional stronger guarantees, better service, etc. We never know which hot button is their buying button. We need to test one feature or benefit against another until we discover what their hot buttons are. Your objective is simply one of matching your marketing mission to the functions of the products or services that your business offers. If your business offers products and services that by design are problem solvers, then you need to use this function in your marketing approach. You want to accentuate the types of problems they may have because your product or service will solve them. Point out a problem in detail and tell just how your product or service is designed to solve that problem. Here’s a couple of examples:

  • A diet program. You don’t want to sell the powder or the vitamin, but you want to sell better confidence, better health, greater attraction, and long life.
  • Toothpaste. You don’t want to sell the fluoride, but you want to sell the whiter teeth, brighter smile, and less trips to the dentist.
How do you uncover their real wants and desires? If you listen, you’ll discover the customer talking back to you in many ways. They might speak directly with you, your employees, the media, other customers. You have to pay attention. You’ll hear more of what they don’t want instead of what they do want. They might say prices are too high or there’s not a big enough selection or the quality isn’t high enough. That’s telling you the opposite of what they really want. However and whatever they say - listen to them! You’ll learn something every time you do. Back to our quote from earlier, the truth is this:

"You can make a living selling people what they need, But you can get RICH selling people what they want"

(excerpt from Lee's "Book of Many Things") How do you fee about this? Comments very welcome... - Lee Collins

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25.09 20090

SEP 25-27 > Direct Response Marketing 2.0 Conference – Las Vegas, NV

By: Lee Collins Categories:Where is Lee Collins?

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23.06 20091

Direct Response Marketing 2.0

By: Lee Collins Categories:Hybrid Marketing

What happens when you combine the power of Web 2.0 Internet and tried and true Direct Response Marketing techniques? That's the question we asked ourselves almost two years ago, and Hybrid Marketing was born. But there was still a void. Maybe not a void but we felt there was something bigger. Something we were missing. So for the past 20 months we went searching for that missing ingredient. You see, what we realized (and you will too when you really think about it) is the people making the most money online (consistently, and that's important) were the people who came from the OFFLINE world. People like Dan Kennedy. And John Carlton. And Ted Nicholas. And Robert Allen. And Frank Kern. And Mike Filsaime. And T.J. Rohleder. And Michael Penland. And... the list goes on, but I think you get the idea. These are the people who use Direct Response Marketing techniques as a WEAPON and consistently crush it online. These are our mentors. And most are now close friends. And through studying Direct Response Marketing DIRECTLY from the Masters, our Hybrid Marketing system took on a whole new life. A life that was MUCH bigger than me and Robin could nurture by ourselves. So from Hybrid Marketing, and our study of OFFLINE Direct Response Marketing, a new era is born. The era of Direct Response Marketing 2.0! Direct Response Marketing 2.0 is the TRUE synergy of online and offline marketing. It combines the prowess of our Hybrid Marketing system, with the tried and true direct response skills of crusty "I was making money online before there was an Internet" marketer Alan Bechtold (we love ya man), copywriting genius "Million Dollar" Mike Morgan, and branding expert Erik Stafford into something that could change your perception of MARKETING forever!

  • Did you know: If you're just an Internet Marketer you're leaving an estimated 72% of your potential profits on the table? The Internet is just ONE media for your message, so why limit yourself to earning so little?
  • Did you know: An estimated 50% of email NEVER reaches the intended recipient? Contrast this to REAL MAIL where over 92% is consistently delivered to the intended recipient!
But rather than ramble on, I want to invite you to enjoy our creation - Direct Response Marketing 2.0: The next generation of online and offline Synergy! We'll give you FREE access to a DVD we've put together for you and a complete, state of the art online eCourse that takes you from simple Internet Mar(ke)ter to a REAL Direct Response Marketer in 10 quick lessons. Grab this now before we start charging for it => http://www.DirectResponseMarketing20.com -- Lee Collins and Robin Collins Direct Response Marketing Experts

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10.06 20080

Where Can I Find Good Direct Mail Campaign Ideas?

By: Lee Collins Categories:Hybrid Marketing

A reader asks: "Where exactly is the best place to get ideas for good direct mail campaigns?" He wants to integrate direct mail into his business but believes he is stuck at step 1. Here are a couple of the ideas we shared with him: 1. You can hire a direct mail expert to help you That’s one way.  An expensive way maybe - but it's a direct way to step into the world of direct mail and work with someone who's been there, done that, and sold enough t-shirts that his was "free". If you can’t afford to do that, the easiest way is to... 2. Check your own mailbox. It is absolutely one of the best learning facilities for direct mail. It’s like higher education. Every day you get new samples and new ideas. You should collect them and make one separate file just for your competitor’s mail. Most direct marketing agencies, direct response writers, and people that design direct marketing  keep piles of all of this direct mail information. ==> INSIDER TIP: These collections of other people's marketing materials has a name - they're called “swipe” files. We have dozens and dozens of binders with thousands of pages that we use when we brainstorm ideas for a salesletter. It helps us in a couple of ways: 1) if we're "stuck" looking for a direction we can go through the swipe files and come up with ideas, and 2) It helps us keep track of what is working for other people. What types of things should you look for when creating your swipe file? You want to look for ideas for headlines, effective design, attention getting inserts, and copy that is written very effectively and gets your emotions going. We recommend a different binder or a different section for each item.  Headlines in one binder, bullets in another binder, PS's in still another binder - that way when you're assembling YOUR salesletter you don't have to hunt all over the place for that awesome bullet point you read weeks or months ago. That’s what we’re going to talk about as we continue to explore hybrid marketing and creating repeat profits. How to create these different variables. A large collection of samples will help you get the juices flowing when you’re ready to create a marketing campaign for yourself. There’s an old headline that says, “Do you make these mistakes in English?” That caught everyone’s attention and they read the ad. You could say,

  • “Do you make these mistakes when hiring a carpet cleaner?” Or
  • “Do you make these mistakes when hiring a plumber?” Or
  • “Do you make these mistakes when going to your favorite restaurant?” Or
  • “Do you make these mistakes when buying a diamond necklace?”
You starting to get the idea? Sort your samples by those that are aimed at businesses and those toward consumers. Look for ways to save money.  Look to see which campaigns are in full color. Read newspaper and magazine ads as well and see if you can spot those ads that are created to get you to take action. You’ll see that you can use this type in your own business also. You might want to go ahead and request some of the free information and see how they mail to you.  (We do this ALL the time.  We subscribe to offers just to see how the marketing process works, so we can model successful campaigns and processes in our own business!) Not all direct marketing is effective and there are a lot of pitfalls to avoid. By the time you finish with this hybrid marketing course, you’re going to know what to look for and be able to review all your samples and distinguish the good ones from the bad. One real key to knowing whether something is working or not is if you keep getting the same things in the mail. One could presume that this means they must be making money because they couldn’t afford to continue sending to you more than a couple of times. But if you're seeing the same ad running in multiple places, or if you're getting the same mailing 4, 5 or more times then you might want to grab those and put them aside. And don't think this just applies to OFFLINE, although that is the way the discussion was geared today you can do the same thing ONLINE with your emailbox.  Stop being frustrated by SPAM and use that information, study that information to determine what's working so you can use it in your own business. I hope this gave you some ideas.  If it spawned more questions, leave a comment and we'll get you an answer.

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