Selling a Price Before Selling the Benefits
Telling your customer that your doohickey costs only $49.95 doesn’t help at all if your customer isn’t aware of it’s benefits. Sell your products or services with benefits (solutions), instead of price, and you are one leap ahead of the competition. For instance, tell your customers how the clothing you sell is pure, high quality cotton with a special addition that ‘wicks away moisture’, and you’ve told your customer one good reason to buy your clothes. The tell, don’t sell rule definitely applies here.

Selling a Price Before Selling the Offer
Similar to the previous direct marketing tactic, if you send a direct marketing piece to a business mailing list, and tell the potential customer right off the bat, “Just $19.95!”, it’ll probably get thrown in the garbage almost immediately. Why? Because you haven’t told the customer what you are offering them, you are only asking them for their money. This not only seems shifty to most consumers, it seems downright rude. Make sure that you build value for what you are selling before you mention a word about the price. Sure, it may be a selling point, but it won’t sell anything if you don’t tell them what your customer is actually buying, first.

Selling at the Wrong Price
There are many theories available as to what price point will work best for your business and your customers. However, when it comes down to it, the only way to know for sure is to test it. Play around with the price points on your lower risk items, and calculate what price the item or service sells the best at, and correlate that with what price you make the most profit with as well. It should become readily apparent what price to sell your goods and/or services at quite quickly, but if you continue to sell at the wrong price, you are eating into your income potential, and direct marketing success.

Now, there are a great many other direct mail marketing techniques that will garner the results your business requires. But start with these three and test them out to see how your market responds differently (if at all) to your new message. You’ll be sure to gather more responses faster than you think.

Tags: direct mail marketing direct mail marketing technique marketing direct marketing copywriting marketing campaign.

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Don’t Make Me Wait
Many sales offers ask customers to call for more information, or send away for a free guide about their company’s products and services. This frustrates consumers, especially in a direct mail piece. Instead, tell them the offer, after you’ve sold some of the benefits of the product or service, first.

Get Personal
If you want to connect instantly with your potential customer, you need to get person as soon as possible. If you have access to their name, use it. If not, come up with a catchy title that isn’t normally used, such as “Homeowner Extraordinaire”. Also, make sure that your copy is conversational, like two friends talking over coffee, so that the personal touch is carried through the entire message.

Create a Need
If your customers don’t instantly think they need your product or service, you have to create a need for them. Tell them what problem they may have, and then how your product or service provides them with a solution.

Using these four tips will not only make your copy sing, it’ll make it sing to the people who make the financial decisions. Try them out in your next direct mail marketing campaign for some interesting results.

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Who Is Your Market?
Every single piece of copy written for a direct marketing ad should be targeted. If you aren’t sure who your investors’ list covers, then you need to do some serious research before you start writing a word. Who is the market, demographically? What makes them buy? What does this specific investors list do, what establishments do they frequent, and how will you catch their eye? Once you know these points, write for your investors list in language they will understand.

What is Your Goal?
Do you know what you want the people you are writing for to do after reading your direct marketing piece? If you don’t, they won’t either. Make sure to post your marketing goals clearly while writing any direct mail pieces so that you don’t lose your focus mid-stream, and then re-read all copy to make sure the goal is extremely clear.

What Mailing List Are You Using?
Purchasing just any old potential investors list won’t get the kind of responses you need. Spend as much time as possible researching the companies where you purchase your mailing lists from, as well as the lists themselves. Unless the investors list you’ve purchased has specifically requested information about the services or products you sell, you’ll have a difficult time selling them anything at all. Even though you may have a fantastic idea, product or service, if your marketing message doesn’t get sent to the right investors list, you are throwing money down the toilet.

Of course, there are a number of other things to avoid when planning a successful direct marketing piece. But if you remember these three items, first, you’ll be well on your way to achieving the kind of response rates you’ve always dreamed of.

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