The Biggest Promotion Mistake
Whether you run an online or off-line mail order business one thing all businesses need are customers.
So how do you go about getting customers?
Well in the snail mail order business you could run ads in business opportunity magazines, or you could go direct mail renting mailing lists.
Online business works something the same you can post your message on Newsgroups or Free For All sites.
To promote my latest opportunity I recently rented a mailing list of 200 fresh business opportunity seekers supplied on sticky labels.
Out of the 200 names and addresses at least 30 of them were regular advertisers in UK business opportunity magazines, another 10 had business names and addresses but the biggest surprise was finding my own name and address on the list.
After I discarded the useless names I sent my offer to the rest of the list and had a 0% response to the mailing. The whole mailing had been a complete waste of time and money.
It wasn't until later that I found out why my response was so low.
I ran a small classified ad in around 10 business opportunity magazines and small adsheets for a month and coded each ad to see which publications were bringing in the best response.
I got a reasonable response from all the ads for up to two months.
After two months I was still receiving replies from these ads but instead of further information requests these replies were filled with business opportunity leaflets and had a sticky label on the envelope.
Someone was going through these publications and compiling a mailing list and I could tell by the different codes on the labels to which publication was renting my name.
To someone new in the business opportunity market this list could be a make or break for their business but it showed me what a lot of businesses online or off-line are doing wrong.
If you try to sell any product you run a better chance of selling it to a buyer than another seller but a lot of direct marketers are promoting their product to other sellers.
If you post a message to a Newsgroup or FFA site they are full of other sellers and you usually get counter messages trying to sell you something.
The same goes with mail order mailing lists they usually contain more sellers than buyers.
It doesn't matter how good your product is or how good your headline or promotion materials are, if your message is going to someone who is already involved with a business opportunity you can be sure they don't want another one.
In order to reach the real market for your product you must advertise in any magazine or ezine that your potential buyers would read.
Create an advert that will invite potential customers to send for further information on your product or service.
When customers reply to your advert save their names and addresses to a database or address book and use these names to promote your products.
These names have made the effort to contact you and have shown an interest in your product so it is only a matter of time before they purchase one or more of your products.
About the author: Gordon King of The Psg Classifieds Ezine. Aimed at the 99% of internet businesses that fail every year. Free ad for all new subscribers. mailto:psgclassifieds-subscribe@topica.com Free Software, E Books and Advertising. http://www.psgclassifieds.co.uk