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Article Surfing ArchiveHow To Use Three Step Direct Response Marketing - Articles SurfingThree step marketing is a cost effective way for you tosell your products or services. It's also a cost effectiveway for you to test various offers. And surprisingly, fewmarketers use this marketing technique. With three step marketing, you'll be selling to people whocontacted you asking for information about your product orservice. And you'll be building your own mailing list frompeople who are interested in your products or services. Because you're building your own mailing list, you'll beable to send several offers to the same prospects. Beingable to follow-up with the prospects who first asked forinformation from you is the key to three step marketing. Your objective with three step marketing is to locate newprospects and then follow-up with an intensive direct mailcampaign. Your sales literature doesn't have to be expensive or fullcolor, it simply has to look professional. Make sure youhave written something good, have checked it for properspelling and punctuation, and have provided a meaningbehind your products or services. This gives reason for thecustomer to order your product. If you have a computer, build a database of customerinquiries so you can track who actually purchases, and thensend follow-up letters to those who don't. Follow-up sales are where you are going to make most ofyour income. Your ad draws the inquiries, the first orderestablishes a good customer, and the rest of the orders arethe selling points. Your second sales packet should be mailed a month after theinquiry was received and another a month after that. Testing is the only way to find out which plan works bestfor you in getting orders. You'll need to find out whichsales package works best and how often to make mailings. How elaborate you want to make your response pack dependson how successful your product seems to be selling and howmuch money you want to invest. Always start small. A simple one page offer can work aswell as a conglomerate pretty letter. After you've built upa few good selling products, you might print up a singlepage brochure. Even at that, you don't have to go to colorunless your product warrants it. You don't need an advertising agency to put together yoursales packet, but you can use one if you want. Be sure toinvestigate the type of agency and what it can do for youbefore hiring them. Your lead generating letters should target the market mostlikely to be interested in what you're eventually going tooffer them. Your letters must state a major benefit thatappeals to the readers' interests. The main purpose of your sales message is to arousecuriosity and to get the reader to move to the second stepof the process. Your sales letter must make the reader wantto know more. For best results, your letter should offersomething at no cost, but realize to keep your ROI atinterest. Studies show that 80% of all people, that's 4 out of 5people, who inquire about a product buy that product withinone year, but not from the company that made the originalcontact. The reason they don't buy from the company that made theoriginal contact is because the company did not follow-up.Statistics show that you must make at least three contactswith a prospect who expressed an interest in your productor service before they'll buy from you. Very few marketersrealize this. So the next few steps in the three step marketing processare to send follow-up mailings to your prospects.Repetitive follow-up is the difference between mediocresuccess and huge success in marketing. If your initialmailing is successful, you can realistically expect anadditional 50% in sales with your follow-up mailings.That's an additional 50% of income you would not have ifyou didn't follow-up. Now you're ready to mail your direct mail response pack toyour prospects by first class mail. Your goal here is toclose the sale. The prospects you send your first direct mail response packto are broken down into the following three steps: 1. A little bit interested. Gather leads through leadgenerating direct response advertisements. 2. Very interested and ready to buy. Send follow-up mailingto prospects. State a major benefit. 3. Very interested. but not ready to buy. Send follow-upmailing to prospects. State same message with differentheadline or call-to-action. Three step marketing allows you to be in front of yourprospects when they move from the "not ready to buy"category to the "ready to buy" category. It allows you tobuild a relationship with your prospects and when they areready to buy, they'll buy from you. The good news about three step marketing is you don't haveto create a completely different mailing package for eachadditional step in the process. Make minor changes to your initial mailing piece. Onetechnique that works well is to mail a different coverletter along with a copy of your initial mailing piece. Tryto keep your cover letter to one page. Another technique is to change the headline or the openingparagraph of your original letter while reminding theprospect that this is another notice. How many times you should mail will depend on whether it'sno longer profitable. Always remember to include any backend sales and the lifetime value of your customer. Yourlargest expense was getting the prospect. Now is the timeto follow-up and grow your business sales. By Abe Cherian Copyright © 2005 You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter on your web site as long as the byline is included and the article is included in it's entirety. I also ask that you activate any html links found in the article and in the byline. Please send a courtesy link or email where you publish to: support@multiplestreammktg.com
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