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I threw in the yellow highlighting just for fun… it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to remember the good ol’ days of internet copywriting.)
The words above are the basic goal of many of the marketing books I’ve read since my business information addiction began back in 2002.
The focus?
Direct response marketing… The secret weapon of the “little guy.”
According to the experts, direct response is the smartest way to business success.
And I’ve had a lot of success using many of the old school direct response marketing methods that I learned in all those books and courses.
But I also bet that my intense focus on direct response has probably also kept a lot of other money from ever finding its way to my front door.
Because while I spent a lot of time building skills and value in the world of direct response, I pretty much ignored other tools of business building that are starting to become very valuable (if you’re smart).
Who knows, maybe I’d be a millionaire ten times over already if I had focused on building a brand beginning back in 2002 instead of focusing solely on “getting the response?”
WHEN Do You Want to Withdrawal Your Value?
I think it comes down to a decision on your part about WHEN you want to store and retrieve the value in your business.
Direct response marketing has a very “get it now while the gettin’ is good” feeling.
You send something out or bring the traffic in and then get them to do something.
The value transfer is fairly immediate - maybe there’s a marketing sequence or something, but the product/service is generally exchanged for moola, pretty quickly.
There’s not a lot of tension built up (we’ll come back to that later) because the transaction (sale or opt-in or whatever) happens quickly and the tension is released. The customer gave something… the customer got something.
People Who Ask for Things All the Time Are Annoying
But the landscape is changing now. And since almost everyone with an internet connection can start “asking for the order,” all that asking is starting to annoy the hell out of customers.
Maybe you didn’t piss them off, but you’ve still got to deal with it even if someone else did.
So it’s getting harder to “get the sale.” Harder to “get the opt-in.”
So folks resort to “try my $40,000 course for just a buck” kind of stuff which is just sad.
Eventually, we’re going to be giving away free cars just to get the opt-in.
So What’s a Direct Response Marketer to Do?
I know the direct response king, Claude Hopkins, might rollover in his grave at this point, but let’s face it:
We’re not living in Claude Hopkins’ world anymore folks.
Stuff changes. Keep up and change or you run into problems.
Or you could get down and dirty and try new stuff now before it’s too late.
For example, these days, you can stick out by not asking for the sale… by not asking for anything really. At least not every single time you reach out and contact the world.
And I don’t mean sending out 4,000 hours of free video to butter me up for your impending product launch.
That’s just so transparent it hurts.
I mean making your business about creating value all the time and getting paid for some of it some of the time.
Sounds crazy to Mr. Direct Responser, I know.
Creating a Value Imbalance
I know there’s no bank that lets you deposit “value” in the form of trust, goodwill etc., but if there was, I bet the rules of compound interest would apply.
What happens when you deliver so much value to a prospect that they firmly cement that idea in their heads?
YOU = VALUE
Then what happens if you keep piling on the value?
What if there’s an avalanche of value that you’ve provided for so long that there’s this tremendous imbalance of value (energy) between you and your customer?
Then what if you offer a way to remedy that imbalance (your product or service) by bringing back some of the value (money) to your side of the scale?
I think that’s when sales happen.
This is old fashioned selling right? Where Mr. Jones is happy to help you for 2 years before you need his services. Then when you’re ready, there’s no question that Mr. Jones is your man.
Well, now we have the tools to do that helping at such little expense it’s hardly noticeable.
Work Now, Get Paid Later
Doesn’t that just sound nuts?
Work now, get paid later.
A few years ago, I would have thought that was a recipe for going broke very quickly.
A tried and true direct responser would probably say the same thing.
Except I think it works now. And people like it.
You could say it still is direct response… except the response gets delayed. Maybe by a day, a month, a year… who knows?
Here’s how I think of it:
Storing Up Value for the Future Response
You’re basically making value deposits for the future. That’s why folks are building up their own vast webs and networks of stored value.
Blog posts, videos, books, PDFs… you name it, there’s value popping up everywhere these days.
(Of course there are some normal business rules that apply here. Like the fact that other people have to actually find value in your stuff. If they don’t, there IS no value. At least not in a business sense.)
This type of content makes value deposits without asking for immediate withdrawals.
Building a “web of value” like this takes time. That’s why I think that more of the “little guys” are going to win.
Time is valuable. And these folks have time.
Bigger slower businesses that are more focused on immediate revenue aren’t going to want to make a (risky) investment of their human resources like this.
That’s a huge opportunity.
Does it make sense that you would invest what is probably your most valuable asset (your time) into creating valuable stuff for your prospects even before they become customers?
Or do you invest your time trying to “sell” everyone who walks through the door?
How would you want to be treated?
There’s just one problem, running your business like this makes measuring things in columns with numbers and totals and percentages just a bit harder.
That’s a problem for my direct response mind, because…
If You Can Measure It, You Can Improve It
Except when you can’t.
Like when you send out a promotion and it doesn’t work. So you change it and it still doesn’t work.
What’s the deal?
The deal is that I think there are some important things in business that really can’t be measured. Period.
Read This Before You Pull Out the Flamethrower
My point isn’t that direct response marketing is dying, or bad or stupid. That would have made a catchier headline, but that’s not my style.
Clearly it works when used well.
My point is that the world of business is much, much, MUCH bigger than just direct response marketing.
So why not experiment and reassess the role that direct response plays in your business?
What about moving it farther towards the TAIL end of the relationship instead of being the first date?
Create value you can measure… create value you can’t measure… throw it all in a pot and see what happens.
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