Direct Response Marketing Boston: July 2007

"What Does It Take To Get Automated Direct Marketing?"

The ultimate lazy man fantasy to making money online is to do absolutely nothing -- right? C'mon, you know who you are. There are plenty of you out there. I know because I am in the selling field every week and I talk to a lot of people.

The dream is to get to a place in life where your blogs are pulling in people
daily whether you want them to or not. This is marketing at its best. It is for the
most part EFFORT FREE.

But what are the numbers involved?

You can start to expect people subscribing to your blog consistently once you post over 400 - 550 articles. When I say subscribe I am talking about daily subscribers who are finding you on their own and you have to do ABSOLUTELY NO WORK AT ALL. This is where you can really put things in automated pilot. Its a great place to be.

It takes a little work. But its worth it.

Ted Cantu posted this on July 22, 2007 at 9:03 am.

"Need A Profit Boost? Offer a Luxury Version Of Your Services "

Putting your services in different income brackets is a powerful way to create more income. Not everyone is going to go for the same level of service.

Last week, I came across this rather unusual discovery. PEOPLE ARE LAZY. Worse, even when I sell them something they don't necessarily use it. This used to bother me. For one thing it was difficult to get testimonials from people who buy my services and don't bother to use them.

Heres what we discovered:

* All customers under a $2,500 level of service don't actually use our services correctly.
* Most customers under $2,500 have poor level of communication and followup
* Customers under $2,500 are more likely to have poor concepts of "money"

But here is what is interesting. The majority of customers who pay well over this mark all share something else in common. They really want to be taken care of.

Anyone paying over $2,500 shared the following:

* They were better customers
* They listened for instructions
* They carried out our advice
* These customers had better results

What Is Your Definition of Money?

There is a game in Japan called Pachinko which is a lot like pinball with a few obvious differences. Instead of having only one ball you have to play with 100's of them all at the same time. They whiz and fly through the air and land on different holes and you rack up the points. Some fall right to the bottom just like some of the best business opportunities and ideas.

The Detroit economy is a tricky one. Especially if you want to stay out of the rat race and be your own company. There are many pitfalls that one should be aware of. Just like in the game Pachinko you have to be wary of many different ideologies. Its amazing to see how many non-profit groups, civic organizations, churches and social groups try to clamp down their idea of "money" when you run your business.

I tend to steer clear of these types.

Anything under $3,000 dollars you are asking for trouble. Seriously. This is the case for search engine marketing or anything internet related. These are the first group of individuals to fling garbage onto your company.

In the last 18 months we took a poll and this is what we found.

When things go the slightest bit wrong our group recorded theats of:

* Getting sued

* Threats from someone they know who was employed in:

A. The Mafia, (someones been watching too many Sopranos episodes)
B. The Government
C. The Church

"My brother has a sister who knows the..... (insert one of the above)..... and will see to it that you will be.... (insert threat of your choice)."

The interesting thing about these threats is where they originated from. In most cases we gave them a "chore" to do so that it would ensure some kind of success. Seriously.

The customer was asked to get a merchant account, ( so they can recieve online orders) or in other cases they were asked to send out some postcard mailers, (that we designed - all they needed to do was pop them in the mail with some postage). Or they were required to buy some online directory listings to get more traffic pointed to their web sites.

These are simple tasks and were usually met with no response. Instead, we get the threats. The other interesting thing is that there were a lot more threats of a spiritual nature at the $2,500 dollar mark. There were a lot of slanderous scenarios dealing with Christ and the Afterlife at this level. For example, if you wouldn't add on a boat load of FREE STUFF, (more than what is reasonable) then this would somehow force you to loose "points" in Heaven. This is totally bogus but this type of business dealing is alive and well in this country.

No offense to someone who is fairly religious. But this is serious bullshit. Seriously.

You need to make a decision what kind of business, (or in this case, what kind of monkey show) you are trying to run. We have made a sincere effort to weed out the strange, weak minded and clueless with a superior product.

One also needs to consider how much this is going to cost you in the long run. When you add up phone time, meetings, email correspondence you will quickly figure out this type of "business" costs you serious time and money.

POP THE CURB
It is better to jump over this level of customer (dis) satisfaction and leave these tire kickers to someone who has time for it. This is going to save your sanity and keep you in better company.

The most common category for this level of customers fall into the following:

* Church, Mega Church environments
* Multi level marketing groups
* Alternative medicine practitioners
* Alternative healing practitioners, (mind, body and spirit)

The last two are very interesting. These two groups had a very poor concept of wealth creation. It is also notable that these types were terrible marketers. When they would experience a profit loss of ANY size they would blame it on their karma, an angry God, or a past life etc.

Cantu posted this article on July 17, 2007 at 8:44 am and can be found at http://www.1seomichigan.com