Gordon King

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.

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