June 8th, 2009
I have often heard of web marketers say that you only have four to seven seconds to get a visitor to stay on a web page. They don’t know how lucky they are. In fax broadcasting, you have less than a second.
You receive an ad via fax broadcast – how long does it take to decide whether you are going to read it or throw it away? I bet all it takes is a glance. This glance on average only takes about .25 of a second. If you have not attracted the recipient into reading the ad within this time, you have lost him and the work you put into the ad is lost.
Write your fax broadcast copy with the intention of grabbing attention within the first glance. There are other things that should be included but this is the first step. Read this earlier article for what should be included in your copy.
This is another reason why you can target the same area a number of times – it may take a number of times before the person actually reads the ad.
Once you have your foot in the door, you have to tell them what to do. There is no point in generating interest without giving the next step. This may be calling or going to a web page to order.
I have come across someone who had a phone number on the fax image while fax broadcasting but when some called the number, it just rang out. What a waste!
Always keep in mind what you are trying to do with any copy you write. After all you want a return for your valuable time spent on the whole campaign. Why include anything in an ad that is not going to help that cause. Being too detailed will work against you. Why would anyone want to read a text book before buying something?
Tags: Copywriting, direct response marketing, fax broadcasting, Fax Marketing
Posted in Copywriting, Fax Marketing | 2 Comments »
June 7th, 2009
For Any Business to Survive, it has to be seen. Some businesses are in the lucky position to be seen by enough of its ideal potential customers just by being there to keep itself busy but this is not very common. Even a shop along a busy walkway has to find some way to get people to come in.
Once you know what people are looking for in reference to what you offer, you have to know how to communicate this to people. Read this article on how find out what about you have to offer people are looking for.
Promotion is a communication and this has to get a response which makes it worth communication in the first place.
First of all you have to keep in mind what you are promoting or selling. Make sure that you can supply what you are selling. Promising the world when you can’t come up with it once you have sold it will not only make you broke in the long term, it is also criminal.
If you are not the person in charge of coming up with the product or service you are marketing, you still have to be sure the product or service can be delivered once sold. This may seem common sense but you have to keep this in mind. Make sure that all promotion is truthful. There is nothing to be gained form giving false promises.
Any promotion (communication) has to have three components. You have to get the persons attention, once this has been done, you have to give him something that will appeal to or interest him. Once this has been done, have to get your communication across to him. This sequence is important.
While you must be truthful, be careful not to undersell yourself. After all, you are trying to get the person getting your promotion to take some action. You still have to get them to do it.
Sales which is too forceful has given sales people around the world a bad name. This force only comes into play when the person using this force does not know how to sell. The fact remains however that you still have to compel the person. Being apologetic or indirect to avoid too much force will work against you.
To survive, you have to promote – you might as sell optimise your return for time spent on it.
Tags: Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Marketing
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May 27th, 2009
We have started our new newsletter which we will be publishing on our blog weekly:
Welcome to our Newsletter. The intention of this newsletter is to help you make your marketing effective.
Marketing, advertising and sales skills are needed in any business. These skills are important when times
are good but in difficult times they are vital.
Not every business owner has a passion for Marketing. This is understandable because very few people
get into business just to do marketing. They are often very good in a trade or profession and decide that
they would prefer to work for themselves than for someone else.
In larger companies, marketing is left to those in charge of it and it is often kept at arm’s length by
everyone else.
Let’s face it, those passionate about marketing end up doing it full time. What about the rest of us who
just want to sell our product or service in which we have interest?
The truth is these things are not difficult. One can get enough leads and sales without paying large
amounts of money in any economic environment if your product has value.
You have to know what marketing is before you can do it. Therefore …
DEFINITION OF MARKETING is creating, packaging and moving of a specific product
or service into clients hands. Done in such a way to achieve optimum distribution and profit.
I intend to teach you how to do this with this newsletter by using short articles each week.
Regards,
Susie Gizdimidis
Agora Commerce
1300 887 910
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May 24th, 2009
Australia’s Do Not call Register is going to be expanded to include fax numbers. Currently the Do Not Call Register does not apply to businesses or Fax numbers.
The Australian Government is providing $4.7 AUD over the next four years to get this operational. Of this $3.5 will be contributed by telemarketing and fax marketing companies in the form of fees paid to the register.
The negative effect of this is that it is the small business that will be affected. The small cleaning company that relies on this type of advertising to bring in new business will have to pay more for the same service. The small businesses seldom have large cash flow or profits that they can dip into if needed.
Currently fax broadcasting is relatively inexpensive in comparison to other forms of direct response marketing while getting simillar, if not better results. It is ideal for businesses which do not have large marketing budgets like small business.
There are those who receive advertising faxes who are offended. The vast majority of fax broadcasting companies go to great efforts to remove these fax numbers from their lists. After all there is no point in advertising to those who will not respond anyway.
For more information, have a look at what the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy says.
Tags: direct response marketing, fax broadcasting, Fax Marketing
Posted in Fax Marketing | No Comments »
May 24th, 2009
What is the best way to know how an ad will be received? In fax broadcasting, like any advertising, it is possible to miss and get no response. You need to survey.
Would it not be better to know what people are looking for or to what they are likely to react to before you spend time on a marketing campaign? Knowing this is Possible.
There are companies which charge a lot of money for all kinds of information about potential or past companies. This information is quite easy to get if you know what you are doing.
There are two major areas that you look at to find this information. They are your existing clients or potential clients.
This is done by survey. You have to ask to find out.
If you have a number of services or products you sell, you can look at what has been popular in the past and push that. You can also ask clients what prompted them to contact you in the first place.
In contacting those who are not already clients you find out what they need or want. Not just the product or service they are after but what feature or characteristic do they want.
Once this information has been found, use it in your marketing.
Remember that you may have a number of markets that you have to cater for. If you were selling cars, a mother would have a completely different idea to a businessman as to what a good car is.
Tags: Copywriting, fax broadcasting, Fax Marketing
Posted in Copywriting | 1 Comment »
May 20th, 2009
Below is an extract from an e-mail regarding the sale of a web product – thought it may be of use.
I was asked to put down some ideas regarding the use of bulk faxing to promote your website. From what I understand, the product is a mini website that is somehow connected to your website with a content manager so a layman can put up and manage their site.
I have seen a very similar type of product where someone was selling domains with hosting that came with a content manager. This guy would send out about 100,000 faxes a day and have a call centre take the calls and do the closing. You may not want to do it on this scale to start off with but you may want to build up to it once success has been proven.
Things to remember about bulk fax marketing:
- The fax does not sell the product or service – It just generates leads. The sale is generated either by a person or a web page etc.
- Getting a Bulk fax to work efficiently takes testing. What image creates the best response? It would be a waste of time to send out a few faxes to see if it works and then give up if the first run did not get much of a result.
I suggest that you use bulk faxing to compliment your sales efforts by driving the leads onto those who are already selling your service. This way you can minimize the expense by not getting new people which have to be trained to handle the calls.
An idea would be to send out faxes daily for a week using one image and then evaluating the result at the end of that week to see what is needed for the following week. Faxing works best on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. You can make your message time sensitive ie: This month only, Call today, First 50 callers.
More information can be found at fax-broadcasting.
The site being discussed is elocal.com.au
Tags: Bulk Fax, direct response marketing, fax broadcasting
Posted in Fax Marketing | No Comments »
May 5th, 2009
I have come across companies that send out a few thousand faxes in a fax broadcast then don’t get the response they expect then drop it as an advertising medium. This is while a competitor is generating most of their income from fax marketing.
This article is intended to give you information on how those that succeed do it.
The way they operate is simple: they religiously send out mass faxes each week.
They use a very simple image and the largest text is the phone number. It is geared around getting the call to come in with minimal information. In other words the fax does not sell, it just generates interest and then when the prospect calls up, the real sales process starts.
They have found, just like most fax advertisers that being consistent in sending faxes gets the best result and increases the rate of response and therefore the ROI. An example of this could be day1 send 5000 faxes, get 2 sales, day2 send 5000, and get 3 sales, day3 send 5000 and get 9 sales. This is on consecutive days but not sending to the same numbers.
Another point is that the send quantity is not directly proportional to the response rate. One has to find out what quantity gets the best response for a particular image being used.
In all of this, testing is key. From testing the following can be determined:
- What is the best image
- How many faxes need to be sent
- How often can I send to the same numbers without minimizing the result
Here are some general copywriting tips that work well for faxing.
- The copy has to achieve the following in the individual: ATTRACT, INTEREST, MESSAGE.
- Don’t give features, give benefits – sales is an emotional thing so use those emotions.
- The fax is a communication so make sure that it does just that.
- Faxes seldom takes the place of a salesman – it takes the place of the lead generator.
- Make sure the person does not have to think about what you are selling – make sure it is clear.
- You want the person to take an action so make sure that you TELL him what to do.
In faxing, do not get affected by the ask-offs. Make sure you take their number down to get removed but if you are getting the result (lead generated) you are doing the right thing no matter how forcefully the occasional (and I mean occasional) person tries to convince you that you are doing them in by sending them faxes.
Tags: direct response marketing, fax broadcasting, Fax Marketing
Posted in Fax Marketing | 3 Comments »
May 1st, 2009
Below is an actual case of how mass faxing has worked. I have given what has worked but there have been a number of companies who have done it in the past with their own formula varying degrees of success.
The Product
Holiday accommodation voucher which could be redeemed at a number of resorts internationally as well as within Australia. There were some limiting criteria that had to be met for anyone using the voucher which included travelling with a partner (married or defacto), aged between 25 and 65, a minimum income per annum and willing to attend a 90 minute presentation during which time an attempt would be made to sell them timeshare, property or some similar type product. The cost of the voucher was $198.00.
The Fax
It took a number of months to get a fax that would get an optimum response. Once this had been achieved any change resulted in a lessened response. The best fax only had a small number of the most popular destinations, a free-call number and the call to action which was two-fold:
1. Today only sale with the current day and date given.
2. First 65 who call get an additional voucher giving discounts on holiday accommodation, restaurant meals and a number of other lifestyle type products within Australia.
The Fax Marketing Procedure
A number of faxes were sent out over a 5 hour period starting at 9 – 9.30am in the morning. The fax blast was made up of 30,000 – 50,000 faxes per day. This was done either three times per week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday or five days a week. No faxes were sent during school holidays.
The Call Centre
There were six seats filled during the day depending on the volume of inbound calls from the start of the faxing until 8pm in the evening.
The Fax Advertising Result
70-350 sales per week. Result depended on:
1. Number of faxes sent
2. Time of year
3. Quality of those answering the phone along with training
4. If there were other companies sending similar faxes
The result always increased day to day when faxes were sent on consecutive days, sales on days directly after sending faxes were minimal or none.
Tags: fax, Web Marketing
Posted in Fax Marketing | No Comments »
April 15th, 2009
Having a pretty site that has just been built is just the fist step in having a web presence. The next step is to make sure that people can find you on the internet.
There are a number of types of sites. There are those who just want to have the equivalent to a glossy brochure where people can find out more about them after getting a business card.
This is good but why not put in some effort to make it also seen by those that are looking for your type of product or service?
This is done by using search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO has two parts:
1. On-page actions that make it easier for the search engines to find you, and
2. Off-page actions, primarily having links referring back to your site (back links). This can be done by posting in directories or blogs.
You could learn how to do this yourself or you could pay someone else to do it for you. Unless you have a passion for this type of thing, it may be best to get someone else to do this for you.
If you are going to use someone else to do this for you, you have to choose who you are going to use carefully because there some companies who don’t know what they are doing or use unethical ways of doing it which can work against your site in the long term. There are also companies that take advantage of people who don’t know much about internet marketing and try to charge more that what the service is worth.
Tags: Web Marketing
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March 31st, 2009
Below is an e-mail I sent in response to a request for a critique on a fax advertisement. I thought that others may find it of use:
Thanks for sending through your fax image to me. I like it especially when you include your clients.
Some things that I would look at changing:
- Because selling is an emotional thing, benefits work better than features. An example of this is people don’t buy a new Mercedes because the lights turn on by themselves or they have a high safety rating. They are bought because the person wants to be one up on his friends or he wants to keep his family safe. The thing to do is find the main benefit that you offer and convert it to a heading. You may need to do a few and then pick the best or the main one. Unfortunately I don’t know enough about your product to do this for you.
- This is not critical but I have found it good to get the person to call up to find out more. If you have someone there to take the call and they have enough knowledge to sell the product, it may be better to have this in place. They just have to be briefed that the first calls that come in are often people not wanting to get faxes before the real prospects call so it is important that they don’t become despondent with the ask-off calls to start off with.
- I try to include the following in every fax:
8 points of an Ad:
What is it?
How valuable is it?
What does it do?
How easy is it to do it?
How costly is it?
How do you acquire it?
Where do you get it from?
Why should I get it now?
Tags: Copywriting, Direct Marketing
Posted in Copywriting | 1 Comment »