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Talk to any business owner or entrepreneur about advertising
and eventually you'll hear the comment, "We don't use direct
mail, email
(insert your own advertising tool you hate right here)
...because it doesn't work or it's too expensive."
I have to smile when I hear this
because it's a misstatement at best and a lack of
understanding at worst of how advertising can work and
viewing each advertising medium as purely a tool to accomplish
an advertising goal.
As a parent what would you do if
you were painting a room in your house and your 5-year old
wanders in picks up a paint brush by the bristles.
Then he or she dips the brush handle in the paint and starts
rubbing the handle on the wall.
Do you say to yourself that you
can't use a paint brush because it doesn't work? Or
realizing your 5-year old is using the tool incorrectly,
you correct them and show them how to use the brush the right
way?
I hope you you don't blame
the tool.
In advertising to often that's exactly
what people do without finding out how to use the tool
correctly.
Here's a case study to
illustrate what I mean. A few months ago I took on a
client in the financial services market. He runs a
mutual fund. His goal is to get people to take a portion
of their retirement funds and invest in his fund.
Chances are you have money
invested in mutual funds and you know there's a lot of funds
to choose from. Over 17,000 right now. So
if you run a mutual fund, you're just starting and don't have
several years of performance like the Fidelity, Vanguard,
Oppenheimer and other funds have, how do you present
yourself and generate leads?
 Well one way is to choose an
affinity group that you are associated with. For
example if your family members were employed by the healthcare
profession, you might target those types of people first.
This is what the owner of the mutual fund did.
He acquired an email list of
people in the affinity group his family was in. Crafting
an email (and advertising tool)
he then sent the email out to several hundred people,
asking them to contact him. Below I've recreated the
body of the email:
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My name is Tom
Patterson, a graduate of Temescal Canyon High School in
Rancho Cucamonga, CA. Everyone in my family has
been involved with California healthcare at some point
in their career.
Don Patterson
is an MD at San Juan Hospital, Karen Patterson is an RN
at Rancho Cucamonga Medical Center in San Gabriel, Tammy
Patterson is a Radiologist at the Rancho Specialty
Hospital.
I am a CPA and
manager of the Southwest Growth Fund (and a trained EMT
who volunteers at the Good Samaritan Hospital in La
Crescenta). I hope this email finds you well with
summer knocking on the door.
I would like
to help educate you on your retirement, investing and
401k plan. I have taught over 100 California
healthcare professionals about investing and planning
for retirement.
I am not
an advocate of insurance or annuities. I like
straight to the point investments using no load mutual
funds and asset allocation.
Please take a
quick moment to go to my website below. Click on
the video if you have 30 seconds. I would be more
than happy to meet with you this summer at your
convenience at your hospital or your residence to
discuss how you can invest in no-load fund through your
retirement. Email me or call at the number below
to discuss.
Sincerely,
Tom Patterson,
President
Southwest
Growth Fund w
www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com
w
800-000-0000 |
After hundreds and hundreds of
emails being sent out, guess how many replies he received?
None. Zero. Nothing. At first he
thought his email provider had been blacklisted or the list
had flaws but as I started to work with him I verified neither
was the case.
The problem was obvious to me as
I looked at the email. First it reminded me of those
letters you get at Christmas from a relative or friend.
I get one every year from one of my sister-in-laws where she
crams all the happenings of her life that year onto both sides
of a sheet of paper, telling everyone what she accomplished,
where she traveled, what she did, who she met and so on.
One year in her letter I counted
the word "I" 36 times. After commenting that the letter
seemed a little too self promoting the letters the
following years were "more balanced". At any rate, from
an advertising perspective, Tom's letter had the same problem.
A lot about him and his family
and what he did and what he liked, then the "call me" request.
If you remember from the newsletter last
week, he was offering nothing of value to the
reader. He was trying the get something before giving
something. And we was asking for too much (a 1 on 1
phone conversation) too quickly (after only one
out-of-the-blue email).
His email is exactly the kind of
advertising that gets ignored and filtered out quickly
by most people reading it. Not only for all the above
reasons but also because it's the "typical" email you'd get
from someone in financial services. And it doesn't
build his case as being an expert or industry source for
valuable information about retirement planning.
What to do? From our
newsletter last week I suggested he, like anyone with the same
problem, should do the following: 1) give something of value
and 2) make it something that helps them solve a problem and
3) create a follow-up series of communications they can
receive after the 1st contact with them.
So I put on my copywriting hat
and developed the email that I've recreated below:
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What would happen if you
and 9 other doctors from your hospital here in Rancho
Cucamonga, sat down in a small room and forced each
other to GRADE YOURSELVES on how well your
retirement plan was doing?
What letter grade would
you give your own retirement plan?
Would you give your
retirement plan a B? Maybe a D? What about your
other 9 doctors? How many would give their own
retirement plans a passing grade?
Would it surprise you to
find out that most, maybe 7 or 8 out of the ten of you
wouldn’t even know THEMSELVES how well their own
retirement plan is doing?
[
Click here to request your FREE
Special Report – The Top 5 Retirement Mistakes
California Doctors Make With Their 403k Retirement Plans
]
And if you started talking
to each other a little and were very candid (read
BRUTALLY HONEST) about what you’ve done or not done with
your retirement, you’d likely find more than half
of the doctors in the room had made what I call a
RETIREMENT MISTAKE during their medical career.
How do I know this?
Fortunately everyone in my family has been involved with
California healthcare at some point in their career.
Plus as an accountant and CPA myself, I’ve taught over
100 California doctors about planning for retirement.
Because of my unique
personal and professional experience I’ve been able to
put down on paper a special report I call
The Top 5 Retirement Mistakes
California Doctors Make With Their 401k Retirement Plans.
The report is free,
it’s a very quick read and in it I show you the
investment mistakes I personally witnessed from medical
professionals around the state of California.
[
To get your Free Special Report,
simply click here to go to my website to request it.
]
Plus at the end of the
report I show you how you can get a grade your own
retirement plan and get a Free Retirement Plan Report
Card.
Getting a low grade on
your retirement plan is one thing. At least you know
where you stand and can take steps to improve or change
it.
Not knowing what grade
or how to grade your retirement plan is another
thing entirely. You don’t know what you don’t know. And
usually you find out, too late (when you retire),
something could have been changed if you’d only KNOWN
what your GRADE WAS.
There Are 2 Ways To Get
Your Free Special Report: The Top 5 Retirement Mistakes
California Educators Make With Their 401k Retirement
Plans
1) The first way is to
simply send a blank email (that means no subject line,
no message, just leave everything blank) to this email
address: 5mistakes@xxxxxxxx.com I’ll
automatically email you right back (maybe in 5-15
minutes) with your special report that you can open and
print out to read.
2) Or you can go to my
website and request it at: http://www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com/5mistakes.htm
The directions are simple and you can download it right
from my website.
Thanks again for reading
this email and I strongly encourage you to read my
report. Again it’s free and may help you avoid
retirement bloopers.
Sincerely, Tom Patterson,
CPA
PS. In case you’re
wondering, Rancho Cucamonga is my home. My father,
Don Patterson is an MD at San Juan Hospital, Karen
Patterson is an RN at Rancho Cucamonga Medical Center in
San Gabriel, Tammy Patterson is a Radiologist at the
Rancho Specialty Hospital.
PPS. I welcome your
critique of my report. Just be kind with the red-ink
pen. Remember I’m a CPA (very good with numbers) and not
a particularly good writer. |
Here are the numbers for the
revised email. Of the people that actually open the
email to read it (which is a relatively low number and another
story) he's getting over 10% of them to respond to the Free
Report offer.
 The
sheer number of advertising messages your customers receive
every day is staggering and unmanageable. The human mind
compensates by ignoring the vast majority of these
messages unless in the first 3 seconds of your ad you grab
their attention.
 Most
ads jump from not knowing you at all to asking you to buy a
product or service in less than 60 seconds. To generate
more leads try giving before you ask. Give
something of value to your probable buyers.
 In
a mall restaurants will offer free samples to try
before you buy. You can do this too regardless of your
industry, product or service. A good B2B example is a
free report that can be mailed or emailed to your
prospect. Use it to build a case for how to buy what you
sell.
 Plan
on doing follow up with these people for a long time after
they respond to your ad. Although you may have your
goals and sales cycle their buying cycle is probably
longer. Pre determine your follow up messages
before you start so you don't play catch up.
NEXT WEEK - Having trouble
generating leads for your business? We'll
take a look at new client of mine that has over 17,000
competitors and is using new methods for finding people
who need what he sells. You can use this same strategy
too.
Until then keep Growing Your
Business!
Jeff Bell,
www.Growing-Your-Business.com
Do you have a marketing question?
I have an answer.
Click here and go to
www.AskJeffBell.com
Turn on your SPEAKERS to hear my
message.
Jeff Bell
Sales and Marketing RESULTS
PO Box 267
Noblesville, IN 46061
317-774-3787
www.Growing-Your-Business.com
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