If you are not creating Immediate Response marketing, you are wasting your money.
Most brick & mortar, mom & pop owned and operated businesses advertise and market like the Big Brand boys. Their marketing is full of platitudes pushing the wrong agenda of Image, Brand and Presence.
Dan Kennedy, marketing guru, shared these sad facts that coincidently follow the 80/20 Principle:
1% of Small Business Owners create tremendous income and wealth for themselves. They DOMINATE their market within their industry.
4% do quite well. They are prosperous and have created a very nice lifestyle for themselves and their families.
15% make a good living.
80% struggle day-to-day or fail altogether.
When I owned my new car franchised dealership I fought a continual battle.
The factory charged me several hundred dollars per car/truck that they designated as “co-op advertising funds”.
They would give that money back to me IF I advertised to promote their Image, Brand and Presence.
I can’t adequately communicate how much this irked me and how short-sighted I viewed this.
Like all “Policies & Regulations” there were loopholes, but what a waste of time and energy to have to run my business that way.
Those small businesses in the 20% tiers don’t blindly follow the crowd. They adhere to a different way of doing business and that especially applies to their marketing.
According to Dan Kennedy: Your Marketing Strategy needs to be and can be much SIMPLER.
- Every $1.00 spent on marketing has to provide you an IMMEDIATE Return-on-Investment (ROI) – FAST! Like TODAY preferably.
- That ROI must able to be accurately tracked back to that $1.00 spent.
- DO NOT spend a $1.00 that does not IMMEDIATELY return more than it costs you.
We will not take on a client where we do not feel confident we can bring them a return 3 to 5x’s what they spend for our advice, strategies and plans.
As a small business owner with limited resources, your sole agenda has to be to SELL SOMETHING TODAY!
You cannot afford any other way of thinking.
Every marketing communication you create from now on must be created with these 7 Rules at the forefront of your thinking:
- It must be created with the intent to get a sale TODAY!
- Every marketing/advertising communication will have an Intriguing and near Impossible-to-Refuse Offer in it.
- Always, always have a reason for the prospect or customer to RESPOND – Immediately.
- It must have very clear instructions on What you want them to do, When and How. Always make it easy to do business with you AND to say YES!
- Every marketing/advertising communication will be trackable. “You can’t manage what you don’t or can’t measure.”
- Brand-building will only be done using NO-COST methods. Absolutely no platitudes.
- Follow-up will be built right into every marketing communication.
If you are spending money with agencies, radio stations, television ads, newspaper ads, online advertising, websites, postcards, brochures, etc. and they are not adhering to these rules. Fire them! NOW! You are on the path to joining or remaining in that 80% that just survive.
Our Desired End Results for every owner we work with is to get them to that 1%.
Only Immediate Response Marketing will get you there.