Direct mail, as a marketing tactic, went out of style for a while.
The reasons why are understandable, but mostly a result of people doing it wrong.
The effectiveness of it hits a point of diminishing returns once you try to do it at too large of a scale.
But done properly, by keeping to these strict guidelines, it can reap immense rewards:
I don’t always post on Twitter, but when I do, I use the shotgun approach.
Recently I started firing off questions and comments regarding the term “growth hacker.”
I’m not a huge fan of that label — I prefer “growth marketing” — but have made peace with its existence and usage.
I know you don’t like to be compared to everyone else.
I know you’re unique.
But I’m willing to bet $100 that your online marketing funnels are probably lacking in scope and size.
I’m saying that because no matter who I work with, and how big they are, there’s always a missing piece to their funnels.
And those missing pieces add up and end up costing you.
You don’t get as many qualified leads as you could have.
You don’t get as many sales or repeat sales as you could have.
I’d say that’s a problem.
And I’ll even add that it’s a problem worth fixing – now.
It seems pretty fundamental and obvious: without buyers, you don’t have a business.
And without knowing your market, your clients and customers, you can’t serve them well or offer valuable products.
Yet, businesses continue to act as if it’s not true or important — especially in their marketing.
You see this when marketers elevate one particular approach over another, supposedly heralding and ushering in the New Age of Marketing.
You can spot it when marketers are still talking about their Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and differentiating themselves.
It’s painfully obvious when marketers take it upon themselves to declare any tactic or strategy “dead”.
Marketing, especially online, is more closely related to doing things based on heuristics, as opposed to algorithms.
It’s more about “Playbooks” than strict and rigid Operating Procedures (we’ll talk about how to fix that, too).
What does that actually mean?
Let’s start with basic, sound, fundamental business practices we can all agree on: Without your buyers — your clients and customers — you don’t have a business.
Peter Drucker himself, all Business MBA programs, and scores of prime business minds are all nodding their somber heads in agreement right now (you are too, I’m sure).
If you’ve ever tried selling a product that no one wants, you’ve quickly realized it’s the surest, straightest path to not just failing to put food on the table but you can’t even afford a table to begin with.