You’re right…
You can go on and on about your theories, but please don’t twist my words. Your very own mentor, Dan Kennedy speaks about qualifying your prospects, and if that isn’t something you comprehend, then chances are, you’ll never be successful as a direct response marketer.
If I choose to mail to a list of people in an effort to get them to purchase a product that I’m selling from a website, and I request that everyone on that list must have a credit card, then by your standards (statement), I’m a dummy for alienating all the others who do not have a credit card… By your standards, I’m making a dumb move by “writing off” the other prospects because they’re not motivated enough (or don’t have a credit card). Well Fadi, if that is a dumb move on my part, then you clearly don’t have a clue to direct response marketing and you should either 1) shut down your blog and stop pretending that you actually know something, or 2) go out there and actually test some of this stuff that you’re actually reading and stop acting like you know what you’re talking about (or should I say… quoting someone else material because you haven’t the experience to come up with your own stuff).
By saying I only want to mail to people with a credit card is in no way saying that the others aren’t capable of buying the stuff… But if I’m going to spend tens of thousands of dollars direct mailing a package, then I’m going to make dam well sure they’re going to people with the means and capability of paying. It’s my money and I want my efforts (dollars) spent on people who I deem most qualified.
If I’m dumb for picking the cream of the crop, then let me be dumb… I’ve made myself, and my clients a fortune being stupid (by your standards).
Let’s give a crash course on a real life example… not fluff and talk, but real stuff!
Take this site for example:
http://denturecorp.com/
A direct mail package goes out each and every month to a list of denture wearers.
Now… as our “genius” Fadi would suggest… we could mail to all denture wearers and by his standards, they would be all great, quality prospects. Based on Fadi’s standards, if we pick and choose who we want to mail too, then we’d be ‘writing them off’ and by his own admission, we’d be “dumb”.
Now… unlike our marketing guru Fadi here, I’d pick and choose who I’d mail to.
Here is what I would require from our prospects before I’d mail them a darn thing:
- Must be a denture wearer
- Must have purchased a denture related product in the last 6 months
- That purchase must have been made either through the Internet (or mail order)
- Must have a credit card
- Must have an income of $24,000 - $55,000 a year.
Fadi has no standards…
He’d mail to those with no credit card, he’d mail to those who have no income (because the fact of the matter is, there are many denture wearers in the list who have no income), he’d mail to those who never, ever made a purchase online (or mail order), heck… based on Fadi’s standards, he’d mail you a package even if you didn’t have any dentures (remember, he doesn’t believe in leaving anyone off the list).
Since I’m spending my money on this direct mail campaign, then by all means, I want the package to go to the most likely candidate with the means to purchase, and that’s exactly what happens here.
True… some people who don’t have credit cards will send in a check or money order, and that’s fine, but that’s not who I want to mail. That’s not who I want to spend my marketing dollars on. My goal is to get the highest ROI and it’s not achieved thinking everyone in the world who wears dentures are your prospects…
Why do we cut off at the $55,000.00 mark? We found that those who made more tend to use a dentist because they can afford it… The majority aren’t interested in doing it themselves, so we don’t market to them – based on Fadi’s standards, they’re all fair game… yes, he’ll pull sales from them, but not as many if he stayed under that $55K mark, but again, Fadi has all of this figured out.
Again… this isn’t all theory and fluff, this is the real deal, real data, and real world decisions made based on the data, not something pulled from a book.
This notion that you must have content on a page, or you won’t be successful is another one made by people like Fadi who doesn’t have a clue. Under most circumstances, I would agree that content is king and content should be on a website. It’s the content that search engines are needing if you’re hoping to get optimal results with search engine optimization. Plus, many people still prefer to ‘read’ versus ‘watch’… but as I would tell anyone, you should be testing multiple versions of your landing pages to see what prospects respond too…
Now… but let’s look at the other end of the spectrum here. Many people spend their time trying to “optimize” their website in an effort to get free traffic. And that’s fine and there is nothing wrong with that. But if you’re depending solely on traffic from natural listings, then you’re only hurting yourself.
You should have a multi-prong approach to driving traffic to your website. I personally know of clients I work with who don’t use SEO at all, but yet drive hundreds of thousands of visits to their site each month (targeted traffic).
For me, I choose NOT to have content on the front end of this particular site because we use other methods to drive traffic to the site (postcards, classified ads from local newspapers, video clips on youtube – although I admit we have not used this strategy as much as we should – advertisements on other local community websites, direct mail mailings to divorce, etc…)
That’s how we drive traffic to our paulding homes site – could we do article marketing? Yes we can. Could I spend time on SEO? Yes we can. Could we spend time trying to do all the social networking stuff? Yes we can. Could I create a myspace page? Yes we can… But, we choose not too. It doesn’t make it right or wrong, it’s just our preference, and it has worked well for us and we get plenty of targeted, local traffic and our site has always converted very well.
There are a million ways to do things and that’s just our way. On other sites, yes, we spend time on SEO, and all that other fancy stuff, but I’ll say this… Use multiple methods to getting targeted traffic. For those of you who are depending on SEO to get qualified leads, I’d urge you to seek other practical ways of getting traffic – SEO is not the end-all, and it’s certainly not the ONLY way to be successful online. Like any other business, you gotta put the time and money into actively promoting your website and don’t waste it on people who aren’t in your targeted market.
While we qualify our prospects by requiring them to fill out our form, that’s our method. It may or may not be the right strategy for you, but that’s the strategy we choose to use. Fadi is simply twisting our language to suggest that we don’t think people who don’t fill out our form is NOT qualified… here is my exact comments immediately after I talked about our forms:
“We are in no way saying that those who don’t fill out the form aren’t qualified, but maybe they weren’t ‘desperate enough’, and we are targeting those who are desperate, and if they take the time (10-15 minutes) to fill out our form and go pull out their paperwork to fill in the answers, then that’s what we want… and it’s been quite successful so far”.
I’m simply saying this is the formula we choose to use with regards to our business model. We don’t want people calling on the phones all day. We want them to go through the site, get us the information we want, and we’ll get in touch with them. Obviously, we don’t get ‘all’ the deals because many people won’t fill out the form – but who in this world gets “All the Deals”? No one… Just like you don’t close all the deals who call you on the phone! Again… this is the model we chose to use.
Many of you have your own model whereby you answer the phone and give your pitch, and there is nothing wrong with that at all. That’s your preference and it obviously works for most people, and it works very well. I’m in no way asking anyone to adopt our model – you’re free to add phone numbers and content all over the place if you prefer (nothing wrong with that), but do be careful to some of the ‘quacks’ out there giving you advice.
Now feel free to Quack away Fadi…
Carl Ross