A marketing mistake

Just when I think I have my marketing somewhat organized, I make a mistake. Marketing is a huge part of my life, especially right now. One part of marketing is pre-qualification...making sure that the people who are interested in what you have are a good fit.

It's a fine line...I want the business but I don't want to waste time with people who don't want to do business in a way I think is realistic.

I met with some people recently who wanted direct response copy and I gave them a quote and they wanted to move forward but when I repeated the price and the terms I was pretty much told to get lost. I wasted about three hours meeting with them and sending a lot of emails back and forth.

My mistake: not pre-qualifying the prospect. This happens all the time but it was still painful--my fault entirely.

This ad was not a snore

The merchants of direct response are increasingly active in the local newspaper. There was a great DR ad in the sports section today with the headline...

Are You Snoring Yourself to Death?

Of course, it looked just like a regular article. There was a photo of a woman next to a man who must have been snoring; the woman had her pillow around her ears. There was a ton of copy--written just like a newspaper article. I can't show you the ad but I went to the website for the product (out of sheer DR curiosity, of course) and, the site is all DR. It's a thing of beauty.

Actually, it's not that great looking a site but the ad and the site have everything.

Video

Testimonials

Lots of copy

Call to action

Clear benefits

A solution to a problem

A clear USP

Guarantee

Two different ways to order

And so on...

So, from my DR perspective, their marketing is not a snore at all and I'm sure they are selling a lot of a product that looks like it costs about $2 to make but sells for $89.97 (plus shipping and handling).

My guess is that an "A" list copywriter wrote all this.

A Superb Benefit Headline

Like so many products today, car rental is pretty much a commodity. Sites like Orbitz have made shopping for a rental car an exercise in picking the best price. Yes--there are tie-ins and frequent user programs but it's all pretty much the same. You get to the car rental place. You're treated very well. You get into a car with a no-smoking sticker but the car smells like the last person who rented it had a three-pack-a-day habit. I had a certificate for Budget and I have a Budget card and so I went to the Budget site for a recent car rental and the first words I saw were:

Rent a car in just 60 seconds.

See it here.

There are some other clear benefit headlines on the home page.

My New Site is Up

I've needed a new website for a while and so it's exciting to have the new one up. You can link to it here. For most of my writing career, I've been a generalist, working on a variety of projects. However, over the past couple of years, I've focused primarily on direct response copy. I love it and one reason I like my new website is that it makes a statement: I'm a direct response copywriter--the fastest, in fact. And I'm affordable.

Scott Martin--Fast and Affordable Direct Response Copywriting

Make sure to check out the free downloads page. It includes what I think is an absolute corker of a white paper...why I think so many people are wasting money on search/SEO.