4 Simple Promotional Ideas

In your last "Success Marketing Strategy" I wrote about the courage that a supermarket realized by giving away with 'no strings attached' offers for free products that they sold.

This was a great example of how anyone can succeed in promoting their small business by following these four simple ideas:

#1: Worry less about image than everybody else does.

#2: Write like you would talk - selling face-to-face, person-to-person.

#3: Be friendly, not stuffy

#4: Be courageous.

As a final comment on this subject, I'd like to encourage you to really work at putting together good direct marketing campaigns for your small business. Don't just hastily throw something together or just wholesale copy an idea you got from these emails.

It takes time, effort, research and sweat to make direct marketing work. One friend of mine in the business forces himself to write at least fifty different possible headlines for the same ad before settling on the best one.

I recently talked with a telemarketing consultant in Las Vegas who does a lot of work with banks and savings and loans across the country. When she goes into a market area to plan a campaign for a bank she first wants to see all the advertising and mailings being used by all the competitors. Then she calls every competitive bank pretending to be a customer inquiring about their advertised services to see how they handle things over the phone. That's research.

I have extensive files of samples and small business ideas and dozens of reference books and materials that I wade through, jotting down notes before even beginning work on each new project or campaign. I know one copyrighter who always tests his basic pitch either face-to-face, door-to-door or over the phone with fifty or more prospects before finalizing his copy.

Simply put I'm talking about paying a high price in preparation so that you get maximum results in the implementation. The payoff can be a predictable means of adding customers or otherwise increasing sales that you can use over and over
again for your business used to expand your business, even franchise, license or sell to others.

The competitive edge you can gain in your marketplace through this process is mammoth because odds are none of your competitors will have the knowledge and the discipline necessary to go through the same process.

I am often introduced at seminars and speaking engagements as a genius in direct marketing and I'm paid consulting fees in recognition of this genius but I assure you that genius is incorrect. My genius, whatever degree there actually is, has
manufactured purely through the same king of research, study, investigation, observation and experimentation available to anybody and everybody. Yet there are very few willing to pay that price for this priceless capability.

Direct marketing can be the tool you use to turn a small business into a big business, a struggling business into a successful one, a modest income into wealth.

In your next Success Marketing Strategy that will be arriving to you in just a few days, I'm going to switch gears and cover... my A-B-C thoughts about the formula of success.

Dedicated To Multiplying Your Income

Dan Kennedy