How would you feel with these results…
If you are human I humbly submit you’d be BLOODY EXCITED.
I received an email recently from a client bursting to share the results of her latest marketing effort.
Here’s why she was over the moon…
4-week campaign.
4 steps involved.
Old school.
But followed the principles taught here…
The result?
Drum roll please…
A 4-week campaign brought in just shy of $900,000.00 in sales.
Not a misprint.
A tick under NINE HUNDRED THOUSAND.
Yes, that’s 9 with 6 freaken zeroes after it.
In 4 weeks.
Want to know how they did it?
Drum roll please…
The exact figure was $894,841.
And yes, it was B2B largely defined by a geographic region in a rural market. Now for privacy purposes I won’t mention names, exact location or the industry (but you can see their logo on my website).
Here’s what they did.
And not a goo-ruh in sight… no latest greatest new fandangle tech thingy-ma-jig…
Just application of the principles taught here.
And so simple just about any business can do it.
The SECRET (the boring secret) to the $900,000.00 campaign was these 4 steps…
Step #1 – postcard
Step #2 – email
Step #3 – email
Step #4 – same message in a newsletter
Ta-da!!!!
What, you’re UNDERwhelmed??
Well I did warn you…
Dead set boring…
Every one of the 894+ thousand dollars was made this boring old fashioned way.
Note: I’m on their list and I have the postcard in front of me…
Again nothing remarkable (not a criticism in any way) but it had…
A clear headline and nice graphics on the front.
Back has 4 paragraphs of maybe 150 words.
Yep, that’s it. Boring.
But oh so successful.
After running my expert eye over the campaign there is indeed a “secret sauce” to their success…
And that secret sauce has 5 key ingredients.
I’ll get ot hem shortly but here’s the thing…
Success can be BORING.
Think of a pro golfer.
Hours and hours of repetition hitting a ball. Boring.
A Pro basketballer.
Hundreds of shots from the free throw line. Boring.
The pro boxer.
Thousands of punches hitting that bag. Boring.
Now if these pros have their basic techniques right and…
They know how to do things in a sequence for the right reasons…
And they practice it again and again and again…
With slight tweaks and changes as they go…
They get success!
And all the accolades that go with it.
But…
And here’s the big but…
They would NOT reach their success without the RIGHT fundamentals and “secrets” in place.
And in my humble (and correct) opinion, it’s similar in business…
As the pro biz owner, you’ve got to get the fundamentals right.
And practise.
And implement.
And repeat your successes with tweaks along the way.
The repetition part can be boring.
And this is when we go chasing shiny objects…
Often ignoring the success principles.
After all, who wouldn’t love a $900K success like our example this week…
Even if it’s BORING???
Now here’s where it gets interesting…
There IS a secret sauce to this success which has 5 key parts.
SECRET SAUCE #1 – the list… they have a big list that’s been nurtured and cultivated over several years… who are used to receiving communication from them… bi-monthly full colour PRINTED newsletter, emails and other promotions… the list is warm… this was NOT an isolated, 1-off wham bam how bout it ma’am style hit and miss offer
SECRET SAUCE #2 – reason why for the offer… and this was authentic… beat the price rise for one of the raw materials in the product which everyone in the industry knew was happening. NOTE: this was not BS scarcity, the major supplier had announced the price rise.
SECRET SAUCE #3 – multi-media… postcard, email, newsletter… it was everywhere the company was, VERY hard to miss… important point: we can rarely guess with any accuracy what the favourite media of our market will be at any given time so multi-media always gives you the best chance of success
SECRET SAUCE #4 – deadline – that was 100% authentic – created REAL urgency and was splashed everywhere ie “BEAT THE PRICE RISE – Order your new
SECRET SAUCE #5 – The postcard… yup, old school still works… thing is, not many are mailing postcards (when was the last time you got one?) so it stands out!! And it followed all our “rules” re headline, offer, reason why, call to action
Like I said at the start… and this is instructive… success can be and often is, boring.
I dare say, if I suggested such a campaign to a prospect, they would ask if there was “anything new” which could be added to make it more successful. Sometimes no – old school works, still.
The execution too was critical in that it was multi-step and multi-media… nothing left to chance.
To your success,
Steve
