CHAPTER 5
THE OFFER
The word "offer" is a common term used in direct marketing
to describe a product or service you're selling. A good mail
order offer can be priced anywhere from $3 and up - the sky
is the limit. Especially with direct marketing's new wave of
selling real estate, cars, etc. A mail order product can
have a lifetime value of $1,000's or $1,000,000's to its
creator. And of course an offer can also turn out to be
useless if nobody wants it or if it is never properly
marketed.
FOCUS ON READILY AVAILABLE MARKETS
I mentioned in a previous chapter that I created, some years
ago, both software and a book which could not, in the end,
be marketed successfully. I would have saved an awful lot of
time by studying the size and availability of my markets
first.
The size of the market is important because only a large
volume of sales can justify the creation of a product. The
market for an asthma book is: asthmatics who actually want
to help themselves and believe that a drug-free cure could
exist in the form of a book. That's probably less than 1 in
500 people in the U.S. and Canada, by my estimate.
The availability of the market is important for obvious
reasons which are far more important than the mere existence
of prospects. If there is no way for you to reach your
prospects, you're doomed. For example, there's probably at
least a million people who would be interested in buying a
book about falling out of love with somebody who doesn't
love them back. But there's no way to reach that group of
people yet. Perhaps in future there will be a magazine
called Unrequited Lover's monthly and we'll be able to buy
the subscriber list.
The best way to determine whether there is a marketing
channel where you want there to be one, is to
1) ask yourself whether anyone is already selling what
you're thinking of selling and
2) call a major mailing list broker and ask them if they
have a list of the people you're trying to contact. If
there's already a lot of business going on with regard to
that product or service, then you're gambling on a winner.
If you're trying something that apparently hasn't been tried
(successfully) before, you'd better ask yourself some tough
questions about how focussed and repetitive an attack you
can make on the market (and make sure they do want it). Can
you reach this group of people through specialized mailing
lists, advertising during certain TV shows, etc.?
NEEDS AND WANTS
Take a good look at what people already want to do. Because
of the brainwashing women have received, there's huge money
to be made selling them weight loss and skin treatment
programs. Similarly, men are paying thousands of dollars
apiece for hair loss treatments. This is big bucks marketing
which is taking advantage of pre-existing wants and beliefs.
People immediately buy what they want. They are not quite so
eager to buy what they need. What are you doing to make
people want what you have to sell? When you try to sell
people what they need, instead of what they want, you have
to spend a lot more time and money educating them before
they'll buy your product. That's not to say that you
shouldn't make the effort. Just be warned.
The very best products to market right now are specialized
information, products and services. Big, established
industries contain vicious competitors (sharks) and huge
warehousing firms (whales) that make it necessary for the
littler fishes to seek a safe place to market where they
won't be overwhelmed by those who outprice them and/or eat
them alive, or simply overwhelm them with more extensive
marketing, large customer bases, etc..
Remember, you can't change the weather by leaving your door
open. And you can't sell something unless people are willing
to give you money for it. People want things from companies
that they are familiar with. But when you offer something
new to a specific group of people, they'll have to give
their money to you, or do without it, because the whales and
sharks haven't got it. Another benefit of being a little guy
with a specialized market, is that a lot of money to you is
probably peanuts to the big boys, and they couldn't be
bothered to muscle in on you for what is such a small payoff
for them.
FLEXIBILITY
You must realize that no product or service is ever
finished. Books need to be updated, corrected and re-
released. Order forms need to be purged of poorly selling
items so that new items can be tested. There are a million
little things to consider.
Your customers will teach you a lot. They'll keep you on
your toes. If you're smart (and flexible) your business will
be an ever-changing and improving collection of products,
services, formletters, advertisements, techniques,
salesletters, etc., which strive to maximize your profits.
And always remember - for every 100 people out there who are
confused by one of your ads, or take offense at something
you said, or really like your new book, only 1 will tell
you! So listen to the voices of the people that bother to
write to you (or call you) with their opinions - they are
giving you information that ultimately means money in your
pocket, if you are willing to listen.
WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR OFFER?
Finding or creating a good product to market exclusively is
difficult but necessary. Does a newcomer usually come
prepared with a line of hot products he's just itching to
sell? Not often. Instead, he'll need to find something to
sell. There will already be a host of other dealers selling
the very best products. The newcomer will be able to sell
some of those products on commission but the competition
(especially the prime source) will, in general, beat him to
the punch and take the lion's share of the profits. It's a
dog-eat-dog world, and it's every marketer's duty to grab as
much of the market as he can. People look for, and create,
hot products for themselves. Nobody's going to give you one
on a silver platter.
What it comes down to is this: those of you without natural
business inclination or a hot product will need outside
sources for products (or at least for ideas), at the start.
FREE PUBLICATIONS. The United States Government offers a
myriad of free publications, yours for the asking. Write to
The Superintendent Of Documents, Government Printing Office,
Washington, DC 20402 and ask for a general directory of
publications. You will also receive information on how to
order more specific directories listing thousands more
publications - some free, some you pay for. These
publications are not copyrighted, for the following reason:
when person X pays person Y to write something, the
copyright owner is X, not Y. Since American taxpayers pay
the Superintendent of Document's bills, it is American
taxpayers (you) who own the copyright to all those free
publications. You can reproduce them and sell them, or give
them away to your customers as premiums to lead in to other
items you sell. You can, of course, also learn from them.
You should also specify to the Superintendent Of Documents
that you are interested in receiving a listing of booklets
and subscriptions dealing with new products. This will lead
you into the world of imports and inventions (and imported
inventions), which may provide you with the product you will
sell.
TRADE SHOWS. For a listing of over 10,000 trade shows over 2
years in advance, get the Exhibits Schedule from Successful
Meetings Magazine, 633 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017.
YOUR OWN IDEAS. As will be demonstrated repeatedly
throughout this book, the best products are your own.
Ideally, the price you want to pay for each unit of what you
sell, is the manufacturing cost and no more. If you can buy
at manufacturing cost and sell at retail, you are making the
maximum profit margin. Needless to say, this situation is
only possible when you are the product's creator. And to
create a product, you need ideas. The best place to get
ideas is from yourself, after seeing the industry from the
inside for a while. It was my participation in mail order
that led me to create the Advertising Deadline Calendar, The
Directory Of Winning Classified Ads, The Complete Mail Order
Record Keeping System, and so on. Each of these products
was, in a sense, created before I realized I could be
selling them. If you have been in business for a year or
more, chances are that you have invented something
marketable whether you realize it or not!
"DEALER WANTED" ADS. In mail order's inner, middle and outer
circles you will encounter a myriad of companies wanting you
to sell their products. Be curious, and be careful. Many of
these companies are not really in the commission business,
instead making money by forcing you to pay for their
catalogs or to register you as a dealer. Check out the back
pages of Entrepreneur magazine, for example. Within this
maze of advertising you will find plenty of dealerships.
USING YOUR COMPUTER SKILL
If you're handy with computers, computerize something. The
last decade has seen the mass computerization of mailing
lists by small mail order dealers. Someone made money
writing the software which allows this to take place. The
very best mailing list program ever written is My Advanced
Mail List. Get it from MySoftwareCompany, 1259 El Camino
Real, Suite 167, Menlo Park, CA 94025 or in a local computer
shop.
Computerization has revolutionized biorhythms, voicemail,
horoscopes, dating services, and more, all of which can be
sold through mail order and/or telemarketing. What's left?
That's up to you!
If I wanted, I could put the complete text of this book on a
3.5" disk and mail it for a total cost of $3. Hey, THERE'S
an idea! If any of you out there are bright IBM programmers
who could take the text of this book (it's already on disk)
and turn it into a read-me file, give me a call! (416-266-
7437).
For an example of software written for mail order dealers,
write to Mail Order Manager, Box 641, Wayne, NJ 07470; 1-
201-694-0779. This program does everything from planning
mailings to keeping records of the results. Chapter 14 gives
the address for Computer Direct. This is another resource
for ideas about what business software is popular, as well
as a source for you to buy software cheap.
CREATING BOOKS AND OTHER INFORMATION PRODUCTS
I'm going to tell you the same thing every other mail order
consultant will tell you - the best thing to sell by mail is
information.
How do you create information products? First, you create a
complete outline in terms of chapters. Then you fill in
headings and subheadings. The creation of the book then
consists of completing each section. Authors generally take
from 3 to 24 months to write a book. It depends of course on
how intensively you work on it, what it's supposed to
accomplish, and how good a job you do.
If you find yourself obsessing over awkward parts, cut them
out. Otherwise they'll sit on the page like a roadblock for
weeks, preventing you from creating a final manuscript which
flows evenly.
When writing from personal experience, go over a typical
day's activities related to the book's topic. Think of
everything you've ever done with respect to your topic, from
day one, so that you recall early pitfalls and warn your
reader how to avoid them, as well as how to handle day to
day trivialities that you take for granted.
Don't just write about what you know, either. For example, I
haven't used card deck advertising yet, but it would be
negligent of me not to discuss it (if briefly) in this book.
Do the necessary research to make your book complete, even
though you should only focus and expand on areas that you
feel are the most important. No single how-to book, after
all, discusses every last detail of a topic.
Where an important topic is not discussed in your book,
refer the reader to a good source, with address and phone
number. Both the reader and the referred-to individual or
company will remember you for it and be grateful.
If you want to write a book whose topic is not related to
making or saving money, then God help you. You can't sell
fiction, poetry, directories, biographies and so on by
yourself. That can only be done by a major publishing house,
which means you'll have to write the book, submit the
manuscript, and wait for the publisher to (almost certainly)
write back to you and say "Sorry, we don't want it".
Lee Howard, a very popular publisher and author for the last
2 decades, says "I have found that when we publish new
books, it takes about a year to really get the sales rolling
on that new item. If you quit too soon you would lose the
benefit of all that preliminary work you have done." Hear
that, folks? Info-selling is not for the impatient.
The above discussion is an outline only; creating an info
product is certainly not as easy as I've just made it sound.
But the beauty of doing all the hard work is that you can
continue to sell your info product(s) for the rest of your
life with only minor alterations from time to time.
SINCERITY
How can you believe in your product when you know that it's
a ripoff? Of course, you can't.
You have to offer something of value. You have to have a
skill or product which will make people so happy that they
will come back to you for more. The problem for so many
starting in mail order is that they believe the dream-
peddlers who tell them that they have a ready-made formula
for success that anyone can follow. Send them $20 and
they'll give it to you. Usually it will be a few bits of
paper basically telling you to do to other people what they
just did to you. Sometimes it's a company telling you how to
import stuff from the South Pacific and sell it in the good
ole' U.S.A. at a 1000% mark-up. In other words, an
oversimplification of a very complicated business.
People selling plans that show people how to make money
using little or no effort make their money by selling that
advice, not by following it. These phony advice pushers are
completely lacking in sincerity; they lose in the long run
because they inevitably get flack from customers, postal
inspectors, etc. and kill their chances of getting repeat
business.
FREEBIES
The "freebie" approach to marketing is to offer something
free in your advertising. This must relate to the product
you ultimately want the prospect to buy, and it must never
seem more important than what you're really trying to sell.
It must also be very inexpensive to produce and mail unless
you're selling a very expensive product. Don't promise "Free
information" and just send a salesletter. The customer was
expecting something of value, and will be angry if you give
him anything else.
The very best Freebies are information products. You could
offer a "Top 5 fishing spots in the midwest" booklet as a
way to attract fishing lure customers (or to lure fishing
customers, depending on how you look at it). A good one for
mailorder would be "Free report: 5 ways to boost your
mailorder business with a telephone" as a giveaway, then
offer your customers voicemail service and tele-marketing
advice books. Some mail order marketers have perfected the
freebie approach and wouldn't think of selling a new product
any other way.
There is much discussion about whether or not you should ask
for $1, or a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope), or
absolutely nothing, concerning "give-aways". There are no
absolute rules, but make a careful note of 2 things :
- if your ad was specifically targeted, you will not attract
a lot of curiosity seekers. Thus, you will be sending
information to truly interested people and your direct
marketing expenses are a good investment. THIS IS THE WAY
TO GO.
- if your ad is vague, you will attract curiosity seekers by
the droves. Compare "Free report: 5 ways to squeeze more
money out of your bulk mailing license" to "Free get-rich-
quick scheme".
The problem with curiosity seekers is that it's a waste of
time and money mailing them your offer when they have no
interest or intention of buying anything from you.
My advice is to keep the freebies free (don't ask for $1 or
SASE), BUT keep your ads specifically targeted. Some common
specific target groups (of which there are thousands)
include:
- bulk mailers
- chocolate lovers
- dog owners
- miniature glass figurine collectors
- senior citizens
- authors
- publishers (tabloid)
- publishers (newsletters)
- multi-level food product participants
ADVANTAGES OF HAVING YOUR OWN PRODUCT
Exclusivity is the key to any mail order fortune. Many
people in business for years or decades still haven't
grasped this fact and are still paying the price.
The really effortless money comes from having others sell
your products, and even your services, for you. You can
approach retailers, wholesalers, and catalog houses with a
simple letter offering quantities of your product at an
appropriate discount (or tell them you'll dropship). To
obtain a current list of appropriate contacts, contact a big
name dealer (BND) and ASK for his or her advice. Companies
come and go too quickly for it to make sense to list any
here.
Choose appropriate merchandise that other dealers will
dropship (or that you can buy at wholesale) and create your
own original selling materials and catalogs. Create
something new that nobody has seen before, and you'll be
able to catch people's attention, instead of being thought
of as "Watkins Distributor #12,631".
There is a definite feeling you get when putting a project
or product together, that you're really doing something
useful for people, something they should pay for, not just
something you hope they'll pay for. For those who wasted
their first few months in mail order selling the same old
useless get rich quick circulars to each other, the change
is uplifting.
THE ADVANTAGES OF HAVING A LINE OF PRODUCTS
When you have a line of products instead of one or two, you
incur less cost to market each product. Compare a mailing to
1000 people selling a $40 book - and nothing else - to a
mailing to the same group but selling ten $40 books. The
second option has $400 potential (plus the potential for
multiple-book purchase discounts); the first has only $40
potential, even though your marketing expense would be the
same.
In the second option, you pay the same up-front marketing
fee for ten times the profit potential of the first option
AND you get an immediate bounce-back effect of having buyers
purchasing more books after receiving the first one(s) they
ordered. Also, the single product option may flop if that
solitary item is a dud. But a ten item collection is bound
to contain a couple of winners. If there was ever a secret
to mail order success, this is it.
PRICE CEILINGS
For those of you who have been wondering whether $19.95 is
really perceived as less than $20, the answer is "Yes". More
people will pay $19.95 than $20. The perceived difference is
subjectively more than a nickel. I'm not going to bother with
theorizing; it's just the truth, so accept it. Once you go a
nickel above a price ceiling, you may as well go all the way
to the very next price ceiling; for example if you've decided
to price something above $19.95, you may as well try to go all
the way up to $39.95, instead of $24.99. These are commonly
accepted price ceilings: $9.95, $12.95 + $2 P&H, $19.95,
$19.95 + $2 P&H, $39.95, $69.95, $99.95, $199.95, etc.
NAMING YOUR PRODUCT
Name your product like a headline. Consider Never Lose
Another Penny To A Mailorder Ripoff Artist, The Directory Of
Winning Classified Ads, and so on. The product titles fully
describes the contents. No cleverness, no vagueness. And
there's no need to be brief when naming a product. Just tell
it like it is. Try to resist the temptation of being clever.
DON'T GIVE YOUR PRODUCT AWAY
Turn to the end of this book and you will see the limitless
self-promotional capacity a self-published book like this
one has. No publishing house would ever let me get away
with this. But with a self-published book I can get away
with whatever I want. This book sells my other products and
my other products sell my other products, too (including
this book).
There are serious questions to ask yourself before turning
your product over to someone else (who becomes the prime
source) and accepting royalty payments. When they sell your
products are they simultaneously boosting sales of your
other products? Almost certainly not. Are they marketing
your product as enthusiastically as you would like them to?
Almost certainly not, since the company that bought it from
you has a long list of other items it is trying to sell, as
well. Unless it says so in the contract, they don't even
have to market it at all. The best royalty contracts have a
stipulation that the production company will produce a
certain volume of sales within 6 months or a year, or the
rights go back to you.
Your product could sell ten times as much in someone else's
hands, but that doesn't mean you'd come out ahead. Remember,
on a $20 book like this one, I clear at least $12 before
marketing expenses. In someone else's hands I would receive
only $2 (10%) per copy, so if I only sell one sixth as many,
I'm doing just as well, right? WRONG! I'm actually ahead -
because my version of this book has advertising for my other
offers at the end and throughout! When I sell a copy of
this book, my customer deals with me, not a checkout girl or
catalog house.
The final point I will make here is that you will rob
yourself of a business education if you hand a product over
to someone else. Handling it yourself forces you to learn
the ins and outs of retailing and wholesaling, and getting
free publicity, dropshipping, and so on.
BE AN ORIGINAL
I'm an anti-multi-level-marketing guy in an MLM world. Why?
Because in the long run, I know that as more and more people
fail at MLM, they'll remember that I advised against it from
the first moment that I started selling direct marketing
advice. Having seen that I was right, they will assume that
I can help them with additional advice. Of course, this
happens slowly, but I know the effect will snowball over the
next decade, especially if MLM is outlawed altogether.
If you do, say or create anything original, you will be
criticized. Expect it. And do it anyway.
YOU'VE GOT A PRODUCT ... NOW WHAT?
Your offer will only sell when you make it sell. An
excellent product goes nowhere until you do something. Here
is where so many marketers pay too much, do things wrong,
put out too little effort and quit too soon. You must plan
to reach your market continually, over a period of at least
a year, in as many different ways as possible, and
especially as many FREE ways as possible, paying for your
advertising only to the extent that you must. The promotion
of your offer is the topic of discussion of the next 2
chapters.