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Article:
5 Things Every Internet Marketer Must Learn From Mail Order To Increase Their Profits Now! by: Jo Han Mok Understanding that the Internet is another vehicle for direct response marketing can potentially make you rich! It's true. Not many people actually 'get it'. Information marketing has much in common with the 'old school' mail order business. In fact, many of the practices you see online today such as two page direct sales mini-sites, mailing lists and unique products, come directly from the mail order model. Every Internet Marketer would benefit from studying the mail order industry. The basic marketing principles and practices employed by the industry translate naturally to the online environment. The five core priorities of successful mail order companies parallel those of the online marketer. They are: demographics, targeting, testing and tracking, up-selling and customer follow up. If you aren't focused on these key areas yet, read on to discover why should be, and what it will mean for your bottom line. Direct Response Lesson #1: Demographics Demographic information provides an in depth profile of your potential customer. There are two ways to acquire demographic information, and two separate motives for each method. You can: Acquire data from consumer data mining companies such as MarketShare Online Acquire data from your existing customer base The preferred source depends on your product development process and your current resources. Professionally gathered data allows you to survey the market and create highly targeted products. Rather than searching through keyword lists for potential niches, you can use demographic data to target specific classes of consumers based on their spending habits and disposable income. Your marketing strategy becomes much clearer with this data in hand. It allows you advance insight into your customer's interests, pricing points and mindset. Now, you have a baseline against which to test the effectiveness of your sales message. You should also acquire as much demographic data as possible from your existing customer base and mailing list. Even when you possess the resources to pay for this information you should still query your own customers. Why? Quite simply, you need to compare the profile of your existing customer base against your expected customer base. For example, if you sell a high-priced information product targeted towards small business owners, yet find that 50% of your list is composed of non-qualified tire-kickers, something is off with either your sales copy, your targeting or both. Direct Response Lesson #2: Targeting Here is a rule of thumb for you to memorize: interest and need alone are not enough to generate a sale. This is a controversial statement, I know. Ask yourself the following question, though: how often have you found yourself interested in a product yet not purchased it? How often have you needed a product, yet not been able to afford it? The truth is that, in either case, despite your interest and your need, you were only marginally targeted when the offer was presented to you. This subtle case points to the synergy between demographics and targeting. This is why mail order companies go to such great effort to acquire detailed information on the marketplace. Whether you send '100
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