How To Use Cheap Classified Ads and Two-Step Marketing To Make Up To $10,000 a Week (or more) In Sales

How To Use Cheap Classified Ads and Two-Step Marketing To Make Up To $10,000 a Week (or more) In Sales

Whether you like it or not, the material world we all live in runs on money.

 

Lots of it and if you are serious about helping others, looking after your family and being known as a kind, generous person, you will generally find it much easier if you have a hit (or lots) of money behind you.

Of course, how much money you’ll make in life is dependent on a vitally important marketing secret you probably never even give a second thought to. This is such a powerful concept that just being aware of it can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of your sales and marketing campaigns. Before I tell you what it is, let me give you some clues to make it stick in your mind. The clues to this secret lie hidden in the following four examples …

Example #1  A person who has worked for a boss all their life buys a successful business with lots of customers … Within 12 months, the business closes down and the person moans about being ripped off.

Example #2  A young guy with a dirty old car wins a brand new one in a lottery.  Within a couple of months, the car is filthy dirty and dented. In fact, a recent newspaper report states that 70% of people who win a major lottery ($200,000 and up) are broke again within two years!

Example #3  A “C grade” tennis player is playing an “A grader” in a tournament.  He plays like he’s never played before and is just one game away from victory.  Suddenly he loses his nerve and the A grader coasts to a win as expected.

Example #4   A self made Chinese millionaire loses his property to the Communists. He moves to Australia, starts a business and, within a short time, becomes prosperous again.

So what does all this tell you? In fact, these examples of real-life situations simply confirm what I frequently come across when working with clients, which is that …

People will do almost anything to stay in their comfort zone.

Whilst most people want to make more money, want to be healthier, more confident, look younger and be generally more successful than they are … not many of them are prepared to change what they are used to doing now and let me tell you …

If you want different results in any area of your life or business,
you must do things differently than you are doing now.

Easier said than done, for most people. You see, most people are simply not used to making decisions that will alter the lifestyle and routine they are comfortable with.

In fact, the most psychologically uncomfortable thing for humans to do is to,

CHANGE!

Any change. Good or Bad. That’s why most people don’t make choices. They settle. They settle for the job they’ve got. They settle for how they spend their time. They settle for the products or services they are used to buying. Which means that if you are selling something that is new to your customer or prospect, you must use great skill in order to make them comfortable about their decision to change.

Most businesses don’t realize this. What they do is, they act as if all their prospects are just sitting around waiting to see their ad or receive their letter and buy their products. Which just doesn’t happen. Look, if you sell alcohol and you walk into a room full of old winos, you can get away with a simple sales pitch like …

“Hey buddy, want to buy some cheap wine?”

Unfortunately, that approach may not work so well with prospects who are not as eager to buy a product as those guys. Yet, that’s the way a lot of people in business approach their would be customers. As if they were already dead keen to buy what they’re selling and that’s not real smart considering the average Australian is probably exposed to over 2,000 ads and sales pitches each and every day.

Buy widget x – it’s cheaper

SALE! SALE! SALE!

John Smiths Spring Clearance!

Save with the best!

Save on all your home furniture  

Jack Browns Stock Clearance Sale

 

Last Chance to buy at this price


Are you ugly?

Want to be slim?

Our photo & make-up Session
will make you look like a
model in less than three hours

Amazing new diet pill lets you
Eat like a pig and look like
an anorexic.

Buy from me! – – – NO, Buy from Me! – – – BUY! BUY! BUY! BUY!

………and so it goes. No introduction. No warm up and definitely no respect for the customer’s intelligence whatsoever. Could there be a better way of doing it? Believe me, there is!  Rather than yelling at your prospect like some sort of demented demon, you should be trying to reel them in slowly and educate them on the benefits of doing business with you!

What you must remember is that.

Yelling ain’t selling

Sure, it attracts attention. But so does a naked gorilla on a bicycle. To sell more of your products, you want something a little more subtle, more refined. What you want, is for your prospects to look at your sales pitch and simply see it as a non-threatening easy-to-tune-into way of getting more information on something they maybe interested in.

This proven way for attracting more sales has many applications. It tells you that your ads should look like editorial articles and blend into the publication they appear in. It says that your direct mail promotions will probably work better if they are in the form of a low-key (but effective) personal letter and not a fancy, high-gloss colour brochure.

It also means that you should be considering doing more two-step promotions. Where you run small (or large) lead generating ads followed by a letter and/or personal or telephone follow-up. This two or three step technique follows the same principles kids use to attach a rope to a high tree branch to make a swing. First they get a light, thin rope and wrap a rock around it. Then they throw the rock over the branch, and once they rock comes down the other end they attach the thick rope to the thin one and pull it around. Simple, but effective.

Now, here are some examples of headlines and ads that may work as a ‘thin line’ to reel the prospects in …

Painful Arthritis??
FREE report by a doctor shows how to get rid of it
quickly and painlessly.
Call 066-78_ _ _ _
Start your own $80, 000 a year business from home.
Call now for a FREE 20 page information kit. (07) 5525 _ _ _ _
FREE Catalogue:
Women’s Fashions: Latest styles 38% off,
30 page retail prices. Call xxxxxx

 

Here are a few more ads I saw in the papers recently that follow this method…

Business Marketing, Business Plan And Sales Training

These then, are the thin lines that roll in the prospects. This is followed by a letter or call which is the “thicker rope” attached to the thin line.

I know a person who spends over $4,300 per week on “little thin line” ads. He places these ads in the major newspapers in all capital cities. Each ad has a local number answered by an operator from a telephone paging company (Telecom Paging does this at a monthly cost) and upon taking the caller’s name, address, phone numbers and ad code (so that we know what ads and papers get best results), they relay the information to my client. However, it’s done in a cleverer way than I’ve came across before.

Instead of the message appearing on a hand-held pager, it is diverted via a clever little box, (costing around $1,500) a printer and printed out instead. This saves a lot of time, and hassles, of getting the person’s details off a pager. Once printed, the name is entered on a computer, the phone number is checked to make sure this person hasn’t called in the past, and a compelling four page letter (written by me) is sent out to this prospect outlining my client’s proposal by Express Post!! Sure it costs a little more, but it gets greater impact!

Included with the letter, is a sealed envelope containing the brochure and instructions for the next step.

Once this package is sent out, the name and phone number of the inquirer is given to a salesperson that follows up the person within two – three days and carries the process to a final conclusion. Which often results in a $5,500 (or higher) sale from each 20 packages sent.

Can you see the subtle nurturing process he uses? All aimed at making it easy for a person to raise their hand, giving them low-key information and closing the sale. Does it sound like a little too much trouble? Is it too complicated? Not if you consider that …

This guy makes up to $55,000 per week using this process.

Another example of nurturing and two or three stepping is the method I use. Firstly, I get prospects to call for a free report or a low priced book or video then I follow up with a one or two page letter. That is the skinny line that got at least 40 people interested to read the 16 page letter that followed and resulted in over $53,925 worth of sales in less than three weeks. 

Let me show you how you could apply this skill to selling the two most common things, your house and car. At some stage in our lives, we all have to sell one or the other (unless you live in a tent, that is).

Normally, when selling a house we tend leave it to the real estate agent in most cases. Hoping that they’ll come up with a truly amazing way to sell our home for the money we want. Which is usually more than what someone is prepared to pay for it. So how can you make sure your house sells faster, and for more money?

Simple. Think of the market you are selling to first. What does a person buying a home look for? They aren’t buying a house, they are buying a lifestyle.

Here’s how Bill Myers advertised a home … and sold it in a depressed market for a price that he wanted!! This ad attracted 38 calls the morning it ran. Let’s have a look at why.

Business Marketing, Business Plan And Sales TrainingFirst the headline. “Affordable Privacy”. Something everyone wants. An affordable home (which could mean anything depending on how much money you have), that protects your privacy. Everyone wants privacy….. But they want privacy and still to be close to everything … which the next lines suggest. Less than three minutes from lake and mall – “Close to the action”.

Next, a ‘privacy fence’. Yes folks, this is not just an ordinary eight foot brushwood fence, this is a “privacy” fence that gives you privacy and peace of mind. Now who doesn’t want that?

Up to this point, no mention is made of how many bedrooms etc. Then you have the balconies overlooking the grounds.  (‘Grounds’ being a tiny yard) and livestock areas (a chicken coop).

Why does this work? Because it’s selling a dream and a lifestyle. To help make this happen, you’ve got to stage it so that the people can see their dreams in your house! The key to selling any house, is to get as many people to look at it as you can.

When Bill was selling his water front house in New Zealand, he put two rocking chairs on the balcony overlooking the beach. And the agent asked everyone to sit in them and enjoy the view and beauty of the beach. When the house sold in two hours, the buyers insisted that the rocking chairs stay.

They bought the feeling they had while sitting in those chairs – not the four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Those were just the logical reasons confirming their emotional decisions.

So, to sell your house faster, put bright lights in the dark closets and bathrooms, and take all personal photos and touches away. De-personalize your house so that the other person can see their dreams and pictures on your empty walls!

This applies to anything you are selling. Including a car! Here’s an example of how I would sell a four-wheel drive motorcar …

Business Marketing, Business Plan And Sales TrainingCan you see yourself exploring those faraway places? 90% of all four-wheel drives never leave the bitumen road.  People buy the dream, but most of them never actually pursue it. Another thing I’d do is to have a photo album of all the far out places the car has been to. Show remote beaches, forests and waterfalls.  Build that dream.

Here’s another idea for a car ad. It transforms an old jalopy into something with character and value. This ad got over 16 calls for the car, most of them from fathers and husbands wanting a car for a wife or daughter …

Business Marketing, Business Plan And Sales TrainingBut what if you were a car dealer who had lots of cars for saleand couldn’t write ads like these. (Most car dealers can’t write any decent ads.) Well, how about a ‘Free Report’? How to buy a used car without getting ripped off.

Hey! We could even produce a video showing people what to look for when buying a car, how to spot rust, how to calculate a fair price and so on.

Come to think of it, the real estate agent could use an ad saying “Free Report on Home Sellers”. Free Report shows how you can sell your home faster and closer to your asking price.

Do you think that these ads would ferret out any people interested in buying a car or a house? I bet they would.

 

 

 

But now let me tell you a story about what didn’t sell! Bill Myers, the U.S.A mail order millionaire, once got a great idea for a video topic. He decided to produce a video on, “How to live without electricity”.

This was a great idea aimed at all those people seeking an alternate way of life, and there were plenty of those that he could target.

So he produced his videos, giving all the tips, tricks and advice he’d collected. He was truly proud of what he created and what a service he was providing to those lucky souls choosing the alternative lifestyle. He placed an ad in the “Mother Earth” magazine asking for $40 to be sent to a P.O. Box (something you should never do). He then sat back waiting for the flood of orders to make him rich. He waited … and waited … and waited.

Finally, after six weeks he finally got a post card from a person who’d read his ad. This person told Bill what a great idea his video was and how he would love to get a copy of it but unfortunately …

Because he had no electricity and no video recorder
he couldn’t watch the video, even if he did buy it!

Bill suddenly realized that all the potential customers for this video had the same problem.  They had no videos or electricity and couldn’t watch his video even if they wanted to buy it.

Goes to show, that everyone makes mistakes, even mail order millionaires. Bill simply learnt his lesson and moved on. He produced many other videos that were a success and ended up making over a million dollars in less than four years.

He did so well because he was prepared to learn from his mistakes and keep trying. You should always be talking to other people in your industry and other business people. Look, in business you only really have one competitor. This competitor is a deadly one. They can cause you to be a huge success or an utter failure. So who is this deadly monster?

It’s YOU!

That’s right. Ultimately, you are your greatest competitor, because you decide what business you get into. What service you offer. How you advertise. How you train your staff, manufacture your products and treat your customers. But that’s not the only challenge you face in business … because if you happen to get it all right and make a ton of money … but you do it at the expense of your health, your family and your conscience … you lose again. It was a wise person who said the three priorities in your life should be:

1. Your health (physical and mental)

2. Your family, friends and relationships with all beings

3. Your business

In that order. Believe me, if you mess those three up you are not likely to realize your true potential.

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