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Category: Direct Marketing

Direct Marketing 8- Developing Marketing Materials and Lead Generation

Developing Marketing Materials and Lead Generation

Developing Marketing Materials and Lead Generation

Direct Marketing 7- Competition, Positioning & Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Unique Selling Proposition

There’s not much more important in business than creating your Unique Selling Proposition

  1. Al Ries & Jack Trout: Positioning: The battle for your mind (Amazing, must read book!)
  2. Jack Trout: Big Brands Big Trouble
  3. Rosser Reeves: Reality in Advertising (This is an older book but he documented so much waste in advertising.  He’s also the first to bring up USP)
  4. Dan Kennedy: No B.S. Price Strategy
  5. Dan Kennedy: The Ultimate Marketing Plan (He spends a lot of time on USP)
  6. Bill Bishop: The problem with penguins (How/why important it is to differentiate)
  7. Dan Kennedy & Dave Dee: Audio on premium pricing
  8. Dan Kennedy discusses the USP

Competition, Positioning and your Unique Selling Proposition

 

Direct Marketing 6- How you can Segment your target markets

Segment your target marketsSegment your target markets

Ryan and I discuss just some of the possibilities / approaches to segmenting your market.   Here are links to resources discussed:

  1. InfoUSA.com (See list below video for what we reviewed in the Word document)
  2. List sources:
    1. SRDS (Standard Rate and Data Service)
    2. NextMark
    3. List Brokers
    4. InfoUSA
    5. Your present & past customers
    6. Other businesses which share your target audience (but don’t compete with you)
    7. thousands & thousands more
  3. Gary Halbert: The Boron Letters , Chapter 6 (Great walk-through from broad to specific lists)
  4. Art Weinstein: Market Segmentation: Using Demographics, Psychographics and Other Niche Marketing Techniques to Predict and Model Customer Behavior
  5. PrettyLinks: Great for tracking performance of each A/B test and different target audiences
  6. TextMagic: Automate texting your customers.
  7. Craig Simpson: The Direct Mail Solution (A ton of great information in this book!)
  8. Nick Kolenda: Psychological-pricing-strategies and books
  9. Dan Kennedy: No B.S. Price Strategy (If you’re wanting to avoid being a commodity, this is a must read)
  10. Priceintelligently.com
  11. Bill Bishop: How to sell a Lobster  (Wonderful book with great examples that will blow your mind!)
  12. Jack Trout: Differentiate or Die
  13. Al Ries & Jack Trout: Positioning: the battle for your mind
  14. Dean Da Costa- Sourcing and targeting tips
  15. Joseph Sugarman: Triggers
  16. Dan Kennedy & Dave Dee: 7 Secret Triggers of Creating a Mind Control Ad Copy (This is a great & insightful video!)

How to Segment your target markets

Geographic

  1. X miles around / drive-time around your brick & mortar store
  2. USPS block  / delivery block
  3. Census Block
  4. Census tract
  5. Zip code
  6. MSA
  7. State
  8. Country

Demographics

  1. Job Title
  2. Income
  3. Education
  4. Age
  5. Household size
  6. Social Networks of Decision Makers
  7. # of kids < 12
  8. Parents living in household
  9. Gender
  10. Employment status
  11. Home owner / renter
  12. # of cars owned
  13. Recently moved
  14. # of devices (phones, tablets, computers, etc.)
  15. Has Savings account / Stocks, etc.

Niche Specific Activities

  1. Death in family
  2. Just bought a home
  3. Just sold home
  4. Recently
  5. Fire at home
  6. Recent birth

Psychographic / Attitudes

  1. Have MasterCard / Visa
  2. Subscribe to specific media
  3. Previously purchased x items
  4. Goes to movies
  5. Spends money on XXX category
  6. Listens to Rock music
  7. Watches murder-mysteries
  8. Shops on Home Shopping Network

Affinity / Groups -Associations they belong to / believe in

  1. LinkedIn groups
  2. Facebook groups / pages
  3. Competitors- Customers or employees of them
  4. Credit cards (animals, veterans, etc.)
  5. Chamber of commerce
  6. Local / State / National seminars
  7. Toastmasters
  8. Event attendance
  9. Liberal / Democratic / Republican / Libertarian etc.

Media Consumption

  1. TV stations
  2. Radio Stations
  3. Newspapers
  4. Magazines
  5. Blogs
  6. Stores they visit

(If Business is B2B) Corpographics

  1. Industry / NAIC code / SIC code
  2. Number of employees
  3. Number of Locations
  4. Number of Desktops / PCs
  5. Sales / Revenue
  6. Software / Technology used
  7. Years in business
  8. Job titles of Decision Makers
  9. # of people with a given Job title (help understand / Identify target market)
  10. Type of company (Public, Private, Government, Non-profit, Education)
  11. Credit ratings
  12. Increasing / Decreasing Sales
  13. Headquarters location
  14. Their typical customers (specific, B2B, B2C, B2E, General Population, etc.)
  15. Current Market share
  16. Own / Lease their assets
  17. High Tech, Low tech, Human
  18. Media spend by product / market
  19. Mergers & Acquisitions
  20. New hires / Attrition

Direct Marketing 5- Product Hierarchy, Information Matrix, & Extensive, Limited & Routine Problem Solving

  • PowerPoint Deck with Product Hierarchy, Information Matrix, and Problem Solving stages
  • T.K Clarke: Consumer Behavior in Canada: Theory and Practice  (Product Hierarchy, Information Matrix & decision making stages are covered in this book.   This book was written by my mentor and has a ton of great information!)
  • Al Ries & Jack Trout: Positioning: the battle for your mind (This is a “must read“!)
  • Fishbein Multi-attribute model
  • Joseph Sugarman: The Adweek Copywriting Handbook has some good mentions of the importance of using customer language
  • Rossiter-Percy advertising planning grid  (Although dated, great article with amazing implications)