Most businesses make a huge mistake when it comes to marketing. They don’t understand the amount of effort it takes to get others’ attention. Consequently, they underbudget their marketing requirements, which renders the marketing ineffective. Black belt marketers understand that in direct mail, 1.5 to 2 percent of the audience will respond. However good your offer, not everyone will take advantage of it. You need massive volume to capture a small number of well-qualified prospects.
Let me give you an example. A recent conference I attended in the San Francisco Bay Area marketed to about ten million people through
- Billboards
- Radio
- Television
- Letters
- Print advertising
- E-mails
This event was truly life changing, with great information and speakers. It was affordable, too. With aggressive promotion, guess how many people attended the conference? Approximately ten thousand. In this case, only 0.1 percent of the people marketed to came to the event. The lesson is that no matter how good your offer is, you need volume to get lift.
Whenever you spend money on a direct marketing campaign, expect a one percent response rate. Or don’t bother! It’s tough to get people’s attention these days.
One percent of the audience will respond, while the other 99 percent will have other ideas:
- Not trust you—Don’t believe you can bring them the value they want.
- Not even read your offer—They are just too busy!
It’s nothing personal. The way that nearly all businesses grow is through referrals and word of mouth (move 10).
A marketing promotion campaign is just like gambling. The odds are not in your favor. Most people do not budget enough money to do an effective campaign. Sending a few hundred letters will not make it happen for you. Giving out a few hundred samples will not make it happen for you. You need massive volume to make any marketing campaign successful. Let’s look at more examples to prove the point.
Major pharmaceutical companies give out thousands of samples to doctors’ offices every month!
You cannot get a lift in marketing until you have volume. Volume = Lift
Study the table below to determine your lift factor.
Customers required |
Volume required for 1% response rate |
10 |
1,000 |
100 |
10,000 |
1,000 |
100,000 |
10,000 |
1,000,000 |
It is expensive to get customers. Some statistics claim it takes seven repeated interactions, others say five. Either way, people will not take you seriously unless you gain mind share—you are able to make them think of you, and you only, when they need a solution to their problem. This comes through volume with a value message.
Change your mind-set. Yes, it takes a significant volume to get lift in marketing. Eight out of ten new companies fail because they underestimate the marketing costs to get their first customers.
PostcardMania, a small postcard company in Florida, has grown 289 percent over the last three years, just by understanding the one percent rule. They send out about seventy-two thousand postcards a week (yes, per week) to get prospects. They have been in business for about ten years and do about twenty million dollars in sales because they understand the relationship between volume and lift. When they started, they mailed only one thousand postcards per week. But then these owners found a direct correlation between volume and response.
The secret to the one percent rule is to get both volume and repetition working for you. Nearly all companies that struggle with marketing grossly underestimate the volume required to show people the value they have to offer. You need to send high-quality information regularly over a long time before people will get the message.
An old marketing saying goes like this: “For an effective marketing campaign, all you need is a good list and a great offer.” Many of your competitors will send maybe fifty or a hundred mailing pieces once and hope the phone will ring. It will not happen. You can never over-communicate in marketing.
L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, says, “You get paid in line with the attention you get.” To get people’s attention these days requires massive effort. It’s nothing personal, just business as usual. As you master this move, remember you need both momentum and a good message to be successful in marketing. Don’t be shy, or you will lose out. Volume and repetition is the only way to get attention (and to get business)!