No B.S. Guide to Direct Response Social Media Marketing

by Dan Kennedy

In the 2012 Olympics, U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian of all time (beating gymnast Larisa Latynina’s prior record of 18 medals). Phelps earned his 19th Olympic medal in the men’s 4 × 200-meter freestyle relay. His current medal count of 22 is made up of 18 gold, two silver, and two bronze.

Although he had a great Olympics, it could have easily not gone his way.

In fact, prior to the Olympics Phelps fell short of many people’s expectations, including his own. His problems began after the 2008 Olympics when he got lazy. He stopped doing the things that brought him success in the first place, like going to the pool to train every day. Until 2011, when he was bested by his teammate Ryan Lochte in the 200-meter individual medley at the world championships.

That’s when Phelps got back to the basics, doing the things he needed to do to win again.

The funny thing with swimmers is that no matter how long they’ve been swimming, they do the same thing day in, day out to prepare for their races.

Take U.S. swimmer Dara Torres, who at the age of 41, became the oldest Olympic swimming medalist in history when she won two Olympic silver medals in 2008. Despite having swam her whole life, she never forgot the basics. She did the same workouts as every other sprint swimmer on her team such as kicking and drills. She kept the foundational pieces in place as circumstances around her changed.

Unfortunately, this is not how so many business owners behave when it comes to social media. They have forgotten the practices that apply to any media that brought them success in the first place.

Contrary to Popular Belief . . .

The internet is not as special as most people think, and media is not marketing. The same disciplined business and marketing practices must be kept in place to drive real results. Very few will do this, so very few will ever see results through social media marketing, or any marketing for that matter.

Social media has a lot of the same dangers that email marketing does. It is free and can be distributed quickly with a very low barrier to entry. Not much thought or strategy needs to be put into place in order to launch messaging or paid ads.

WHY SO MANY BUSINESSES ARE FAILING

Just because it is social media doesn’t mean it shouldn’t use all of the same principles as direct response marketing.

It’s been 40 years or more since I replaced old-fashioned prospecting grunt work for a 100% measurable way to attract a predictable, reliable stream of ideal clients.

Success at getting qualified clients, customers, or patients has a lot more to do with understanding the real secrets of direct response marketing and a lot less to do with chasing prospects through tweets and status updates.

I’ve been entirely DR (direct response) since 1975, and pioneered a few things of my own; although the fundamentals and the principles of this do not change, it is still really about applying tested and proven mail-order methodology to nonmail-order businesses.

The overwhelming majority of commerce of all kinds is driven by direct response.

Everyone from the credit card industry to the apparel industry, from the information business to the local service business is using direct response. The fundamental principle of my approach to marketing is this: Let’s make sure we’re talking to highly interested, highly motivated, very appropriate prospects for what it is that we have to offer people, who will have a high level of interest the minute we show up.

Do a decent job of selling to them, instead of trying to reduce everything to 146-character tweets, videos no longer that 3.8 minutes, and no sales letters with words more than two syllables, so that everybody can pay attention.

WHY YOU ARE THE SAME

Everybody believes their business is different. That this doesn’t apply to them. That no one else is doing this in their industry. Just because they aren’t using the written word to sell, it must be acceptable because they are making sales. Maybe it’s “acceptable.” But using better sales copy gives you a competitive edge. Especially when you possess this number-one skill and they don’t.

Darin Garmin was making sales in real estate, but he wasn’t happy with the process and was becoming increasingly frustrated doing a lot of work only to lose the sale to a competitor.

No one was using sales letters to sell apartment buildings until Darin decided to do it. Not only did he succeed at selling apartment buildings with sales letters, he also got the people HE predetermined were good candidates to respond. Plus, when he did some research, he found he had moved into a position where his office handled 70% of all apartment building transactions. That was NOT the case before he started using sales letters.

It does not matter whether your clients are the CEO or the broom pusher or which media channels you use, everybody buys the same way. They all go through the same process. They all go through the same emotional journey.

The Basics of Effective Marketing

There are just a few plain and simple direct marketing rules to follow, and by committing to them you’ll reap the long-term benefits you desire and develop a long-lasting business foundation.

These basics are skipped by most businesses using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as their primary sources of communications. Realize you have choices, and you can make your marketing dollars work harder for you by offering people more than one reason and more than one means of responding to you.

However many channels you market in, there are basic rules you need to understand in order to succeed. These foundational concepts must be fully comprehended, practiced, managed, and enforced.

1. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE AN OFFER

There is a popular saying out there that “content is king.” I would disagree. The sale is the king. Without it, you have no market share and no kingdom to rule over. Your social media marketing needs to have an offer, telling your ideal prospects exactly what to do and why they want to do it right now. It should be irresistible and time sensitive and give them some type of transformative value if they take action.

Ideally, yours is a Godfather’s Offer: an offer that the appropriate prospect or customer for you can’t refuse.

2. THERE WILL BE A REASON TO RESPOND RIGHT NOW

The hidden cost and failure in all advertising and marketing is in the almost-persuaded. They were tempted to respond. They nearly responded. They got right up to the edge of response, but then set it aside to do later or to mull over or to check out more the next time they were at their computers. When they get to that edge, we must reach across and pull them past it. There must be a good reason for them not to stop short or delay or ponder. There must be urgency.

3. THERE WILL BE CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS

Most people do a reasonably good job of following directions. For the most part, they stop on red and go on green, stand in the lines they’re told to stand in, fill out the forms they’re given to fill out, and applaud when the Applause sign comes on. Most people are well conditioned from infancy, in every environment, to do as they are told.

Most marketers’ failures and disappointments result from giving confusing directions—or no directions at all. Confused or uncertain consumers do nothing. And people rarely buy anything of consequence without being asked. Sharing content alone will not bring measurable results from your social media. You must walk your prospect through the steps you want them to take in order to make the sale.

4. THERE WILL BE TRACKING AND MEASUREMENT

If you want real profits from your marketing, you are no longer going to permit any advertising, marketing, or selling investments to be made without direct and accurate tracking, measurement, and accountability. You will be given all sorts of arguments against such a harsh position by media salespeople, by online media champions talking a “new” language of “new metrics” by staff and by peers. You will hear terms like “engagement” and “reach” and “virality” with no data to back up the results. You will smile and politely say, “Rubbish.” Each dollar sent out to forage must come back with more and/or must meet predetermined objectives. There will be no freeloaders; there will be no slackers.

5. THERE WILL BE FOLLOW-UP

Often, I find business owners with more holes in their bucket than they’ve got bucket! People read your ad, get your letter, see your sign, find you online, call or visit your place of business, ask your receptionist or staff questions, and that’s it. There’s no capture of the prospect’s name, physical address, email address, and no offer to immediately send an information package, free report, coupons. This is criminal waste.

I’ve been poor, so I abhor and detest and condemn waste. Just how much waste are you permitting to slop around in your business? Probably a lot. When you invest in advertising and marketing, you don’t just pay for the customers you get. You pay a price for every call, every walk-in. Every one. Doing nothing with one is like flushing money down the toilet.

To be simplistic, if you invest $1,000 in an ad campaign and get 50 phone calls, you bought each call for $20. If you’re going to waste one, take a nice, crisp $20 bill, go into the bathroom, tear the bill into pieces, let the pieces flutter into the toilet, and flush. Stand there and watch it go away. If you’re going to do nothing with 30 of those 50 calls, stand there and do it 30 times. Feel it.

You probably won’t like how it feels. Good.

Remember that feeling every time you fail—and it is failure—to thoroughly follow up on a lead or customer.

6. RESULTS RULE

Results Rule. Period. Consider the simple agreement: You want your car hand-washed and waxed outside, vacuumed inside, for which you will pay your neighbor’s teen $20. If he does not wash or wax or vacuum the car but wants the $20 anyway, what possible “story” could he offer in place of the result of a clean car that would satisfy you? I would hope none. You didn’t offer to pay for a story. You offered to pay for a clean car. The same is true with advertising and marketing investments in social media. Do not let anyone confuse, bamboozle, or convince you otherwise. Further, no opinions count—not even yours.

Only results matter.

Breakthrough MomentsBreakthrough Moments

by Kim Walsh-Phillips

If you are going to reach your destination, you have to take your first step. Of course, it does help if you have great shoes.

When I first read Dan’s No B.S. Guide to DIRECT Marketing for NON-Direct Marketing Businesses, I was hooked. I felt like I did as a kid when I was finally able to ride a bike beyond my driveway by myself. The possibilities were endless.

I couldn’t wait to try the strategies I learned from him to see what improvements I could make for my company and financial well being.

What I Needed to Change First

1. Positioning. I had to change my position to in-demand instead of “in desperate need.” I needed to stop competing in a crowded marketplace of local “full service” marketing agencies that could do everything for everyone. I had to stop being a commodity. Commodities compete on price, and the cheapest one wins. That is what working really hard for free looked like, and I couldn’t survive that way any longer.

I had to become THE expert in my industry so that when prospects came my way, I was the only firm they were going to talk to. It needed to become more of a privilege for them to meet with me vs. the other way around. It wasn’t all smoke and mirrors though. I AM the industry expert when it comes to direct response social media marketing with a high ROI. There is no other person with the same expertise as me.

2. Pricing. Being the cheapest wasn’t paying the bills, and that needed to change. I slowly started to increase new-client pricing. Admittedly it wasn’t until two years later that I finally raised prices with some of my long-term accounts. A lot left, but some stayed even though their monthly services fee was triple what it was when they started. This gave us fewer clients but more profit. Those clients that stayed were still profiting from our work (now that we could measure results!), and everyone was happy. Our minimum monthly fee to work with private clients is now Ten Times what it was when I started this process. Being fluff-free is very profitable.

3. Target market. Local brick-and-mortar businesses in my community couldn’t afford to pay what we needed to earn in order to survive or for the level of service they really needed to get tangible results. My target market had to grow beyond the five-mile radius of my office to a national and international stage in order to reach those who understood direct response marketing and were hungry to expand to the digital marketplace. Thankfully, we knew the media channel that could reach a larger audience.

4. Media. First, I needed to use media. Up to this point, my marketing centered around my hand reaching out to someone else’s as I shook it. I owned a marketing company, yet grew my business by prospecting personally. In fact, it was all person-to-person, and I needed to scale quickly. I had to grow my list to include those I was targeting and to go beyond those I knew. I started in a channel I was most familiar with, LinkedIn, and then moved on to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. My results were astonishing. But more on that later.

Of course, I had no money, so I couldn’t start by buying media. I also had limited time balancing the baby and my business. So I started simple.

I began by writing a weekly email that I also posted on my blog. I then distributed links to the blog through my social media channels. I focused my messaging on marketing equaling results and shared that anything else was pointless. I tried to be a little controversial to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Dan’s advice of “trying to be everything to everyone results in being nothing to anybody” stuck in my head. I had to focus on working with those who wanted results beyond just awareness. I had to focus on those who wanted measurement of results, and accountability for their marketing, and a high ROI. Those who just wanted “branding” were no longer my target market.

THE RESULTS

The amazing thing was that my social media and blog strategy started to work. My strategies were producing results. I began to get prospect inquiries from businesses I had not met at a networking event. They were coming to me because I was THE social media expert on getting a high Return On Investment. I used these same strategies in my clients’ businesses and they were working there as well. At contract renewal time, our contracts weren’t being cut. In fact, clients were increasing our budgets.

I landed some large accounts and cash flow improved, and I started to be able to choose my clients, instead of taking anyone with a pulse and a checkbook. I admit, saying “No, thank you” to someone who proves to be difficult during the sales process has become one of my greatest joys. I love having the ability to prevent future pain for my team (and myself for that matter) from someone who will obviously be a tyrant. (In case you were wondering, tyrants do not make great clients.)

During this time, I also got more involved in the organization Dan Kennedy started, the GKIC Insider’s Circle. I attended a few events, joined its Diamond Level of Membership (at first it was just to get access to the VIP Networking Event because I knew no one to start), and devoured as much as I could of the people surrounding Dan. Unfortunately, I learned that Dan doesn’t have an affinity for women with hyphenated last names and also despised social media. Both were because he had never received much ROI from either.

But I persisted.

I would test all the direct response strategies I learned in the channel I knew best: social media. I would try out these strategies first with my own business and then use what worked best to benefit our clients. Through this process, I grew my email list from 1,200 names (all of which I had received by going to a networking event, getting a card, and then entering it manually into my database) to more than 21,000 in just over one year using Facebook as our primary lead source.

I also grew our revenue over 327%. We went from a company struggling to make payroll to a seven-figure business. I woke up every day with gratitude and kept up the strategies I was learning—and they kept paying off.

My Lucky Broken iPad

About a year into this large company shift, I was driving home one night after picking up my iPad from a repair shop. My then 1-year-old had shattered its glass doing what 1-year-olds do. That happened to be one lucky iPad because as I drove home that night I listened to the last month’s audio program I received for being a Diamond member of GKIC. On that CD, I discovered I could apply for “Diamond Marketer of the Year.” The prize was a Mastermind Weekend with Dan at Disney World.

The day I learned of this potentially life-changing opportunity also happened to be the last day of the contest. Never being one to shy away from a challenge of time, I raced home, helped my husband put the girls to bed, and with him cheering me alongside (thankfully I am blessed to have a supportive husband [who also happens to be very cute, I might add]), I set to work.

I opened up an e-fax account (did I mention Dan doesn’t use email?), wrote my application, sent it in, and waited.

Waiting is my least favorite!

But getting faxes from Dan is my most favorite.

The day I received a fax from him about being chosen as a finalist, I did an extended happy dance. Being a finalist meant that I was able to compete in a live phone-in program where I would share with others what I discovered through my time with GKIC and Dan that had changed my business and life. I would speak about the strategies I learned and the practices I put in place because of them. Independent judges would choose the winner, and Dan would announce the results live on the call.

I was born for this challenge! I went into the contest believing that even if I didn’t win, this was my chance to share my gratitude with Dan for all I had learned through him that had changed my life.

I spent a lot of time preparing for the competition. Thankfully over the course of the year of being involved with GKIC, I became friends with some brilliant and kind entrepreneurs. I consulted dear friends who had competed as finalists in the past. They offered some poignant insights.

I prepared by writing out a script, buying the domain www.ILiveOnPlanetDan.com to post all of my examples, and spent some time praying before the call.

I was sooooooooo nervous. I sat alone in the most quiet space of my office building—our nursery. I provide childcare for our staff members’ children along with my girls, but on this day, none of them were in. So there I sat among jumpers and dolls and pastels bearing these young folks’ names, waiting.

FINALLY IT WAS MY TURN

My hands shook. My voice trembled. My heart beat so fast I thought Dan could hear it. But I kept reading my script. And reading. And reading. Dan, who had a reputation for being a curmudgeon, was supportive throughout and encouraged me to keep going.

I finished my presentation and took a deep breath. Breathing was something I didn’t do much of back then.

I had to wait to listen to the other callers. That was torture. Don’t get me wrong, they all had great stories, but waiting is my least favorite. It seemed like forever until they were done.

Then it was time for a decision. The judges had chosen their favorite, and Dan was going to announce it after a few housekeeping items.

AND THE WINNER WAS

Not me. Dang!

Dan was kind to share that I was the other person he was debating on, but the judges felt strongly about awarding the contestant who was a manufacturer who successfully put GKIC practices in place.

But wait, all was not lost!

In an act of delight and surprise, Dan announced that for the first time ever he was going to allow all of the finalists to come to the Mastermind. We would have to pay our way to come, but if we did that, once we were there, we could participate in all activities for the weekend. We just needed to fax him and let him know if we were in.

I couldn’t send in my acceptance fast enough.

Two months later, I had my chance to present at the Winner’s Weekend Mastermind at Disney and get to know Dan better. After that event, we started to talk about how we might be able to work together on some projects, including a presentation to his most elite Mastermind, the Titanium Group. From there, he introduced me to GKIC’s Chairman of the Board and from there, I was able to secure GKIC as a client. To this day, we still run Facebook member acquisition for GKIC (for more on that, take another look at Chapter 1).

And now, of course, our partnership has produced the book you are reading. Two years into working together, Dan Kennedy is writing a book with the woman with the hyphenated last name about social media. Me.

WORK SMARTER. NOT HARDER.

Amen.

#NoBSsm Tweetable Takeaways#NoBSsm Tweetable Takeaways

Social media is not special. The same disciplined business and marketing practices must be kept to drive real results. #NoBSsm

Make your marketing dollars work harder for you by offering people more than one reason and more than one means of responding to you. #NoBSsm

Tell your ideal prospect exactly what to do and why they want to do it right now. #NoBSsm

Only results matter. #NoBSsm

Work Smarter. Not Harder. #NoBSsm