The Newsletter Pro - April 2017

COVER CONTINUED ...

Direct mail works so well that Apple, Google, and Facebook all use it as part of a multi-channel media strategy. WHAT SHOULD YOU DO? Here is the truth. You have to do it all. I know that makes it more complicated. I know that means you may have to increase your budget. But the truth is, you need a multi-channel strategy. Doing anything less is way too risky. Think about it. What if you’re all-in on Facebook and your account gets shut down? It’s happened to me and almost EVERYONE I know in the marketing world. Start by focusing on fixing the holes in your bucket. This includes fixing retention issues, bad/no follow-up, bad lead-to-appointment conversion rates, bounce back issues, and referral shortages. Each business will have issues right now that they should fix first. You don’t dump water into a bucket that has two giant holes in the bottom of it and try to fill it up. So why keep dumping good, expensive leads into your business if you haven’t first fixed the holes in your bucket? After that, you can add a multi-channel marketing campaign that includes online and offline follow-up for new leads. This means Facebook advertising, direct mail or Google advertising, Your marketing strategy should look something like this:

and event sponsorship — whatever is going to get you the best results for your business.

PRINT MEDIA IS DEAD? NOT SO FAST. Do you remember when the media was predicting the death of traditional books? Tech Crunch has an article from August 6, 2010, that predicted the physical book will be dead by 2015. Someone may need to inform Barnes and Noble, because I was in their store just this past Sunday, reading physical books. I even bought two of these fossils. In 2015, e-books did not take over the publishing world. In fact, revenue from e-books fell 11.3 percent, while hardcover book revenue grew 8.3 percent. The fastest growing segment of the whole book industry is audiobooks, both digital and physical. I, for one, listen to a ton of audiobooks each year. It appears the funeral for physical books may need to be postponed. What about direct mail? Ninety-eight percent of U.S. consumers get their mail daily from this weird box at the end of their driveway. Seventy-seven percent check their mail immediately. Seventy percent of consumers prefer to read on printed paper, and 67 percent of consumers prefer print media over digital media. Only 20 percent of emails are opened and read, and although I don’t have a stat for this, let’s be real. No one enjoys the volume of emails they get. Ninety-three percent of all consumers have responded to a direct mail piece within the last six months. Fifty-one percent of all consumers have responded to a direct mail piece in the last 30 days.

I promised you the truth in this article, so I’m going to end with a true statement — one that might not be palatable for some. Marketing is getting more and more difficult. You can’t simply hang a shingle on the door and announce you’re open anymore. You can’t simply put an ad in the Yellow Pages or the local newspaper and get flooded with business. Marketing and advertising is now complicated. For some, that creates a massive amount of stress and anxiety, and I understand that, but you could look at it differently. You could see all of the complication as a benefit. Think about it like this: If you invest and figure out how to have a profitable multimedia strategy for your marketing, you negate nearly all of your competitors because it is unlikely they are smart enough or patient enough to figure the strategy out. The complexity actually becomes a massive competitive advantage for your business, with a side benefit of making the business more valuable from a resale standpoint.

This leaves me with one final question that only you can answer.

Can you handle the truth?

– Shaun

BUSINESS TOOLBOX

THE MOST DIFFICULT ASPECT OF OWNING ANY BUSINESS

of personal responsibility and feel people need to own their mistakes. As I’ve grown my team and my leadership abilities, I have come to realize the truth in this statement. Every problem truly is a leadership problem. Now, I can hear the cries of “foul!” from entrepreneurs as I write this. “I’m not responsible for their poor job performance or customer service, etc.” So understand, I’m not suggesting you’re solely responsible, but it is your job to put the proper systems in place to help people succeed. It’s your job

Since people are the most difficult aspect of any business, it is important that you find great people — the right customers for your business, as well as the right team to support your company. You must also focus on continual improvement of your customer service and people management skills. Unfortunately, few business owners and leaders work on this skill, which is really the cause of many of the problems they experience. One of the things I learned from one of my mentors is that every problem is a leadership problem. At first, I took issue with this idea, since I’m a big fan

There is a saying that goes, “Business would be easy if I didn’t have any customers or employees.” While that might make things easier for a time, I bet you’d also be either broke and bored from lack of work or way too busy trying to figure out how to get new customers, and ultimately employees, on your own. I’m not 100 percent sure which one it would be. Obviously whoever came up with this saying was really talking about how difficult it is to work with people, regardless of what side of the table they sit on.

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