In looking through the classified ads in the back of Response magazine (opposite), I was appalled to discover that not one single advertisement – NOT ONE – used direct response marketing. ALL lacked a compelling headline, OFFER, benefits or testimonials, and MANY didn’t have a means for responding – which is the entire purpose of direct response marketing: to elicit a response!
One dummy who took out a full-page ad had “Click to schedule a demonstration” without listing a URL… in a PRINT MAGAZINE. Anyone without the basic intelligence to see how incredibly stupid that is and who hires this company deserves to be separated from their money – and there are people buying from them. This is why it’s CRITICAL for you as a business owner to know the difference between a good lead generation ad and a bad one. Maybe you can’t write a sales letter, but you SHOULD be able to look at a sales letter, ad or other marketing campaign and at least spot BASIC errors; otherwise you’ll end up spending buckets of money from one failed marketing campaign to the next.
Remember, the most expensive advice is BAD advice – and if you wouldn’t take counsel from an IT security company who didn’t know how to set up a firewall, be careful about taking advice from “marketers” who don’t understand direct response.
