Dan Kennedy and I spent 45 minutes on a call together yesterday.
To be clear, there were 114 others on the call too. It was a gathering of members from a Mastermind I belong to, run by Brian Kurtz. And Dan (who is a direct response marketing legend, in case you don't know) was there to answer our questions and promote his new book.
3 Lessons Dan Shared On Our Call
Most of what Dan said I had heard or read before. But that didn't make it any less powerful advice.
Here are 3 areas he spent time on:
Why social media isn't any different from all the other media that came before it, and how too many businesses are wasting time paying attention to the wrong metrics.
How ruthless management of both time and people can give you much better control over how your business can provide you with the life you want.
How brand building can happen through direct response marketing, and why that's much better for small businesses than paying to get your brand seen.
This last topic resonated with me, because so much of my time is spent helping the businesses I serve put this concept into practice.
Here's an example of how one business does it (and why more small businesses should too):
Brand Building Through Direct Response Marketing
It's silly to pay for for ads that put a brand into the mind of the general public.
Not everyone needs what most businesses sell. So it doesn't make much sense to spend boatloads of cash to buy widespread awareness. Instead, it's possible to use direct marketing to get paid for building your brand in front of the people who will are mostly likely to buy.
Small businesses don't need to waste money trying to compete with enterprise-level budgets.
Spoils Of The Direct Response Branding War
Direct response marketing brings money into the business right away.
For example, My Pillow has sold over 70 million pillows from direct response TV ads and direct mail campaigns. They also have the names, addresses, and other contact info for more than 50 million customers.
Multi-million dollar TV or magazine branding campaigns could never expect those kinds of results.
The Value Of Their Return On Investment
Smart businesses do their branding on the backend.
Locking a brand's name and identity into the mind of the existing customer offers a much better ROI than promoting a brand to the general public. After all, existing customers have already demonstrated their financial support of a business. That means they're also more likely to spend money again and even refer others to the business
Not to mention, backend branding is hyper-targeted, making it much less expensive than general branding.