“And so, in conclusion, you should buy our wonderful product!”
As you know if you’ve been reading Breakthrough Marketing Secrets for any length of time, I’m a full-on direct marketing curmudgeon.
I know, nobody in their 30s should be a curmudgeon. But I can’t help it.
Ever since I discovered direct marketing and realized that you could actually measure the effectiveness of your advertising and make decisions based on that… I rejected any other approach.
Now for most folks, direct marketing equals junk mail. Or late night infomercials. Or other “high-pressure” pitches, done through various media.
So what role does education-based marketing play in a direct marketer’s toolbox?
Here’s the thing. Nearly ALL of the best direct marketing in use today is education-based marketing.
And if you want to create a hugely successful marketing campaign today, it’s likely to feature a heavy education component.
I’ll explain, with a bit of a history lesson — which, as you’ll see, is HUGELY relevant today…
In the 1990s, a shift took place in direct mail…
While previous direct mail efforts focused heavily on creating the best sales pitch, the new winners in split-run tests were more content-focused. This was when magalogs, bookalogs, and other formats that looked more like content than marketing rose to prominence.
Yes, you still had to sell. But with mailboxes facing ever-higher levels of clutter, you couldn’t break through with a bigger promise. All the bigger promises were already being made. Rather than compete with ever-higher levels of promises, candor and useful information won the day.
When an investor’s mailbox was packed with promises of 753%, 936%, even 1,295% returns… The best way to cut through the clutter was a direct mail piece that looked more like a magazine, featuring a cover story on the “5 things to come in the markets in the next year that EVERY investor must know about.”
The filter investors were using to throw away all those over-hyped promises let this information through, because it was different and of personal benefit. It seemed — and actually was — valuable. The copywriter’s challenge was then to fulfill on the promise of useful information, and transition that into a sales pitch for the service offered.
The same transition took place in every major direct marketing niche, as well as niches outside the traditional direct marketing circles…
At the same time as this transition to magalogs was going on, now direct marketing celebrity Joe Polish was taking the carpet-cleaning world by storm. (Totally different industry, isn’t it?!)
Rather than feature just his company name and contact info, Joe filled his marketing with education on the need for carpet cleaning as a first-step toward selling carpet cleaning services. He’d offer this free information to generate leads, and use direct marketing to convert those leads into buyers of his carpet-cleaning services.
After having built a model that could be easily replicated, Joe soon began sharing his methods with other carpet cleaners, and his education-based approach to selling carpet cleaning has since been responsible for over $1 billion in sales of this mundane service.
Dean Jackson offered guides to neighborhood real estate prices as a way to attract new listings, and did what Joe did in the carpet cleaning market.
Chet Holmes used education-driven campaigns to build companies so fast that his boss and Warren Buffett’s business partner Charlie Munger accused him of doing something illegal or at least unethical.
The secret they all used was building entire campaigns that accomplished the same thing a magalog did in a single direct mail piece. They got attention with relevant educational content about the market, then tied it into a pitch for the company and the product or service. Only, they often did it over the course of a 2-, 3-, 4, even 10-part lead generation, marketing, and selling system.
The methods for education-based DIRECT marketing were tested in niche-upon-niche and proved themselves superior over and over again…
And then the internet came along, and education-based marketing faced a new challenge…
While the internet had been growing in usage throughout the 90s, it wasn’t until the 2000s that broad-market use really started to take off.
And at first, direct marketers didn’t have to take a very sophisticated approach to getting conversions online.
The old straight-up sales messages that had worked well until the early 90s in direct mail and other mediums worked like hotcakes online. There was little competition. The internet wasn’t cluttered yet. And so if you had something to sell, you could just sell it. And because it worked so well, few people tried very hard — they just made money.
And then the internet exploded.
With every business in the world recognizing the “free” media as a new business essential, advertising on the internet grew — as did clutter, and the expense of reaching your prospects. The old hard-pitch messages stopped working as well. They became “same old, same old” and prospects started to tune them out. All while the cost per lead was rising, as more and more marketers fought over the same hot traffic.
That’s when a sophisticated group of direct marketers started applying education-based marketing to the internet…
It started simple. Content-driven emails. Yes, they could link to a sales page. But marketers realized you could get a lot more people opening your messages more consistently with useful content than with yet another pitch. (Just look at what I’m doing with Breakthrough Marketing Secrets — valuable content delivered through email and posted to the website. It’s a perfect example.)
And the pitches started to change as well. Instead of pitches that came out up front with a big promise, long-form sales copy started burying the pitch in favor of interesting content.
And then marketers got clever. They no longer limited their sales messages to words on screen. They were able to — through the miraculous growth of internet technology — deliver live video and audio presentations to their prospects. Teleseminars. Webinars. The works. These multimedia education-based pitches were put on the front end of a standard sales pitch — or replaced the pitch altogether.
Increasing clutter was forcing online direct marketing to become even more sophisticated.
And then came the ugly video sales letter. Done poorly, these look like just another sales pitch. Done well (as I always try to do for clients), they feel like an education — even a “seminar” in themselves. It’s only when you’re thoroughly hooked into the video that you realize you’ve been watching a sales video. But at that point, you’re so into it that you see it through to the end. At least, assuming you’re the targeted prospect they wanted to be viewing the video.
What format do we go to next? Well, in direct mail they went to formats that looked more like content than selling messages. And some of the world’s best marketers are doing the same thing online.
Rather than video sales letters — or at least, to supplement them — they’re creating full-scale video productions. Maybe you can call them documercials or newsmercials, in the spirit of magalogs and bookalogs. They get viewership and cut through the clutter by starting more like a really compelling documentary or news segment than a sales pitch. Then they seamlessly tie the content through to a sales pitch for their product, transitioning into something more closely resembling a commercial or infomercial.
The key is starting with the compelling, educational, information-driven content, and — in a single swoop — transitioning from that education into a well-structured sales pitch.
I should underscore this important point — the difference between content marketing and education-based direct marketing…
“But this is just content marketing,” I hear from the peanut gallery.
Not so much. The “content marketing” in vogue today is an excuse. (See my previous rant, Content Marketing is Bull—!)
Many — if not most — content marketers today are “marketing” with content so they don’t have to sell. Education-based direct marketing has another purpose entirely for including the content — to cut through the clutter and get attention for the sales message.
The content marketer doesn’t want to sell. The education-based direct marketer does.
Put simply, “content marketing” as it’s most commonly practiced does not ask the reader to do anything. It simply hopes to build awareness, good feelings, a positive impression, and maybe a follower.
Education-based direct marketing is totally different. Is strategically uses content throughout the sales process to attract a lead… Turn them into a follower (getting permission to follow up via email or offline)… Build authority, trust, and liking… And get the order, to boot.
Sometimes, it happens in one fell swoop. The really great education-based marketing approaches can convert a cold lead into a paying customer in a single sitting. For most though, it happens as a process. All along the way, using educational content to re-engage the prospect with the sales message, and drive them toward action.
This applies in any business — not just traditional direct marketing niches…
Yes, the best-of-the-best direct marketers are all ahead of the game on this. They’re the innovators. They’re doing it first. But you’d be mistaken to think that this approach only applies to this niche.
Education-driven direct marketing campaigns work because they are uniquely able to capture the prospect’s attention — using useful, relevant information to lead the sales pitch itself… And they convert that attention into a new lead, a new customer, additional sales, or other desirable business results. How? Using the most important action of direct marketing — the offer, with a call to action, and a response device.
If you want to use education-based marketing, here’s what you need to do…
Recognize that the sales process is always the same — whether it happens over 60 minutes, 60 days, or 6 months…
You need to capture the prospect’s attention with something that speaks to a desire, need, problem, motivation, or other conversation already occurring in their head, or that interrupts that conversation with something so compelling they can’t help but pay attention (but that still speaks to their current desires and needs — you can’t create desires, only channel them!)…
You need to build their interest in you as a messenger by delivering relevant information that adds value to their life…
You need to build their desire to have what you offer by making a promise that pinpoints their needs and desires, and prove you can fulfill on the promise…
And then you need to spur action by making a compelling offer, and giving them reason to act on it immediately…
You can apply this in every email you write… Every white paper of free report you offer for download… Every lead generation message you circulate… Everything.
Get their attention with useful, valuable, compelling content, and walk them through the process of taking action one step closer to and all the way through doing business with you.
Do this well, and it doesn’t matter if you’re selling one-to-one, using direct mail, using the internet, or using any other media that exists today, or may exist in the future… Education-based direct marketing strategies WILL be a breakthrough for you.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets
