My upcoming book, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets, which I’m writing while you watch on this site and in my daily emails!
Hey there Rainmaker, let’s talk about the power of a single sales letter, ad, web page, or whatever other vehicle you use to deliver your selling message…
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I don’t know anybody who is successful in direct response — the art and science of using marketing to make sales — who doesn’t consider Gary Halbert to be one of their major influences.
A larger-than-life personality, the self-appointed “Prince of Print,” a mail order and direct marketing Titan.
A man who made a fortune through sales letters, lost it, and then made another. A man who found the love of his life through, you guessed it, sales copy (this one, a space ad in the LA Times).
There was one lesson Gary both taught and lived throughout his career.
A single piece of sales copy can make you rich.
Gary famously wrote a 1-page sales letter for family crests that mailed over 1 billion pieces… Sold over 7 million family crests… And made him his first fortune.
Gary went on and wrote ads, sales letters, and promotions for his own businesses and clients that — time after time — would turn nothing but words on paper into millions of dollars.
Zero to hero with a single advertisement.
I had a lot of small experiences with this in my first few years in marketing. Change a sentence on a website, add 10% more revenue, on average, from every visitor that hit the site. Change the text of a tiny ad, bring more customers through the front door. Tweak the page someone first visits when they hit your site, turn a break-even ad campaign into one that brings in $2 or $3 for every $1 spent.
With that same client, a letter mailed out to a small handful of past clients turned into tens of thousands of dollars in new revenue. Adding one offer to another webpage brought a steady stream of sales from $1,000 to $30,000.
The successes were small, but numerous. Cumulatively, I helped drive 7-figures in annual sales in the company, with steady growth.
And yet, it didn’t really hit me hard until I started writing long-form direct response sales letters.
An early campaign I put together — the first of many like it — generated over $250,000 in sales in two weeks. Off a sales letter I wrote. Sales actually came in so fast that the client had to pull the promotion — not let any more new customers in. They wanted to make sure they could keep up with demand. Then they relaunched it, and the total sales of the product, on the back of that core promotion, have approached $1 million.
When you know what to put into your marketing communications — what to say, and how to present it visually — you can generate a ton of revenue, fast.
New customers in through the door. Leads making their first purchase. Selling again to your existing customers. There are a ton of opportunities to generate substantial revenue…
With simple words and pictures.
And when you strike the right chord, it’s practically a license to print money.
When you’ve gotten everything else right… The mindset of breakthrough marketing… A marketing system built on proven principles and strategies… A compelling offer that fulfills a need, want, or desire in the marketplace… The ability to put your message in front of your ideal target market… (You know, all the stuff you’re learning in this book.)
And you add on a compelling marketing message that brings in more money than it costs to send out and fulfill on orders…
Then there are only three limitations on how much money it can make you…
- The number of people in the market who make ideal prospects for what it is you’re selling.
- Your willingness to spend money to reach as many of those people as possible.
- Time — because every successful marketing promotion eventually dies.
In a big market, and with a willingness to spend money fast to reach as many of them as possible before the promotion fatigues, one sales letter can make you a ton of money, fast.
I’ve worked with clients to make 7-figures in sales in weeks, on the back of a single promotion.
I’ve had single promotions bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars, month-after-month.
When you understand what it takes to make this happen, these become the expectation, not the exception.
What you’re going to learn in this section on breakthrough-level marketing communications is exactly what your sales letters, advertisements, web pages, and marketing promotions (in whatever media) need to contain to generate results like these.
What you should say (and what you shouldn’t). How to sell (powerfully) without coming across as a sleaze-ball salesperson. What you should consider in terms of advertising design (and why nearly every ad agency and media sales rep is wrong).
The content of the communications, above and beyond anything we’ve discussed so far.
I didn’t make this up just to sell you a book. I’m simply compiling the best of the best marketing wisdom, experience, and actionable strategies in one place. In fact…
This is based on over a century of best practices from advertisers who measure results.
Measurement of advertising results has become easier and more mainstream with the mass adoption of the internet. Yet this style of direct response — or, previously, mail order advertising — has been around for well over a century. Pioneers like Claude Hopkins, Albert Lasker, John E. Kennedy paved the way at the Lord & Thomas ad agency. Robert Collier in his work. Many others, too. They established best practices, and begin writing them down to share with others.
Throughout the 20th Century the movement continued to grow. Best practices were expanded and refined, and adapted to new media.
Now in the 21st Century, a whole new era of marketing where everything is measurable and everything is measured has only accelerated progress. And proven that foundational principles and strategies don’t change, even as the media in which they are applied does.
Always and forever, advertising is sales multiplied. What works to sell face-to-face can be packaged in an advertising or marketing message. Presented to the prospect. An offer made. A response requested.
And what worked in newspaper ads in the early 1900s works on the internet today, over 100 years later.
Similar appeals, similar offers. Just new products and new businesses, and new language to say the same things, and new media through which to say it.
Get that right, and over a century’s worth of experience says you could make yourself very wealthy, very fast.
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That was the intro chapter to the section on Breakthrough Marketing Communications out of my book, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets. The book I’m writing while you watch.
It’s also the last section and the last intro chapter (which are usually slightly less actionable than the rest of the chapters, but still incredibly important)…
I’ve got a TON to share with you soon, but for now, I’ll sign off for today.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets
