Thou Shall Speak Softly but Carry a Big Stick

The fol­low­ing is prob­a­bly the great­est com­mand­ment in “Power Positioning.”

Now that we’ve talked about lead gen­er­a­tion adver­tis­ing, the next step is where to adver­tise. And the trick to hav­ing as many pre-​​qualified prospects come for­ward is to have your ad noticed and read by such a spe­cific group of peo­ple as much, as often, and as effec­tively as pos­si­ble. Gen­eral pub­li­ca­tions won’t do that and they cost a lot of money… That’s cost-​​per-​​lead money.

Spe­cial­ized pub­li­ca­tions, on the other hand, have the dis­tinc­tion of appeal­ing to a spe­cific audi­ence and thus increase the chances of it being noticed as well as read. Why? If one news­pa­per has a read­er­ship of 100,000 but only 25,000 fits into your demo­graph­ics, where another has only 40,000 read­ers but all of which fits into your demo­graph­ics (because the pub­li­ca­tion is spe­cial­ized), which one do you think will give you the great­est response?

In other words, rather than fish­ing for min­nows in the mid­dle of the ocean, you’ll be a catch­ing big fish in a small pond. Think of the spe­cial­ized pub­li­ca­tion as a sonar that will help you to find the kind of fish you really want.

This is due to the fact that not only the read­er­ship of a spe­cial­ized pub­li­ca­tion will match your demo­graph­ics but also that peo­ple who buy these types of pub­li­ca­tions have a ten­dency to read them from cover to cover.

Unlike a gen­eral, mass-​​published, large cir­cu­la­tion news­pa­per that will only be skimmed through (i.e., it is bought by many but read in its entirety by few), a spe­cial­ized pub­li­ca­tion will be read more intently and thor­oughly (i.e., it is bought by few but read in its entirety by many).

Your per capita hit-​​ratio will dra­mat­i­cally increase than if you would have adver­tised in a major pub­li­ca­tion that’s too gen­eral or too vague. Your lit­tle ad can eas­ily get “lost” in such large media or get drowned in a sea of ads.

These days, spe­cial­ized pub­li­ca­tions exist by the truckloads!

For exam­ple, there are occupation-​​specific, special-​​interest-​​specific or industry-​​specific pub­li­ca­tions, which can include newslet­ters, trade pub­li­ca­tions, ezines, jour­nals, reports, cor­po­rate mail, mag­a­zines, spe­cialty news­pa­pers, cat­a­logs and com­mu­niqués from spe­cific orga­ni­za­tions. There are numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions for spe­cific peo­ple or with spe­cial­ized topics.

For instance, if you go to your library, you will find that there are mag­a­zines for home-​​based busi­nesses, newslet­ters exclu­sively writ­ten for cor­po­rate exec­u­tives, mag­a­zines purely about cig­ars, news­pa­pers strictly pub­lished for fire­men, and even mag­a­zines geared for, of all things, ger­bil breeders!

As long as the read­er­ship some­how log­i­cally fits into your tar­get mar­ket, this is where you will get the great­est bang for your mar­ket­ing buck.

An adver­tis­ing agent spe­cial­iz­ing in computer-​​based firms can adver­tise an offer for a free report in com­puter mag­a­zines or, bet­ter yet, in mag­a­zines read par­tic­u­larly by com­puter firms (such as hi-​​tech or Inter­net magazines).

A med­ical con­sul­tant, whose tar­get mar­ket con­sists of doc­tors, should adver­tise in med­ical jour­nals, health-​​related mag­a­zines, med­ical asso­ci­a­tion newslet­ters, or med­ical equip­ment man­u­fac­turer cat­a­logues — any­where that puts him in front of as many doc­tors as pos­si­ble. Any­way, you get the drift.

By the way, hav­ing your own newslet­ter is also a pow­er­ful way to attract qual­ity prospects. If you are not yet pub­lish­ing one, get on it. It may be offered for free or at a nom­i­nal cost to pay for the print­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion, but the idea is to have the peo­ple who read it want more and come forward.

You can sell adver­tis­ing space in your newslet­ter to, or swap ad space with, firms also cater­ing to your unique clien­tele (again, it’s devel­op­ing strate­gic alliances). Con­versely, you can buy space in a newslet­ter writ­ten by another firm that also caters to your tar­get mar­ket. The pos­si­bil­i­ties here are endless.

How­ever, it wouldn’t be right for me to end this por­tion with­out dis­cussing the web. With infor­ma­tion being one the major shifts the world has expe­ri­enced, the Inter­net can help to make your pres­ence known in a bet­ter, quicker and cheaper way. If you’re not on the ‘Net yet, you’re los­ing out big time!

But if you are, your web­site and email addresses, which should appear in all your mate­ri­als, should be made avail­able to every­one with whom you come in con­tact, even as part of your sig­na­ture on all forms of correspondence.

Email helps prospects to come for­ward in the pri­vacy and con­ve­nience of their own homes or offices, and it also gives you a chance to respond to them imme­di­ately. It’s truly a dynamic form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that, to this day, is still often over­looked. Permission-​​based email mar­ket­ing is a goldmine!

For exam­ple, with an email announce­ment list, dis­cus­sion list or elec­tronic newslet­ter (often called “ezine”), you have the oppor­tu­nity to remain in con­stant con­tact with your clients (and thus main­tain top-​​of-​​mind aware­ness), develop cred­i­bil­ity and build rela­tion­ships with them. Also, you should invite peo­ple to sub­scribe to your email list at every chance you have.

If you haven’t already cre­ate a home­page (or “mini-​​site”). Many peo­ple think that this is too expen­sive or tech­ni­cal, which for a large sophis­ti­cated web­site it can be. But a sin­gle web page (or a smaller, more content-​​driven web­site with just a hand­ful of pages) ) is dif­fer­ent than a robust site in that it’s usu­ally a part of a greater web­site — a chap­ter of a book, if you will.

These sites are usu­ally called domains. Many Inter­net providers have domains on which your web page can be stored (many are free). Some non-​​competing strate­gic alliances with web­sites might host yours as well.

Nev­er­the­less, while your “mini-​​website” may not be as large, as glitzy or as sophis­ti­cated as hav­ing your own domain, it’s a good start. It’s a low cost way to be on the web and it doesn’t have to be slick with graphics.

The impor­tant thing is to main­tain a pres­ence. Your page can be strictly information-​​oriented iden­ti­cal to a book or newslet­ter. Your page can also be designed to adver­tise you, your com­pany, and the prod­ucts you offer.

But most impor­tant, it can be a won­der­ful tool for peo­ple to access your free report. If your report is writ­ten in a two-​​dimensional printed for­mat, more than likely you will have it on some diskette. There­fore, by hav­ing it avail­able via the Inter­net, peo­ple can access your free infor­ma­tion and print it them­selves at home or the office, with­out cost­ing any money, time or postage.

How­ever, don’t make your free report avail­able directly in your home­page. Many peo­ple who choose to use the multi-​​step mar­ket­ing process I described ear­lier (which I strongly encour­age) want the names and addresses of those peo­ple com­ing for­ward for future follow-​​up and direct mail possibilities.

In this case, they have a spe­cial sec­tion of their web page that includes their free report, but it is one to which only peo­ple who have a pass­word can access. If you use this tech­nique, and peo­ple have seen your site or your ad some­where let alone your free report offer, they can write or email you to obtain their secret, free and time-​​sensitive password.

Once “inside,” they can read your report and do so instan­ta­neously. They now have access to use­ful infor­ma­tion and feel part of an elite group of edu­cated mem­bers. Your newslet­ter can also be pub­lished on the web and made avail­able through pass­word pro­tected access.

And if your newslet­ters carry a sub­scrip­tion cost, you can charge peo­ple to obtain their pass­word and you can bill them reg­u­larly for renewal. Again, the pos­si­bil­i­ties here are end­less. The web opens many doors for you.

Remem­ber that you’re not try­ing to adver­tise with the hope of stum­bling onto a trickle of sus­pects. You want an end­less stream of pre-​​qualified, pre-​​screened and pre-​​sold expects! In other words, you don’t want to shout in order to attract prospects. You want to speak softly but carry a big stick with which you can lure bet­ter leads and “clob­ber ‘em” (with your free­bie offer, valu­able infor­ma­tion or unique exper­tise) when they’re in “proximity.”

For exam­ple, peo­ple who visit your site and read your web page will hope­fully want more and come for­ward to get it. But even when only a small por­tion do, you know in advance that they are much more qual­i­fied, which saves you time and effort than try­ing to “fish in a dried up desert filled with suspects.”

In addi­tion, once you’re on the web there are many more advan­tages that come with using this medium, such as search engines. Search engines are like elec­tronic yel­low pages that con­tain mostly every page and email address avail­able on the web. (How­ever, there are ways to use engines effec­tively, and we’ll come back to this in Com­mand­ment #9.)

You can also link your page to other sites and get your link posted on those that also cater to your spe­cific mar­ket. Also called “rec­i­p­ro­cal link­ing,” this method is sim­ply another way to adver­tise through spe­cial­ized means.

Nev­er­the­less, it’s all part of devel­op­ing an effec­tive lead gen­er­a­tion sys­tem, and you know what “sys­tem” stands for, don’t you? It stands for “Save Your Self Time, Effort, and Money!” Yeah. That’s the ticket!

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• How to Capture and Captivate Attention
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• Two Shining Stars in an Age of Darkness
• Changes, Relaunches, and Extreme Makeovers
• Superior Value Equals Superior Sales

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