A Porsche 911 Turbo and the Essence of RESULTS Based on Direct Marketing!
Porsche just recently sent me a lavish presentation kit and a very expensive brochure about their new 911 Turbo.
I sold it on eBay last week for $45!! I saw others that were selling it for twice that amount! (For REAL, I am NOT Kidding, I SOLD their promo package!)
Anyway, a simple, well-written one-page sales letter offering me a test drive would have gotten me down to the showroom, located 27 miles away in..about..oh..17.3 minutes! (I'd get there faster, but there are a lot of RED lights and the 2004 Turbo I have is by all accounts, not as fast as the new 500 horsepower one.)
Marketing Membership & Real Estate By Mail
Over the last few months I have been on a quest to gather marketing materials from every high-end club and real estate development in the country, plus a number outside the country. This is partly because I am looking for a second home and partly because I just wanted to see how BAD most marketing really is when orchestrated by traditional ad agencies (like the Porsche campaign).
I have samples of over-sized leather-bound brochures, hardcover books masquerading as brochures, multi-media packages with DVDs, videos and the kitchen sink enclosed. Plus, just about every imaginable variation of glossy stock and slick brochure. All cost tens of thousands to produce, additionally, some as much as $5 each to mail!
About the only thing I don't have in over 100 examples is a DECENT sales letter, NOT ONE!!
Every one of them has poor or non-existent headlines, no story, NO testimonials, no calls to action and there are about three good offers out of one hundred. Well over five million dollars worth of marketing down the proverbial drain, but you know what, I bet they won some awards!!
Here is another observation that you can only really appreciate if you look at a dozen packages or more (exactly the type of twisted thing a real prospect might actually do!)
All these high-end "vision" brochures look and sound EXACTLY the same. I can't tell from reading their VISION if the property is located in Carolina, Utah, Colorado, California or Timbuktu!
Some clubs even use the very same stock art!
NONE TELL THE REAL STORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT or club and many of the clubs have GREAT stories just crying out to be told!!!
Direct mail is the most effective form of marketing real estate, membership, golf days or travel. Getting a GREAT response is far more about crafting a good sales letter than it is about spending $50,000 on photos, printing and mailing.
YOU ONLY have to succeed once from the simpler approach of writing KILLER sales letters costing some 90% less than the TYPICAL agency campaign to be converted for life.
Questions and Answers
Article Tags:
direct mail
,direct marketing
,golf marketing
,golf course marketing
,real etate marketing
Avoid any relative words in advertising. Words like stronger, better, less are relative. Also avoid words indicating an extreme position like "No 1", "the best", "quickest" etc. Quantify any claim and support with a testimonial or certifying agency. Quantify quick delivery by saying how fast, most durable by saying how long. Mind can see and feel only quantified terms. So use quantified terms to make the prospects understand easily.
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