From: Direct Response Marketing Consultant Alan Forrest Smith

What Has Potatoes Got In Common With Your Marketing?

How the world of direct response marketing has changed! What once would take 2-months in the world of marketing can now take 2-hours. What used to take 2-hours can take 2-minutes and to top it all the avalanche of messianic gurus pronouncing their latest, greatest must-have business tools (to people that don’t have a business) is playing with minds and bank balances. It’s a real mess unless you are deaf, dumb, blind and living on another planet you couldn’t have failed to miss it.

So lets take a step back a little here.

Marketing in its most basic form or earliest start.

Farmer grows potatoes more potatoes then he needs. Farmer has an idea to sell his remaining potatoes to those that have none. Farmer takes potatoes to be sold at the market. Once the farmer arrives there are another ten farmers also selling potatoes. Farmer has to discover and maybe invent different ways to make sure everyone buys from his stall and not everyone else’s.

Market-ing is born.

Now you have many farmers on the same market selling the same thing – potatoes!

One day one of the farmers decides to almost shout at the people walking by. He tells them a story. It’s the story of how his family arrived on the barren wasteland 178 years ago. How they meticulously worked the land and then eventually turned the brown soil black. This black soil is what creates the finest potatoes for 300-miles. Despite the reality that all the potatoes at the marketplace are actually from the same soil

Position-ing is born.

Another day and another farmer has decided that selling his potatoes in a fresh cloth sackcloth with a real identifiable label written in hand by his buxom wife would make his potatoes stand out. He copies the story from the previous farmer, adds a little twist and creates an instant label that is easily identifiable to the buyer as a sign of quality.

Brand-ing.

And finally one more farmer and his son and his wife decide that rather than setting up their potatoes in the old cart they would actually create a beautiful hand carved presentation stall that could be seen from the second you walked into the marketplace. It was tall, wide and made with the finest materials they could afford at the time. They of course copied the previous three farmers, changed the story and designed their own brand but they now had something none of the others could afford and that was position.

Presence & Perception was born.

Marketing today isn’t any different despite what you are told. The best marketers I know and have met are those that have never listened to anyone but dig deep into what their customers really want.

You see if you undertake any kind of marketing and that means including all four above yet haven’t taken a minute to understand what your customers actually want and need you are going to be in trouble.

For example where I live cars that go into the millions surround me. Just this weekend gone close to Manchester airport two of these cars were destroyed racing along the motorway from my village. Both cars went into a value of over one million pounds. Thankfully both drivers were fine.

Why Do Your Customers Buy Anything?

My question is does anyone really want to spend (lease) a car valued at £500,000 or are they actually buying prestige, image, appearance, and significance or more?

So just advertising cars isn’t enough. The car industry has to tap into a more primeval thought and that is the desire for the above deeper needs to be fulfilled through the perception of the car rather than the car itself.

Another example is skin creams. Who really wants to spend a small fortune on a cream only to go home, spread it all over their face and sit around for sometime waiting for it to take effect?

Or is it more that what people are really buying is youth, less wrinkles, less sagging and better looking skin. Better looking skin removes the fear that they are becoming less desirable. If they are less desirable they could lose the lover in their life. So they no longer buy cream but are actually buying a solution to their inner and deepest fears of growing old and being alone!

And then arrived the likes of Apple. They went beyond the smartphone and gave us cool technology in cool packaging with cool branding and a presence and position to die for. And despite the fact that people like even myself think we are buying Apple because it is virus free etc. what we are really buying into is this.

If you have Apple it is cool and fills a feeling. Hence if you have a tablet say from the local store with it’s own brand, despite the fact it functions and does the job – getting online, picking up email, social media and office suite… it just isn’t cool and that rises an inner fear of disapproval from the mass and no one wants to be disapproved right?

So one of the biggest things you can do in your marketplace is to really understand what it is your client buys inside their buying process or in their head because if you fail to find out you might have the greatest sales system in place ever and yet if the message is wrong to market you just won’t sell a single thing!

The other thing you should know is this. Your buyer has already bought and owns the product or service you are selling in his or her mind months before they buy from you. Think about this; even YOU know what you want to buy a long time before you actually buy it. I correct right? Maybe two years before I went and actually bought my first Apple I had thought about buying, owing and using it long before I actually parted with my money.

Marketing Perspective From The Mouth of The Direct Response Marketing Consultant

If you’re marketing isn’t right, nothing will sell. No one will come to your farm in the middle of nowhere if they don’t know you are there. That’s your marketing.

If your positioning isn’t in place, you are just another face, a me-too struggler trying to compete and grow in a massively crowded marketplace.

If your branding is none existent you have failed to capture the mind through embedded memory, perceptive expectation, emotional fulfillment and memory triggers. What does your branding strategy and campaign look like right now?

If you presence is as good as none you will struggle in the noise of everyone else average. If your perception hasn’t been tapped into you are losing the mind game that has been already been set into place from the potential buyers side. If you don’t tell them what to think of your product or service they will make up their own minds.

If you need solid advice, the best direction and a proven direct response-marketing consultant of the highest caliber you know where to find me.

Strictly For You But Only If You Need The Very Best

So if you have to have the very best. If low results and failure aren’t an option. If you need the best of the best minds working on your projects. If you have tried a ton options already and simply cannot take a chance on the next campaign. If you demand excellence and don’t mind eccentricity as long as you get what you need I could be your guy. Just know this: If price is an issue I am not your man.

There is a reason Rolls Royce are the price they are. There’s a reasons Vertu phones are the price they are. There’s a reason that Dolce and Gabbana price the way they do. Of course there is a reason I charge the fee I charge.

Time, quality, precision, research, detail, meticulous, old world craftsmanship, exacting, demanding, skilful, original, inspired, results-based and probably unconventional – I am your man.

Strictly for the client that demands only the finest of results.

I have space for a client right now. That could be you. You can get me from my contact page.

I’m really looking forward to talking with you.

Direct Response Marketing Consultant, Copywriter and Eccentric supreme

Alan Forrest Smith

Get me from my contact page or do it the old way via email (alan@orangebeetle.com) or the even older way ... phone (07793069486). Just a note on my cellphone. I rarely pick up to unknown numbers so please text me first and I will call you right back.