Bigger is Better

We are not just selling ads we are selling a Program for Success by New and Old Customer Acquisition.

The New Labels are hitting the streets; the reports are coming in positive. Using Several different sources: Telephone & Tax Records, Credit Card Companies: etc…making it the best list that is out there!

Where is the money? Don’t invest in the market, invest in bettering your business!

Now is the time to be MORE AGGRESSIVE in gaining or keeping your market share. With the economy as bad as it is, each customer is important to keep our business (yours and mine) afloat. Your competition is in the same boat and trying to figure out a way to grab your customers from you. Keep in mind that the Cleveland area is not growing in size or population so the business out there is constantly being pulled in several directions to spend their money. Keep your name and message out there on a constant basis is the only way to assure that you have a shot at keeping your client base around. Remember: “People go where they are asked and stay where they are appreciated!”

Value Keeps You Around...Doesn’t Let You Down!

With Areas selling out in J.B. Dollar Land, it is a common ploy of my competitors to tell you that J.B. is getting TOO BIG and now you’re ad is getting lost in the shuffle. Of course, when your not selling a lot of ads and your mailing piece is small it’s easy to believe that kind of logic when you’re really not sure why people love and use J.B. Dollar Stretcher. The main thing that keeps people looking in the magazine is money! Money that is in the form of a coupon. Saying that people prefer a smaller magazine is like saying you prefer less money in your wallet because it would be easier to carry around. If that doesn’t wash consider these 2

examples:

Entertainment Books 99.

Here’s a big “mamma”. It’s so full of value your die hard coupon cutters are willing to shell out $30.00 or more to get a copy. Do you really think people would pay $30.00 for something that was only a half an inch thick...2. The Big Yellow pages. Why do I always hear: “I have to be in it”. Well, two reasons; One, statistically most people prefer it because it is all inclusive. Many times when they look in that small local edition they can’t find what they need and end up in the “Big Book” anyway. Two, everyone else is in there. When you go fishing and you see a lot of fisherman pulling out fish you get next to them because that’s where the fish are. You don’t throw your line in where there ain’t no fish! In J.B. you’re in the company of advertisers that are doing well and continue to do well.

Ask yourself, why is that other publication is so small? Big turnover in advertisers prevents you from growing. And the reason you have a big turn over is generally other people who have tried it didn’t do as well as they needed to come back again.

Economics 101: Supply and Demand...Supply is Low Demand is High. You know what that means!

East & West glossy and several of the 4 color Newsprint sold out last issue. If you are not contracted for future issues, there is an increasing chance that you may not get the area’s that you want. For those of you that don’t know, our magazine is printed in sections of 8 pages. This means towards a deadline we will call the section of the book at a certain size (i.e. 48 page section). When this is determined and we decide to sell 1 more page we actually have to sell 7 more pages which can be rough. Also, we are limited by a maximum size for our magazines. Due to weight and postage we would have to substantially increase the cost to each of our customers if the books go beyond a certain point. Contract to Assure that you will get in the magazine. Because of the increase administrative duties that I have incurred, you must contract to insure that I will be able to get to you each issue. Print scheduling is changing giving us less time between books, possible printing out of state will decrease our flexibility, procrastination still runs rampant, so clients that are contracted get first priority. If you’re not contracted and need to get in the next issue page me at early enough to make the deadline in time. For my customers that are contracted on a long term agreement, we have to get your ad copy in sooner. This is to ensure that your ad gets finished in a timely matter and reduce the number of mistakes.

After being in this business for 17 years you would think I would know all the angles to “couponing” concepts.

The other day I had a new insight to something that I do every day. Convince people that advertising and coupons can help develop more new customers. In discussing coupons with a customer something occurred to me when I said “...and I’m not an average coupon user, but even I have a price if it’s a great deal....” Most business owners complain about “Those Coupon People..” who try to “nickel and dime” them. And that’s when it hit me...THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO GET EXCITED BY A CHEAP OFFER ARE “CHEAPER” PEOPLE! To find a customer that is not a typical nickel and dimer you have to MAKE THEM AN OFFER THEY CAN’T REFUSE! In my business it is often said that salesman create their own objections, but what I am saying is that maybe business owners are creating their own customer base by the kind of coupon they use in their advertising. A good customer who doesn’t mind spending a few extra dollars for something they want won’t worry about a coupon that’s only a few dollars in value.

Another way of looking at this is if you want to catch really big fish, you have to use really big bait and really big hooks. You determine the kind of fish you catch by the type of rig you use to fish. If we keep throwing small worms in the pond with small hooks we are only going to snag some blue gill. Take a good look at your ad and offers. Does it make people stand up and say,” Wow, for that kind of deal....even I would give them a try!” If it doesn’t do that we need to rethink our strategy and goals! We also have to look more at the process of what we are trying to accomplish.

Taking someone who is NOT doing business with you currently and DIRECTING THEM to come into your place for the very first time having someone try your product or service is very difficult. Then you have to hope that you are doing your job well enough to keep them around as a regular customer. The amazing thing is until we are willing to make great offers we are going to have a hard time getting great customers. I am not recommending that we have to do super offers all of the time. There is a cycle for couponing, however, every once in a while we have to stretch out farther and harder to get some excitement going in the marketplace. Same old, same old gets boring especially for prospective customers.

If you are not happy with J.B. Dollar Stretcher or me…let me know.

A small note for any customers who don’t feel like the ad or that I am getting the job well enough let me know right away. Every ad we do is an experiment in the marketplace. And all good experiments mean: hypothesize, try, track, review, and re-hypothesize. But if you wait until the 3rd ad to tell me that the ad is not doing what you expected it MAY be too late to change it before you decide on another path. Sometimes it might be just what I wrote in the other paragraph about increasing the size of the bait. It also may be the EXPECTATION LEVEL of the ad is too high. ADVERTISING is a PROCESS it has short term and long term effects. When I hear about good referrals it is interesting to track down the original source of that referral. Many times it is a new customer that was developed through the process of advertising with J.B. Dollar Stretcher. This is easy to lose sight of when you have a couple of “less than stellar performance” ads go out!

Clarification

of last newsletter on “Sales Speak”

...When I write your newsletter, I write it over a period of time and then put it all together after deadline. I was so frazzled last time that I started with one subject and ended with a completely different thought, something was lost in the translation. Here’s what I wanted to say: If I call you up and say “WE NEED TO PUT YOUR AD TOGETHER…” That means you ARE contracted to run the next issue and I am just getting my artwork together, and I have started the pestering process. If I say “I’D LIKE TO GET TOGETHER AND SEE WHAT WE ARE DOING THIS NEXT ISSUE” or “I WANT TO DROP BY AND TALK TO YOU ABOUT THE NEXT ISSUE” This usually means you are NOT contracted for the next run and I am going to try and sell you something!

Positioning: the REAL Story!

My advertising career started in 1985. That doesn’t include 5 years of marketing and advertising classes in college. I still read and study advertising and marketing today to help further my education to help make your business more successful. The topic of positioning has been brought up by customers through the years, first at Merchant Clipper (the first direct mail magazine I worked for) and for the last 15 years at J.B. Dollar Stretcher. There are some people who feel very strongly about it and others that don’t give it a thought (especially if their ads are working well without it). However, out of all the books I have looked at, hundreds of tapes I have listened to and talking to my own customers over the years I have yet come across an actual study or proof that has shown any evidence, positive or negative, about the placement of an ad in a certain publication.

Positioning in the mind!

There is a marketing book called “Positioning” that is about the position a product, service or name brand that a consumer can remember off the “top of his head”. For example, if I ask you to name 10 toothpastes on the market today, the brand which you think of first is in “position one”, the next toothpaste is in position two, and so on. Marketing strategies and advertising are used to get a product or service higher in the “positioning ladder”. This is the only thing I have run across that refers to “positioning” in all the years that I have been in advertising.

Why would the position of an ad be important?

With radio, newspaper and TV advertising they are trying to “catch” the consumer’s attention while they are doing something else such as reading a newspaper article, watching “FRIENDS”, or driving their car on the highway (billboards). These forms of advertising are intrusive and try to get you to pay attention to an ad when you were doing something else. So you might need to be more concerned on the exact location or time that your message is placed. The key to OUR magazine is that it is a non-intrusive form of advertising, in other words, the only reason people look at J.B. DOLLAR STRETCHER MAGAZINE is because they WANT TO LOOK at the ads and the money that is associated with those ads in the form of a coupon. People tend to look at each ad individually. If I have a small black and white ad that says “Free Dinner at Mountain Jacks”, No Purchases Necessary or No Strings attached. People would find that ad no matter where I “hid” it in J.B. DOLLAR STRETCHER MAGAZINE. I know this for a fact because we have run deals like that in the past with small ads and got great response.

There is a story of how the “right hand page” became popular for an advertising space.

Initially, the prime position for most advertising on things like the old newspaper was the upper left hand side, because people read “left to right not right to left”. Pick up your favorite novel and try reading the other way. And what ended up happening was that they would sell out of space in those areas and they had to come up with a way to balance the newspaper out. The solution was to tell everyone that “the best position to place your ad is on the upper right hand side of the page of the newspaper”.

Sometimes I DO LOOK at the right side when I am browsing and really not reading “line for line” other publications/catalogs. But if I am taking a serious look at something I tend to read left to right also, just as you are now reading this newsletter.

Is there a definitive answer? Until I run across some information or studies to back either claim I feel that both theories have some validity, but are not conclusive. I believe that it does make sense to position your ad in a certain section of the newspaper when you know the people reading that section are theoretically good prospects for your product or service, such as, a sporting goods store putting an ad in the sports section of the newspaper. Positioning of an ad in a better visual area or a certain period of time might be more important in these cases; however, I again have found no studies to prove this concept. The reason WE keep the ads mixed up is to force someone to look through J.B. Dollar over and over again.

I have read “starch reports” that show results related to ad SIZE and I have studies to show that you get more readership when you use FULL COLOR ads vs. Black and white and other studies that show how important consistency is in advertising. You can find all sorts of references to these concepts in advertising on the web, in books and in tapes. These things will beat out any positioning advantage one may think they have. Now I do believe that there are some advantages to certain spots in J.B. DOLLAR STRETCHER MAGAZINE such as the back cover. But these are very few spots that are usually booked in advance and are very costly. I doubt that the amount of extra expense is justified by the percentage amount of increase of response you might realize. If I honestly thought that ad positioning was THAT important I would have said so a long time ago to you. The fact is there are literally thousands of businesses who can’t get a “good position” and still get great results with J.B. DOLLAR STRETCHER MAGAZINE.

If you take time to spy on people you will see that the way people look through any magazine varies. Some start from the back and thumb their way forward. Some people start at the front, but when was the last time you went through anything one page at a time? And another group will actually crack the magazine in the middle and go back and forth. In conclusion when it comes to J.B. DOLLAR STRETCHER MAGAZINE I would be more concerned with a GREAT MAILING LIST, YOUR AD SIZE, THE CONTENT OF YOUR ADS AND THE CONSISTENCY OF YOUR ADS! Those things are far more important and less expensive than positioning.

Who should I advertise to?

What is my target market, should I only advertise to them?

The definition of a dynamic market is when the “non-target audience” today may be the “target audience” tomorrow and vice versa. The only constant in the market is change! Being in business for a long time has taught me some valuable lessons: There are no guarantees in life. Taxes, like hemorrhoids, are a pain in the.....And you never know who you are talking to so be nice to everybody. It’s this last statement that I want to explore. We live in America! The land of opportunity! In this country poor people can become rich and rich people can become poor. When you advertise you must keep this in mind.

A quick illustration:

Joe just graduated from college, he starts a new job at $25,000 a year. After 2 years of hard work and initiative he was promoted to a better position and is making $35,000 a year. While in this new position he meets his future wife, they marry in 2 years and have a combined household income of $65,000 a year. When is the best time for you to start getting your message to Joe about your services or products? Since advertising is a long term conservative commitment and investment the right answer is from day one. If you wait until he reached $65,000 a year to start sending him ads about your business (because that’s your “target market”) it could be a year before he actually respond to it (27 exposures). By that time he could have realized that the marriage was a mistake and with his wife leaving and settling out of divorce court, his real income is now only $22,000 a year. Now he’s no longer in your “target market”. His ex-wife may be though....

The key is we never know who or when someone will move in or out of our potential target market. If we advertise and develop some business that is a little below or above the average scale and they want to come in and buy something I hope your not going to turn them away because they don’t fit your profile or don’t live in your target market. You want to reach them before, during and even after they’ve arrived in your “target market”. Every dollar and every customer adds to our income stream. Some will be high rollers, some will be “once in a blue mooners”, but most will be your average good customer. If you treat them right they’ll come back to you over and over again no matter what level of income they make.

The last thing that involves planning is the economy.

My last newsletter told you why to advertise especially in an economic downturn. Less competition, prospective customers looking more aggressively ways to save money and a great time to increase your market share. However, these advantages will not do any good if you don’t PLAN ahead. Make the tough decision to invest now in advertising now and reap the benefits later. Planning is an easy thing to talk about but a harder thing to do. For the clients that signed up for the entire year of 2001 in December you know what I am talking about. Anyone who waited can start today and avoid anymore increases in the next 12 months. WITH ADVERTISING, MARKETING AND LIFE if you FAIL TO PLAN, YOU PLAN TO FAIL....

Attention New Customers!

Because of deadline and the rush to get your ads done right we may have not talked about realistic expectations for your first ad in 411Marketplace and or J.B. Dollar Stretcher Magazine. We always strive to have ads do the best they can the very first time they hit the streets, however, in advertising as in the stock market even the best planned strategy is subject to outside forces. “Advertising and marketing are conservative investments, they are not miracle workers, not instant gratifiers....” Is part of a quote from Jay Conrad Levison the author of Guerrilla Marketing. Really it is just common sense, if you started a business and you didn’t double your sales in six weeks, surely you wouldn’t give up. The same is true for your message. It takes a total of nine impressions to move a customer from total apathy (they don’t know who you are and don’t care frankly) to the point they call “Purchase Readiness” when they are willing to take out their checkbook. However, people only notice one out of every three ads you run. It can take a total of 27 impressions of your ad, to a new prospect, before you can expect to see any results at all.... Paraphrased quote from Ray Orville Wilson, Guerrilla Marketing Selling audiocassette. I know that is not what someone who invests money in advertising really wants to hear, but it happens to be the Truth. It is said over and over again in any marketing or advertising book you can get at the store or library. Deciding to use the power of direct mail and putting into the magazine format is the best choice out there...don’t let unrealistic expectations and arbitrary market forces ruin the chance for slow steady growth and success which is needed in ANY advertising endeavor.

Attention New Customers!

A major impact on the economy is coming, the post office is asking for another increase on postage.

I reprinted some of the article here for you, but again it is time to plan ahead and try to keep the current price as low as possible. It kind of makes me think about the gas prices lately. The way that they have been fluctuating I only wish I could have a gas company offer me a contract for gas for a year at even $1.50 per gallon. I’d sign up in a second. My car is an important tool that I need to make a living and to increase my sales for my business. That’s the way I look at signing up now with J.B. Dollar Stretcher Magazine or 411Marketplace. It gives you an opportunity to save money in the future on something you need for your business. Sometimes I think we lose sight of the impact that advertising has on your business and livelihood.

A major impact on the economy ...continued

It’s easy just to say “it’s only one ad I missed, but those ads that we don’t do today will effect the future of your business down the road. As my first sales boss use to say “the tougher the decision you make up front tends to be easier to live with, the easy decisions you make up front are usually the hardest to live with....” Planning and committing up front are those tough decisions that will be easier to live with in the long run. Be talking to you soon about making them...Dave