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Too many marketers focus on the initial sale, when the real profits are often generated by repeat business over the lifetime of the customer, says marketing expert Jay Abraham.

For Icy Hot, a balm, he got $10 million worth of advertising without paying for a single spot. In exchange for running the ads at no cost, the station or publication could keep the $3 customers paid for each jar bought from the ads. One million people tried Icy Hot on that basis.

Approximately one-third of these buyers came back at least 6 times a year at an average order of $10, generating $21 million a year in sales.

Icy Hot became so successful that a major pharmaceutical company bought out its original manufacturer for many millions of dollars.

Source: The Abraham Files

One of the most dreaded customer objections is “I have to think it over.” Here are some responses that can help get past it:

>> “What exactly do you want to think about?”
>> “Let’s think it over out loud. Sometime two heads are better than one.”
>> “Let’s think it over while it is fresh in your mind. What are some of the items you need to know more about?”

Source: Selling Power magazine

Whenever there is a recession, the marketing trade publications run articles extolling to their readers the importance of continuing to advertise in a recession.

Since these articles are usually contributed by ad agency owners, magazine publishers, and marketing consultants, one could make an argument that they are self-serving.

As Warren Buffett says, “Don’t ask the barber if you need a haircut.”

Marketing professionals make money only when companies buy their marketing and advertising services.

But do they REALLY believe that spending money on marketing in a recession is smart business?

Or are the consultants and ad agencies pushing clients to keep spending so the advertising professionals won’t starve?

During a recession, when money is tight, should companies ramp up their marketing activities and spending…keep them steady…cut back…or stop altogether?

McGraw-Hill Research’s Laboratory of Advertising Performance studied recessions in the United States.

Of course, we must keep in mind that McGraw-Hill, as a large publisher of trade journals, depends on ad revenues to maintain profitability.

That being said, following the 1981-1982 recession, they analyzed the performance of some 600 industrial companies during the downturn.

Their research found that “business-to-business firms that maintained or increased their marketing expenditures during the 1981-1982 recession averaged significantly higher sales growth both during the recession and for the following 3 years than those which eliminated or decreased marketing.”

In a different study, Management Review asked American Management Association (AMA) member firms about spending during the 1990-1991 recession.

The data showed most firms that raised their marketing budgets enjoyed gains in market share: firms that increased
their ad budgets were twice as likely to pick up market share.

One of my readers, MT, owns a software company. In response to the recession, MT has cut his budget for Google AdWords campaigns in half.

How did he determine what to trim?

Before the recession hit, MT ran 10 Google PPC ad campaigns—all profitable.

“When the economy turned south, 6 of those PPC campaigns, those targeted mainly at fence-sitters who don’t buy any longer, began to lose money,” says MT.

So, very wisely, MT cut those 6 unprofitable PPC ad campaigns—and kept running the 4 that were money-makers.

But are all consumers not buying any more…or is it just MT’s customers?

According to an article in Internet Retailer, nearly 4 out of 5 households earning $100,000 a year or more said they are cutting back their spending.

When consumers cut back spending, your business can take a real hit—especially if you sell a product that’s “nice to have” vs. one that customers absolutely must have.

So what can you do to maintain healthy sales during what has already been a prolonged recession and is likely to continue for some time?

The first thing big corporations cut in tough times is marketing. That’s really stupid (and yes, I know that as a
copywriter, I sound self-serving saying this).

Marketing, when done right, makes money, brings in customers, and generates sales.

During a recession, your biggest problem is making sales and maintaining revenues—exactly what marketing is designed to accomplish.

So stopping all marketing really makes no sense.

What does make sense is MT’s approach:

1 – Precisely measure the ROI from all marketing campaigns.

2 – Cut the ones that lose money.

3 – Keep the ones that make money.

John Wanamaker, a famous retailer in his day, once said, “Half my advertising is wasted, but I don’t know which half.”

But today, with direct response measurement and Web analytics, we do know which half is wasted.

So we can fix or eliminate the wasted half, and generate a positive ROI by running the ads that do work.

I took a survey on my website on how the recession has affected my visitors.

38% of those surveyed said their sales are flat, while 25% reported increased sales and 37% have seen sales fall.

Eight out of ten people who answered the online survey expressed some degree of worry about the effect the recession will have on their business and their sales.

In response, 32% have increased their marketing budgets and 24% are spending less money on marketing.

Yet these businesses are holding firm on their pricing—more than 8 out of 10 say they have not lowered their prices to stimulate sales in a recession.

When it comes to economic recovery, they are slightly pessimistic.

Just over 57% believe the recession will end this year.

Almost 43% say the country won’t recover from the recession until 2012 or later.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

What products and services sell best in a recession?

Hint: It’s not a trick question.

And yes, the answer is the one that immediately popped into your head when I asked you – and before you started over-analyzing the question…

The products and services that sell best in a recession are the cheaper ones.

That’s right: the ones that cost less and are more affordable.

I recently read in a biography of Milton Hershey that he believed his business was recession and depression-proof because he sold an affordable product.

He reasoned that, even if a person couldn’t afford new shoes or a new car or a vacation, they could always afford a nickel for a Hershey’s chocolate bar (which was the price in those days).

It turns out Milton Hershey was right.

According to an article in Ad News, when the economy turned sour in the fourth quarter of 2008, Hershey increased its advertising budget by 23%.

And as consumers switched from expensive premium chocolates they no longer felt they could afford to Hershey’s, the company’s net income for 4Q 2008 rose 51% to $82 million.

Similarly, while the restaurant business is in its worst slump since 1991, McDonald’s worldwide sales rose 7.1% in January 2009. Diners may not be able to afford caviar any more, but they can still afford a Big Mac.

I have found the same principle—consumer preference for lower-priced goods and services during an economic downturn—to hold true in the 2 little businesses I run: information marketing and freelance copywriting.

In my online publishing business, our low-priced products are e-books selling in the $19 to $49 range.

Our mid-range products are DVD and audio CD albums selling in the $100 to $150 range.

And our high-end products are multimedia programs selling in the $300 to $1,000 range.

In recent months, our customers are clearly telling us that (a) they are worried about money, (b) they really appreciate our reasonable prices, and (c) for now they prefer offers of low-priced products.

They want us to focus on offering products that sell for under $100, which seems to be the magic recession-proof price point for our market.

When we advertise midrange or high-priced products to our list, I get at least one e-mail from a reader telling me she wants to buy the product, but she can’t because she has lost her job—and a few others asking if they can break up the purchase into multiple small payments.

If you are an information marketer, I suggest that, rather than fight this trend, you accommodate your customers by:

1) Expanding your product line, especially in the lower-priced products like e-books.

2) Offering your readers more free content such as special reports and webinars.

3) Bundling products into packages that enable customers to get related materials at handsome discounts; e.g., buy 2 e-books, get the third free.

I am also finding that offering low-priced service options has kept my freelance copywriting business active and profitable.

To make $10,000 as a freelancer, you can either do one $10,000 project or five $2,000 projects.

These days, I am doing many more $2,000 projects for clients who want to continue their marketing but are focused on controlling costs.

For instance, we are saving my clients money by doing more marketing online and a bit less offline.

We are also using marketing methods that can be tested at minimal cost before rolling out the campaigns (e.g., small test mailings of 1,000 instead of 10,000).

One thing that has worked especially well is a new service bundle I call the “Starter Package“.

I added a button to the main menu of my copywriting website describing a new service I call the Starter Package.

Normally, I charge $500 an hour for consulting. With a 10-hour minimum, payable in full in advance, that works out to $5,000—affordable in normal times, not so affordable in an economic crisis.

With the Starter Package, I offer new clients 90 minutes of my time for a flat fee of $600—a discount of $150 off the regular rate.

I picked 90 minutes deliberately. Not only is it enough time to give prospects a taste of how my advice can benefit them. But it comes in at a price point under $1,000, which is within the comfort zone of a new client who doesn’t really know me all that well.

More important, the Starter Package shows prospects I empathize with their desire to cut back on spending and have designed a service to accommodate their smaller budgets.

Interestingly, what usually happens is that, after reviewing the Starter Package offer, prospects call me to get a quote for whatever it is they really want—and more often than not, buy it from me.

So while I don’t actually do a lot of consulting under the Starter Package arrangement, it makes prospects more comfortable with me as a vendor who respects their budget concerns and limitations.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

There’s a lot of money being made in marketing information products online today.

But there’s also a lot of competition as I’m sure you’ve noticed.

You can’t just sit there and pray that your customers never find out about your competitors.

Thanks to Google, they can find these competitive offers in seconds.

Your best strategy is to identify who and what you’re competing against and fill a gap in the market they’re missing.

Here are the 4 types of competitors you face as an info-marketer and one good strategy for combating each.

The first category of competitors is organizations giving away content on your topic absolutely free.

There are countless companies out there giving away free information on their sites.

These folks are not in the business of selling information products.

They typically sell a physical product or a service and give away free content to build their reputation as a recognized expert in their industry or to expand their e-list.

It can be challenging to compete in a niche where a lot of good free content is published by companies that treat content as a marketing strategy instead of a product.

After all, why would your customers pay you for your content when they can get it—or something close to it—for free elsewhere?

One competitive strategy against free information is to establish yourself as a guru in your niche.

Consumers want authoritative information from experts, and are willing to pay a premium to get it.

For instance, anyone can compile and sell or give away information on conservative issues and politics—and many have.

But only Rush Limbaugh can publish The Limbaugh Letter.

Bookstores are a second category of competitors in the info-marketing business.

I’ve lost track of the number of times I have reviewed some Internet marketer’s expensive info-product, only to find that it contains less information than a 250-page paperback I can buy at Barnes & Noble for fifteen bucks.

One competitive strategy is micro-niching: publishing in a highly specialized niche trade book publishers won’t touch.

Example: I can go to Barnes & Noble today and find several highly useful—and quite inexpensive—books on social
networking.

If your market is dentists, you can publish “Building Your Dental Practice with Facebook”.

That title is too niched—and narrow—for bookstore sales.

Low-priced info-products are a third category of competition.

Their bargain rates can make it difficult to sell your more expensive info-products.

In the 1990s recession, a major newspaper ran an article about two entrepreneurs selling reports on marketing in a recession.

One was me and another was a much more famous marketer.

The paper told readers how to buy my report but not the famous marketer’s.

Reason: mine cost $7 and his cost $1,000.

From one press release, I sold over 3,000 of those booklets.

A great way to win against low-priced to competitors is to offer more in-depth content.

In information products, there is a content hierarchy that from weakest to strongest goes like this:

A – Telling readers what to do (e.g. in a booklet on making money as a landlord, telling the reader that they must make every tenant sign a written lease).

B – Telling readers how to do it (e.g., giving a checklist of the 9 points every lease should cover).

C – Doing it for them (e.g., actually including sample leases).

Low-priced info-products mostly cover level A and to a lesser degree level B.

The more your high-priced info-products give the readers of B and C, the greater the price you can command.

Finally, there are competitors in your field that charge as much or more than you do for seemingly equivalent info-products.

If your pricing is similar, the two strategies mentioned earlier—micro-niching and establishing yourself as an industry guru—can work to differentiate you from the crowd.

If your price is lower than most of your competitors, play the price card.

In your copy, talk about how the other guys charge an outrageous fortune for big, elaborate packages that the reader won’t have time to absorb, and will probably never look at.

Then show how your product saves time because it is tightly written (no fluff) and inexpensive by comparison.

One other idea for handling competition: befriend them instead of going to war with them.

This strategy is called “coopetition”. It recognizes that two companies can be competitors and joint venture partners simultaneously.

Reach out to your competitors via phone or e-mail. Offer to do joint venture deals and affiliate promotions with them.

Maybe they have a high-priced product that is the perfect back-end to one of your front-end products.

Instead of spending a lot of time and money to duplicate what they have done, sell their product to your customers on the back end for a nice affiliate commission on every sale you make.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

My readers often complain to me that the gurus they follow are aloof and inaccessible.

You often can’t reach them by phone, and either you get a ‘no’ reply to your e-mail or an automated reply from an
auto-responder.

My readers say this is rude and it angers them.

After all, they bought the guru’s book or course…or might someday soon.

Doesn’t this entitle the customer to some personal time and customized advice from the guru himself?

Well, yes and no.

I personally answer my own phone and reply to my own e-mail messages.

But I don’t think other authors and info-marketers are obliged to do so (though I think they should).

When you buy a Stephen King novel, you understand that he is not obligated to discuss the plot with you – and most likely will not do so.

In the same way, when you buy a business book for $20, you are purchasing the contents—and nothing beyond that.

The author may also consult and speak, but he charges thousands of dollars for those services and just buying his book doesn’t entitle you to them, right?

One famous copywriting guru complained to me that some of his readers have the unmitigated gall to call him up, ask for free advice, and then grumble when they don’t get it.

“Do they not realize my paying clients get first dibs on my time?” he asked me.

I do. It makes sense to me. And I hope to you too. But still, I desire to help my readers as much as I can while still having time for a life.

So how do I respond to queries and complaints, both phone and e-mail, without becoming overwhelmed—and unable to get my work done?

For e-mail queries and complaints, about 90% are routine (e.g. did not receive a product they ordered on my website, can’t open the PDF of an e-book, need help becoming an affiliate, etc.).

These I pass on to my assistant, because she can handle them better than I can.

About 10% require a more thoughtful answer. These I answer myself—either via e-mail or sometimes a brief phone call.

Tip: when a customer has a problem or complaint they register via e-mail, calling them on the phone and helping them one-on-one converts them from complainers into rabid fans.

They are shocked that you actually took the time to call—and care enough to resolve their problem personally.

Of course, I can’t talk to everyone all the time: I have copy to write for my clients.

So I use caller ID to screen my inbound phone calls.

After the call, I listen to the voice mail.

If it’s routine, I pass the request or complaint on to my assistant for handling.

If it’s a situation where my personal attention would add value or create satisfaction, I will call back and help them.

However, as an information marketer, you want to avoid the trap of allowing people you don’t know to pump you endlessly for free consulting over the phone.

Speaker Patricia Fripp has a great technique for handling these brain-pickers which I use.

When someone who is not a client wants to ask me questions, I say: “My time normally sells for $500 an hour. I will give you 5 minutes—starting now.”

This script makes the caller understand that your time is limited…and that by talking with them without charge, you are doing them a favor and giving them something of value.

5 minutes may not seem like much. But at $500 an hour, 5 minutes of my time is worth almost $42. That’s a generous gift to give a total stranger.

The time limit also forces callers to get to the point, not waste your time with long explanations, and listen to what you tell them without debate or argument.

Here’s another way you, as an expert, can save time answering questions from readers…

Produce content—an FAQ page on your website, a blog, a newsletter, a special report, an information product—on the topics you are asked about most often.

Then, when people ask you for advice on Topic X, give them the URL of the website where they can either read your content for free…or purchase your information product on Topic X.

Am I clear on how to handle inquiries from clients, customers, prospects, readers, and fans?

If not, I expect you’ll call or e-mail me for clarification—and I welcome hearing from you.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

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