I want to talk about what I call the heart of any direct mail campaign or for that matter direct response advertisement or other direct marketing effort.  I want to introduce the topic of how to develop a winning offer.

First, here’s a real secret to creating a successful offer. Here it is…

“Don’t create the offer until you have found out as much as possible about the people who will be receiving the offer.”

Most small business marketers create the offer first then look for someplace to advertise it or somebody to mail to. That is the exact opposite of the method used by the most successful direct marketing pros.

In fact, to give you an idea of the extreme this can be carried to some mail order companies create their new products and offers by first studying the Standard Rate & Data Service Directory.

First they select some available lists that interest them, getting complete demographic information on those lists, finally picking the best list and only then creating a product and an offer especially for that list.

You may not be able to go to that extreme if you’ve already got an established business and have to structure new offers within the parameters of the goods and services you sell.

In my next post, I’m going to give a couple of simple examples of how this might apply you.

However, you shouldn’t immediately reject the idea either – every business’ products and services have some flexibility and may be creatively re-named or re-titled, re-packaged, re-priced, etc. to be ‘new’ and ‘for’ a certain market.

Author Info:  Dan Kennedy is internationally recognized as the 'Millionaire Maker,' helping people in just about every category of business turn their ideas into fortunes. Dan's "No B.S." approach is refreshing amidst a world of small business marketing hype and enriches those who act on his advice.