Page 183 - Duct Tape Marketing

Duct Tape Marketing

ads in the local “penny paper” for bands or people selling used music
gear (guitars, drums, etc.). Next, he copies their phone numbers on an
Internet reverse look-up site and gets their mailing addresses. Then he
mails them each a flyer offering features and specials. The only real cost
is a stamp and some printing. The best part is that he knows his mailing
will get directly to a musician.

Your Hot Suspect List

Once you have done your list research and identified some num-
ber of qualified suspects, it is time to put these suspects into a contact
database such as ACT! You can also simply save this list as a spread-
sheet type of file, but it is best that you save your list in a way that will
allow you to mail to the members of the list frequently and keep track
of your response and follow-up activities. At this point, I suggest that
you carve out a budget that allows you to mail to this list at least six
times in the next six months.

The idea is to work with the number of suspects that your bud-
get allows you to impact. By impact, I mean put your message in
front of qualified suspects frequently enough to get noticed. Much
of the lead generation tactics explained in the next two chapters
will allow you to broaden your marketing efforts, but your initial
hot suspect list should be manageable enough that you can flood
them with your advertising offers and test and track messages fre-
quently. Because advertising is often the biggest marketing “real
dollar” expense, it is best if you can focus on this group in such a
way that they will receive your messages six to eight times in a mat-
ter of months.

Depending on your marketing goals and needs, a list of five hun-
dred very qualified suspects may be more than enough to focus your
entire marketing effort on. This decision starts with a determination
of how much business you need to grow your business.

In some ways, your available budget may dictate the size of this

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