Key Takeaways from Dan Kennedy's Latest Book on Direct Marketing

Like the Godfather, make potential customers an offer they can’t refuse. (Unlike the Godfather, keep them alive for repeat buying.)

Your communications must ask your audience to do something. Make your requests and instructions unequivocally clear. Otherwise, they’ll continue browsing and thinking without doing. This clear call to action (CTA) can also help you measure and track the performance of your advertising.

​Two types of offers exist: 1) a purchase request and 2) a lead generation. Always include one, but consider employing both at the same time.

People who feel like spending money tend to cluster spend, waiting until they feel the urge to purchase. That’s why we have the term “shopping spree.”

Your prospects will need some convincing from you to get off the couch, find their wallet, and enter their payment info for your goods/services. And that convincing is achieved through URGENCY–just make sure the urgency is genuine.

​Urgency can involve limited supplies or timeframes. Countdown clocks, diminishing inventory quantity counters, giving out gifts for the first however many buyers, et cetera, work well, so choose the method that’s real and verifiable for your product and go from there.

Tell people exactly what to do to get your offer. Then, make it easy for them to do it–one click, postage paid, telephone number prominently displayed, etc.

Don’t advertise without a way to track and measure sales conversions. Use Return on Investment calculations (ROI = purchases / expenses).

​The internet makes it easy to see what specific ad led to a sale using codes attached to advertisements. Ignore brand metrics like social media engagement rates and impressions.

Brand recognition DOES NOT guarantee success, sustainability, or anything else a company needs to stay alive. Please don’t pay for it. Let it be the happy byproduct of business success.

Most marketing and advertising fail at capturing the almost-persuaded. Combat that by following up with:

What should follow-up look like? A reminder, re-stating and extending the same offer. Candid conversations about why people don’t respond right away. Answers that cut to the heart of common fears. A new deadline.

​Give a second and third notice with a deadline. These can be humorous or serious.

There’s no time for subtlety–your copy has to be bold and relevant. Do what it takes to keep your prospect’s attention. And don’t continue to spend money on an unoptimized campaign.

Ads that get the most results look like ads. Even your online advertising can look like a mail-order ad. Mail-order formats prevent mistakes and are highly persuasive, calling for more immediate action. Make yours look like the best mail-order ads, ignoring everything else. The format is:

Never pollute your copy with other offers.

Only results matter. Do split testing. Use AdWords for online split testing and split your mailing list in half for offline.

​Can’t afford it (yet)? Then, learn from national direct mailers. Subscribe to their mailing lists multiple times and determine what they use as a ‘control.’ Then, replicate, using their common success factors for your own promotions.

Just like on a food diet, your direct marketing diet includes:

These rules have helped countless increase their sales, retain customers, and achieve measurable marketing success without unnecessary expenditures on brand awareness.

I’ve typed out invaluable decades of marketing tips in the pages of my many volumes. My newest edition of “No B.S. Direct Marketing” features updated content for our online era.

​Here’s what you can expect from to find:

This blog has provided a very brief summary of my newest book. It’s nothing compared to the diamonds of direct marketing tactics within its physical pages, though. You can grab a free copy here today.