The Marketing Viking

This is a reprint of an email I sent to my newsletter list on January 2008:

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I’m sure you’ve been reading about this recession we’re “about to have”.

And, being in business, you might be asking yourself “if this thing hits hard, what’s it going to mean for my company?”

Well, Clayton Makepeace , the world’s highest paid copywriter, wrote something about this a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to share it with you. Clayton wrote:

“Let’s say this recession slashes a particular business’ profits 30%.  Suddenly, the owner is earning only 70% of the profits he earned last year.

Now, as a copywriter, you could just write a better promotion in the hopes of raising his response and average sale.

But to erase that 30% decline, you’ll need much more than just a 30% sales boost.  Your admittedly inspired copy will have to boost his sales by a whopping 42%.

Willing to bet your copy can do that?  In a recession? 
I thought not.

But what if you could help his company cut costs by just 7% …

Bring him 7% more new customers …

Boost his profit on each product sold by just 7% …

Cause existing customers to order from him 7% more often …

Increase his average sale by just 7% …

And keep customers buying 7% longer?

These incremental improvements would restore his profits - and then some — in no time flat!

And if you improved each of these metrics just a little bit more - say, by a meager 10% — he’d be growing his profits by a respectable 24% per year — at a time when his competitors are losing their shirts!”

Clayton’s point - a point that he, I and many other marketers have made for years - is that you can increase your profits significantly if you just find a number of small improvements in key areas of your business.

Obviously, you don’t have to wait for a recession to do this. But if you’re worried about the economy, Clayton’s words should reassure you that business and marketing optimisation puts you back in control of the future of your business.

If you want to read the whole of Clayton’s excellent article, you can find it here:

http://www.makepeacetotalpackage.com/clayton-makepeace/the-insanity-chronicles-part-two.html

Also, I wrote a blog post in June 2007 that gives advice on what to do when marketing gets tougher. Many of the points I make also apply to marketing in a recession:

Amateur Hour Is Almost Over

Best wishes

Steve

I want to give thanks to a client of mine, Jamie Miller, for pointing out that the BBC had a programme about David Ogilvy last night.

I missed it, but I’ll watch it on bbci over the weekend.

Staying on the Ogilvy theme, Drayton Bird - who worked with Ogilvy and has the very enviable quote “Drayton Bird knows more about direct marketing than anyone else in the world” - David Ogilvy, on the cover of his books - mentioned me in his blog this week. 

As you can see, it wasn’t bigging me up, but for someone in my line of work, it’s a brush with greatness.

Steve