One of the most effective weapons in your marketing arsenal is urgency. Urgency makes your prospective customer feel that he has to take action and respond to your offer immediately. Your job is to give him a good reason to do it.

Why is this so important? Some people read a sales letter and set it aside. “I’ll come back to this later,” they think. This happens even if they are truly interested in the product you’re selling. But what usually happens is that they forget about the sales letter… and never order. They miss out on a product that could help them make money or get healthier or become a better writer. And you miss out on a sale.

Some products have built-in urgency. Let’s say you’re selling a conference. The conference takes place on August 23rd, so, naturally, people know that they have to sign up before that date. Or perhaps you’re selling a special Q&A session with one of your experts, but the expert has put a cap of 50 on the number of people who can attend. Interested folks know that they need to sign up right away, or they won’t get in.

If there’s no urgency inherent in the product, you can create your own with what Jessica Kurrle, ETR’s Marketing Manager, calls the “Fast-Response Bonus.”

Here’s how it works…

Think about your potential prospects’ secondary core desires and what could fulfill them. Make a list of five of these and identify the best one. That’s a great topic for your bonus – something your prospects REALLY want. Now, you can quickly create an excellent special report on that topic, or maybe even repurpose material you already have that addresses this need.

That becomes your Fast-Response Bonus.

And this is how you use it to create urgency – and get your prospects to click the order button immediately: “Limited offer today only. The first 50 people who order will get a free copy of…”

[Ed. Note: The more you know about simple but effective direct-marketing principles, the more sales you'll make. Learn how you can get your hands on dozens more techniques from two direct-marketing masters right here.]

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 11:18 am and is filed under Marketing/Internet, Wealth Building .