It’s your lucky day: You’ve found a great product to promote.

Maybe it’s a client’s product. Maybe it’s your own.

And because your discovery possesses the six qualities direct-response homeruns share, you suspect you just might be looking at a grand slam:

• This product delivers benefits your prospects already want.
• It conveys these rational and emotional benefits in superior ways.
• You’ve got proof elements out the wazzoo.
• It’s a screamin’ deal.
• The offer makes buying this product, from you, today a no-brainer.
• Downstream sales are a slam-dunk.

In fact, this product is so good, you’d feel guilty if you failed to nag your sweet, sainted old grammy until she bought it. Better yet, you’d joyfully buy it and give it to her yourself.

Congratulations, my friend. You’ve got a product that can make your reputation, your career, and your fortune.

… So where do you start?

Well, you’d sit right down and write the ultimate promotion for your ultimate product, right?

Well, not exactly. In fact, not by a long shot.

Instead of ETR’s “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach, that would be “Fire! Ready? Aim.”

First, you need to find a marketing model that’s the best fit for your product.

“So what the heck is a marketing model?” you ask.

Simple. Your marketing model describes the strategy – the step-by-step process – you’re going to use to:

1. Find your best prospects …

2. Turn those prospects into customers in the most cost-effective way…

3. And, ultimately, cause your customers to:

• Buy from you more often …
• Spend more with you on each purchase, and …
• Keep buying from you longer. Hopefully, forever.

Get that right and you’re on your way. But if you screw it up, the best product ever invented and the most brilliant sales copy ever written won’t save your sorry butt.

I can’t be there with you the whole way. But I will give you a great starting point for getting a great marketing model …

Steal it.

Find a company that’s marketing a product similar to yours … that sells at a price point similar to yours … to prospects like yours … and shamelessly duplicate THEIR marketing model.

I mean, why re-invent the wheel? There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of successful companies in every niche market you can name. The most successful ones have spent years and millions of dollars in slow, painful trial-and-error testing to find their optimal prospect/media/messaging/offer mix.

The conclusions they’ve drawn from all that priceless marketing data are easy to see. You just have to watch what they’re doing.

When I begin working with a new client in a new niche, the first thing I want to know is, “What are the names of the five most successful companies in this niche?”

Once I have those names, the questions come fast and furious: “What kinds of prospects are they targeting? What media are they using? What kinds of offers are they making? What price points am I seeing most often? What kinds of sales copy and formats are they using to attract new customers?”

I grab the appropriate SRDS publication (usually the latest Direct Marketing List Source) and look up my target companies. I search for clues on how fast they’re growing (by studying the number of hotline names they have available) … how they generate their customers … and what their price points are.

I check Target Marketing’s Who’s Mailing What to see if they have any samples of my targets’ promotions on file.

I buy something from the companies I’m studying, suspecting that they’ll be sending their new customer acquisition promos to their customer file. And I buy something from their main competitors, hoping my target companies will rent those lists and I’ll be able to see the promotions they use to attract new customers.

I visit the popular websites in my client’s market niche to see if my target companies are placing banner ads on those sites or sponsoring those e-zines. I click every link that I suspect may lead me to their squeeze pages, landing pages, or websites. If they have an e-zine, I subscribe. If their website invites me to register, I register.

In short, I do everything I can to make sure my target companies have my phone number … my street address … and my e-mail address so I can see as much of what they’re doing as possible.

Then, once I have a clear picture of how my target companies attract new customers, I simply “borrow” (okay, “steal”) a marketing model from the one that seems to be the most successful.

At this stage, I don’t want to innovate. I just want to help my client do things as well as the largest, most successful company in his niche. Once we’re doing that, it’s time to test new stuff. But initially, being as good as the best is good enough.

“Borrowing” marketing models from competitors is just one of the strategies I’ll be talking about at Early to Rise’s upcoming Info-Marketing Bootcamp this November. Also on the stage will be a dozen of the top Internet marketers working today. They’re not just respected in their fields – social media, search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, and more – they’re making millions for themselves and their clients each month.

You can find out all about who’ll be joining me at Bootcamp here.

P.S. Master copywriter Clayton Makepeace publishes the highly acclaimed e-zine The Total Package to help business owners and copywriters accelerate their sales and profits. Claim your 4 free moneymaking e-books – bursting with tips, tricks, and tactics that’ll skyrocket your response – at MakepeaceTotalPackage.com.

More from Michael Masterson…

Uncle Sam: Subsidizing a Junk Food Nation, Part 1

When I was in New York recently, I read in The Times that NYC’s poorest citizens are much fatter than those of means – with double the rate of obesity in the poorest neighborhoods.

I asked Jon Herring, one of ETR’s health experts, what he thought of this. Here’s what he said …

“The poorest New Yorkers, like those in the rest of the country, are fat because of what they eat. And what they eat is a direct result of government subsidies. The USDA subsidizes a select few food crops with more than $15 billion a year. Which crops get the money? Sugar, wheat, rice, corn, and soybeans. In other words, the government has made the main ingredients in junk food and sweetened drinks (corn syrup) artificially cheap.”

So how much government money goes to farmers who grow healthful fruits and vegetables? I’ll tell you tomorrow.

A One-Hit Wonder Falls Off the Charts

Crocs. Your grandma might have a pair. Maybe the nurse at your doctor’s office too. Seems these brightly colored shoes/sandals are on everyone’s feet. In fact, the company sold 100 million pairs in seven years. And they had to keep ramping up production to meet demand. They spent big time on manufacturing plants and distribution centers.

Then came the recession.

The company posted a $185.1 million loss last year. It had to cut nearly 2,000 jobs. Its stock price plummeted 76 percent. All this just two years after posting a $168.2 million profit. And just three years after selling $200 million in shares to the public.

The moral of the story? Be skeptical of one-hit wonder companies. If their plan for the future is to keep riding the same fad, they are doomed for a quick decline.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 4:00 am and is filed under Daily Issues, Marketing/Internet .