I have learned from many of the world’s top marketers over the years but the person who has influenced me more than anyone else is copywriting legend Drayton Bird.

In November 2003 the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton Bird one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

Advertising legend the late David Ogilvy said he “knows more about direct marketing than anyone in the world…”

What follows is a very interesting and poignant article written by Drayton which he has kindly given me permission to reproduce for you here.

Forty-odd years ago, I was creative director of an 80-man London advertising agency. By happy chance, many of our clients were not ordinary advertisers…

They were not likely to base their marketing decisions on what they liked or what their wives liked or what their friends at the golf club liked or whether a particular ad might win an award.

They had businesses that depended on results. They had to make their ads pay – or they’d go broke.

A massive challenge
Our biggest challenge was a company that sold washing machines door to door.

For you to understand what follows, i should explain something. At the time (you might even remember) people were buying a peculiar contraption called a twin-tub. Instead of having all the functions done in one chamber, there were two separate tubs.

My client believed that there was a market for the kind of machine he was selling – a sensible machine that did the whole lot (i.e., the kind of the machine we all use nowadays). So we set to work on the advertising for it.

Testing led to success
In a series of tests for my client’s machine, I discovered all sorts of things:

1. We had to make a price claim within the headline. ( “Costs less than a twin-tub.”)

2. We had to explain what the product was and what it did. (“This fully automatic washing machine washes, rinses, and spin-dries at the press of a button.”)

3. If we put people in the ad, response went up. First I tried a baby. That did well. But then someone said, “Maybe people worry about the baby being unattended.” So I put the proud parents in. That worked better. And when I tested a photograph instead of an illustration, it improved response by about 50%.

We managed to completely destroy my client’s main competitor. And I was delighted. Not just because we had won, but because we had done it with integrity.

A breakthrough
My greatest triumph for this client came from doing some advertising archaeology: reading Maxwell Sackheim’s classic book My First 60 Years in Advertising.

If you were to read this book today, you would learn from it, I promise you. I certainly did. Don’t make the mistake ( as many new marketers do) of thinking that the advertising business started yesterday or that  the old-timers were idiots.

Sackheim was one of the great direct-marketing pioneers. In his book, he told about tests he did at the turn of the 20^th century- more than 100 years ago. One of the companies he turned around through testing sold washing machines.

But although technology changes, people and their motivations don’t. Never forget that. He did the trick by making an unprecedented offer – that you could try the washing machine at home free.

This got me thinking. I knew my client’s sales force converted 40-45% of the leads we got into sales. I asked if any customers had ever complained about the machine and asked for a refund. Apparently this hardly ever happened.

So I sat down and wrote an ad that said: “Try this fully automated washing machine in your home for free for 7 days – no obligation.” Needless to say, the ad proved to be extremely successful.

What happened next? not good news
Around this time, I left the agency. But before leaving, I did something you should always do. I wrote down what I considered to be the factors that made our advertising work.

I told my successor that if he omitted any of them, the advertising would not work as well. If he omitted tow of them, it would work really badly. And if he omitted three, he might just as well start looking for another job. Well, the minute I left, everybody decided to get creative with the account. Instead of going back to what had worked, they tried wacky new ideas every week. Within a year the company was in trouble. In 18 months, it was broke. And the owner of the company – my intelligent, likeable client – killed himself.

This may seem a very extreme example of what can happen as a result of bad marketing, but it did.

People’s lives may depend on you
If you think I’m exaggerating when I suggest that marketing can be a matter of life and death, consider fundraising.

Every time I see some clever advertising done by a charity – advertising created to make the copywriter and art director pat themselves on the back instead of to raise money – I want to throw up. Their egos are costing lives.

Remember…marketing is a tool – a tool that you can choose to use the right way or the wrong way. And isn’t it nice to know when you do it right, it’s not only ethical… it’s profitable?

Drayton Bird

If you would like to hire Drayton Bird check out his website at www.draytonbird.com

Or if you would like to work with myself please do get in touch, you can do so by using our Contact Form.

Thanks for reading, I hope you found it as interesting as I did.

Neil Davies – Aida Marketing

What am I talking about? Wine of course and the question is Red or White? but only if you feel your time has been wasted.

If you are a relatively local business to ourselves, let’s say a 50 mile radius and you fancy taking your chances of being gifted a nice bottle of Red or White Wine, here’s the offer.

We are keen to talk to businesses who feel their marketing either online or offline could be doing better. But if after our visit you feel your time has been wasted and our advice has not at least given you some ideas, some food for thought, we’ll offer you a free bottle by way of thanking you for your time and apology for wasting it.

Call it a gimmick, an enticement and simply an apology if things weren’t what you are expecting.

Gimmicks in business can work well, if nothing else it can make you stand out in the crowd. In some areas of business there is so much cut throat competition these days you can often need something to make your prospect stop and at least look at what you have to offer them.

In these increasingly fast living times of instant gratification you only have two seconds, yes just two seconds to attract the attention of your would be customer. So you simply have to stand out.

Behind the ‘Improve Your Marketing’ button on this website you can learn several simple skills to genuinely increase the effectiveness of your marketing, whether that be your website or any of your offline marketing.

So if you do nothing else today make sure you add your name and your email address and you will receive lots of proven and potentially very profitable advice, all for free.

Getting back to our own gimmick, if you would like us to visit you and maybe even leave you with a bottle of rather nice wine, send us an email or give us a quick call and we can go from there.

Seriously though, we don’t expect to be handing over any wine, we fully expect if we come to visit you to give you more than enough proof that working with Aida Marketing could fill your wine rack/cellar many many times over.

To get in touch call the office on 01490 460239 or use the Contact Us page now. You have nothing to lose and possibly a hangover to gain.

Whatever the government figures might say I feel there is a long way to go before the UK sees good times again, and they may never be as good as they were a few years back.

Many economists are predicting a long hard slog for businesses in the UK and to me it stands to reason that in a world that has been rocked to the core by the financial crisis things are not going to get easier for a long time.

In fact even if your business is doing well now do you have marketing methods in place to keep business rolling in or is your business just ticking over?

The term ‘ticking over’ refers to an engine not driving but just ‘ticking over’. So is your business parked up at the traffic lights? and will it be able to respond when the lights turn green? or are your competitors ready to jump ahead of you when the time comes?

At Aida Marketing we speak to a lot of business owners who say the following: -

‘we’re doing ok right now’
‘we have got enough customers’
‘we are quite busy considering…’

But what if business dropped off a little? would those businesses and maybe yours too, start to suffer?

In business if you are not going forward then you are surely slipping backwards.

If your business is doing well then now is a great time to go through everything you do on the marketing side and make sure it is ready for a sustained battle. Can you improve in any way? If so do it know rather than when it is too late.

If you feel you could not improve, then you are either extremely good at what you do, and in that case, nice one, well done, good effort, or your are deluded.

A good way to look at the marketing side of your business is to get a big sheet of paper and write down each and everyone of your marketing activities and then do a flow chart and follow each activity through ensuring you have a good solid procedure in place in each case.

For example let’s say you advertise in a Newspaper or Magazine. You could have an arrow leading to website enquiries, which then leads on to an automated email response, which leads on to a series of email responses, which then leads on to further follow up email special offers.

This is just for those advert responses that come via your website, when a person calls you on the phone from your advert the process could be: -

You take the name and address of the enquirer, you send them a brochure with a covering letter this leads on to a follow up phone call 3-4 days later to enquire about the possibility of a sale, if they do not buy then a second letter follows offering an incentive to order or a special limited time price and so on.

Depending on your business, your piece of paper may need to be extended as you discover more and more arrows leading from each component of your marketing armoury.

If you need any help with your marketing flowchart I hope you will give us a chance to help you. Call today on 01490 460239 or use the contact form.

How would you like to have a website slave work for you for just £10 a month? The exact amount does depend on the exchange rate but for $49 a quarter if you haven’t done so already you can put a brilliant piece of software to work for you 24/7.

The virtual salesperson tool I am talking about is called an Autoresponder and the very best one I have found is this one Click Here.

Imagine your best sales person, which may well be you, putting down in an email your very best and persuasive sales pitch. Now imagine that same sales pitch being available to every single visitor to your website and those visitors receiving not one but a series of sales messages all sent on complete autopilot.

This is a powerful strategy and whether you realize it or not it is already being used very widely all over the Internet. If you are not using it, you are almost certainly at a big disadvantage compared to any of your competitors who are using it.

This powerful tool has to be about the best investment you can make for the online side of your business. If you want to find out more and even take a trial Click Here Now.

If you want to know more about the power of a good Autoresponder please feel free to email me or give me a call on 01490 460239.

My advice is simple, if you have a website but you don’t have an Autoresponder, get one! Get Your Autoresponder Here

12 years ago businesses were telling me that they didn’t need a website; now they all have one, lets’ hope they are more forward thinking about an Autoresponder.

Don’t miss out on using one of the Internet’s most powerful tools Click Here Now

Welcome to the Aida Marketing website if you need help with any aspect of your marketing you could do a lot worse than spending some time on our website.

Better still give us a call for an informal chat about how we could maybe improve your marketing and in turn increase your profits. Aida Marketing specializes in Direct Marketing, copywriting and Internet Marketing. We are based just outside of Corwen, North Wales and the company has been in existence since 1998.

The word ‘Marketing’ can sometimes be a little vague as to exactly what is meant by it. To us Marketing is simple and straight forward.

Marketing is offering your product or service to a business or individual and finding the most effective and profitable methods with which to achieve that goal.

Direct Marketing is all about knowing exactly what is working for you and what is not and in times like these few business owners have much money to waste.

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” John Wanamaker

In 1875 John Wanamaker opened what was said to be the first Department Store in Philadelphia he was a pioneer in the field of marketing. This now famous quote highlights the fact that it is very easy to lose track on what you spend on ‘Advertising’ and it is still happening today.

Unless you know that every pound of your marketing budget is paying its way, you cannot possibly know what to do to improve it and increase your profits.

For example, let’s say…

• 30% of your marketing budget goes on Newspaper and Magazine Advertising
• 25% goes on Radio Advertising
• 20% goes on Yellow Pages and Yell
• 10% goes on Pay Per Click
• 10% goes on brochures
• 5% goes on signage

In this example it is often difficult to track if your marketing pound is pulling its weight. However by employing some simple Direct Marketing techniques, in all bar one of the above you could easily find out what is working for you and more importantly what is not.

Incidentally the one that is really hard to track is the 5% of the budget spent on signage but even signage can sometimes be given the ‘direct’ treatment as it were.

Staying with the example, if you knew that the 30% of the budget you spent on Newspaper and Magazines advertising and the 20% you spend with Yell and Yellow Pages only produced 20% of your turnover, it would certainly be time to so some restructuring of your budget wouldn’t it?

If your company is based with a 40 mile radius of Corwen, North Wales, we will be delighted to visit you at your place of business for an informal chat about how we could maybe help you.

Some companies are pretty much on top of their Direct Marketing activities but we are yet to visit one where some serious improvements could not be made. No business is perfect, including ours, but the more Direct Marketing techniques you can use and improve, the more chance you have of increasing your turnover.

Contact Aida Marketing today on 01490 460239 and let’s have a chat to see if we can work together and make sure every pound you spend on marketing is made to work for you.

Contact Neil or Catherine on 01490 460239 or email neil@aida.co.uk