Why Small Businesses Succeed With Direct Response Marketing

Complacency is one of the big 3 C's stopping businesses from using direct response marketing and marketing themselves effectively. The other two are Comfort and Certainty.

We get complacent because things are ticking over OK as they are, and if we're not exactly rolling in clover, then we're not destitute, either.

And if we look around us at our competitors, then they're really no better or worse than we are. It's easy. So we get comfortable. We like to be comfortable... and we strongly resist anything that takes us outside our comfort zone.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), that's where the money's to be made.

If you stick with the crowd then you're going to be looking over the same ground they're looking over.

When you strike gold, they'll strike gold right along with you. If you want to find your own gold mine and have it all to yourself, then you need to strike upwards into the rocky terrain where no one else dares to go.

Find the gold there... and it's all yours. You won't mind the few who DO come along with you, because they'll be good company on the journey.

And certainty?

That's a real killer.

See, most business owners are so certain direct response marketing, with all its maverick and quirky strategies, tips and techniques, just isn't going to work for them.

But even if what they're going right now isn't working, either, then that doesn't matter... they somehow KNOW with complete certainty, despite all the empirical evidence around them to the contrary, it's not going to work.

It's too unprofessional. It's too friendly. It's too long. It's too ugly. No one will go for that.

Or masses of people will take advantage of my guarantee and rip me off.

Their attitude is....

Yes, I know what I'm doing isn't working and I need advice, but what I'd really like is approval. I want you to tell me my current strategies are OK, and if I just put in a bit more effort, something somewhere will magically change and suddenly I'm going to get a deluge of new customers and clients into my business and all this will seem like a particularly bad nightmare. But... can't you just help me a little bit?

Do something I like?

Do something comfortable?

And answer has to be "NO!". I encourage all business owners to look around them at the successful businesses out there and see what they're doing - and then see how you can apply what they're doing in YOUR business (but look below the surface - and watch what they DO, don't just listen to what they SAY).

Because if you keep doing what you've always done with your marketing, you'll keep getting broadly the same results you've always got; and if you take your lead from your competitors and do the same things they do... why, then you can expect broadly similar results to them (and let's remember some 80% of businesses go OUT of business within the first five years, so if you follow the herd, 4 times out of 5 you're going to follow it right over that cliff).

Believe me, complacency, comfort, and certainty are three things you do NOT want in your business.