Marketing Rules!

Whenever we visit a potential new client, the first question to us is usually, “How do I attract new customers to my business?”

We usually tell our clients they may be competing in the wrong playing field. New customers are notoriously fickle. Half of them leave you after one purchase. New customers are rarely your best or most profitable customers. Existing customers count for more than 80% of the sales of a typical business.

Yet most businesses spend six times as much money on new customers as they do on existing customers. Although the grass may look much greener on the other side of the field, there is much more green to be made by sticking with the customers you know rather than the ones you wish you could attract.

When writing a headline, an ad, a newsletter, turn the focus from “I” – the business – to “you.”

This isn’t a new idea. Forty-eight years ago Ed McLean proved it in his famous subscription letter for Newsweek in which he used some version of the word “you” 58 times.

“Dear Reader,” the letter began. “If the list upon which I found your name is any indication, this is not the first - nor will it be the last - subscription letter you receive. Quite frankly, your education and income set you apart from the general population and make you a highly rated prospect for everything from magazines to mutual funds.”

For 15 years, no other Newsweek advertising letter was more successful in gaining new subscriptions than Ed McLean’s letter. After the magazine sent 107 million of McLean’s subscription letter, it was replaced with a new letter offering a free calculator. Free – another dynamic marketing word.

Now re-write your ad with “you” in mind and create your own marketing success!

P.S. Here is the full version of Ed McLean’s famous subscription letter.

Tom, the tie salesman was an annual visitor to our store. The problem: his selections were all polyester fabrics. All our ties were made of natural fabrics: cotton, silk, wool. So we never bought anything from Tom. One day, when he appeared, I said, ‘Tom, you know we don’t carry polyester ties. When are you going to stop coming to see us?”His answer: “It depends on which one of us dies first.”