Erica Stritch, the General Manager at RainToday, had the following comments in today’s Rainmaker Report.
I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I won’t. Here’s what she wrote:
Direct Mail and E-Mail Make A Powerful 1-2 Punch
A recent article in DM News titled, Study: DM, e-mail blend ups spend, cites new research conducted by Royal Mail, a British postal service, that revealed nearly seven in ten people believe direct mail strongly support the success of online advertising.
The Royal Mail research found that:
- Direct mail and digital campaigns can increase spending by 25%.
- More than half of those surveyed prefer to be contacted by some combination of direct mail and online communications.
- Web users think direct mail is more personal, professional, and gives a better impression than online communications.
- Eight in ten people believe that e-mail is best for communicating brief messages.
While the research primarily focused on consumer spending, we can apply most of its lessons to B2B professional services.
First, in my experience, integrated communications work better than singular tactics. Prospects respond differently to different offers and media. Some delete all emails, others trash direct mail, and yet others need to see your offer several times before they act.
Second, professional services firms face long sales cycles. It often takes many touches, over time, to engage a prospect. By mixing up the media and continuously sending prospects value-based communications, you stay in front of your prospects and position yourself as a thought leader.
Third, as the research points out, direct mail and email give very different impressions of your brand. Direct mail is considered more professional and personal, while email works well to deliver brief messages. Professional services marketing and sales require a direct, one-to-one approach. Direct mail can provide a professional and personal touch, while email can reinforce your message.
Lastly, most professional services providers must connect with busy, high-level buyers bombarded with marketing messages. The combination of direct mail and email can get you through.
For your next campaign, follow in the footsteps of consumer marketers – consider pairing direct mail with email. You may see your response increase by 25% or more.
More and more around town and around the web, I’ve seen consultants and professionals fascinated with the prospect of self-publishing their books, and disgruntled with the prospect of working with traditional business book publishers.
Avoiding the hassle of writing a book proposal, selling it to a publisher, hitting content deadlines, losing control over the artwork and title of the book…all of that sounds like a good idea. Plus, as we all know, publishers don’t do a thing for you when it comes to PR. Might as well just take the book to a print shop, take it to market a year earlier, and make more money from each copy of the book, right?
Not always. Not most of the time, I’m guessing. It all depends on your goals and your book publishing history.
Most consultants and professional service providers that I know write books (or, at least, talk about writing books) so they can build their brands, get more speaking engagements, become recognized thought leaders, raise fees, and grow their practices and companies.
The question I have is, “Does self-publishing your book help you with the brand…speaking engagements…thought leadership…fee raising?”
Having researched and published The Business Impact of Writing a Book, and having spent a lot of time in the industry talking to authors, my instincts say that self-publishing may actually do more harm than good. I’ve spoken with numerous folks who’ve actually derided self-published consultants. “Didn’t have the stomach for the real book publishing process? Quality of your work not good enough to make it through a real editor? Don’t have enough followers to interest a real publisher in you or your work?”
Now, for those big-name consultants who have already published a book (or five) with the big boys, they won’t have this problem. Assuming they have a following, they might even sell a nice pile of books.
Most self-published authors won’t sell a nice pile of books, and won’t get the benefit that selling a lot of books can get them. In our research, authors who self-published sold around 2,000 copies of their books. Those that published with a major business book publisher (e.g. McGraw Hill, John Wiley, AMACOM, Berret-Koehler, Jossey-Bass, Penguin, Henry Holt, Adams Media, Dearborn, etc.) sold on average more like 12,000 to 14,000 copies.
How much does volume of copies sold matter? Some food for thought data. Said the report:
- Overall Effect: Authors who reported a “positive” overall effect on their practices sold a median number (at the 50th percentile) of 5,000 copies of their first book, whereas those who reported an “extremely positive” overall effect on their practices sold a median number of 10,000 copies of their first book.
- Raising Fees: Authors who reported a “strong influence” on their ability to raise their fees sold a median number of 4,000 copies of their first book, whereas those who reported a “very strong influence” on their ability to raise fees sold a median number of 20,000 copies of their first book.
- Generating New Clients: Authors who reported that publishing books had “some / a little / no influence” on their ability to generate new clients sold a median number of 9,000 copies of their books, whereas those that reported publishing books had a “very strong / strong” influence sold a median number of 20,000 copies of their books.
- Generating Better Speaking Engagements: Authors who reported that publishing books had a “very strong influence” on their ability to generate better speaking engagements sold a median number of 25,000 books over their careers, whereas those who reported a “strong influence” sold a median number of 8,200.
It’s clear that selling 4-5,000 copies of your book can bring measurable success to your practice. However, what I found even more impressive only emerged after analyzing all the measures of success in the study… to reach the strongest positive impact on their practices, the authors seem to have to cross two critical hurdles when it comes to the numbers of books they’ve sold:
- Hurdle 1 = 10,000 Copies: Authors that sold over 10,000 copies of their books by and large reported strong positive effects on their businesses as a result of publishing books. This group of folks seemed very pleased with the return on their investments in effort, time, and money for writing and publishing books.
- Hurdle 2 = 20,000 Copies: Authors that sold over 20,000 copies of their books reported phenomenally positive effects on their businesses. In most categories where we studied this data, the results achieved by authors that sold over 20,000 copies of their books were far and away stronger than those that sold less than 20,000 copies.
The virtues of business blogging are well established. (Google the topic. You should find plenty.) So why won’t more service business leaders blog?
- Blog posts take sustained energy to write.
- Blogging takes marketing support (such as online linking, keyword optimization, technology, etc.) to get the full effect.
- Blogging takes time to take hold.
- Leaders still don’t understand (much as you might tell them) why they should blog.
- The blogger has to have something to say.
- The blogger has to have the boldness to actually say it.
- Legal departments have to get out of the way.
- Service business decision making takes too much time. Setting up the focus of the blog, who the bloggers will be, and what the topics the bloggers should post about would take forever at most firms.
- The decision to spend brain time blogging means that brain time won’t be spent on something else that someone else is advocating for. Leaders often hear the following request, “Boss, we need your time to focus more on <insert strategy here>.” There’s only so much time.
- Service firm marketing strategy is generally behind the rest of the business world. Blogging is still too new.
All of these: tall orders to overcome.
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