there’s room for both one-step and two-step marketing, but be smart about how you use them.
by jassen bowman
the number of steps that a lead must take in order to receive your full marketing message is an important consideration when planning marketing campaigns and media purchases.
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generally, the more steps that a lead must take in order to enter your marketing funnel is going to increase the quality of your leads, but decrease the quantity.
for most marketing funnels, you want the process of becoming a prospect to be as simple and easy for the prospect as possible. the matter of one-step versus two-step marketing is largely a matter of media.
some media will be one-step, which means that you can fit your entire marketing message into one marketing piece. for example, if you are sending a 12-page sales letter via direct mail to a purchased list that perfectly matches your demographic criteria, then you can get your entire marketing message in that letter.
compare this to radio spots, classified advertising or sending postcards. these all have limited space for communicating your marketing message, and thus will generally require two-step marketing.
in two-step marketing, your first step needs to generate just enough interest that the lead takes an action to obtain your second (or even more) steps. the majority of your lead generation activities will involve two-step (or more) marketing systems.
for example, if you are using a classified ad, you really only have room for a headline and your call to action. then, you have to direct them somewhere else to obtain additional information. this could be a number of different things, such as a 24-hour recorded information line, a live answering service, a website, etc. somehow, they have to take an action in order to obtain additional information about your services. this is two-step marketing.
notice that one of the nice things about two-step marketing is that it inherently provides you with a trackable response mechanism. it usually also provides with you some basic piece of contact information for the lead, such as a phone number, email address or mailing address. this is powerful for followup purposes.
compare this to one-step marketing. if you are mailing a 12-page sales letter, then you have ample room to describe your entire product or service. you can get your entire message into that mail piece, and make your actual offer that attempts to sell your services.
a general rule of thumb is that one-step marketing will generate better qualified leads. two-step marketing, on the other hand, will generate a greater number of leads. this greater number of leads will require more extensive nurturing than those leads generated via one-step marketing.
so, there are pros and cons to each method. with one-step, you can set up a “fire and forget” situation and if people respond to your offer, then great. with two-step marketing, you get people who are somewhat interested in the initial offering, but then you have to put greater effort into converting those leads into genuine prospects. the great thing about that is you can then contact these people forever because you are building what we refer to as a response list of interested people.
lastly, but definitely important, is that two-step marketing tends to be cheaper on the front end. for example, a postcard is significantly cheaper to print and mail than a 12-page letter. you are talking as little as 42 cents versus a couple of dollars to print and mail that longer sales letter. also, with two-step marketing, you are expecting and anticipating more of a delayed response.
single-hit versus multi-hit marketing
the number of times that you make contact with somebody has a significant impact on the response rate that you obtain.
consider the last large product purchase you made, such as a new car. how many times did you see the same car ads, commercials and billboards before you finally went and test drove one?
even with lead generation-oriented, multi-step, direct response marketing, you’re seldom going to want to do one-hit marketing. one-hit marketing does have a place in your marketing arsenal, however, albeit infrequent.
for example, consider the mailing of a 20-page sales letter to the customer list of another company that has the identical ideal target market as you. for the sake of discussion, let’s say it’s a financial planner. if this financial planner is also going to write a cover letter of introduction from herself on your behalf, and include your 20-page sales letter, then this is a great one-hit mailing.
compare this to a lead generation campaign on linkedin to find prospective bookkeeping clients. you can do extensive targeting to make sure only your ideal target market sees your ads, but even then, a future prospect is most likely going to need to see your ad numerous times (called impressions) before he actually clicks on it. thus, you need to ensure your budget is large enough to accommodate multiple impressions per lead you’re trying to generate via such a campaign.
direct mail postcards provide a bit stronger illustration of the multi-hit concept. if mailing to a cold list, such as a tax lien list, new business formation list or new homebuyer list, then a single mailing to that list simply isn’t going to cut it. i always tells consulting clients that if you’re not going to budget for at least three contacts to any cold list for lead generation purposes, then don’t bother doing it at all.
when doing one-hit marketing, you always need to send your absolute best, proven offer. it needs to be the single most compelling thing ever created for marketing your services.
let me share with you an interesting piece of statistical trivia. numerous studies, conducted over the past several decades, continuously indicate that multi-hit marketing is far more effective than one-hit marketing. in aggregate these studies show that the response rate on your fifth contact will, on average, exceed your response rate on the first four contacts combined.
so if you are only hitting your target market once, then you are really doing yourself a disservice. yes, multi-hit marketing is more expensive to implement, and it requires a lot more forethought. when you hear people say, “oh, i tried this and that and it didn’t work,” chances are it is because they did it one time or in insignificant quantities, which is going to yield you the smallest possible response rate.
multi-hit marketing will always outsell single-hit marketing – hands down.
so, why would you ever do single-hit marketing? perfect example: special promotions.
perhaps you rented a mailing list or you are doing a joint venture partnership with someone to use their list and you are only being allowed to use it one time. this is pretty common when you rent a list from a mailing list broker or if you are doing a joint venture deal with another business. situations like this are when you most commonly use single-hit campaigns.