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(part 5 of 5)
Learning direct response marketing gets you out of person-to-person selling. The only reason to do it is because it lends itself to automation and leverage because you can reach a lot of people with one effort. The internet is the most perfect medium for direct response marketing ever because people can pay on the spot with a few clicks. The internet makes buying deliriously easy for consumers.
The problem is the internet has matured a bit and now the selling environment online has become competitive. There’s no easy or straightforward path to internet riches these days (sorry to burst your bubble), but if you educate yourself about proven direct marketing principles.
Just because the internet is the perfect medium for direct marketing doesn’t mean it’s the best. That’s because the barrier to entry with internet marketing is low so there’s a lot of competition. With direct mail, your costs will be higher but the competition tends to be sparser.
Most of the best copywriter/marketers are also intense students of human nature and salesmanship. We read widely because you really cannot learn to be a great direct marketer at school – you have to teach yourself.
If you bumble into internet marketing like I did, made some money and thought “Wow!”, good for you. What usually happens though is most people who do that have a tough time re-creating their early good fortune. The market will go shift on you and then the money you were making isn’t there anymore.
To be a steadily successful marketer you have to get it together on a bunch of different levels. It’s not all easy and you cannot learn it all fast. But if you keep up with your learning, you’ll gradually come to a better understanding of what’s going on with the marketplace and how to exploit opportunities that come along.
The post author, Loren Woirhaye writes sales copy and creates marketing systems for business clients who want to slash customer acquisition costs and position their businesses For 20%-30% sales growth in the next 12-18 months. He writes regularly about marketing and life at his Entrepreneur Blog.
