March 2024 Insiders Call:
Direct Response, Your Secret Weapon

It’s the single-most 
valuable skill 
in business…

The ability to make money show up.  To get the phone to ring.  To bring a customer in the door.  To generate sales, and profits.

And specifically, to do it on repeat, in a measurable and scalable way.

Once you figure out how to generate this essential business result, you can basically write your own ticket.

You’re qualified for ample opportunities in sales, marketing, entrepreneurship, business ownership, and beyond, because… 

Nothing happens in business 
until someone buys.

If a business doesn’t have customers, there’s no business.  And all the other jobs in the business are moot unless and until there’s a transaction taking place.

Of course, salespeople can make sales.  But selling 1-to-1 is limited.

What’s far more valuable, because it’s scalable, is the ability to sell 1-to-many.  “Selling, multiplied through media.”  Moving the sales process forward not through individual effort, but through pretty much any kind of media (online, offline, audiovisual, text, etc., etc.).

This, at its core, is the skill of direct response.

(There are also ample markets that are often thought of as “direct response markets.”  Let’s distinguish those from this key skill set.  When I refer to direct response here, I’m referring to the skill of selling through media, NOT the industries which are often rife with questionable claims from untrustworthy marketers.)

The skill of direct response
is a secret weapon
you can use in any business…

David Ogilvy created the largest, most successful Madison Avenue brand and image ad agency in the world (while he was its chairman).

He once wrote an ad for Ogilvy & Mather with the headline:

The advertising agency with
the secret weapon.

In it, he’s quoted…

“For forty years, I have been a voice crying in the wilderness, trying to get my fellow advertising practitioners to take direct response seriously.  Direct response was my first love.  And later, my secret weapon.”

And Ogilvy was neither the first nor last direct response advertiser to take the skill beyond “the direct response world.”

The direct response markets can be great places to make money as a marketer, as a copywriter, as an entrepreneur.

But they are a tiny fraction of all the money flowing around out there in the world.

There is HUGE opportunity
beyond the little worlds of the
“direct response markets”...

Take just the financial services and investing world.

The world’s largest financial publishing company did no more than about $2 billion at its peak (and is off a bit from that today, as far as I understand).

The total financial services market, according to the US Department of Commerce, is about $1.7 trillion — about 1,000X that!

The same applies in industry after industry.

Where there is a “direct response market,” the non-direct response businesses serving the same core needs are many times bigger.

And there are market after market where there is no “direct response market” serving the need, but where billions and billions in transaction volume occur every year.

All of these markets and the businesses in them SCREAM opportunity, if you have direct response as YOUR secret weapon.

They might NOT KNOW direct response,
but they NEED direct response!

One client is one of the highest-paid physical therapists in the country.

How?  Because he uses direct response to generate high-paying, highly-motivated potential patients…  And easily converts them into extended treatment plans for his cash practice.

His ads have driven so many new patients, he literally had to stop advertising.

And he’s not an A-list copywriter.

He’s a good marketer, but he would tell you he’s far from the best.

He simply figured out how to get new patients in through the door, consistently, with direct response…

And it became his secret weapon!

Another client does the same for financial advisors, using direct response that looks pretty far off from the stock-picker promos you might think of when you think of financial direct response.

The skill of direct response has been used in pretty much every industry…

Often by one or a small handful of renegade marketers who proceed to dominate their corner of the market, with this secret weapon.

The secret weapon comes from knowing
a handful of direct response principles…

When you know these, you can basically step into any business in a viable market, with a viable offer, and clean up.

I have a friend who works in IT services, primarily for BIG government contracts.

I could tell you exactly how to make direct response work there.

I’ve also sold direct to consumer products, information, services, etc.

I can also tell you exactly how to make direct response work there.

Because the principles are universal.  It’s just a matter of seeing what’s going on behind the scenes that makes it work, and adapting that to the specific situation in front of you.

You apply the PRINCIPLES of direct response, and generate results.

This is more valuable today
than ever before…

Here’s the thing…

It used to be EASY to not care about results, as an advertiser.

You could claim brand impression and image was what mattered most…

And that if the advertiser only ran for enough impressions, the customers would come.

But in today’s media landscape, almost anything you do is trackable.

And, because tracking happens almost automatically in so many cases, there’s an expectation of tracking…

And with tracking, results to justify the expense and effort!

Which means that advertising merely to build a brand is revealed for the farce it is…

While the marketers actually able to generate results are recognized for their valuable contribution.

This trend will only continue.

While privacy concerns make it a bumpy road, the road is still headed decidedly in the direction of more tracking, more attribution, more expectation of measurable results.

Which almost makes understanding direct response ESSENTIAL for the future of advertising and marketing.

WARNING: 
Wannabes will NOT be impressed.

I’ve been around this world long enough to notice an interesting trend.

When someone is new and they’re basically a wannabe and they don’t know anything and they’ve never gotten any real results…

They just want TACTICS: “Put this one thing on your website to double your sales!  Guaranteed to work — will boggle your mind!”

And while some of those claims are based on one person’s actual experience…

They almost never live up to the hype.

But the consummate professionals who’ve generated untold millions or even billions in results almost always ignore those tactics.

Instead, they focus on (and you should focus on) the core principles and strategies, and adapting them to the current situation.

One last thing: 
A side note about AI.

There’s been a ton of hype about artificial intelligence (AI) doing a lot of the work now.

And the belief or at least hope that if I just figure out the right AI prompt, I’ll get rich.

Sorry bub, it doesn’t quite work that way.

AI (just like any other tool) is only as strong as the person who wields it.  And while it can be used to accomplish some pretty amazing things, an old lesson still holds true…

“Garbage in, garbage out.”

If you want to be able to use AI to do the grunt work, great.

But you still gotta be the one doing the thinking, and directing it towards what work to do.

Which means that even if you’ve got AI executing tactically, the quality of your principles and strategy will dictate what you’re getting out and putting into the market.

Regardless of who’s doing the grunt work, it’s the direct response thinking that’s your secret weapon.

Here’s how you get access to 
Direct Response, Your Secret Weapon

Direct Response, Your Secret Weapon: How to get more leads, clients, sales, and profits for any business is the March 2024 Monthly Insiders Call for BTMSinsiders members.

This exclusive benefit of membership — included as part of the BTMSinsiders All-Access Pass — allows you to participate in the training live, plus gives you access to all past Insiders Calls recordings.