
Tested direct marketing basics boils down to three fundamentals.
Follow these rules and you will be light years ahead of marketers who ignore them.
Furthermore, any product or service can be marketed using these tested direct marketing basics.
Test everything on a small scale.
Keep what works
Discard what does not work.
In this way you will avoid costly advertising and marketing mistakes.
If you want to put this kind of hard-boiled direct marketing basics to work in your business a book for you is SCIENTIFIC ADVERTISING.
I've been a big fan of this book for years...and recommend it to all my Marketing Direct subscribers.
Among the highlights:
- Test Advertising Campaigns: "Almost any (advertising) question can be answered cheaply, quickly and finally by a test campaign. And that's they way to answer them --- not by arguments around a table."
- Just Salesmanship:"Advertising is salesmanship. Treat it like a salesman. Force it to justify itself".
- Good Business:"...most national advertising is done without justification. It is merely presumed to pay. A little test might show a way to multiply returns."
- Things Too Costly: "Many things are possible in advertising which are too costly to attempt. That is another reason why every project and method should be weighed and determined by a known scale of cost and result."
- Letter Writing;"Letters to inquirers, follow-up letters, whenever possible they should be tested. Where that is not possible they should be based on knowledge based on tests."
- Offer Service:" Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interests or your profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and a costly mistake in advertising."
Bottom Line: The book is a gold mine of tested direct marketing basics that will change the way you think and act about marketing your business regardless of where you decided to run your ads.

Direct Marketing outreach services for your business.
Keeping your active customers engaged so they don't drift away while also finding new clients is something we all have to do but seems there's never enough hours in the day to get all this done.
You're probably re-tooling how you do this now that COVID-19 has moved the goal posts making what worked before a bit bumpy, to say the least.
Whatever your COVID-19 game plan I thought you might be interested in some ways my Marketing Direct outreach services might help you along the way.
Just know it requires hands-on follow-up to show your prospects and also your clients you're up-to-speed and maybe ahead of your competitors during this post COVID-19 turnaround time we are all going through.
Too many people think it's simply contacting a prospect and setting appointments by explaining what you do and how you can help them.
That last part --- explaining how you can help a prospect --- takes way more than just a single phone call. And it's what effective phone prospecting and list-building are all about --- a relationship-building process that takes time.
Yes,it's a process and a far cry from one call appointment setting.
I'm here to help and you can call or email me anytime if you'd like to kick around some ideas for working together.
One thing for sure --- remote work is a game changer.
Brings outsourcing vs. doing the work in house with your own employees into focus.
Which works best?
Depends on your employees and getting the right people if you outsource.
Cost factors are key --- and this report I found helpful.
How much does an employee cost you?
https://web.mit.edu/e-club/hadzima/how-much-does-an-employee-cost.html
Try these tips:
Some things learned the hard way.

Which is how I learned list-building for direct outreach prospecting.
Had been told by many to buy a list and get busy making calls.
Trouble was I ended up buying the wrong lists.
Either too many outdated contacts or companies really not suited for my particular offers.
So I went to on-line directories --- trade journals and the like.
But what a tedious process ---
Digging out contact data like phone numbers and who best to reach out to at each particular location.
Hours on the web doing this and you can end up with maybe five or six decent data profiles for your call list.
Fast forward to a process I've learned which seems to work just fine and eliminates most all the headaches (and wasted $$) I've just mentioned.