Wesley Yuhn @ ACHDP.COM: 10/09/14

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Direct Response Advertising aka Dial-In-For-Dollars

Let’s get this straight from the start. Dial-in-for-dollars is not the same as “dialing for dollars”, although there are some similarities.

Direct response advertising requires that you find a way to connect to your target customer and ads that are opened by smartphones are the most successful methods of doing that.

As millennials become more sophisticated about how they achieve goals and acquire goods and services, business enterprises must increase their methods of reaching them. It’s a matter of knowing who your potential customer is and where you can find them.

For companies that primarily relied on television, radio and direct mail advertising, changing to digital marketing frightens them. Yet, the stalwarts of multi-national corporations who have been dragging their feet are discovering to their dismay that millennials really don’t watch that much television and pay for “ad-free” radio.

Some have reverted to direct mail marketing, sending coupons and brochures to every address in a specific zip code, hoping to trigger upticks in their company’s sales. For the record, their sales are continuously falling.

Understanding“Right Now” May Be “Tomorrow”

Perhaps you are familiar with what were called the “yell-and-sell” ads on television where you are told that you should buy this or that “right now”. In the digital version, there is no “yell” to sell style and “right now” is not necessarily “this instant”.

The entire purpose is to put your best foot forward and put a “buy” button in front of every potential customer in case they decide that “right now” is actually “right now”. Understanding how to use direct response marketing spares businesses from unrealistic expectations.

The time parameters and methods of approach must be different. According to Wesley Yuhn, here are some of the best:

Email marketing with a link to your store, a special sale or one particular product ranks number one right now
Click2Call advertising as cutting edge marketing is coming in at a strong second, especially if used through twitter
Video ads that are opt-in (and opt-out) are placed second for current approaches

There are new techniques that are to be released in the next 6-months that are showing a lot of promise, according to the beta testing results. Until then, using the above three methods are the most efficient and effective with proven strong ROI.

Switching to Digital Direct Response Advertising

Regardless of the size of your business and whether or not it caters to local, national or international customers, in order to gain and retain marketshare in today’s world you need to dive into digital marketing.

Wesley Yuhn at Media Oasis has helped many multi-national corporations understand the necessity of making the switch, developing budgets that allowed them to ease into the new methods of connecting with both B2B and B2C targeted demographics.

Mr. Yuhn explained that even in the age of instantaneous results from Google, it still takes time to gain a footing among all the competition.

For mom-and-pop local businesses, direct response is one of the fastest ways to push the big name companies over to the side in their own market area.

Still, it does require at least a one-year commitment to using multiple methods of marketing to your local area. Overall, it is cheaper than radio and television and reaches more people than the old-fashioned, traditional methods.

Bringing Home the Bacon with Merchant Cash Advance Lead Generation

Without good, quality leads no company can make a sale and while every businessman knows that this is a requirement to creating a stable business, most think that “viable leads” translate to “instantaneous sales”.

Merchant cash advance leads are no different than other leads that are generated to increase business. No matter where or how you obtain a lead, you still have to work to get that customer to try your service or product.

Can You Generate Enough Leads Without Buying Some?

Wesley Yuhn & ACHDP have client experiences that say generating sufficient leads to keep a business growing at the rate necessary to sustain it cannot be done by traditional methods. Cold calling and networking only goes so far.

Previous methods used in conjunction with social media and website data gathering cannot predict the viability of any given potential lead. Buying leads that are considered quality is the only method left.

Defining what “lead” means is important before you decide to purchase some. You should look for leads that have shown some tangible interest in your particular product or service for more than a month.

This would put the potential customer somewhere along the “ready to decide” line.

As any salesman would tell you, you throw enough dung at the wall and some will stick – and some won’t. Not every viable lead ends up doing business with “you”; some will go to your competition and some will be absolute duds in the end for the industry at large.

Which Has the Highest ROI: Advertising or Purchased Leads?

One comment that is heard by all merchant cash advance lead generation firms is from businessmen who are disappointed with the results they had last time they purchased leads swear they “will never buy leads again”.

Curiously, these same businessmen are the first to allocate exorbitant percentages of their budgets to advertising in traditional mainstream media and dribble some of the budget into internet marketing streams.

So, which has the best ROI? Actually, viable purchased leads result in 42% - 48% of confirmed contracts within a year.

What Methods Are Used to Acquire Leads?

There are several methods used to gather quality leads.

These are methods that you can do on your own but for those who wish to save time, purchasing merchant cash advance leads is the best option only because the big data collection is already in place with proper analysts on site.

Email Marketing – Data is collected from direct email campaigns according by industry
Call center marketing – Operators initiate calls to those merchants who have suggested an interest in the specific industry--either by surveys or email queries—verifying the interest
PPC campaigns – using big data methodologies, pay-per-click campaigns are scoured and data assembled that indicate specific interests over more than a month’s time period
Referrals – gathering referrals from within specific networks that are applicable to specific industries and call center verification of interest as a follow-up

Merchant cash advance leads are collections of small businesses that have already applied for or have an interest in cash advances to get them through a temporary rough spot-- either for operating costs or inventory purchases. Finding the company that best suits your target demographic is what the best lead generation teams do.

Wesley Yuhn: Using Mobile Advertising to Gain Competitive Edge

Everyone that owns a cell phone – at least in the U.S. – is familiar with some of the recent attempts at mobile advertising that show up on your phone. Not all mobile ads are successful, however.

For example, if anyone tries to talk you into advertising your business or a product that you sell in a mobile bannerad, run the other way.

On the other hand, mobile video ads are super successful with as much as a 120% ROI. And, that can be done as easily as creating a YouTube video.

In a recent interview, WesleyYuhn of Tampa explains that there are several very lucrative target markets for mobile advertising right now and others that are expected grow over the next two years.

Mr. Yuhn names local advertising as the type he would rate as the best investment for small businesses with less than 50 employees. After that, for companies with retail outlets in more than one state, video ads that target the zip codes of areas within a 100-mile radius.

For major enterprises that are either national or international, such as the film industry or automotive industry, national ad buys designed specifically for cell phones and mobile devices are the best option.

Small Business Local Mobile Ads

Why should a small operation whose customers are virtually all from the local area go to the expense of mobile advertising?

According to Google, 94% of smartphone users look for local information on their phone. That number alone should stop you in your tracks and make you start a search for a good mobile ad marketer.
One out of six people use a mobile device (even if they have a PC next to them) to help them make shopping decisions every single week. Furthermore, there is no one day that spikes higher data than any other which translated means that 1/6 of everyone that currently has their cell phone or tablet in their hand right this minute is looking for something to purchase right now.
According to eMarketer, local mobile searches – which are now at 85.9 Billion–will exceed desktop computer searches by the end of this year.
82 % of those who use mobile devices are influenced to make purchases by results found using local searches and 70% of all mobile searches are for either products or services.
81% of calls and/or purchases from mobile searches and mobile advertising occurs within 5-hours of seeing the ad!

One way to make sure that your mobile ad shows up on local area mobile devices is by including the name of your town or city in the ad. That one move alone will increase the number of people that will look at your ad by 200%, according to Media Post.

Final Thoughts …

If you are lucky enough to have someone in your family or in your employ or a marketing agent that has someone that can create ads in Spanish … now is the time to go for it!

The fastest growing market for all products in the U.S. in the last 3-years has been the U.S. Hispanic market and smart local businesses can gain an edge right now.

Where Have You Been All My Life--Remote Deposit Capture?

When the first reports of depositing checks over mobile devices reached the paper, admittedly there was a good deal of scepticism. But, as usual, with a bit of time, the convenience of this new breakthrough started to make a lot of sense.

There isn’t one business person in the entire world that hasn’t run into some unexpected problem in getting to the bank before it closed and having to wait until the next morning to get it deposited.

When a deposit includes checks that means it will be an additional day before it shows up as real money in your account. This is where remote deposit capture prevents unnecessary delays.

How Remote Deposit Capture Works

Being able to scan a check and deposit it to your bank account is not the only benefit of this new technology. As Wesley Yuhn of Tampa explained in a recent seminar, there are three types of remote deposit.

The first includes a software package and the ability to scan your check online, which is called a browser based deposit. The second is making deposits through an RDC system which provides its own scanner. The third is by taking a photo of the check and sending the picture of the check to your bank for deposit.

Browser based technology allows you to logon through any computer with a scanner and sign in with your authorization codes as provided. The disadvantage of this technology is that you cannot logon if the bank is not online at the time. This is when you can turn to your smartphone and make the deposit, in case you do not have an RDC program subscription.

RDC or remote deposit capture software systems works with your desktop computer, allowing you to scan in any number of checks and upload the whole batch at once. You don’t have to be connected to the internet to use it but this does mean that the information on the checks may remain on your hard drive – including account data.

Finally, mobile remote deposit capture is done by taking a picture from your smartphone of the front and back of the check and sending it to your bank. The disadvantages of this method are that it may not recognize handwritten checks and you can only transfer one check at a time. But, that beats the heck of not getting to the bank!

Unexpected Benefits of Remote Deposit Capture

If you choose an RDC program that has the added benefit of knowing instantly if a check is good or bad, if the account is open or closed and having the check become cash immediately after it enters your bank account, you stand to benefit more than one way. You could even accept electronic checks, deposited directly into your account 24/7/365.

This means that you can verify a check at the point of sale, instead of discovering that the customer’s account was short of funds three or ten days after you made the deposit. It also means your bank account won’t be charged a “return” fee for uncleared checks, either.

Remote deposit is accepted at nearly every bank and credit union in the nation. It helps you avoid getting to the bank late and saves the bank money in scanning checks.

Using Mobile Advertising to Gain Competitive Edge