5,169 passages, newest first · 164 ms
All You Have To Do Is Observe!
Observe the ads that keep repeating. Observe the size of the mailing lists available for rental on different product areas. Observe the direct mail pieces that keep getting mailed out month after month and sometimes year after year.
More tomorrow.
I Love You and Good Luck!
Dad
Go To Chapter 8
# Boron - Chapter 08
The Boron Letters - Chapter 8
Tuesday, 10:52 a.m.
June 19, 1984
Dear Bond,
Another digression. I am tired. I was upset after last night's visit plus my roommate was snoring like a buzzsaw last night. (Poetic justice)
Anyway, what should a person do when he is tired? Should he stay on his program or should he rest? It all depends. I am skipping lunch today and I am writing this on my lunch hour. If it turns out, that in my opinion, I am just spinning my wheels, I will stop writing and start resting.
The same applies to my road work which I will start a couple hours from now. You see, the way I look at it, if you halt your forward progress every time you get a little tired or irritable or whatever; then you are suffering from a lack of discipline. On the other hand, if you keep pushing when you…
It's not macho, it's stupid.
So what I do when, like today, I don't feel like working, is that I start working anyway and I pay attention to what signals my brain and body is sending me. Then, after working a while, if I honestly do start to feel worse I will stop and quit. However, if…
As someone once said, "Most of the world's work is done by people who didn't feel much like getting out of bed."
So true.
By the way, I am having coffee and V-8 Juice. I am a big fan of V-8. It's cheap, it only has 36 calories, and, when you pour it over a…
Give it a try. It's a nice alternative once in a while to eating or having a soft drink.
Now, back to marketing. You know, one of the remarks I hear all the time when I ask someone what they think of one of my ads goes something like this: "Oh, I'm not a good person to ask…
Really. Mail order sales run into the billions of dollars each year but rarely will you run into anyone who admits to being a mail order buyer.
Personally, I think all these non-mail order buyers are the same people who don't read the "National Enquirer."
Once again, it must be all those Martian invaders.
What I am doing here is redundantly making a point and I am going to be even more redundant. Here's another little glimpse into one of the vagaries of human behavior: Once I asked at class at USC how many of them preferred to go to plays more than movies…
Lots of people raised their hands.
"Bull!" I said to them. "You are all fooling yourselves and I'm going to prove it." I then asked for a show of hands of those people who had seen a play in the last week or so.
No hands.
I then asked to see the hands of people who had seen a movie in the last week or so.
Many hands.
Bond, this phenomena is common. All of us, including thee and me, have a slightly shrewd idea of ourselves. We often try to convince others and ourselves that we are something we are not, something we…
Therefore, truth, my good son, can be determined NOT by how people use their mouth but rather how they use their wallet.
I want to burn this message into your mind. Be skeptical of what people say. Be skeptical of surveys. Of questionnaires. Instead, believe in numbers. For example, if everybody you talk with says they like plays more than…
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck - guess what? It's probably a duck!
So keep reading the "SRDS" book. Keep looking at hot mail order publications and repeat mail order ads. Get yourself on as many mail order lists as possible. (Get a P.O. Box.) Watch the offers you receive…
Keep your finger on the pulse of the industry. Stay aware. Keep awake to the possibilities of overlooked marketing opportunities. After a while you will develop a sixth sense.
Here's a true story that illustrates what I am trying to get across. It has long been my belief that a lot of money can be made by making offers…
Well, guess what? For a long time I have been wishing there was a way to get a list of pregnant women. Now there is! While looking through the "SRDS" I discovered that now you can rent 120,000 new names of pregnant mothers every month. Oh boy! Well, I got myself a hold of an M.D. who is…
This is exciting. Let's talk numbers. I plan to sell the report for $19.95 + $2.75 postage and handling. (Total $22.70) My fulfillment costs will probably be (including the 10% I pay the doctor) about $5.00. This means that every sale will yield a $15.00 contribution to overhead. Now, let's assume I'll get…
Hot damn! I'm cooking now! I'm glad I decided not to rest.
Onward. Let's see now $485.00 profit per M times 120M equals a total profit of $58,200.
EVERY MONTH!
P.S. I'm sitting here with Bobby B and I have just discovered how to get Paul Harvey on my new radio. What I…
# Boron - Chapter 09
The Boron Letters - Chapter 9
Wednesday, 10:30 a.m.
June 20, 1984
Dear Bond,
Well, kiddo, I don't exactly know what I'm going to write about today so what I am going to do is just keep putting words down on paper until I start to get some direction.
It occurs to me that I need to tell you that just because I told you how to pick the very best lists doesn't mean that the less responsive lists are not valuable. Never forget the coat-of-arms promotion. That was mailed (and very successfully) to names taken from the white pages of the telephone book.
I guess what I want to start on today is how to think about developing a mail order campaign. And, as I said earlier, from now on a good part of your working life should be spent reading the "SRDS" list book and newspapers and magazines that carry a lot of MO advertising.