Buy Now E-Book

Rick Cesari

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 282

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Learn the secrets of direct response marketing with the man who created the George Foreman Grill campaign In today's highly competitive, global marketplace, businesses have to do more than just advertise their products. By taking advantage of the accountable advertising model that direct response has to offer, you can improve your bottom line, build brands, and develop lasting relationships with legions of satisfied customers. In Buy Now!, Rick Cesari reveals twenty-five years' worth of insights and methods, enabling you to make the most of direct response marketing in your business toolkit. Whether you're a business owner, executive, inventor, or marketer, Buy Now! gives you the secrets behind the successful campaigns that catapulted products into millions of homes. * Find out how to use direct response to create a "self-funding "marketing campaign * Learn the techniques to building offers that will get people to respond to your products * Use "high touch" direct response marketing to build brand equity and drive sales at retail * Find out why large companies like Johnson & Johnson and Valvoline are using these concepts for their consumer brands * Cesari has put more companies on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies than anyone else Buy Now! to launch your products and campaigns to new heights-and connect with customers as never before-with Cesari's market-leading insights.

Leseprobe

Contents

Prologue : The Secret to Our Success

Chapter 1 : Why “Buy Now”?

The Direct Response Solution

Carnival Beginnings

Why Direct Response?

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Chapter 2 : The Geeks Inherit the Earth

Why Is Direct Response a Great Value?

Why Doesn’t Everyone Try Direct Response?

What Is a Brand and Why Do I Need One?

Chapter 3 : They Don’t Teach This in College

The Pitch

My Story

From Real Estate to Infomercials

How to Make a Million

Chapter 4 : Juicing for Dollars

The Power of PR

Live Seminars

Chapter 5 : Building the Juiceman® Brand

Explosive Growth

Retail Strategy

Chapter 6 : Expanding the Brand

Validating “the Model”

Selling the Business

Chapter 7 : Sonicare®

Problem/Solution

Credibility: The Key to a Successful Infomercial

Rolling Out a Campaign

Chapter 8 : The Biggest Knockout in History

How a Champion Boxer and a Failed Taco Maker Created Sizzling Success

The Price of Celebrity

Grilling Up Some Big Numbers

Chapter 9 : OxiClean®

The Ubiquitous Billy Mays

The Rise of OxiClean

Unique Packaging Strategy

Chapter 10 : The Customer Is No Dummy

Positioning Your Product: The Next Niche

Get to Your Unique Selling Proposition

Chapter 11 : Channel Explosion

Direct Demographic Media Messaging

Messaging versus Demographic

What Are You Going to Grow Today?

The Intersection of the Internet

Chapter 12 : Free Advertising?

Is My Idea Direct-Response Worthy?

Why Are the COGs So Important?

Long Form or Short Form? That Is the Question

Chapter 13 : Anatomy of an Infomercial

Show Styles or Formats

Long-Form Elements

Show Outline

Chapter 14 : Offer Is King

Why Is Everything Priced at $19.95 and $39.95?

How Do Long Form and Short Form Work Together?

Chapter 15 : Beyond Television

Online Marketing Is Direct Response

The Backend of Direct Response

Chapter 16 : Conclusion

Brass Tacks: What Does This Cost?

Index

Praise for Buy Now

“We came to Cesari Direct with a lackluster infomercial and they turned it into one of the top 10, longest-running DRTV shows of its time. Whether it’s creating, filming, or marketing new ideas, Cesari Direct is who you want on your DRTV project.”

—Allan Gourlie

Owner, Quick N Brite

“Rick Cesari is someone who [has] changed my life forever. He had the vision and fortitude to help us pursue our dreams of teaching and reaching millions of people, which seemingly happened overnight. I recommend Rick to anyone looking to manifest their dreams through direct sales.”

—Jay Kordich

Father of Juicing andNew York Timesbest-selling Author ofThe Juiceman’s Power of Juicing

“1414 Dexter Avenue in Seattle, WA, is the home of a true, direct-response pioneer. Rick Cesari was the architect behind one of the biggest brands to emerge out of the infomercial world: The George Foreman Grill. Rick and DRTV Cesari Direct set the gold standard and demonstrated to the world that, when harnessed correctly, there are no limits to the reach and power of direct response.”

—Anthony Sullivan

Star of Discovery TV’sPitchmanand DRTV Producer

Copyright © 2011 by Rick Cesari. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Cesari, Rick, 1956-

Buy now : creative marketing that gets customers to respond to you and your product / Rick Cesari, Ron Lynch ; with Tom Kelly.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-470-88801-8 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-118-00787-7 (ebk)

ISBN 978-1-118-00788-4 (ebk)

ISBN 978-1-118-00789-1 (ebk)

1. Direct marketing. 2. Customer relations. I. Lynch, Ron, 1966- II. Kelly, Tom, 1950 Oct. 8- III. Title.

HF5415.126.C44 2011

658.8'72--dc22

2010037971

PROLOGUE

The Secret to Our Success

Entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 companies and small companies thinking big come to us every day and say, “Hey, what you did for OxiClean: I want that!” “What you did for the Juiceman Juicer, for the George Foreman Grill, for the Sonicare toothbrush. . . . We want a brand. We want that!”

The next thing they usually say is, “But I don’t want a yell-and-sell pitchman like Billy Mays!”

It’s funny that everybody who walks through our door makes some pretty universal assumptions about what goes on here. We don’t—assume, that is. That’s our first rule. Don’t assume. Don’t assume you know everything about anything. That’s the first sign of arrogance and the last sign of learning. Want to stop creativity? Tell people you know everything, and act like it’s the absolute fact. Our job is to walk into every situation with innocence, newness, and freshness, and that starts with ignorance. The same ignorance your next unassuming customer has when he or she finds you in the marketplace for the first time.

Together we have sold somewhere north of $2 billion worth of product and launched about 30 brands. We are proven to be some of the world’s best salesmen, but it is not because of what we say. It is because we know what to listen to.

Ever had a really good doctor? A really good coach? Or meet a really good salesperson? I bet they all had the same common thread. They ask questions—lots of questions. They listen. They observe. They observe even more. They ask other people what their experience has been around you. They align their observations and their learning with years of proven experience. They strategize. They plan. They communicate. They get your commitment and buy in to the result that will benefit you the most.

Then, the very last thing they do is . . . start.

That is what we do every day. It is the secret to our success.

Yes, we have had unparalleled success and good fortune. Often we have been in the right place at the right time. We have also had failures you’ve never heard about. We’ll share some here. Yet the truth is, we wouldn’t be a leader in the direct response (DR) marketing space based on just a good 25-year run of pure luck. Our expertise is not machismo, or a flag we plant for attention. It is, rather, time-tested, results-oriented, and statistically proven. Our kind of success is one that transfers from boardroom dialogue to actual spreadsheet success, real product sales, increased brand equity, and return on shareholder dividends. Like everything we seek to do, we keep a scorecard and count our success—not with gold trophies, New York gala dinners, or personality features in Adweek, but with units sold, customers satisfied, and dollars in the bank—for us and our clients. We’re not involved in advertising art. We are in the modern digital, multichannel, marketing business. We sell. We sell more for our clients around the clock, around the world.

While you we’re sleeping last night, we were busy selling.

Some of the greatest American companies today have walked through our doors. Our identity and reputation is based on a relatively simple set of principles and understandings that drive sales. In any company, sales is the healer of everything that ails you.

In the following pages, we will share the insights and knowledge we have developed over the years. This is not a book of relative philosophies on how to sell, how to manipulate the consumer, or how to get inside the head of the American housewife to sell another food processor. This is a book specifically on how we have charted a course to successfully create transactions through television, and how the radical shift of media channel explosion and the Internet threw that model on its ear. It’s also a down-and-dirty exposé of how we nearly lost it all and came back with new learning and an innovative arsenal of direct marketing techniques that not only has put us back on the map, but realistically pushed us many years ahead of both traditional DR marketers and conventional advertising agencies. We’ve been successfully working this new model for our clients for the past five years. We have proven it works by growing revenues for our clients and expanding specific markets and individual demographic verticals. Competitive media companies routinely bring their clients to us with confidence. How many companies in the world have had their competitors come—and pay a premium—to add your secret sauce to their recipe? It happens in our world all of the time. Why in the world would we let them? We learned the hard way the first three rules of partnerships:

1. Never count the other guy’s money.

2. Don’t set out to make a million dollars from anybody.

3. Definitely set out to make one dollar from everybody.

If that sounds like hyperbole, read this book. You’ll understand every bit of it before you’re done.

We have perfected the secret and science of deconstructing a product and rebuilding its identity to match a new innovative category.

We create a unique selling proposition, a USP, for any given product. Then we pave a multifaceted, multidimensional sales path that looks slightly different to each consumer segment that approaches the product in a variety of media channels. You cannot be all things to all people, yet we systematically show our clients how to be more than one necessity to many different customers, while maintaining a broad, cohesive brand message. The beauty is, we do it in the real world, building sales and funding advertising organically the whole way.

In the following pages, we’ll tell you how we use something called Direct Demographic Media Messaging to build brands with a Self-Funding Direct Response Campaign that crosses diverse media channels.

We’ll explain how any company—your company—can use these techniques to launch a product with a high probability of success.

We’ll explain why direct response sales never cannibalize retail store sales. In fact, they enhance them.

We’ll even tell you how we have employed strategies to make small companies look huge, huge companies look homespun, and corporate giants appear fleet-footed, friendly, and caring.

At the end of the day, just reading this book will make you a better marketer, a better businessperson, and a more valuable asset to your company, whether you have lunch in the boardroom or the break room.

Are you an entrepreneur who wants to launch your own product? This book is your personal manual, which we have created to help you grow and succeed. Please acknowledge us as having inspired you when you write your memoirs!

Are you a CEO or CMO who needs a peek under the hood of direct response to appear more knowledgeable in your next meeting, presentation, or selection of an agency? We are the CliffNotes for the course they don’t teach at Harvard. You need this book. Buy one for everybody on your team. You need people who are willing to think like leaders. They know less than you; they need it!

CHAPTER 1

Why “Buy Now”?

When choosing a name for this book it was important for us to grab your attention and communicate to you two things: One, you have a strong need for something. Two, we can fulfill it. That’s a hard thing to do in the brevity of a book cover, yet you did pick up the book with some degree of interest. We would like to think that we stacked the deck a little in our favor to get you to take that action. We did, in fact. In the context of this book, we’ll tell you how and why; better, we’ll teach you how to do it.