Icing the Cake
Have you ever seen my famous “Icing the Cake” letter sequence that brings in new fitness clients like nothing else ever created??
If so, you know the first letter in the sequence gets a picture of you at the top icing a cake.
It represents the theme or the “hook” of the letter. And it gets attention.
Getting attention is the first and most important step in marketing.
When I first wrote that sequence for Forrest Walden and his (then) partner, Aaron Crocker, they thought I was nuts.
Aaron told me (in his Alabama drawl), “You gotta be yankin’ my chain. I’m supposed to send people a picture of ME icing a cake?!!!”
Yup.
And to his credit, Aaron wanted new clients more than he wanted to protect his ego. He mailed the letter to 750 upscale homes near his studio and brought in 19 new clients worth over $30K on the front, many, many thousands more on the back. A staggering ROI.
To the best of my knowledge, Icing has been mailed over three million times since I wrote it in late 2002. That makes it one of the most successful direct mail letters…ever.
There’s a BIG lesson in that for you:
==> Be willing to do what’s necessary to get attention.
Interesting pictures representing the hook in your marketing piece are one of the best ways.
Recently, I created a new campaign for our NPE V.I.P. Members that uses a picture of the fit biz owner standing on one leg, holding the other foot in his hand and grimacing, as if a bowling ball had just been dropped on his foot.
In another piece I’m working on, the fit biz owner will be splayed out on the street curb. The hook of the piece is “kick me to the curb.”
How often do you see stuff like that in YOUR mail?
Like I said, this kind of marketing gets attention, and that’s one of the main reasons it works.
How do I come up with these ideas, themes and hooks?
I read a lot. I look at other marketing pieces with a critical eye. I take ideas I like from a variety of sources and see how I can massage them into effective marketing pieces.
Another one I’ve done is a marketing sequence to men called “the gunfight” campaign.
It features a picture of Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood) pointing a gun at the reader. The theme is “if you don’t do something about your fitness, you’re staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.”
It pushes a lot of emotional buttons.
So this should give you some ideas of your own. And once you have an idea, a theme, a hook, then all you have to do is write the letter, then a second and third letter (you always want to sequence), and then test the campaign by renting a list and mailing.
Maybe it will work. If it doesn’t, then you look at how you can tweak the campaign and re-test it. Or just trash it altogether and write another one. Rinse and repeat.
If you don’t have time (or the desire) to do all that stuff, then you can hand it off to me, a proven producer, and I’ll give you all the marketing tools you need, already done for you, ready to go, ready to bring you more clients.
Including the famous “Icing the Cake” letter sequence.
But I’m not just talking about letters. I’ll give you free standing inserts (FSI), space advertisements, postcards, press releases, web site landing pages, autoresponder sequences, reports and guides you can use as lead gen “bait” and a lot more. Basically, everything you need to keep your marketing machine running on high octane fuel, bringing you more clients.
And I’ll do that for you in three different categories:
1. Regular fitness training (1-on-1, small group)
2. Nutrition (the sexiest front end)
3. Bootcamp (all the tools you need to fill your camp starting now)
But I’ll only give you those tools if your “area” is not already taken. Because we provide these tools and the coaching and strategy on how to use them just to our “area-exclusive” V.I.P. Members.
That way you get a marketing “monopoly” in your area - a “competition-free zone” so to speak.
And that’s how you dominate your local marketplace.
We’re opening up V.I.P. for a limited time and accepting a limited number of applications right now.
If you’re interested in exploring this further, first take a look to see if your area is already taken by going here:
Sincerely,
Eric Ruth
P.S. Go take a look at the map to see if your area is already taken:
Tags: attention, fitness, marketing, theme