By the Ocean
Cloudy 74 Degrees
6:05 a.m.
When I started my freelance copywriting career, my “client getting” system was simple:
I sent out (terrible) letters about how great I was to newsletter publishers across the country.
I was just starting, so I had no idea there might be better and more strategic ways to generate attraction. Instead, I just showed up with a letter that talked about my prospect’s least favorite topic: ME.
But since miracles DO happen, I still attracted attention.
One of the companies on the list was a supplement company that had been around for decades.
After speaking with the owner, I found out his budget for copywriters every year was about $600K. He had worked with some very big names.
So why did he give little ol’ me any attention? Especially when I showed up with what was probably the dumbest marketing “strategy” available?
Because I got my letter read. I hand addressed all of the envelopes. During our first conversation, he explained the only reason the letter even made it past his secretary was because she thought it was personal mail.
The $.41 it cost me to send that letter eventually transformed into about $14K.
What did I learn from this experience?
- Consistency works. (That wasn’t the first letter I sent. I sent letters to the same list every month.)
- Not taking shortcuts gets you noticed.
My monthly letters were my first experiments with the magic of the media platform. Yes, they were an extremely crude version. Not very strategic. Poorly executed. But I got the consistency part right. Keep showing up in ways that aren’t annoying.
If you want to build trust and credibility in the marketplace, create a body of work that can speak for you. That can sell for you. That can attract the people who resonate with what you’re about.
It’s a long game. And you generally don’t see results overnight.
But if you look at the way most business owners are running, towards fast and easy…and you know that what MOST people are doing is generally wrong, then perhaps going the OTHER way is the smart thing to do?
Standing out is the natural byproduct of doing things other people aren’t willing to do.