The paper is always folded over so that you see only the bit that’s above the fold. That’s where you see the attention-catching headline that makes you want to buy the newspaper.

This concept also applies to direct mail. It is actually a very important aspect of direct mail because the information that you most want people to see needs to appear at the top third of the paper. In this case, “above the fold” refers to the piece of a letter or a mailing that people read before they have unfolded it. You want that information to be compelling enough to make them want to unfold that paper and continue reading.

Keep this concept of “above the fold” in mind as you create and develop your squeeze pages, too.

On a webpage, “above the fold” basically refers to what people can see in their browser.

If someone has a huge monitor they will be able to see a big part of your webpage at one time. But more and more people use laptops and smaller devices with smaller screens, including Blackberries and phones, to view webpages.

This means that the area above the fold is getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

You need as much of the relevant information about your business as possible to appear above the fold. Your opt-in box – the specific box where people put in their name and their email address – should be right at the top of your page.

For example, if you are giving away a free CD or a free report, you should insert the opt-in box above the fold.

In the past, people would scroll down pages on a website looking for information, but it’s a fact that the attention span online is getting shorter and shorter. Fewer people scroll through pages anymore. If you click on a page and don’t immediately see what you’re looking for, how long would you stay on that page?

Everything relevant should appear at the top so people don’t need to scroll down.

Make certain that all of your most powerful and motivating information, your most compelling headline, your best bullet, your best offer, and your best call to action appear above the fold wherever possible. Catch people’s attention right away and make them want to buy what you’re offering.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Though it might sound a bit cliché, everyone, even those of you who feel encumbered by a limited budget or a relatively small business volume, can do that.  Whether you’re sending out 10 pieces of mail per week, or 1,000 pieces, you can not only entice people to open your mail, but you can keep their attention with a creative, lumpy insert.

Maybe you have, at times, felt intimidated by the “big boys” – the companies who have thousands or millions of dollars to spend on direct mailing.  But, despite what you might have come to believe about these huge corporations, you actually have an advantage over them for creative direct mailing.  If you have an inventive idea for lumpy mail, you don’t have to sit in countless meetings with marketing committees, pitching your idea, enduring criticism, and perhaps, ultimately, having your idea shot down.  You are your final decision maker.

When you’re creative with your lump mail insert, you can spur your recipients to action.  Here are few examples to stimulate your imagination:

• If you’re intent on helping companies and individuals to find their own hidden treasures, you might consider including an old-fashioned scrolled treasure map with your promotional letter.

• If you consider a message to be of the utmost importance, you might want to stuff it into a bottle before mailing it.

• If you’re hoping to entice inactive customers to fall back in love with your company, you might insert a boomerang with a message like, “Boomerangs always come back, don’t they?”

• If your company has a mascot, you can have a lovable likeness of him or her reproduced as a lump.

• If your company helps people to find resources, for instance, you might want to include an ornamental needle-in-a-haystack.

• A complete comprehensive service might be accompanied by a small, silver platter and the statement, “I’ll give you everything you need for start-up on a silver platter.”

• Fortune cookies can be purchased, complete with customized messages inside, that deal specifically with your purpose or promotion.

If you’re stumped for lump ideas, there are resources that can help.  Two examples are www.LumpyMail.com and www.ImpactProductsMarketing.com.  There, you’ll find lots of creative ideas for lumps.  Maybe you want to announce a promotion, invite inactive customers back to the fold, broadcast an upcoming campaign, publicize a grand opening, or announce a new product or service.

Simply using bulk to create a piece of lumpy mail will, indeed, prompt people to open the envelope, but if you want to stay with them for longer than it takes to empty your promotional pen of ink, or to use that pad of custom sticky notes, you’ll want to put some innovative thought into your lumpy insert.

Make your mail memorable with creative lumps…because when your lump is specific to your purpose, and unlike any other lump, it deems you memorable, worthy of the call or the click, and the investment.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

It’s not flat; there’s no way that it could have traveled seamlessly through a postage meter.  It contains more than paper.  It’s got depth!  She tries to determine what’s inside by squeezing the envelope in the area of the biggest bulge.  With that, she hears the unmistakable sound of a duck, “Quack!”  What in the world?…

Of course, the office employee opens the lumpy envelope first.  In it, she finds a cute-as-a-button rubber duck that quacks every time she squeezes him.  The letter that accompanies the duck is from an insurance company that is conducting a promotion for new customers.  The little quacking duck is a perfect likeness of the insurance company’s mascot.

The woman gives the duck a prominent place on her desk.  He makes her smile.  She makes him quack when coworkers walk past, making them smile.  When she knocks him over with a paperweight or telephone receiver, she sees the name and phone number of the insurance company on his bottom.  And most importantly (for the insurance company), she remembers their business name every time she glances at the duck, prompting her to not only recommend the insurance company to her boss, but to her company’s own clients.

The power of lumpy mail is two-fold:

• First, lumpy mail begs to be opened.  Can you imagine yourself throwing away a piece of lumpy mail?  Surely, you’d be wondering what was in there, and might even resort to fishing it back out of the trash to satisfy your curiosity.

• Secondly, the item in the envelope that’s responsible for its lumpiness will stay with your target for as long as they choose, effectively giving your company’s name a front seat in that target’s mind.

Many times, business owners focus on the letter that’s enclosed in their direct mail envelopes; when, in fact, their focus would be better placed on actually getting that envelope opened.  And it doesn’t matter who opens it…even if a gatekeeper at a large corporation is intrigued enough to set to it with a letter opener, your correspondence has a greater chance of completing its voyage to the decision maker’s desk.

Emails cost nothing to send.  But with direct mail, you’re paying for paper, envelopes, ink, and postage.  Unless people are opening those direct mailings, your spending is in vain.  Even with a conservative mailing list, you can spend hundreds, or thousands, of dollars in the blink of an eye.

Because you’re investing so much more in direct mail, high response rates are more than desirable.  Direct mail experts site 1 or 2 percent response rates to direct mailings as satisfactory, even impressive.  But if you want extraordinary response rates to your direct mailings, a lumpy mail endeavor could result in response rates as high as 25 percent.  That means that, even if your budget is so tight that you can only afford to send out 10 pieces of lumpy mail, you can expect a response from 2 or 3 of your recipients.

So lump it up!  Mix up the mail bag.  Make mail interesting again.  Maybe you haven’t the budget for big bulk mailing…but there’s nothing stopping an honest shot at some lucrative lumpiness.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

This is where good research pays off. Once you learn where your target prospects congregate, you can find ways to leverage relationships other people have with them.

For example, if they’ve paid to subscribe to a magazine, there’s a relationship established with that publication. Someone else might already be selling their products regularly to the same group of people.  Many members of your target audience may also belong to the same trade associations.

The point is, any way you might be able to connect with your audience through an existing connection should be added to your list. Media contacts, possible joint venture partners, associations, and online discussion groups are all valuable assets to be leveraged while growing your list.

If this sounds like a lot of legwork, there’s some good news. Once you begin to find these places where your target audience congregates, a snowball effect will kick in. You’ll talk to one or two people, and then learn of more and more connections. Rather than painstakingly tracking down each place, your new prospects will begin to show them to you.

Find common connections between the people in a specific market. Look for books and publications which give lists of trade magazines or associations.

Ways to Reach Your Market
Remember, the key is to gather information on your list that allows you to reach your market. That means not starting from scratch trying to sell to your audience if there’s another way in.

You might choose to advertise in that magazine your target audience likes to read, or submit some editorials. As you research your list make notes about who accepts advertising, articles or editorials.

A joint venture with a company already selling products to your intended market is another good way to break in. Look online at companies you might once have considered your competitors. If your products complement theirs, a joint venture could benefit you both.

Another possibility is to offer to give talks to the groups you find your market tends to join. Keep notes on who needs guest speakers, how often they meet and whether you can sell from the back of the room.

Again, all this will take some research on your part. Even if someone else could tell you exactly where members of your target audience hang out, they don’t know your product like you do, so do your own homework.

A final tip about reaching your audience: don’t waste your money trying to reach your market through large publications. The expense to advertise in national, regional or even large local publications is enormous, and you’ll be paying for circulation beyond your audience. Target niche magazines and newsletters, instead; your return will be much more profitable.

Devote some time to researching where your target market hangs out and keep your eyes open for opportunities to leverage existing relationships. Expanding your list of marketing prospects will become much easier once you multiply your impact through these avenues.

Specializing your approach will definitely help your conversion rate. It may make you nervous to think of narrowing your options, but it’s the first step in attracting more long-term clients. Here’s one more benefit to narrowing down your focus: each time you specialize a little more, you’re able to charge more for your services.

Step Two: Understand What They Really Want Emotionally and Logically
Once you’ve identified your best target audience, it’s time to learn what they really, really want. What do they dream of accomplishing? What keeps them awake at night?

There’s no point in marketing your products if you aren’t sure what your target market wants. Here’s a key concept: people buy what they want, not what you think they need. Get to know your market and you’ll find making sales much easier.

Step Three: Package What You’re Offering Toward Desired End Results
Because you understand your market so well, you know the desired end result they’d like to achieve. The closer you get to that desired end result, the better you’ll do in business. Package your products toward that result, so that you’re always meeting the needs of your clients.

When you’re really tuned into the needs of your target market, you’ll experience the rush of business running smoothly. You’ll stop having to push and shove to make sales and see how it all flows together—the needs of a group of people, and products packaged to meet those needs. What’s the takeaway? People don’t buy because they understand something, they buy because they feel understood.

Step Four: Create an Irresistible Offer
What, exactly, are you delivering with your products, and what must the client give in return? To be effective in marketing, you need to be able to answer that question in one sentence. Here’s an example: “Give me ten minutes per day and I’ll give you the body you’ve always wanted.”

You want to state your offer in a compelling way that has people raising their hands to say “I want that!” Work on developing your one-sentence offer; it will form the basis of all your other marketing.

Step Five: Go Find Your Target Audience
Where do the people most likely to buy your products hang out? Do they congregate on online discussion forums? What publications do they read? Which organizations do they join?

If you’ve done good market research in the previous steps, you’ll already know the answers. Now, go out there and make your irresistible offer to them in ads, talks, comments on forums and whatever way you can that makes them affordably reachable.

Step Six: Practice Great Follow-up
You’ve done your research, created great products, packaged them to meet the needs of your target audience, and made your offer where they congregate. To maximize all the hard work you’ve already done, you must follow-up consistently.

What’s the best way to make sure that happens? By automating and systematizing as much of your follow-up as possible. Here’s the rule: Always follow up, and find ways to make it automatic.

Step Seven: Close the Sale
This one gets stepped around so often, and that’s a shame, because it’s essential if you want to succeed. Learn how to ask for their business. For some companies, that might mean a face-to-face meeting, and for many others, the entire sales process can be automated. Unless money changes hands, you’re not really in business.

Whichever way you chose to close, you must give your prospects enough information that they can buy with confidence. Automate that information-sharing as much as you can, with webpages, sales letters and brochures, so that you can expand your impact in less time.

Step Eight: Make Additional Offers
The bulk of your profits are going to be made from additional sales to satisfied customers. You’ve already built a relationship with them and they know you can be trusted. Create products you can offer them as you continue to listen and hear what solutions they need.

These long-term clients give your business stability, and you’re not out chasing new clients constantly. Learning to make additional offers will make the difference in whether your business lasts.

Following the eight steps puts you on the path to attracting new clients and earning more income. Keep working through them until you’ve perfected your products and your offer. Automate as many of your processes as you can, and don’t forget to offer additional products to satisfied customers. By doing so, you’ll be on the road to the income you want.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

“I already know that.”
“I can’t see how that applies to my business.”

Both will put a lid on your income.

You’ve likely uttered them at some point. They may seem like perfectly reasonable statements, but they are not. They are blinders that will prevent you from seeing new opportunities to grow your business and increase your revenue.

It is so important that you keep an open mind about new ideas for your business. It is important not to dismiss something simply because you’ve heard it before, or think it doesn’t apply to you.

In business, repetition is a valuable tool. For instance, in my business. I use the same principles, the same processes over and over. And I get results, over and over.

When you hear or read about something you’ve come across before, you may be tempted to say, “I already know that.” But there is a big difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing it, as dancers say, in the muscle.

So instead of tossing the idea away, challenge yourself a bit. Try the “Dr. Phil test” – ask yourself, “How is it working for me?”

If you are producing the results that you want, only then may you can say you truly know something. But, if your external results aren’t quite where you want them to be, then there is something that, at some level, you still don’t know.

You may grasp the idea intellectually, but you may not have it fully integrated and absorbed. There is always a chance that you can learn more about something that you think you already know. Keep your mind open.

The second problem statement is related to keeping an open mind. Just because you can’t readily see how an idea applies to your business, doesn’t mean that it isn’t applicable to your business.

For example, you might hear about a great marketing technique for selling to individual clients, but think, “I can see what you’re doing, but I’m selling to corporates, so I can’t see how it will work for me.”

Or if you hear about a product idea, you think, “What I’m offering is more intangible. It’s not a hard offering that’s going to help people make more money. So how do I map that over to my business? I can’t see how it would work.”

Even if you can’t immediately see how it applies to your business, it doesn’t mean that it’s not applicable. It just means that you can’t see it yet.

To get beyond this, start paying attention to the difference between the external form and the underlying structure of the new idea.

E-mail marketing may not be the right tool for your type of business. But if you look beyond the external form of the idea – the e-mail – and consider the underlying reason behind it – reaching more clients simultaneously – you might find that it leads you to the tool that is right for you.

You need to start looking beyond the face value of things. You need to start looking beneath the surface. Delve into the underlying reason behind an idea.

When you do this, you will find that there is more to an idea than you already know. And you may find a way to employ a new or different technique to increase your income.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

It’s very tempting for you to give up too soon. I realize that, especially right now. It would have been really easy for me to give up too, when I wasn’t getting the sales I wanted for a recent event. It would have been really easy for me to say, “Okay, it’s tougher this year than it has been to fill events. I give up.”

That would have been so wrong for me to do, on so many levels. How could I have that kind of attitude? I simply can’t allow for that when I am trying to inspire and educate you and the rest of my clients. That’s not good enough.

In addition to that, what does it say about me if I’m not doing every single thing possible to ensure that the right people are in that room at that event? I know that it’s life transforming, and it’s my responsibility to make sure that every person that’s got any question about that event, receives an answer.

Although this took some planning and organizing because I was traveling with my children to Belfast at the time, I made the two hours for the phone calls that needed making.

I added an extra follow-up step and made it happen because it was important. It’s important that I walk the talk. It was important that I do every single thing to make sure the people who could benefit from that event benefited from it.

And that’s what I want and expect from you. When you think about what you’re selling, if you truly believe that what you’re offering is so great and can make such a difference, you should stop at nothing to make sure that the people who most want and need it are using it. Leave no grey area – inform them, educate them and get them everything they need.

Don’t make excuses to give up. It’s easy enough to create reasons for giving up too soon. You’re too cool for school; you don’t want to be seen as needy; you don’t want to be pushy. Except, those reasons aren’t reasons. They’re excuses – obstacles that you are putting in your own way.

If you’ve made the connection with prospective clients, presented your offering, followed up a couple of times – what more can you do?

Well, you could drop back, you could stop going that extra mile, which effectively says you don’t believe enough in yourself and your business to keep trying. My gut tells me that you won’t do that. That’s not good enough for you.

Be inspired and motivated to follow up, and do it more thoroughly. Think about the different ways that you might be able to follow up and how you could add another step to your follow-up sequence.

Stop at nothing when it comes to reaching out to your prospects.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Breaking the “Find New Customers” Cycle
It’s difficult to watch someone work very hard to build a business, only to leave the additional income from repeat business on the table. That’s what happens when you’re constantly chasing new customers and making one-time sales to them, rather than offering new products and services to existing clients.

If you think about it, it’s actually easier to sell a product to a satisfied client, isn’t it? So it doesn’t make sense to get caught in the cycle of “go out and find more clients and sell them the same old product.” In order to boost your income considerably, you must, instead, begin creating new products that meet the needs of your existing clients.

Once you make up your mind to pursue additional business with existing clients, you can step off the never-ending cycle of chasing new clients and watch your income move up at the same time.

Learning What Your Clients Need
You may be asking yourself, “But how do I know what my existing clients need?” You can actually use the same process that you used to create your original products. Here are some helpful steps:

• Look at your client base as a target market.
• What questions are those existing clients asking?
• What additional needs continue to be unmet after they buy your product?
• What add-on products complement your original offerings?
• How could your product line be expanded naturally to meet more needs?

Here’s an example that illustrates how a one-product company can create add-on sales to its existing customers. A hypnotherapist specializes in smoking cessation hypnosis. She has lots of clients who come to her for that service, but once they stop smoking, she doesn’t ever see them again. She’s spending a lot of time and money in marketing to attract new clients.

Because her existing clients know her smoking cessation sessions work, they’re the perfect prospects for additional services. By listening to her current clients’ concerns, she learns many of them are ready to take on new challenges in life, now that they’ve quit smoking. She offers to help with visualization sessions so they can focus on their new goals.

By expanding how she sees her existing client base, and focuses on their needs, she has opened the door to a whole new level of income. You can do the same thing. If necessary, take some time off from marketing to new target audiences and turn your complete focus on your existing customer base.

Develop the habit of listening to your clients’ questions and determining what needs still exist. Turn those needs into products that fill them. Not only will your clients be grateful, you’ll also see your income multiply substantially.

You will always have to do some marketing to bring in new clients, but there’s far less pressure when you’re making repeat sales of new products to existing clients. Once you stop chasing new clients and focus on building more products to help your customer base, your whole business will turn around. Learn how to mine the gold of repeat sales to build a strong, sustainable business and a solid base of satisfied customers.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

8.  Look at the “click-through rates.” If you are advertising through a list, your email might include details or a teaser that clients can click on. What percentage of people will actually click on it?  Ask list owners if any stats are available. If they can’t, you can easily track the click-through rate yourself to determine if you want to continue advertising on that list in the future.

In my own research, I’ve found that I typically get a 15% to 25% click-through rate. If 100 people open my emails, 15 to 25 are going to actually land on the page.

You can see how quickly that list of 100,000 can be drastically reduced in terms of the number of people who end up signing on with you.

9.  Make sure that your squeeze page is totally aligned with the message that you are advertising. It’s important that there are no inconsistencies or mismatches that would cause you to lose opt-ins right at the point of a sale.

10.  Be emotionally resilient. If you are serious about lead generation, one thing is certain. You will sometimes end up doing advertising that does not produce any results. As disappointing as that will be, you must push yourself to move past it. Having a balanced approach to spending your money will protect your emotional investment in your business, should your financial investment in advertising take a hit. Recognize that some things don’t work.

11. Look for different advertising opportunities. If you allow yourself to get hung up on the money you view as “lost” because an ad didn’t produce any leads, you’ll find it difficult to get back up and advertise again. The next time an opportunity presents itself, you’ll talk yourself out of it. That’s the worst possible thing that could happen. It is through advertising that you are going to reach all of the people who need to know about what you can offer.

If you can run ads that get you a $3-$5 return for every dollar you spend, those are your real cash cows. A guaranteed return like that takes time to find, as well as some trial and error. Take care of the things that you can: your content, where and how you advertise, and tracking your results so you can make well-informed decisions.

When you do hit upon advertising that brings you some significant return, be sure to evaluate it. Are there similar advertising opportunities available elsewhere that can bring you that kind of return?

Last, but far from least, remember to protect your mindset when you do start to pay for advertising. Don’t bet your child’s college tuition fund until you’ve tested what will work for you.

Yes, your priorities. Because what’s essentially happening is that your desire not to look pushy or appear needy is actually getting prioritized ahead of your desire to make sales and make money. You are putting that first as your main concern.

Now, this is fine. It’s perfectly okay for you to have your priorities in that order – as long as you recognize that the results you ultimately achieve will be a reflection of the order of your priorities.

You can look at this from a couple of different angles. You can say, this is who I am, this is how I am, and it’s not going to change.  If this is what you make up your mind to do, your belief in your product or service will take you only so far. I’m not saying you won’t achieve success, but without promoting what you believe in, you are responsible for limiting the results you could achieve.

I recognize that sales is not everyone’s strong suit. It can be intimidating to try to convince someone to try something, to do something. People don’t like to feel pressured, and you don’t want to be the one pressuring them. That can’t possibly be good for your business – or can it?

Instead of merely accepting these self-imposed limitations, try viewing this from a different angle.

Think of it this way. If a friend or colleague knew of some groundbreaking thing, or something really special that would make a huge difference in your life, and they tried to tell you about it once, but you were too busy to listen, how would you feel later? Wouldn’t you say to them, “Why didn’t you tell me about that? Why didn’t you call me again about it? If I had only known about it, I’d have done it.”  You would feel like you’d missed out, whether it was a sale on a great product, a ticket to an amazing event or an opportunity for a life-changing service.

Just because past clients or current prospects haven’t followed up with you doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve lost interest.

It might mean that their circumstances have changed and what you were originally offering is no longer relevant. But you might also have changed or expanded your offering. If you don’t tell them – seek them out, be assertive and tell them – they won’t know, so they won’t buy.

More often than not, past prospects haven’t changed their mind about you; more likely they’ve forgotten about you because they just got busy with other things. You are not pestering them by getting in contact with them. You are actually serving them and helping them. You’re saving them a job.

Try telling yourself that in order to do the very best for your customers and your business, you have to put your personal priorities on the back burner. Instead of the never-ending struggle to bypass the sales conversation, address it head-on. Do it for your clients. Do it for your business. The one most likely to gain the greatest benefit from doing it, is yourself.