Writer Points Marketers in the Right Direction

What do Reader’s Digest, JC Penney, American Express and a majority of the Fortune 500 companies, including IBM and General Motors, have in common?

They all profit from the use of direct marketing to generate business.

But small business people and entrepreneurs can also benefit by using direct marketing techniques, says Mark S. Bacon of Mission Viejo, author of a new book that shows just how to go about doing it.

“Do-It-Yourself Direct Marketing: Secrets for Small Business” (John Wiley & Sons; $24.95) covers a variety of issues involved with direct marketing--from mail order and telemarketing to radio and television, newsletters and print advertising.

“One of the things I emphasize throughout the book is how to do direct marketing for small businesses on a limited budget,” said Bacon, 43, former director of marketing for the Orange County Federal Credit Union. He has been a self-employed marketing consultant specializing in direct marketing for the past seven years.

There are ways to save money on things such as postage and printing and renting mailing lists, Bacon said.

“Ideally, you want to rent only as many names as you need to get the number of responses you need to be profitable,” he said. “The way you do that is to be very precise in your targeting: If you’re selling sports car parts, you only mail it to people who own sports cars.”

Indeed, according to Bacon, some direct mail is opened by 90% of its recipients.

“I really think direct marketing is ideally suited for small businesses, but they need to get beyond what I call the murky myths of direct marketing--that, for example, direct mail is junk mail,” he said. “In fact, it’s not junk mail. It’s only junk mail if it’s sent to the wrong person and that’s a result of poor targeting.”

Another myth, Bacon said, “is people think that direct marketing is unsuitable for professionals or business consultants. They tend to think of direct marketing in terms of Veg-o-matics or Ginsu knives or some of those kinds of direct marketing products.”

In fact, he said, “you can create any image you want through direct marketing for yourself or your company and I have seen good direct marketing for attorneys, chiropractors, accountants. . . . It can be done in a very dignified way. In direct marketing, you control everything.”

The bottom line for a small business, Bacon said, “is direct marketing’s flexibility: They can mail exactly what they want to mail--they can use postcards, five-page letters, big glossy catalogues--and they can mail whatever quantities they can afford to.”

Bacon himself has benefited from direct marketing, which he defines as “accountable advertising. In other words, it’s advertising that seeks a direct, measurable response.”

He used it to sell his first book, “Write Like the Pros” (John Wily & Sons), a 1988 how-to business writing book which was selected by Book-of-the-Month and Fortune Books clubs.

“I identified the publishers who publish books like that and I essentially put together a direct mail package,” he said.

John Wily & Sons, which specializes in business and professional books, also has used direct marketing to sell “Do-It-Yourself Direct Marketing.”

“They put out a catalogue of their new business titles that goes to more than 300,000 businesses,” he said, “and my book was the number-two seller in the catalogue. So the book is being sold both by direct marketing and through bookstores. That’s another thing my book talks about: how direct marketing can work in conjunction with retail.”

Actually, it’s amazing just what can be accomplished through direct marketing.

Just ask Bacon, who even used direct marketing to propose to his wife, Anne.

“It’s true,” he said with a laugh. “I used a series of three messages that were included in flowers I sent to her over a three-day period. And then for the final one I had delivered to her by special messenger a plaque on which I had engraved my proposal.”

It worked, he said. He and his wife have been married since 1982.