In my particular case, I have a small fax machine that uses 49-foot rolls. I cannot buy
any larger rolls because of my fax machine's capacity. Each roll costs $2.39. If I receive
50 faxes of nothing but money making opportunities, naturally I won't read any of them and
become angry if another one is sent.
But the person sending the fax has no idea this is happening. In fact, they believe that
they are marketing correctly. Why? Because they have been taught by everyone else that
"fax blasting" is the way to make money. They are told it is a cheaper and more
effective way compared to direct mail. Boy are these people WRONG!
Some marketing experts feel that you have to push your product or service down people's
throats to make a sale. This is ridiculous! If someone is forced to buy something just to
get rid of you, you will never get any repeat business from this person. In fact, you and
your company will leave a bad taste in this customer's mouth and you'll never be able to
build a solid business if you do this to all your customers.
What the marketing experts don't tell the people who are instructed to fax blast is that
you are NOT supposed to send 5, 10 and 15 pages all at one time. (They assume you know
this, but most don't.) Instead, the CORRECT way to fax blast is to write a cover letter
about your product or service and give the potential customer a phone number or
fax-on-demand number to call for more information. Then you can send the 5, 10 or 15 page
fax.
That's right! You must use the two-step method in fax blasts or you won't get anywhere.
Not only will you be annoying to the customer, but you also will cost yourself a lot more
money than a direct mailing and your chances of a sale are much less because you are
annoying people.
Doing a fax blast is the same thing as purchasing a mailing list. In a fax blast you
normally purchase fax phone numbers from a company without having any knowledge of who
these people are and what they are interested in. Oh sure, those companies will tell you
the fax numbers they are selling you are hot prospects and people interested in MLM or
money-making opportunities, but how do they know? Do you think they can really tell you
the demographics of a particular company's fax number? Of course not. You might have to
send out 3,000 fax's before you make one sale. It is worth it?
As with anything else. Before you can close a sale, you have to get the customer to part
from their money. In order to do that, the customer must have an interest in the product
or service you are trying to sell. You have heard the old saying: You can't sell ice to
Eskimos, so you can't sell a product or service to someone who doesn't need it.
A friend of mine purchased a fax phone list from a company and did a fax blast attempting
to sell a program that saved homeowners lots of money on their mortgage. He faxed about
2,000 before he called the company and requested the demographics of the fax phone numbers
he purchased. He discovered the numbers were for people who rented their dwellings and did
not own a home. Naturally, renters would not be interested in saving money on their
mortgage when they didn't own a home. My friend lost about $250 because he didn't make one
simple phone call.
Marketing with a fax machine is effective if you keep these 2 things in mind:
- Check out the demographics
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- Only fax 1 sheet of paper
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