[0:00]the most powerful advertising to the businesses that really need it most, these smaller companies that can't always afford $5 to $10,000 to do a a direct mail campaign. You're bringing that into their reality. They'd be spending $10,000 themselves to do it. Now you're giving that to them for $6 to $700. Here's why you're struggling to sell 9x12 ad spaces. This is the high response marketing podcast. I'm Jake Lorraine, the postcard pioneer. I gave myself that title. I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk in depth. I like these cuz I can talk in depth about a certain topic. I should do more of them. A lot a lot of you that are getting into the 9x12 system, struggle with selling spaces to some degree. It doesn't go as smooth as you maybe thought it would because at the surface it sounds it just looks so simple that anyone would understand this. That that is you're you're pretty correct. But it's not as simple as that. There are a lot of stupid businesses out there, stupid business owners out there that are just dumb to marketing. They're not gonna see the value in it right away. They may not instantly get it like you do, but there's other things too. They might be it may not be enough mailing for them. It may not be, you might be raising red flags in another way. Maybe the way you're presenting yourself or the way you prospected or timing. There's a lot of things that can go wrong that you weren't prepared for and that affect your ad sales. Especially because some of these could have been sales, but you blew it in some way. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk in depth about why you're struggling to sell 9x12 spaces at any level. It could be this could be your hundredth card, your tenth card, or you haven't even started yet at all. All of those are are going to be completely applicable here. I just want you to come away from this podcast, selling space is easier. I want you to sell these things as simple and easy as possible. Do not overcomplicate this. And it's not about closing. I think a lot of people think that it's they gotta they gotta know the right thing to say or tell me how I can convince these business owners that direct mail is, you know, good and that it's not outdated or it's not bad. What's the thing that I can say? There are a lot of little phrases that you can say in ways you can handle things, but that's that's a whole other topic and it's a lot to take on. Like selling spaces should be really easy and straightforward. They should not require magic things that you say that's gonna suddenly, you know, get them to to sign up with you right away and be like, oh my God, you're right. A lot of it is actually things that you're not you're probably not thinking of. So the first thing is mentally just being just sold on it yourself. That's like a huge aspect of it. It is to make sure that you are completely sold it on it yourself. If you know that it's a good deal, it's gonna be easier to present that to someone else. So if you know that this is just like a really great opportunity, a great bargain, a great window of time to do this, you that's gonna it's gonna affect how you like present it. So if you're excited about something and you really feel this is like just an amazing opportunity, which it is, that's gonna come off from you to your customer. The same time or to your prospect, the same time, if you're not. So if you're not, if you are shaky about it or you're just like nervous about what you're selling or where it's going to or the type of business that you're dealing with, maybe you're just you're nervous for whatever reason and you it's you're shaky.
[3:47]It's gonna throw off a ton of red flags. And if they question anything, you're not gonna know what to do and you're gonna just break down and you're not gonna sell anything. So you have to be confident that this is a good deal. If you're not sure, then reach out to me or someone and say, Jake, you know, is this uh, is this really good pricing, actually good pricing on direct mail, you know, is direct mail really out date. Like give me talk to someone if you're in the elite group, Facebook group, in the membership, you know, bring those concerns up, so you get totally sure that this is a a good deal. If you have are shaky about anything, please bring that up because you can't be when you're going out and selling, you really don't wanna be shaky about anything that you're selling. You really want to know what you're offering. And the good news is, this is not, there's nothing shaky about this. There's nothing sketchy, there's nothing like this is not a pyramid scheme or an an MLM, this is, which I hate. This is as good as it gets. A direct mail postcard should cost around a dollar a piece, especially with postage has gone up significantly in the last year, just went up again quite a bit. Up first class stamp is as of right now in 2025, it's 78 cents. A stamp, just to send a stamp to a a letter is 78 cents in postage alone. If you were to do as a business owner 10,000 pieces or even say 5,000 pieces, you're gonna be spending a dollar or more per piece. Paying the designer, getting the printing, um, the sales tax, mailing, posted, all that stuff is gonna run a dollar plus. You're probably in the like dollar 10 to $1 25 range for most print houses, like the vast majority for something mailed. That means if you're sending 5,000 postcards out, you're gonna be spending $5,000 at least. It would not be even crazy to be spending $6 or $7,000 for a 5,000 piece mailer at most places. People are doing it all the time. Direct mail's a huge if you look up the stats, there's there's a a tremendous amount of money spent on direct mail every day. Why? Because it's like one of the most powerful, you could argue it is the most powerful form of local marketing. It gets a post gets something physical in the people's hands directly. It's there's nothing they can't swipe away. There's no spam filter, there's no algorithms. You can saturate an entire neighborhood, you can pick exact precise targets on age, home ownership, um, or just whole neighborhoods. Like it there's nothing, it's physical, it's storable because it's got so many advantages and because it's so powerful, it's very expensive. It's a very expensive medium. Most businesses cannot afford it. I always like to say like the little businesses like cafes and restaurants and pizza parlors, ice cream parlors, auto shops, most home services, handymen, they they will never be able to do direct mail. Like they shouldn't be able to do it. It's too expensive.
[7:05]What retail shop owner or little boutique or pizzeria or coffee, cafe place can afford $5 $6,000 to send out 5,000 mailers. Like it's just not in the budget. It will probably never be in their budget. This is a medium that is totally, you can't just turn it on and off like you can digital ads. You can put $100 or $50 or $500 into digital ads, but you can't do that with direct mail. You can't just turn it on and off. You have to commit to a campaign, there's a lot of moving parts and pieces. There's a big upfront cost. It's a huge investment that most small most really small businesses will never be able to take advantage of. Never. Never in their wildest dreams would they be able to do a five or $10,000 piece mailer just off the table because of the cost. The funny thing is, the interesting thing is, these are the type of businesses that will get the highest response. A coffee shop, a pizzeria, a restaurant, a retail boutique. Those are the businesses that will actually get the highest response because they are in general low ticket items that are everyday like things that people buy. You know, people buy pizza all the time. People go to stores. Uh, they're the highest, think of ice cream, think of auto oil changes. Like they're the highest responding, uh, items, you know, services and stuff. But they'll never be able to efficiently advertise over direct mail because of the cost. And even if they could, it would be hard to recoup that money. You know, you spend $5,000, how do you actually recoup? You might get a lot of response, but it can be really hard to recoup when you're talking $30 average tickets. Like you have to get a ton of response. They get a lot of response and they're really well received in the mail, but it takes a ton of response to make it a positive ROI. So they again, that's working against them. It's working really hard against most small businesses. The ones that advertise in direct mail typically are businesses with very high tickets and businesses that have their marketing really dialed in. So you're talking higher end remodeling, um, businesses with sales staff like window siding replacement, the big dogs that have sales people, roofing, things that are high ticket, lawyers, furniture, mattress, auto. That's why the auto dealer can send you billions of dollars of direct mail like constantly at you and billboards and stuff because they have their marketing dialed in and it doesn't take a lot of car sales to make a positive ROI. So the brilliant thing about a 9x12 postcard, if you're I'm assuming you're familiar with it, if you're listening to this, it's just this this big 9x12 postcard, it's huge. And you're you're getting other local businesses to share the spaces on it, you're doing something, you're bringing now the most powerful advertising to the businesses that really need it most. These smaller companies that can't always afford $5 to $10,000 to do a a direct mail campaign. You're bringing that into their reality. It's incredible. All of a sudden they don't have to spend $5,000 or $10,000, and in case of a $10,000 piece mailer, they'd be spending $10,000 themselves to do it. I'd say like $7 to $10,000 if they were to do their own $10,000 piece direct mail campaign, now you're giving that to them for $6 to $700. A tenth of the cost. Businesses of all sizes can afford $5 to $700, absolutely. And you could do a $5,000 piece mailer that gets us into the $4 to $500 per ad space. You are giving them the ability to do something that they were never supposed to have. The pizzeria was never supposed to have a $10,000 piece mailer. The retail shop, the coffee owner, the little bakery, the new business that doesn't have a big marketing budget, suddenly they can do all this stuff because of you. I'm, I'm hoping that that kicks into gear mentally that you can understand what a great opportunity you are giving small businesses that never should be able to have this type of advertising. Suddenly they can. So be sold it on it yourself. Make sure that you can get that bargain across the people that it exudes out of you. Cuz there's something that just it's, it's in the way you talk, it's in the way you present yourself, it's in the way that you just pitch it. It just comes off and when businesses understand, wow, this is actually a really sensible, amazing opportunity, they look at it harder and you'll sell more deals. A lot of it's mental. Here's the stats. One out of every five business owners are gonna buy from you no matter what. One out of every five. If you just get this postcard, this sample piece, this opportunity in front of a business owner, one out of every five of them is going to say yes. They're just gonna get it. Statistically 20%, one out of every five. I've been doing this 15 years, you can count on these stats. One out of every five is just gonna get it and they're gonna say yeah, I want on. You don't have to be a great salesperson, you don't have to have any kind of closing ability. You can be introverted, you can screw a whole lot up, you can basically just get this in front of them and say I'm doing this and they'll say I want on. One out of every five. The hardest part is actually getting a hold of the business owners. That's the hardest part is being strategic enough to not be going to hundreds or talking to hundreds of business owners and not getting not reaching any owners. Because managers and employees and gatekeepers don't matter. Like they're not that's not a pitch. If you talk to ten gatekeepers, that's not the same as talking to ten business owners, decision makers. You've got to talk to the actual business makers, but one out of every five is going to buy. That's why it only should take you two weeks to prospect because if you're talking to five business owners a day, I think that is the perfect goal to set for yourself is to talk to five business owners a day. You will have this card sold out in two weeks. Two weeks.
[13:11]Now, if you're got any kind of like ambition and closing ability and you can kind of talk to people and that are on the fence where they're like, I'll think about it and you can get them. You can bump that up to two to three out of every five. I would say three is really high, but two and a half, two to two and a half, totally. And if you pre-select your advertisers, which is probably the most critical thing to do. We'll talk about in a second, you're gonna, you're gonna get this to two to two and a half out of every five business owners you go to, just around 50% of them are gonna buy. I would say 45 to 55% of these you're gonna have a closing rate right now. And that means your ads are gonna sell really, really fast. That means you're gonna sell a card out in just over a week. When you talk to people who sell their cards out in a week, they did everything right. They did a lot of their preparation right. So the preparation is overlooked so much. Like preparation, marketers that want to get they wanna, they wanna spend all their time on things like websites and business cards and their their brand and the colors. They build this website, they spend hours and hours and hours on the website and a business card. And it's stupid or the name that they're gonna call it, which is dumb. You're trying to make yourself look like something they've never even heard of. When you try to look all this credibility and and off off I wanna look credible, I wanna look a reputable and big and this is a big brand. All you're doing is raising a ton of red flags. Local business owners know the different options. They know other businesses and the different advertising opportunities. And when they see something that looks like it's this big thing but there's nothing there, it's a red flag. It's like, who, I've never heard of you. What, what is this? You were not, this isn't like ten years ago or or older where like fancy websites like meant something. Now, web who even looks at websites? They don't they look at socials, you know? They don't look at your anyone can make a great looking website. That's just those days of having a fancy nice looking website and was impressive, like it's, it's over. It's totally over. No one's gonna judge you by the website. Now, if you have a functional website that's really doing something functional, that's another thing. I would not be wasting your time on this stuff. I would be investing your time into the preparation stage, and that comes down to pre-selecting your advertisers. Can't say this enough. Pick the advertisers that you want on the card. And I don't mean the actual companies, I mean the the industries. So you look at your card setup, however your layout is, let's say it looks like this or whatever it's gonna look like. You actually pick, chances are you have 16 or so spaces. You should be picking which niches you want on the card. You're pre-selecting. You should already know when you go out prospecting, who you want on this card. If you're gonna be doing a 9x12 card right now, that means that this card is probably gonna go out and hit homes in six weeks. You could even give yourself seven or eight weeks if you wanted to be super safe because you need a couple weeks to prepare, you need a couple weeks to prospect, it might take you an extra week. That's that's why you're at five weeks or so and then you need a week to print. So think ahead six to seven weeks in what season is that? Right now, for me, I'm recording this and it's in July, it's in the middle of July. But if I was to start a 9x12 from absolute scratch right now, I know that this card is gonna go out in the beginning of September. It's gonna be in that first part of September, which is the fall, so I gotta be thinking, what businesses are gonna want to advertise in the fall. That's what that's what I'm gonna build this card around. So when I go prospect, I wanna make sure that that's a big point that this is gonna be going out in the first or second week of September. So what kind of businesses is that? Well, I can think of pools are getting closed, right? So a pool company for pool closings, H V A C where people start getting their furnaces tuned up, um, fall cleanups for lawn care. You wanna be thinking of the businesses that are really gonna want to advertise in that period of time. Don't be just thinking of right now. A lot of marketers do is they think of right now and and they they fail to sell spaces because they're not thinking forward enough and they're not even presenting to the business. Hey, this is going out in the in September. You'd be a good candidate for that, right? I'm sure you'd want to advertise pool closing in the beginning of September. So you pre-select who should be on this card. And then so you think of a pool company, right? Pool company. Okay, pool closings. I want a pool company on there. Then you go to Google and you type in pool companies near me and you see who's advertising. Okay, who's spending money? You're, before you even do that, here's a really good exercise. Don't even search in Google. You figure, okay, pool company and you think to yourself, or if you have a spouse or a family member, a friends, ask them together and say, pool companies, which ones? And you think, who who comes to mind first? Chances are, there's one for sure that's gonna come up, and there's probably two to three, most likely in every niche. H V A C, mattresses, furnitures, lawyers, chiropractors, dentists. You can think of one to five, most likely two or three, but sometimes even five right off the bat, even if you've never used those companies, even if you've never bought a mattress or bought furniture locally, you can think of one, two or three at least furniture stores, even lawyers. You can think of a worker's I guarantee you can think of a worker's count attorney right now. If you were injured, what attorney do you call? Because these are the businesses that do the most advertising, they spend the most money. Those are the big dogs, the dominant ones and those are gonna give you a very high chance of landing them as a space on the card. So think of the first ones that come to mind. Then go to Google, type it out and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also, things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most, the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising. What's what's gonna be interesting is you're likely going to find a the underdog. These are the most the lowest hanging fruit for sure are gonna be higher ticket items underdogs. So these are the businesses and sometimes lower ticket also. Things like liquor stores and uh, uh, things that are really aggressively marketing, but they're not the big, huge, like dominant competitor. They're the, they're the underdog, the one that's trying to take the first spot. These guys are great. This is where you're gonna sell so many spaces with so little friction. They're gonna be just like, I want on this card. This is the, this is the key. This is the lowest hanging fruit. You will you can sell out a card fast if you just target just underdogs. So look at the main competitor, the one that everyone knows, and then type it into Google and see who else is advertising.
