Mr. Czar

One thing I've noticed over the years in direct response is how much people talk about "attracting leads and customers." But here's the thing... Direct response isn't really about attracting. That's what branding does. Direct response is largely about FILTERING. Direct response goes out to the customer. Branding waits for the customers to come to them. Hence, attraction versus filtering. Think about it... When we select mailing lists, we're filtering. When we target audiences with ads, we're filtering. Even your headlines, hooks, openings, stories, mechanisms, and offers are all filtering mechanisms. Every element is designed to filter out the wrong people and move the right people closer to buying. And here's where it gets interesting... The more you filter, the smaller your audience becomes. The smaller your audience, the higher your conversion rate tends to be. But the more narrowly you filter, the higher your cost of reaching those people can become. And oftentimes, the cost will outpace the conversion because, at the end of the day, it's always all about economics. The game isn't just getting more people to pay attention. It's getting the right people to pay attention. Whenever I see an offer not doing well, there's a very high probability that it's over-filtering. And when you scale an offer and all the ads and conversions break, it's over-filtering in the broad audience. This is why universal offers that anyone, anywhere would buy tend to do very well because they filter the least. For example, everybody drinks water, everybody uses a cell phone, everybody uses the internet. Massive industries, little to no filtering Remember, direct response filters; branding attracts. - Alen