[Franklin]

I was just curious Franklin - and FUNd- if you were using saturation lists for b2b direct mail (by zip codes, geography etc) to build your presence in your natural market or drilling into specific chosen industries.

Well either one can work but they depend on your budget, the volume of deals you can handle, and your funding particulars. There's a large direct lender that uses Meridian to mail the whole country once a month, so that's a
huge spend but the fund over 10 million a month from it so the ROI is there.

I always recommend specialization when first starting out, and a small budget when testing something you've never done before. Expect that budget to go more towards learning than roi and get every drop of information you can, identify and fix your mistakes, and then do it again, small, but better.

I would try to find a niche that you've had success with or know well that's not super saturated (like restaurants or auto repair), and create a piece that speaks their language (solving specific problems to them), targeted to a particular city. I would hand deliver 2 or 3 and speak to owners in that niche and get their feedback, make some tweaks, then mass mail in small quantities. Some of my greatest sources of information have been from merchants
that were irate with me marketing to them, as they give you the blunt truth. If you listen and don't take it personal, they'll tell you what you need to fix so you can try again better next time.


Honestly, the strategy is to try anything, do it small, and keep doing it over and over, being a little bit better, being different ,and listening to feedback each time. In all the creative development I've worked with, this has always been the way to achieve excellence in a given niche, topic, study, etc. Just have more experience than everyone else and be different.