Three Principles of Direct Response

Three Principles of Direct Response

This page will cover the three key principles of direct response marketing. These are the three core principles that drive all marketing messages.

The first key is psychology.

It’s about understanding your prospect’s psychology — their fears, concerns, desires, current situation, and the outcome or transformation they desire.


Understanding their fears, concerns, frustrations, and what they want is key. Understanding your audience’s psychological state is key.


If you don’t know the psychology behind who you’re speaking to, it’s impossible to create a compelling marketing message. This is the first of three key points.


Communication is the second key. Communication in this context refers to what are we saying in our marketing messages? What’s the headline saying? What are we saying in the headline or opening of our marketing message? What are we saying when we present the product, its features, benefits, and their advantages? What are we communicating and how do we communicate it? How does that relate to the psychology of our audience’s?


You see, I want to help you understand the relationship between these two. Everything we say, do, and show should be based upon our understanding of the psychology of our audience.


We need to understand who we are talking to, and what their psychological state is. I will give you tools to help you do that later in this book.


The third, often forgotten by marketers and entrepreneurs, is arithmetic.


We are in the psychology and communication business. Arithmetic is because, again, as you know, direct responses are trackable. It is measurable. It is accountable. Understanding those numbers is key to understanding the meaning of these numbers.


Understanding the psychology of your audience is key to communicating with them in a way that is relatable. It’s then a matter looking at data, math, arithmetic and understanding what we need to do, tweak what we need, and what we should take out. These are the three pillars of direct response marketing.


As we go through the steps of creating your first successful marketing campaign, I want you to remember these three things: psychology, communication, arithmetic.



Front-End vs. Backend Marketing

In this chapter, I will be discussing the two main categories of your marketing activities. Each marketing campaign you launch or create falls under one of these two umbrellas.


The difference between the front-end of the web and the backend is what I am referring to.


This is a very different way of thinking and operating than the mom-and-pop entrepreneur.


The front-end is the marketing activities and campaigns that are created for prospects by direct response marketers.


They are designed to convert prospects into buyers and customers into customers.


This book focuses mainly on the front end.


Helping you to acquire clients and customers every day. Consistently, repeatedly, and predictably.


The backend, as you can see, is all the marketing activities and campaigns that are created to reach existing customers.


These are designed to bring in additional customers and increase the customer’s lifetime value.




E5 Coaching is designed to help you dial in your backend, while nailing your front-end. Visit to find out if it’s right for you.




This is important, because these marketing campaigns serve different purposes.


They are working towards a different goal.


Your front-end campaigns should be focused on one thing. This is to acquire new clients, generate new buyers and finally generate the first transaction.


This can sometimes be done without making any profits, as you will see later in this book. All front-end marketing campaigns aim to attract as many new customers as possible.


All of our profit is generated at the backend. Customer acquisition is the most costly activity in any business.


Front-end is the most costly activity. The back-end is where all the business’s profits come from. This second transaction, third transaction and fourth transactions are the most important.


Front-end marketing is about maximising customer acquisition.


The backend includes all marketing campaigns that are created for customers to monetize them, such as the second transaction.


You now know the various umbrellas when we talk about acquisition or monetization.


Acquisition is the front-end. Monetization is at the backend.



Marketing Campaigns: The Order of Priority

This chapter will discuss the importance and priority of any marketing campaign.


These are the elements that will make or break your marketing campaign’s success, and they should be ranked in order of importance.


The audience is the first and most important element in any marketing campaign’s success.


Who are you speaking to? Are you targeting the right people? Is your message in line with your audience? What do they want? What are their needs and what do they want?


How specific are you with your audience? A correctly targeted audience can overcome many marketing campaign weaknesses.


A weak audience or the wrong audience will make your marketing efforts fail. No matter how great your copy, headline, marketing automation, or marketing copy, if your target audience isn’t the right one, you won’t succeed.


You can’t expect your campaign to succeed if you have a brilliant marketing campaign about mixed martial arts.


You don’t need to be the best copywriter if your audience is looking for something specific. It doesn’t matter if you are the best graphic designer. Your campaign doesn’t need to be the most successful in marketing automation.


Targeting the right people is crucial to your marketing campaign’s success.


Marketers and entrepreneurs are often misled into believing that the offer is the second most important element.


What do you offer to your audience and what can they do to receive it?


The second crucial element of your marketing message is therefore not the headline. Contrary to what many marketers believe, it is not the headline. It’s not even the opening paragraph or the copy. It’s the offer.


A lot of sales can be achieved by offering the right offer to the right audience. Marketing mistakes and marketing failures can be made up by the right list and the best offer.


If you’re targeting the right audience, your offer can make or break a campaign.


The marketing copy is then the final element.


Why is this information being shared with you?


You should understand that many marketers spend a lot of time crafting the message for their marketing campaigns.


They then create an offer in a matter of minutes when it comes down to the offer. They don’t do much work to make sure they target the right audience and instead focus their attention on the third element. This element is less important than the offer and audience.


These are the three main things that you should be aware of and in what order. The audience, then the offer and finally, the message.