I’m not looking for the “coolest,” or the “sexiest,” or the “funniest.”  I’m interested in conversion – which ad made you pick up your wallet, and dole out some dough for the advertised item?

When you’re starting off something new, or looking to reach a new group of contacts, you will experience the great temptation.  This is the voice in your head that says: “I need to find someone else with an audience, and send my campaign to those people.”

The great temptation manifests itself in different forms:

• a newspaper ad that promises a distribution to thousands
• a purchased or “rented” email list 
• flyers or admail through the postal service

Simply put, broadcasting to an anonymous sea of recipients doesn’t work.  People receive thousands of messages a day; they’ve learned to dissociate from mass media.  Which is more powerful: a list of 1 million with a response rate of 0.00001% or your own audience of 30 where everyone is actively engage with your message?

You need to build your own audience: a group of people that want to hear from you, and will keep coming back time and time again.