My name is Stephen Tickner and as well as being a founder and partner in Direct Marketing Drive and owner of Apps Factory, I’m the President of TRS Technology Group, Inc.

There are many ways to market your business, both online using the power of the internet and offline using more traditional methods like direct mail and classified advertising.

I’ve learned the hard way that most advertising is bad. Before I learned the art of direct response advertising I was doing the same thing as everybody else too.

And it wasn’t working…

^{Everybody Thinks They Know How To
Write a Brochure But Copywriting is a
Skill that Takes Years to Master}

I did what every business owner has done in the past and created my own marketing brochure. It’s funny how we all seem to gravitate towards a brochure as our first attempt at creating a marketing piece.

I would include a link to it in this bio but I’m too embarrassed! I look at it now and shake my head in disbelief, what was I thinking? At the time I thought it was wonderful and mailed them out to every business in my local market.

That didn’t work either!

I then hired a ‘professional’ to help me. I don’t remember too much of the details but after meeting several times the idea was to run a four color ad in one of the high end local business magazines. I should run it for about nine months to get the correct amount of exposure.

I did create the ad but was doubtful and this was going to be very expensive. I asked the advertising representative if I could run it once to see how it did. She reluctantly said ok. I didn’t get any phone calls.

The advertising representative said the same thing about running the ad repeatedly for at least nine months to get the right exposure.

It didn’t sound right to me. I had absolutely no clue about advertising or marketing, but it seemed that my ad hadn’t worked and I didn’t have the money to waste on advertising that didn’t work…

^{I Admit it, I Became a Sales & Marketing Junkie}

Around this time I started playing with Google Adwords and trying to create my own ads. I didn’t know what to write in my ad, so I searched online and came a across a book by the legendary Joe Sugarman.

He’s the guy behind BlueBlocker Sunglasses and a direct marketing genius. I had no idea who he was at the time, but I bought his book called Triggers. I was hooked!

From that point on I became fascinated with copywriting and direct response marketing. I became a student of marketing, spending thousands of dollars on my marketing education.

About a year, and five thousand dollars, into my journey I found out that there was a local business mastermind group run by Glazer-Kennedy right here in my home town.

I joined the group, paying $300 a month for the privilege and for the first three months I was in way over my head! I could barely keep up with conversations about marketing strategies, methods and techniques.

I was among very bright marketing minds, people who were as fascinated as I was (and still am today). It was a full day and I came home exhausted.

After a while I started to get up to speed. It was starting to rub off…

^{Direct Response Advertising and Marketing Can
Sky-Rocket Your Business Lead Generation
& Sales In Less Than One Week!}

That was many years ago now and marketing has become second nature to me. I know strategies and tactics for both online marketing, which is where I started out and offline marketing including direct mail using letter sequences, post cards, voice and fax.

I’m in the enviable position to be able to think marketing. It takes a long while to get to that point.

Now I can look at a marketing piece, a letter, postcard or whatever and see the flaws; see the ways it can be improved and made to work better.

It’s truly a blessing because I can write my own ticket, but sometimes it feels like a curse!

Do you know the Bruce Willis movie called The Sixth Sense? Well, the child in that movie finally breaks down and tells Bruce his ‘secret’; ‘I see dead people’ he says to Bruce, who replies ‘where?’

‘EVERYWHERE!’

Well, I see bad marketing everywhere! The good news is; I know how to fix it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I think your marketing is bad. I don’t know enough about it yet to make that call.

But I bet you I can make it so much better…

I am a coach and consultant in online lead generation, creating sales funnels and sales processes, internet marketing techniques, driving traffic using pay per click, search engine optimization and web 2.0 strategies and most anything related to sales and marketing online.

Once again, thanks for visiting and I hope we get to know each other
Sincerely
Steve