For the direct Response Assignment REALM Apparel had an ad offering a free seminar for budgeting as well as a free guide on more ways to save. As a background, REALM Apparel has a focus group of women who were obtained from a previous vision board party. The age ranges of the group range from 25-60. I was able to conduct a poll within the group but took the responses from the “ideal clients” and reduced that to four individuals.
I posted the initial ad in the Facebook group and asked them to respond within 2 days. After the two day point I turned off the comments and then hid the post from the Facebook group.
After the two days I went through the replies and responded to each person with some thanking them for the response and the others (the four subjects) with the secondary component of the direct response tool. One person was overjoyed at the ad because they were one of the faces on the ad, another was excited because she already owned some of the apparel. She indicated she was going to post herself in the apparel so she can be featured on the next post, I chuckled. The occupations of these women ranged from educator to young professions, to upper-level positions and even entrepreneurship.
I learned overall from the individuals that budgeting was an important topic on their radars. Although they were all from diverse backgrounds, the values were not much different from one woman to the next. I did notice that the women who had younger families were more interested in the budgeting component than the savings component and the opposite was true of those who did not have families of their own or who had older children. I was privy to this information because I knew all of these testers on a personal basis.
The interest went something like this the 20-something female with no children had a great interest in both the budgeting and savings guide. She mentioned she wanted to start planning financially early so that she could achieve financial freedom but also so that she could learn more financially. She shared that she is fairly new to managing her own finances and although responsible (my deduction) she wants to set herself up for success in the way of finances.
There were two 30-somethings that were both interested more in the budgeting component of the offerings. One had a family and still wanted the savings guide but not as much as the other one that was single with no children. That individual was equally interested in both components at least it seemed that way at first but then the more we texted she wanted to know more about what the savings guide had to offer. She mentioned about the background that she had come from and she didn’t want to struggle as much as she had seen others in her family have to do. The 40-something was no different than the rest of these women. She was interested in both budgeting seminar and the guide.
My takeaway was something that I already knew because I knew that majority of my ideal clients appreciate financial advice. I work in the financial services field and also held many seminars when I was a full time real estate agent. Women in the 20-something to the 40-something range value their finances being in order and if someone is offering a free way to help them achieve even more order they are usually very open to that offering. I was even able to gain some interest about the merchandise and one sale from the test. So in my opinion a win-win.