With an eye on driving sales, awareness and its distributors list, network marketer Links Direct Inc. launches an integrated television and teleservices program featuring PGA tour professional, Fuzzy Zoeller, as spokesman.
Pairing Zoeller’s television role in a series of regional direct response ads that tout the company’s marketing opportunities along with discounted golf apparel, equipment and travel packages, Links Direct has blended Zoeller’s screen role with a three-pronged teleservices program. The PGA professional is featured on a weekly scheduled conference call, a two-minute “sizzle” message and a toll-free message that helps provide lead generation for the company’s 6,000 independent distributors.
“Consistency is very important,” said Paul Vizard, media director, Links Direct, Fort Lauderdale, FL. “When you have contact with a potential client you want to provide a consistent message. If a potential distributor sees the ad and responds to the call to action you want to have continuity from the advertisement to the when the call is answered.”
The company’s network of independent distributors handle their own media buying and are airing a 30-second 1-800-“Go-Fuzzy” spot throughout a handful of markets. The commercial broke recently on New York’s MSG network in an attempt to reach 6 million viewers. The “Go-Fuzzy” spots help generate leads for the independent sales representatives by soliciting name, address and phone numbers from callers.
“The voice-capture is a commercial approach to recruit new distributors,” Vizard said. “We handle the leads in house and pass them to leaders in the field.” Links Direct relies on the model of network marketing to drive sales and distribution of its products, which are sold through distributors via the company’s web site and catalog.
Links Direct receives batch updates for its database every 48-hours from First Call Communications, another Fort Lauderdale-based company that is handling that component of the teleservices program. Vizard said based on the cost of the program and call volume, the company is yielding lead generation at about $1 per call.
“It is very cost effective for what we do,” Vizard said. “They distribute the leads in the form of e-mail or disk and we fire them into an Excel program.”
The multi-tiered program also features a “sizzle” message that provides a detailed, two-minute business pitch to callers by Zoeller who elicits a series of “What ifs?” to drive listener interest in signing up with Links Direct. First-hand business contacts direct callers to the sizzle message.
Additionally, a weekly conference call, which is hosted by Zoeller along with a number of Links Direct executives, provides a one-way forum to hear about various operating and marketing initiatives undertaken by Links Direct.
Links Direct tapped the controversial PGA player in April and this is the first program that features him as the spokesperson. Zoeller, who made racially controversial comments about Tiger Woods following the Masters Tournament last year, will sport Links Direct apparel on tour. Aside from being a spokesman he is also an actual representative, according to Vizard. “He is helping us determine what is needed in the golf industry.”
