Postcard Marketing Information

Posts Tagged ‘Postcards’

What do I mean about thinking out of the box ?

Well the box I am referring to is the marketing box you put yourself into when you are promoting and only thinking what your product or service offers.

Reach outside of that box and think what is it my customers want!

Most of the time it is not what your product/service directly offers, but what that can help them with.

For example:  here are a couple of draft postcards for an business insurance agent.  On the card he has made an out of the box guess that most of his customers look forward to going on vacation.  So, he is making the connection to something they really want: “the money to go on vacation” from the savings they get by using his business insurance services.

It is really quite simple, yet sometimes reaching the simple effective idea of promoting what people want is hidden by focusing on the features of our products and services.

Think beyond the features box and offer what your customers must really want with your products and services.
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Monitoring the results of your marketing postcards is certainly crucial to figuring out the measure of accomplishment of your campaign. It is a must in order to make judgements on how to improve the campaign message.

The nice thing is, it is easy. You do not need some sophisticated technology.

All that is needed is a plan of action.  Here are some things to consider for the plan:

• Put someone in charge to be responsible for the running the whole campaign and for compiling all the information.
• Make sure all personel who deal with customers know about the campaign and instruct them to keep track of all customer responses and related sales.
• All response information should be entered into the appropriate system.
• If you have a website, make sure the postcard points the customer to a specific response page which you can count all visits.
• Collect all website visits, all response telephone calls, all store visits, and all related sales.  Divide all these numbers by the total number of postcards sent out to get your response rates. ( for example if you get 500 visits to your website after sending out 10,000 postcards your response rate would be 5%. )
• Have the person in charge create easy to understand reports.  Have all personel involved review the reports and look for ideas for improvement.

Do not be concerned if your first batch of promotional postcards did not turn out with great response rates. Most first campaigns do not.  Utilize what you learned to make it better and try again. This is essential for all types of marketing and advertising, and postcard marketing is no exception.

For most businesses an integrated marketing approach ends up being the best approach to promote their web site business.  This means they should consider all the usual promotion and advertising methods as well as new online methods.  Direct mail is still one of the important methods for promotion, and direct mail with postcards is one of the most effective.

Direct mail postcard marketing is one of the traditional forms of marketing that delivers results. Three good reasons for this are:

(1) it is highly targetable — less money spent on uninterested potential receivers.
(2) it is highly measurable — you can determine which lists work and adjust your list.
(3) it can be very, very cost effective.

Most small businesses cannot afford to consider television, radio or magazine advertising. However, even the smallest business advertising budget can afford a direct mail campaign.  With postcards you are getting the lowest cost for postage and printing.  Also, you can manage your campaign management by only sending to a portion of your total list on a basis you decide from your budget.

Your postcard can make use of color, photos and print to  drive interest in visiting your site. It is best to make your message very simple and targeted. Always keep in mind the purpose of your advertising postcard is to bring traffic to your web site for the sale to be made there.  Think of the postcard as a highway billboard driving interest in what your web site offers.

One of the key ways to separate your online business from your competitors is to promote your online business in ways your competitor has not used.  Take your “use only online promotion blinders off” and try postcard marketing to drive more new traffic to you web site.

Many businesses offer a service for cleaning, reparing, maintenance, landscaping, construction,etc … in which you can visually see the difference before they gave their service and afterwards. With these kind of services a photo show what something looks like before they do their work and then what it looks like after they complete their work can communicate a whole lot more than words to potential customers.

A good example might be an air duct cleaning service.  If you take a photo of the inside of the dirty ducts before they are clean, and then take another photo after they are cleaned, you have an easy to understand testamonial of the benefit offered by the service.

Then print these two photos on the front of a marketing postcard with a catchy heading.  Put details on how to contact your business on the back with a limited time offer to push the reader to take action and you have a highly effective marketing postcard to bring in new customers.

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If you are in a business in which the main benefit you offer can be visually shown with before and after photos, give it a try!

We can help create your custom marketing postcard for you.

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Some statistics are saying that direct mail will fall by 38% in the next five years, but postcards are still giving effective results.

Here is what a recent posting in “The Marketing Forum” blog said:

“Rather than spend a lot of money for complicated direct mailers of the past, many companies are sending out postcards at a relatively inexpensive price. And they are getting some phenomenal results. For example, you could send out a coupon postcard to your targeted mailing list and then also place that coupon on Twitter. For local restaurants, shops, etc. it’s a great, cost-effective idea.”

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Services to design, print, and mail your marketing postcards available at this link

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