Marketing can sometimes feel like a giant black hole you keep throwing your cash into without any way of knowing if you're really making an impact. Measuring sales and the impact of a certain marketing push isn't always an easy thing to do, and sometimes down right impossible.

You can put up a number of posters, but for all you know it won't be until two months after they're up that some people will see them and give you a sale. How are you supposed to track that?

Postcard printing and direct mailing, however, are a different matter altogether, and gives you the chance to know exactly what kind of impact you're having.

Direct mailing involves sending out a specific number of postcards to a specific number of homes. You know exactly how large the initial pool of people was that you were targeting, and you know exactly how many postcards were printed.

This means you can better judge how many sales that follow are related to the postcards you sent.

This system is not necessarily perfect, of course, because sometimes a person isn't going to act right away. Your postcard might be what prompted them to have interest in coming in, but they might end up waiting a month to do so.

However, more often than not the advantages of a direct mailing push is felt quickly. People who are likely to buy from you will do so quickly rather than waiting.

This ability to track success gives you the ability to fine tune your postcard printing in a way you can't do with other advertising. If you didn't get the results you were expecting try a different image or wording and see if that gives you better results. Vary up your list of people you're sending your material to see if you can help your sales that way instead.

The cheap nature of postcards also help to give you the ability to send out several different batches at once, rather than a single, large marketing push. This means when it does come to fine turning your postcards, you don't have to fork over the same amount of cash to do so.

Every form of marketing comes with the fear that your money won't end up being put to good use. You're spending the money before it helps you earn any. If this has been a concern for you, or if you aren't entirely sure about the right style of advertising for you, postcards might be just what you need to get a feel for the marketplace.

Send a few batches out, gauge the responses you get, and use that as a starting place for future marketing campaigns. Once you know the right kind of theme and visuals to use with your marketing, you can apply it to other forms of advertising, and create an all around powerful marketing campaign.