Your direct mail campaign would only be effective if you focus your postcard printing project to a particular group of clients, as well as understanding them. You need to get in the shoes of your target readers, know what they need, and package the benefits that your products and services can offer to answer their needs.
Consider the features that you have in your previous marketing campaigns. Which ones were successful, and which elements need a little more tweaking? One marketing analyst advised that for those whose target market includes larger firms with many decision makers, it is better to choose several key companies and then mail your postcard printing pieces to a number of people within each of the firms. That way, you will have more response to your postcard printing project.
You also need to develop a sturdy database for your postcard printing direct mail campaign. Your present and previous clients would be a good source. Your financial and sales databases can also be another good source. Others include list of compilers and brokers, government lists, organizations or professional groups you’re affiliated with, trade and business publications, as well as the Internet.
Step 2: Develop a well planned and creative brief.
When you provide a creative brief for your postcard printing direct mail campaign, it makes you confident that you have analyzed your target clients, developed clear and easy-to-accomplish goals, and develop key messages for your postcard printing project.
Your brief should include key areas such as your goals for your postcard printing project; your mailing size and direct mail budget; an analysis of your target market; a study of the strengths and weaknesses of the competition; benefits that appeal to your target readers’ interest; unique message that will make you stand out; as well as a system of success factors to help you measure the effectiveness of your postcard printing direct mail campaign.
Step 3: Write your postcard printing content.
Your main goal is to make your target readers take action according to what you want, and that is to call you. In addition to a compelling postcard printing copy, include a powerful call-to-action that will encourage your target readers respond to your call.
According to studies, a good enough postcard printing direct mail campaign usually generates a 2-4% response rate. An even better response would be 4% or more. To have this kind of response, you got to address adequately the issues and concerns of your target readers; described in clear form how your business can solve the issues and benefit them; encourage the reader to act on your call; and provide all the contact information in your postcard printing project to make it easy for your prospective clients to get in touch with you.
Step 4: Develop a compelling offer that will make your target readers respond to your postcard printing direct mail campaign.
How to Find What Works in Your Marketplace?
Overture provides an excellent tool to find what people are looking for on the internet. For all practical purposes, you can use that to apply to other types of marketing.
Go to http://inventory.overture.com. Type in some keywords that apply to your product or service. Overture will provide the number of times that search word was searched in the last month, and it will also provide a list of related words and how many times they were searched. This provides a really excellent tool to research what people are wanting, and how they are looking for them (at least what words they are relating to that search).
Using my business as an example: I provide training (sales, customer service, leadership and several other things).
So, which ones are in demand right now? I can do a search for ?training? on Overture.
The results are: ? Training --searched 165,196 times ? Online training, searched 149,418 times ? Management training, searched 133,499 ? Sales training, searched 70,496
What can we learn from this? ? It looks like I should focus more online training instead of face-to-face, or local training. ? Management training is being searched for almost 2 times as much as sales training. So, shouldn't I focus more on management training over sales training? I'll certainly have a larger market.
This can be applied to almost any kind of marketing, direct mail, cold calling, email, website, etc. Not only can I find the best direction (management training) but I can also find the right words to use in a direct marketing piece before sending it.
Here's another one.
Use GoogleAdwords, a pay-per-click online marketing campaign to find what works. If you haven't experienced GoogleAdwords, just go to www.Google.com and search for something. When the listing shows up there will be 2-3 sponsored listings across the top of the page, and 5-6 down the right hand side. These are pay-per-click ads, those companies pay for the ads only when someone clicks on them. You are taken to that site. At that time the sponsoring company pays so much for each time someone clicks on it.
A really fantastic way of using this for a marketing study is that within 1-2 days, there will have been enough clicks to know which search words are working. Another one of the fantastic benefits of GoogleAdwords is that they allow alternating ads in an Adword campaign. So for any campaign you can have several different ads running. Within just 1-3 days there will have been enough people searching and clicking through that you can see ? Which search words are searched for the most often ? Which one of the ads are producing the most click-thru's
It isn't unusual to see a 2 to 1 difference between the ads. So now you know how to say what in an ad and what kind of typical response rates you might have.
You can also take the best ad, tweak it again. Check back in a few days and know if you've improved it or not. I've seen pay-per-click ads crawl upward to 10-15% response rates in a matter of a week.
Now, it's time to start using those same words and structure in our next direct mail, or other direct marketing campaign. It's fast and very economical. Instead of taking weeks and costing a ton of money like a traditional test market would, we know in days what works for a lot less.
Want to know how many people are looking for your product in your small geographical area? Set up a GoogleAdword campaign and set the geographic limitation to your address with a known radius. Come back in a few days and see how many searches you got in that territory. Then go out with your local direct marketing with what you just learned. Even if you aren't an e-commerce site you can learn a lot about what works in marketing this way.
Both Janice Jenkins & Alan Boyer are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Janice Jenkins has sinced written about articles on various topics from Business Cards, Brochures and Marketing. For comments and inquiries about the article visit: . Janice Jenkins's top article generates over 550000 views. to your Favourites.
Alan Boyer has sinced written about articles on various topics from Small Business, Sales and Negotiation and Hypnotherapy. Alan Boyer, CEO of The Leader's Perspective, LLC is one of the world's leading breakthrough specialists. With over 35 years of business experience, he has catapulted businesses lightyears ahead in weeks. Some double, some jump 10 times. Helping companies. Alan Boyer's top article generates over 14800 views. to your Favourites.