Direct marketing is putting valuable product and service marketing materials directly into the hands of your consumer. By using the mail, newspaper delivery routes and point-of-sales displays, these ads can give smaller companies a bigger boost than more expensive mass-media advertising like TV and radio. While more cost effective than some other advertising methods, it’s not worth the spending if your direct marketing campaign fails to reach your customer. Here are some tips to fine tune your direct marketing campaign.
Hit the Target
If you don’t have a good idea already of your small business’ target market, you should take time to find out exactly who you customers are before engaging in any serious direct marketing. Your target market can be geographic, like the area near a restaurant, dry cleaner or auto repair shop, or be targeted to likely consumers, which could include technology products for young adults, insurance for the middle aged and health care products for the elderly.
Make a Headline Attraction
Between TV, radio, the Internet and direct marketing materials, the messages that consumers receive from advertisers will start to blur together. That’s why it’s important that your direct marketing material deliver a strong headline or tagline to make an impression on the potential customer. Your best, most engaging material should introduce your product or service to the customer. More is less, as customer’s attention span can be short.
Explain the Value
Why is your product or service better than everyone elses? Cheaper prices? Better quality? Both? After luring the customer in with a catchy headline, be sure to add relevant and compelling content that explain what makes your business bigger, better and bolder than the rest.
Follow With an Overwhelming Offer
After explaining the value of your product or service, demonstrate it with an unbeatable offer that gets them into your store or on the phone. Sometimes these offers are “loss leaders,” products and services that are underpriced, but effect at drawing customers to your location, internet site or phone number.
Personalize
The more personal you can make your pitch, the better the chances are that it will be effective. Using their name to personally address them shows your customers that you know who they are, what their interests are and how to meet their needs. Hand writing an address can also have this effect.
Track and Test
Using content like a coupon or a special code can help show how many customers received and subsequently used your direct mail promotion. Test different offers and ideas. If you’re not getting the results you’d like, perhaps a stronger offer or bolder headline is needed for the campaign. By testing different concepts, and tracking the results, you can constantly improve the effectiveness of your campaign.
Automate
Direct marketing campaigns rely on repetition and volume, so automating as many tasks as possible is vital. A print shop or mailing service provider can help small business owners automate many parts of a direct marketing campaign. Software products like Virtual System’s Midnight Print & Mail-Shop software offer many features to make direct marketing campaigns easy to set up, execute and track.
