Comprehensive Marketing Details Not Found In
Beginner Books
Joy Gendusa
If this is the first marketing article you are reading, go find
some other more basic articles that I have written and then come
back. This data is for the intermediate to advanced marketers.
I want to go over a three-step outline for your marketing which
are:
1) Surveys
2) Getting Attention
3) Postage
Marketing surveys save you from flying blind in your business
marketing strategies and are the best way to find out what you
should be offering, to whom and how. When you don't really know
what to put in your direct mail marketing it's because you
haven't done your research.
In order to get the response you would like on your direct mail
marketing campaign, one area you need to look at is whether or
not you are using a survey to find out what to say to your
public. You may immediately answer “No – I don’t survey.” But
truthfully, it’s very possible you do and just don’t realize
it….read on.
You know your market quite well because you already sell to
them. You’re unwittingly surveying all the time. Take this
example:
An optometrist has an optical boutique. He knows that the
biggest market for his eyewear are women from the ages of 40 to
65 years old. How does he know that? His women’s frame inventory
is constantly being restocked fives times more than his men’s
frame stock or even children’s. And the types of women’s frames
are ones compatible with no-line bifocals. Interesting! Let’s
look at what else this optometrist knows. He knows that these
women pay a higher price point for their eyewear because the
products he keeps reordering are from the more upscale
designers so these women probably have more discretionary
income. That is what I mean by surveying unwittingly.
Now let's take an example where you are sure you have no data:
You are a mortgage broker and you don't know what to say to
people to get them to refinance their property, yet this is the
area you specialize in. You assume that the best deal will
attract more customers. You conduct a marketing survey, or get
a marketing survey conducted for you that asks people
indirectly for their attitudes and emotions concerning
refinancing and what would be the advantages and disadvantages.
You find the majority of people would like to refinance but
think it is a very complicated procedure and so they never try.
>From this information you are able to determine what the tone
and message of your advertising should take.
So, what should your promotion say? How about "We'll take the
hassle out of refinancing for you. Find out how." You will get
a response. You could send out thousands of promotional pieces
telling your prospects that you can get them the lowest rate,
but that isn't their concern. Their concern is that it's too
complicated. Do you see how you could miss? A survey is the
answer.
It is smart business to design a survey (or have one designed)
to send out to your past customers that will keep you in the
know, and not in the dark.
Now let’s go into the next logical sequence of how to break the
first barrier of getting attention, so the “button” you found
from your survey hits them before they throw away your
promotion before ever even reading it.
Ditch the Envelopes!
The most common question that is asked when dealing with direct
mail is "How do I get their attention?" This is a major problem
because, no matter what you do to them, most envelopes look
basically the same. Print on them in color, make a window,
stamp it urgent - your customers have seen all these tricks
before. They get thrown away before they’re even opened. They
can tell from the outside that it is a sales pitch and they
just get rid of it. This causes you to lose sales because of
assumptions made before you even try to get your message
across, when if you had the chance to let the customer know
what you were offering they might have gone for it. Plain and
simple, the easiest way to get around this is by using
postcards.
Not only does the full color aspect of postcards attract more
attention than all of the envelopes in any given day’s stack of
mail, but it will allow you to get your message across while
recipients are making the decision of what to read and what to
throw away.
Let’s use this example:
You are sitting on the subway and the guy next to you leans
over and says "I have something I would like to sell you and
it’s under my trench coat, are you interested?" So as any sane
person would do, you move to the furthest seat from him so not
to be bothered.
As you now sit in the farthest seat from the untrustworthy
freak in the trench coat you are approached by a smiling little
Girl Scout who holds out a box of cookies and says "Would you
like to buy a box of cookies? Everyone loves the Thin-Mints!"
So this time you pull out your wallet and plunk down the $3 for
a box of delicious cholesterol and sugar.
See the difference? Don’t hide your message behind a trench
coat. For all we know the "untrustworthy freak", as I have
affectionately named him, could have had a box of Thin-Mints
under there.
We may never know, and neither will your customers if you don’t
stop stuffing your promo into bland looking envelopes.
Now, make the final step easy and take out the hassle of direct
mail.
It’s one thing to get postcards designed and printed. It’s
another to get them into the hands of the recipients rapidly,
efficiently, as inexpensively as possible and without too much
hassle. You have the choice of doing it yourself in house or
getting someone to do it for you.
The apparent advantage of doing it yourself is that you don’t
pay someone else what they charge to do it for you. The
disadvantage of doing it yourself is that it’s going to cost
you more in the long run.
Why?
Normally your postage for a 4.25 x 6" postcard is 23¢. Direct
mail companies can lease special software from the USPS which
reads the addresses and barcodes them. The post office gives a
significant discount for bar-coded mail. Updating this software
often (every three months) ensures that the addresses you are
mailing to are good. If the person is no longer at that address
then it’s a waste of your money to mail to them.
Because of the high tech equipment and software direct mail
companies use, you can sometimes save as much as .04 cents per
card. And you don’t have all the hassle of getting the mailing
out yourself.
I call it a no-brainer: a technical term for saving money and
hassle by getting someone else to do your mailing for you. If
you have been doing it the hard way, switch over to a direct
mail marketing company. I am sure they will be glad to help you
save money, time and trouble.
About The Author: Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998;
her only assets a computer and a phone. By 2004 the company
did $9 million in sales and employed over 60 persons. She
attributes her explosive growth to her ability to choose
incredible staff and her innate marketing savvy. Visit
http://www.postcardmania.com
<<--------- End of Free Reprint Article --------->>
Find More Free Articles
See Also:
All Free Articles About Advertising
All Free Articles About Marketing
Index of All Free Reprint Articles
