Keep And Grow Your Customer Base With Postcards!
February 24th, 2010 | 
Author: Keep And Grow Your Customer Base With Postcards!
In todays fast paced world we see marketing everywhere we go. We see it on billboards as we drive down the freeway on television magazines and on the back of bathroom stalls. Its everywhere! In order to grow our business we have to get involved.
As a small business owner we dont always have the necessary funds to do mass media marketing such as television or billboards. We have to get creative and only target our best potential customers. This is where direct marketing comes into play.
If used correctly direct marketing will give you return on your investment.
So you may ask yourself Sounds great but how do I do this?. I have designed these easy 7 steps to help you successfully market your target audience and create customer retention.
1 Find out who your target audience is. Is it your current customer base? Or do you want to target specific demographics that need your product or services? Direct marketing involves you as a business owner finding out who your best customer is and marketing your products and/or services to them effectively and directly.
This is in fact is the most important step to starting a successful marketing campaign. Constantly learning about your customers needs and characteristics will allow you to maintain and grow your business.
2 What can you commit to each week/month to marketing funds? This is a very important question. With direct marketing it is important to set up an actual schedule for when your email marketing campaign or direct mail campaign goes out whether it is each week every other week or each month.
3 Once your budget is determined you can now decide how you would like to approach your audience. Do you want to blast an email out to your audience every other week then follow with a postcard each week? Whichever strategy you wish to choose just make sure it is consistent and repetitive. Also make sure you are able to catch their attention quickly.
This is one of the reasons we named our company Postcard Planet we are not a fan of envelopes. How many times do you get home from a busy day to open your mail but ignore the envelopes that dont have a bill in them yuck or are from your family?
Postcards catch attention! With the professionalism creativeness and quality of the card youre bound to catch their attention even if its right before they toss it in the trash.
4 Stay true to who you are as a business and stick with a consistent message that works with your company branding. The reason for this is simple: people learn by repetition. You look at some of the larger companies who have commercials every 5 minutes; they always have the same theme going. Can you hear me now? Good! or Mikey will eat anything! or GOT MILK? or my favorite BEEF its whats for dinner. We all know where these came from because they embedded it into our heads by being repetitive and consistent with their message even when they change the offer. This holds true with your direct mail piece or email campaign as well.
5 Testing testing testingvery important. If youre not getting good response on your campaign after the third time around chances are is you need to change something about your offer. For instance maybe the 2.00 off your next visit! didnt grab the attention of the viewer. Or Buy the whole familys meals and get free ice cream on your next visit was not appealing or enticing enough to get the customers attention or business.
The best advice I could give you on how to correctly and affectively get return off your direct marketing piece would be to put YOURSELF in the customers shoes! What would make you stop and read the postcard that you just received? What would make you Call today? Most likely it’s the same thing that would make your customers respond. Lets not reinvent the wheel!
6 Follow through with your offer as well as your services. Lets face it if you get 100 new customers but you dont deliver chances are your campaign was a waste of time.
7 If youre already busy you still have to market! It’s a common misconception that you no longer have to market if you are busy. This is in fact is the best time to start a campaign. Be proactive! Just because you are busy doesnt mean you want your current and potential customers to forget about the great products and services that you provide.
Happy marketing!
Until next time
Jennifer Minor
Chief Executive Officer
Postcard Planet Inc.
Marketing your planet
www.postcardplanet.com
About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Jennifer Minor is the Chief Executive Officer for Postcard Planet. Jennifer came from a strong background in customer service human resources and sales. She started Postcard Planet with the vision of providing business owners with a sense uniqueness and individualism while maintaining their valued customers visions and branding image. Jennifer wanted to see something different for marketing something more personal for the customer involved. She strives on customer satisfaction and has a strong passion for creativity personality professionalism and the highest standard of quality printing out there.
You can visit Jennifer Minors website at www.postcardplanet.com or contact her via email at jenniferpostcardplanet.com or contact her toll free at 866.427.3623
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