Postcard Marketing
As with any direct marketing tool, be sure that your door hangers, are using many of the same powerful components that your postcard marketing campaigns use to ensure your success rate and return on investment. Things like a compelling direct response offer, deadline, stand-out headline - and matching your message to your market segment are always great ways to give your marketing the competitive edge you need to succeed in today's world. If you'd like more ideas, please refer to our 10 Best Practices in Direct Marketing.
Creating ‘just a postcard’ isn’t tough. Crafting the right messages for the right people at the right time so that it drives your business and helps you build your customer base? That requires a few best practices and a little strategic planning. As experienced leaders in helping entrepreneurs and business owners create postcards for every industry, we’d like to share five keys to what makes postcard marketing work, and even a little of what doesn’t so you can steer clear of the common missteps others have made in the past.
- Critical key words: No one knows your customer better than YOU. And if you don’t? Start with a little homework to learn what their hot buttons are, what causes them to act and what causes them to fall away. Armed with that information, put your best words forward in your headline and lace your entire offer with those buzz words that will cause them to reach for the phone or visit your site.
- Consistency counts: One and done marketing doesn’t work. Never has, and never will. It’s simply not the way human beings respond. So one mailing of 1,000? You can’t expect real results, but five mailings of 200, now you start to hit the ‘sweet spot’ of consumer recognition and response. The key to success? Consistency. Month after month ‘show up’ in their mailboxes and on their radar as the resource to call. Start today with a strategic plan to have postcards delivered every 30-45 days, each including the 10 best practices of postcard marketing. When you find a promotion that works especially well, expand on it and watch your success rate soar.
- Know your business. Let’s face it, your core business? Isn’t admin work. It isn’t trying to custom create postcards, peeling labels or standing in line at a post office. Your core business is about what you do, providing the best service and products for your customers and building those relationships over time so that you can rely on a steady stream of referrals month after month and year after year. Delegate the postcard marketing to a team that truly does consider that their core business. Why? Experience, best practices and automation are on your side meaning you’ll get better results, faster and for less than trying to go it alone.
- Don’t be all things to all people. I know, it’s an old saying, but an accurate one. Trying to go after EVERYONE will mean that you end up with NO ONE – or at least far fewer than you would if you truly targeted the prospective customer base you’re trying to reach. That way you can truly match your message to your market segment. You can speak their language, give them what you already know they want and know that you’re not wasting time and precious marketing dollars on folks that just aren’t your customer base.
- Don’t overcomplicate the process. Like most of us, you’ve probably seen marketing postcards that seem to have everything AND the kitchen sink on them. What that does however, is frustrates and confuses the consumer, which will send your postcard to the ‘circular file’ faster than you can blink. Use the three C’s: Make your message, graphics, and direct response offer CLEAR, CONCISE, and COHESIVE, giving good direction as to what you want them to do.