No matter how small your business, don’t forget offline direct marketing… print is powerful stuff
Integrate your direct marketing activities
Internet marketing’s exciting, fast and cheap and, if you do it properly, extremely effective. But any marketer worth their salary or fee will also integrate offline campaigns seamlessly to maximise your budget’s impact. It’s a clear case of whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
Don’t knock snail mail
Traditional direct marketing is powerful stuff. Take snail mail campaigns. It can be a challenge to be heard above today’s intense communication noise. Emarketing, evolving fast, is on everyone’s agenda and many businesses are using less traditional direct mail. Which provides the ideal opportunity to stand out by dropping a pertinent, succinct, beautifully targeted piece of print onto customers and prospects’ doormats.
It needn’t be complicated. You can integrate a good value piece of print with an online offer, powering extra site visitors and making your business more tangible to the target market. Or use a simple but well-designed postcard as a device to drive general business to your site.
Direct mail needn’t be expensive
Here’s an example ‘on a shoestring’: It cost around £50 to print 250 postcards on 350gsm stock. Sent to a carefully selected hand-built database of 85 local businesses in Brighton’s creative community, it prompted a response rate of 10%. All responders converted to sales with an average sale value of £500. That’s a total of
£4,000 new business for a total outlay of £75.60 (inc. postage).
I designed and artworked the card myself. Most people will need to use a professional designer, who shouldn’t take more than two hours to design you something this simple. And use a professional copywriter.
If you’ve got a great offer to make, which you target carefully to a relevant audience using attractive design and compelling copy, the numbers might well stack up.
