Marketing Manner

Short term ad campaigns attempt to get people to take action immediately. Whether the campaign involves postcard printing or newspaper spots, the ads tell about products and offers available for a limited time, creating a sense of urgency that causes people to respond. Here are some tips to help you short term ad campaign be all that it can be. Continue reading »

Few business managers understand the difference between offset printing and digital printing.  This is important to understand for postcard printing in particular, since the difference between offset or digital printing can mean significant savings.  So what are these differences?  What is the best method for your postcard printing project? Continue reading »

Word of mouth advertising is effective because it is trustworthy – when a friend or relative recommends a product or service, you know you can trust their opinion based on the history you have with them. Word of mouth advertising fits well into any budget because it is inexpensive, but it does take a concentrated effort. Here are some tips on how to encourage word of mouth advertising among your customers.

Give Rewards
The most obvious way to get your customers talking about your business is to offer them something in return. This should be a carefully thought out promotion or you may end up spending too much money in your promotional offers. Referral postcards are a great way to keep promotional offers within reason. Offer customers a few of your postcards at checkout. For each new customer who comes in with a referral postcard, the existing customer named on the card could be given 10% off one item or 20% off a purchase of $100 or more. You may want to offer the same special to the new customers as well. Continue reading »

The concept of a print and mail service is simple: you send a digital ad file to a company that will print and mail your ad, usually along with many others to make up a packet of ads, and the company will use their own mailing list for your ad. Bam! – thousands of new clients, just like that. You pay them one fee and they do all the work. If you use a few services at a time, you could potentially mail your ad to thousands of prospective buyers within weeks.

Sounds good, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work quite that smoothly.

Many print and mail companies don’t have a high level of return on the offers they churn out. I say churn because these companies often take as many advertisers as they can without care about the quality of the ad presentation. That means that you’d have to reach tens of thousands of people to get the same return on your offer that you would if you mailed out your postcard or print ad yourself. If you get a 3 percent return from mailing your offer by itself, you can expect to get about .5 percent return if you use a print and mail company, and oftentimes it’s even lower than that.

Why Such a Low Return?

The reasons for the low return rate are speculation from many differing Web sites and marketing experts. No one has done any official research into why the print and mail companies have such a low return rate. Here are a few reasons:

They have a non-targeted mailing list. For products or services that only a chosen population needs, a print and mail company’s list won’t do just because it’s not targeted. The list might be geographically targeted, but that’s about it. The mailing list is one of the most crucial, if not the most crucial, part of a successful direct mail campaign. Your ad can’t do any good if you don’t get it into the hands of the people who are likely to be interested in it.

Poor quality materials. Many print and mail companies use the thinnest paper they can and don’t use quality inks or quality printers. Many of the ads come out looking amateurish or even worse, smudged from the printer.

Double-sided printing. To cut costs and make a bigger profit, many print and mail companies will use double-sided printing, with two ads on one piece of paper. This makes the consumer have to choose between the two ads if there are coupons on each side: which one will the consumer give up? There’s a good chance it’ll be yours unless your product or service appeals to everyone, which is pretty hard to do.

Dishonesty in number delivered. There is no way of knowing if the company actually sends out as many ad packets as they say they do. If the company says it’ll charge only $3 per 100 ads sent out, how do you know that they are actually sending out 100 ads? Many companies cut costs and pocket profit by sending out a smaller number of ads than promised.

With all of these negatives associated with print and mail services, it’s smart to research the company before you hand over any of your hard earned money. Your best bet is to look for complaints on forums and Web sites and to compare the price of the print and mail service with the separate prices of using an online printing company (which is generally cheaper than an offline printing company) and mailing the ads yourself. It might take some time, but time is money and you don’t want to waste either element.

It’s easy to get carried away when it comes to advertising.  As business owners, we want to put as much information as we possibly can into every piece of marketing material that we produce.  But that can be dangerous and, even worse, counterproductive.

I am going to run through some of the most common forms of advertising literature, and explain why simplicity is so important for each one of them.

Brochure Printing

Yes, brochures are expected to be packed full of information.  But it is very easy to overdo it.  Try to focus on just one or, at most, two aspects of your business that you are trying to convey to your target customers.  If you are trying to get the word out that your prices are better than those of your competitors, keep the emphasis of your brochures on that topic.  Do not stray into a lot of other areas, and keep the design of the brochure relatively uncomplicated, too.

Postcard Printing

Postcards are nifty little tools because they are ready to mail and you can really do a good job of reaching target customers with them.  However, because there is not a whole lot of room on a postcard, it is especially important to keep things simple.  Do not try to add too much information to your postcards.  Be straight and to the point.  Customers can be quickly overwhelmed by too much advertising info, so be careful not to do that to them.

Business Card Printing

Now, it is a good idea to make business cards that stand out from the crowd and look unique.  But, at the same time, avoid giving the customer information overload at all costs.  It is fine to have a somewhat outrageous business card design, but keep the content on them to a minimum.  At most, they should display your business name, personal name, and a few forms of contact information.

Media Ads

For this, I am talking about radio and television ads.  If you can afford to run an ad like this, you certainly do not want to waste that money by overloading your listeners or watchers with too much information.  Again, pick one of two aspects that you are trying to emphasize with your advertisement, and stick with them.  Television watchers will quickly ignore a commercial that tries to do too much.

Any direct mail postcard marketing is going to have a lot of competition. I would hope all businesses would realize that they aren’t alone.

My mail pile has plenty of different advertisements in it. Some of them I take the time to pick them up and read through what they have to say, and others get dumped right in the trash. What’s different between them?

The ones I pick up have the right kind of designs, layouts, and colors. They scream out to be seen and I oblige them. The companies that accept they have a lot of competition and do their best to stand out among them are the ones I’m going to look at.

Put some serious thought to your postcard printing before you send them out. Is it appropriately attention grabbing? Will it stand out in a pile of postcards?

If you don’t put enough thought I’ll probably be throwing it in the trashcan.

So how do you make your postcard marketing campaign work? By getting good addresses for your direct mail campaign, that’s how. A good mailing address list will help you strengthen your postcard marketing effort, as well as help you to reach out to as many of your target market as possible.

First off, you must identify who you would want to target. You wouldn’t want your full color postcard printing materials to fall in the wrong hands, would you? Obviously, the wrong recipient would most likely treat your collateral as useless and insignificant, which means your marketing campaign would be a waste. This why it is very important to focus on your target market to avoid wasting your postcards’ value and purpose.

Now, in order for you to know who your clients are, there are online sites and offline search engines that can provide you the information you need. Find out who actually use your products and services, and then focus on that market.

When you know who your target clients are, you now have the option to create your own database, or get a company that provides such service. Nowadays, there are companies that make their living by selling their mailing lists to businesses. They have gathered, cataloged and listed all the information you’ll need for your requirements. All you have to do is buy it from them.

Having a firm and compact database can help you to have a strong postcard promotional campaign. Make sure that you have one and see how your results change for the better.

What do you need to get your clients to clamor for more of your posters, booklets, and even business cards? A good headline should do it.

Yes, Iʼm talking about pure, raw and unadulterated headline that packs a mean punch wherever it hits. Youʼll say, sure! A good headline does give you the enticement you need to make your audience thirsting for more. But what can you do to make sure that you have one for your marketing collaterals?

For one thing, you have to make sure that your headline is the first thing that your readers would see in your material, and not your name or your store address. I know that you want people to know you. But letʼs face it. Itʼs not you that the clients would be buying. Itʼs your product. So get off your high horses and teach yourself to write a great headline.

Second, write your headline like youʼre the only business that can provide the solution to their problems. Make it sound like youʼre the miracle drug of all miracle drugs. If thereʼs one thing that would make your audience hopping to your store itʼs the benefits that you can give, more than that of your competition.

If you have a great headline, you can convince your target not only to read your ad, but to clamor for more. Heck, you can even convince your clients to buy, which I think is the objective of this exercise in the first place.