With the marketing industry focusing on online promotion, it can be easy to ignore the potential business that offline marketing can bring. Although traditionally offline marketing is more expensive than online promotion, if you focus on specific campaigns for a clearly defined target audience then you can ensure your investment is well spent.
Direct mail can be used as a way to contact clients you?re not currently reaching online or to backup your online marketing efforts. The key is to see your direct mail as a?campaign?and encourage your recipients to go online to a specific webpage or social media channel; ask them to call a dedicated phone number or call them yourself a few days after your campaign has reached them.
As direct mail can be expensive, it?s vital to take a considered approach to anything you send out.
Below are a few questions to ask yourself before you begin a campaign.
Why are you sending a direct mail campaign?
If you want to avoid wasting money then your reason for doing a direct mail campaign needs to be crystal clear.
It?s not enough to base a campaign around ?increasing your client base? or ?making more money?; you will need to be much more specific than that. Ask yourself what the main purpose of the campaign is ? is it to drive typically offline clients to your website? Is it to promote a new product? Is it to showcase a service your recipients might not be familiar with?
Who are you sending it to?
Unless you have a bulging marketing budget you will have to refine who you send your direct mail to, at the very least by geographical area and industry sector.
Again, being as specific as possible will reap the most rewards. Will you send your direct mail to angel investors based in London? Female business owners in New York?
Small businesses with less than five employees in your local area?Every decision you make at this point will help you to define the most appropriate concept for your entire campaign and will have a direct impact on your ROI.
What is your budget?
If you have refined your send-list with the above questions then you should have a manageable number of businesses you want to make contact with. The main reason direct mail is expensive is because of postal costs, so factor this cost in alongside your design and printing. Printers often offer discounts for bulk buying but don?t be lured in by a cheap deal if it means you?ll have 5,000 postcards you can?t afford to send out, for example. It?s best to start out small with direct mail and test out a couple of sample groups of around 200 prospective clients before launching a campaign which will take you into the thousands. If you break your campaign up and test small samples then it?s easier to have control over your project and see what works and what doesn?t as you go, rather than blowing your whole budget on one concept or target market.
What your direct marketing should do
Demand attention
Your letter or postcard will be one of many landing in your prospective clients? in-trays so it?s vital that yours stands out. Again, knowing who your target market is will ensure your marketing strikes a chord with them. Successful direct marketing campaigns work because they completely understand the needs of the recipient and clearly show how a product or service can meet these needs. The better you understand your target audience, the more you will understand how they think and feel and the easier it will be to target your campaign.
Rightmove, the UK?s leading property portal, received a 20% signup rate for theirdirect mail campaign?because they fully understood who their target market was.
Rightmove?s direct marketing was sent to estate agents in London and illustrated how much market power Rightmove has in specific London postcodes, to encourage the estate agents operating in these areas to advertise with them. The campaign worked as it was so highly targeted and used clear statistics which the target market couldn?t ignore.
In another example, creative agency Targetbase Claydon Heeley sent their?direct mail campaign?to just 117 decision makers after completing some painstaking research. The company identified four industries: retail, automotive, fundraising and financial services and selected the companies which they believed offered a good fit. From researching the companies? culture, size and budgets to checking that the decision makers would be in the office when the direct mail arrived, Targetbase Claydon Heeley took their targeted campaign to the extreme. This approach worked though, as they enjoyed a response rate of 19.5% which is not bad when you consider the usual response rate for direct mail is below 3%.
The lesson here is to research your target market thoroughly and to have a clear message which will demand attention and cut through the rest of the mail your prospect will receive.
Highlight the benefits of your products or service
As with all copywriting, the message in your direct mail will highlight the benefits of what you?re offering and ideally this message should ?show not tell? your prospective clients the benefits of working with you. Using the Targetbase Claydon Heeley example again, this agency sent out two postcards which arrived a day apart and both ?postcards of the future? were ?sent? by the recipient from 2029. The first postcard featured the recipient having a lovely time on their own paradise island, the second postcard was no so positive and featured the recipient living in Southend and feeling depressed about how things hadn?t gone to plan. The difference was that in the recipient?s rosy, desert island future, they had worked with Targetbase Claydon Heeley and their business had thrived.
Instead of just listing all the features of your product or service in your advert, focus on what it will do for your potential customer and it doesn?t have to be complicated. O2 used a?simple and straightforward direct marketing campaign?which focused on the hectic schedule of IT managers who end up doing all the niggly little jobs in their business. O2 pointed out how they could take care of a company?s mobiles so the IT managers were freed up to do what they should be doing.
Successful direct mail copy highlights the features of a product or service and then shows prospective clients the benefits ? having one without the other will reduce your chances of connecting with your customers.
Close with a strong call-to-action
Make sure your direct mail copywriting tells your recipients what they need to do next.
Without a strong and clear call-to-action, your prospective clients will soon lose interest, no matter how good your direct marketing is.
Send people online to your website or a social media page or simply ask them to call you. In some cases, your call-to-action will be you calling the people you sent the direct mail to so you can follow up your campaign. Whatever the call-to-action, it needs to be in your campaign and it needs to be clear.
This article was written by Sarah, joint owner of the UK copywriting company?Pure Ink,which she co-founded in 2008. She has been creating content for clients? websites and offline projects for over five years and has worked with clients such as Avon, Best Western, Ford and the Private Health Partnership as well as a range of other companies in the B2B and B2C sectors. Sarah specialises in search engine optimisation copywriting, developing tone of voice for clients and also crafting headlines and tag linesfor projects.
ShowSource: http://www.presort.com/2012/03/15/how-to-make-direct-marketing-work-for-your-business/
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