Marketing - Like a Game of Chess

Have you started thinking about your Valentines Day Promotion yet?

It may sound like a strange question on the day before Thanksgiving but it really isn’t. When scheduling your promotions it is like a game of chess. You should always be thinking at least 3 moves ahead.

In this case each “move” should be one month. Therefore you should have been

thinking about your Valentines, or February promotions as you fall asleep after your big Turkey dinner.

There are a few reasons why you need to have your promotions figured out that early.

Getting Promo Out Takes Time.

By having it all worked out months in advance you give yourself enough time for the logistics. Getting the concept down, getting artwork put together, printing, and mailing all have to be done and this can take several weeks from being an idea in your head to being a piece of promo in your customers hands. You are also going to want to have the piece in your customers’ hands at least 2 weeks before the sale or event.

Get the Message Out Multiple Times.

Getting your promo out early lets you drive your message home through repetition. Take Christmas for example. If you start mailing to your customers in the beginning of November, you will be able to cement your company name in their head because you will be able to mail to them multiple times before they have to make their Holiday purchases. On the other hand if you start mailing to them in late November or Early December you will not have the time to do multiple mailings. Getting one mailing out at that stage will still be much better than not sending anything at all, but nothing works better when promoting than multiple mailings with the same message to the same list.

Free Up Time for Running Your Business.

Most people who own a business do their own marketing. Thankfully marketing is one of the few things in a business that you can do far in advance. By scheduling your holiday promotions ahead of time you will make yourself available to wear all of the other hats that you do around your business.

Scheduling promotions can seem like a huge task, but some things are just worth the extra thought. It really isn’t that daunting. Once it is done, then you’ll have time to put your ideas and energy on other areas that need your attention so that you maximize your efforts toward expansion.

Check Mate!

Direct Mail Marketing: Is It Your Choice?

Direct mail marketing is a system of marketing that is directed at specific people. In direct marketing, the advertisement is directed to a specific individual. This is unlike marketing that is open ended such as a billboard or a television commercial. Direct mail marketing is a very effective means of communication in virtually any environment and for most businesses. But, there are some things to be wary about when it comes to direct mail marketing.

One of the benefits of direct mail marketing is that you can measure your success. If you send out direct marketing materials to 100 people and 50 respond, you can see just how well your marketing has worked. Where as in banner advertising there is no way to judge how many people saw versus how many reacted to your marketing technique. This can help you to measure your success rate quite simply.

But, there are a few things to protect your business from when it comes to direct mail marketing. For one thing, many people hate to get junk mail. And in this we mean email and postal services. Spam is quite common on the web. There are even laws and regulations regulating marketing techniques that employ the use of spam or spam like marketing. Steering clear of such avenues is quite important.

So, should you invest your advertising budget in direct mail marketing? It is quite necessary in most cases to consider the use of this type of marketing. And, regardless of the hassles, it is one of the most beneficial ways to advertise.

There are also many information portals now devoted to the subject and we recommend reading about it at one of these. Try googling for “direct mail marketing” and you will be surprised by the abundance of information on the subject. Alternatively you may try looking on Yahoo, MSN or even a decent directory site, all are good sources of this information.

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All too often people look at marketing ROI in terms of response rate: in other words, “I sent out 10,000 pieces of direct mail and only got 39 responses which is terrible.” This is wrong think.

When it comes to marketing ROI, you have to realize that the term means Return On Investment and the return is measured in dollars (or your local currency). Let’s say you spend $2,000 to get out a bulk mailing of 5,000 pieces and you get 10 calls as a result. Doesn’t look like much. But of these 10 calls you close 6 and get immediate sales of $12,000. That’s marketing ROI! And that’s not even taking into account the future sales to those 6 new customers. It could add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The same simple mathematics apply to any other marketing efforts: radio ads, press releases or articles in magazines, print ads, yellow pages, web site, etc.

Obviously you need to keep track of response from each marketing campaign you do so that you can weed out unsuccessful campaigns and strengthen successful ones.

Case in point:

Jeff Lee, CFO of a very successful consulting company, Measurable Solutions, has adopted a successful small business marketing strategy based on direct mail marketing. Key elements are mailing out a newspaper and full color postcards. The design is done in house and the printing and mailing is done by a specialized postcard printing company. In his own words…

“We get our best response from mailing out a newspaper and back it up with postcards. Depends on the postcards. Some postcards have pulled better than others.

“The professionalism of the postcards is something that is effective: it gets attention, it keeps the image that we want to keep, it creates the reach, it creates the response and keeps our leads in a very high range.

“We probably average around 7,500 post cards per week. Out of 7,500 post cards we’ll get in an average of 15-20 leads. Of the 15-20 leads at least a third of them come to our introductory seminar. So say 5 or 7 people show up and they pay $1,700 a piece. Off of that we close a further $30-40,000 for services.

“The money we have put into the postcards is like a drop in a bucket compared to what we get back. We know that the more promotion we send out, the more return we’re going to get. It always works.”

That is excellent marketing ROI. Measurable Solutions spend about $2,275 for 7,500 full color post cards. That includes printing, postage, mailing (including the mailing list). From that they get between $8,500 and $11,900 in immediate response for an introductory seminar and an additional $30-40,000 follow-up sales. Spend $2,275, earn $40-50,000. You don’t need to have majored in advanced math and rocket science to work that one out: that is what is meant by marketing ROI!

Results of direct mail marketing vary from business to business but the principle holds and always works: if you send out enough promotion, you will make sales and maximize your marketing ROI. Don’t worry about response rate if your marketing ROI is high.