Hot Gossip > Key Ingredients for Direct Marketing
In this economy, companies are becoming more competitive through a drive to survive.
With more companies pushing their marketing, it’s essential to avoid the knee-jerk reaction of “Bad times. Better start tightening the purse strings”. Now is the time to:
- Review your market and analyse your a-class clients
- Maintain or increase marketing spend
- Target that expenditure more efficiently for better results
Avoid knee-jerk spending on one-off big money methods just to let them die a lonely death
Direct marketing is still alive, well and becoming more important in today’s market.
With that in mind, now could be the time for you to initiate an efficient direct marketing campaign. To help with this, we have put together some key ingredients.
1. Proper Planning and Preparation!
This includes a review of those clients you have and those clients you want to get so that you have a good picture of your ideal target market. Don’t fall into the trap of “Our market is everyone. We want everyone to use our services”, as without a proper idea of your target market you’re more likely to inject a whole wad of cash into marketing with no return.
2. Database Sourcing
If you already have an extensive database that could be working better for you, now is a great time to give it a good spring clean. Check contact details, see who has replaced who and ensure you are dealing with the decision makers.
If you have no database, there are plenty of places you can get hold of one. Just remember that this could be the first contact you will make with a prospect so, like the back of our business card says, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression!”.
When it comes to direct marketing, bad impression = junk mail. Good impression = something useful that your prospect would want to know.
3. The Mailout
The material you send out in your campaign needs to reflect the quality image of your company and the market you are targeting. For example, if you’re a rental management company targeting quality rental homes, such as Christchurch’s Rent Right, you don’t want to send out Warehouse-style branding that presents a cheap, mass-market image.
Your material should be designed. Sending out home-made, Publisher template correspondence is great for family greeting cards but looks cheap and tacky when it comes to business.
4. Measurement, Measurement, Measurement
This is what’s going to distinguish you from the crowd. Any successful direct marketing campaign must be measured. This will allow you to review the campaign, analyse its strengths and weaknesses and make your next campaign even more effective. You will also see which methods were less effective and so you can make the decision to stop spending in that area instead of pouring all your hard earned dosh down the plughole.
There are a variety of methods that will allow you to measure your campaign’s success. The standard “where did you hear about us?” seems the most obvious but many sales staff forget to ask and many prospects forget where they heard about you! Plenty of our clients have asked the question only to be told that their advert was seen in a publication that they’ve never had anything to do with!
We have discussed this in a previous newsletter but to review, one method is to create a unique webpage address or e-mail address that the prospect must go to in order to contact you. Anyone using this address will have either read your material or heard about the material from someone else. Another method is to create a special offer coupon that will fill the dual purpose of encouraging people to make contact AND telling you where they read your material.
So give your database a spring clean and start thinking about how best to target your specific market. If you’re after assistance, give us a call.
P.S. Hot PJ’s “2 tips a day” twitter account is going well. Check us out at www.twitter.com/hotpj2tipsaday
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Copyright 2007 Hot Pyjama Productions Ltd
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