Direct Mail Promotion ? Effective Ideas For Small Businesses ...

Direct mail advertising is still perhaps the most powerful and profitable means for just about any small business to get new customers and to sell more products and services to existing customers and clients, as well.

The problem is business owners go about it in quite the wrong way. A successful direct mail marketing campaign is not merely a case of delivering some haphazard letter or postcard through the mail and counting on it to lead to a rush of sales.

Effective direct mail marketing, like all other forms of successful and profitable small business marketing is based on observing the rules of the game, rules laid down over the past 150 years or so.

They?re not rules as in regulations you must abide by ?or else?, but instead are suggestions which have been found empirically to give much better results (i.e. higher Return on Investment, or ROI).

Sadly, the people responsible for creating most of the direct mail marketing campaigns small businesses run are not really qualified for the job. Because it is likely to be left in the hands of graphic designers, and unless they?ve been specially trained in direct marketing principles, they ?ll produce something that looks sensational ? but in terms of ROI is a disaster.

Worse still, it?s useless picking an argument with them: despite the presence of mountains of evidence to the contrary, I still hear graphic designers informing my clients what I?ve produced for them has too much text and nobody will read it (which must be why the 22-page sales letter I just lately wrote for a client went to 30,000 + people and brought in an ROI of 150,000 GBP or more, I imagine). Here are a couple of easy peasy suggestions I suggest you try out in your direct mail marketing, and just see the difference they make.

Rule # 1: Don?t scream ?ADVERTISING?

The majority of direct mail advertising SEEMS like advertising. You get it in a stock envelope with a label or printed address on it, and as often as not it has the company name and logo on it, to. This is a really awful idea..

How so? Well, it?s plain to anybody it?s just something sent by some jackass seeking to take your money off you. Who wishes to read that? Where?s the value to the reader and why might he or she waste her time with it?

Instead, I suggest you use an ordinary, white envelope, the sort you?d use for a personal letter. Then use a genuine stamp (as in, one from the Post Office), and hand-write the address, or at least use a realistic looking handwriting typeface printed straight onto the envelope? NO LABELS.

In case you have got to have a return address on it, simply put the address in the top left corner ? no business name, no logo.

Just doing this one means your direct mail is going to be delivered to and opened by many, many more people. No one can resist a hand-addressed personal letter.

Rule # 2: Write like you speak

But ? if you go through most direct mail advertising pieces, they?re dull, dreary and full of wind. They don?t seem to be there for any particular reason other than ?brand awareness?. Forget that right now. Your ?brand awareness? will be a result of your success, not the other way around.

You need to write your direct mail marketing pieces in exactly the same tone as you ?d write a letter to a valued aunt or uncle. Forget about being ?professional? or following the rules they taught you at school. Simply write like you speak, and you won?t go far wrong.

Aim your whole piece at emphasising one problem and one problem only, by giving a big, bold promise in your headline. Then, in the body of the piece, tell them you CAN solve it, and then explain to them HOW they can obtain this magic solution you have. In other words, you have to have a focused and impossible-to-miss call to action, like ?Phone me on 00000-000000 NOW and reserve your free appointment ? places are limited to the first seven people to call, so if you are the eighth person to call, you?ll miss out?. Dead easy.

These tips by themselves will make a huge difference to your results, I promise.

Source: http://traffic-generation-techniques.com/direct-mail-promotion-effective-ideas-for-small-businesses/

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