Aim for your target market!
Your marketing will fall flat if it is not reaching the correct person, so knowing your target audience is key to any marketing campaign.
A few questions to consider: What are the attributes of your best customers? What is the demographic like? Do they have any buying habits or patterns? Be sure to tailor your messaging to identify with this customer.
Data is often overlooked, but it is essential to an effective marketing strategy. Be sure that you are utilizing your current customer list properly. The list can be segmented to identify specific demographic characteristics such as location, gender, age range, income level, and purchase history.
You already know who they are and what, where, when, and how they buy so it is possible to customize your marketing to reach them specifically. A personalized marketing piece is much more effective than a generic one. Perhaps you would prefer to purchase a new prospect list. These are also useful and can be segmented accordingly so you can market to them specifically.
This segmented data is extremely useful for appealing to your target market. For example, consider a gym who might want to advertise its new babysitting service that will watch kids while their parents are working out. The gym’s target audience may be women from their mid twenties to mid thirties with children. A list can be acquired with their addresses but most importantly the creative can be customized to appeal to the consumer. A postcard with a buff body builder lifting weights might not be as appealing as an everyday mom next-door on a treadmill.
Identify you target market and utilize your data to customize your marketing.
Amanda Moore
Get your customer's attention and give them an incentive to act now!
Your marketing piece should have a clear call-to-action that expresses to the customer exactly how you want them to respond. To implement a call-to-action, simply ask yourself how you want the recipient to react to the piece and include it in the creative and messaging.
A call-to-action can take on many forms. It could be to respond to a personalized URL or generic URL, go to a website, call a phone number, contact a representative, attend a trade show, or go to a retail location. Ask the recipient to act now! Include this call-to-action in an obvious and noticeable location in your creative. Perhaps bold letters, in the headline, or in a star burst.
The call-to-action seems to go hand in hand with an incentive. Infomercials utilize this tactic regularly to get buyers to have a sense of purchasing urgency. Call in the next twenty minutes and receive an additional ______ free! Incentives give the receiver reason to act on your call-to-action. It can be in the form of a giveaway, a discount, a contest, or a free gift with purchase.
Again, you must think like your consumer. Is a free $5.00 Starbucks gift card enticing enough or would they prefer to be entered in a drawing to win a new iPod Touch? Some offers can be pertinent to your business or others can be fun items that you think your customers will appreciate.
In any case, a call-to-action linked to an attractive incentive will give receivers all the more reason to react to your marketing piece.
Amanda Moore
Frustrated by your marketing?
I can’t generate new leads! My customers have left me for my competitor! They are not buying enough! I can’t seem to gain market share! They are not responding to my mailers! That postcard is too expensive! –My marketing isn’t working!
Everywhere I turn these days it seems that everyone is questioning their marketing. Although there is no sure fire formula that will bring success, there are ways to improve your marketing, enhance your response rates, and see a better return on your investment.
The next few blogs are intended to analyze your marketing efforts and will be presented in six short segments where we will discuss:
• Message and Copy
• Frequency and Timing
• Creative and Branding
• Call-to-Action and Incentive
• Target Audience and Data
• Response Mechanisms
Amanda Moore
Cut through the clutter with a creative twist on direct mail
Integrated direct marketing campaigns consist of coordinated promotional efforts that send a consistent message across multiple marketing vehicles to individually target specific consumers more directly. Because consumers gain information from a wide variety of marketing vehicles and media sources, it is important to cut through the clutter and reach your audience through a variety of channels.
Consumers are overwhelmed by marketing communications so you must make sure to create communications that are timely, relevant, creative, interesting, personalized and contain value. It’s important that promotions contain a unique personalized message, multiple touch points (such as email, mail, or website), one-to-one marketing, and interactive components.
Promotional objectives to consider for an integrated direct marketing campaign:
• Create Awareness
• Stimulate Demand
• Identify Prospects
• Retain Loyal Customers
• Combat Competitive Promotional Efforts
• Reduce Sales Fluctuations
The Direct Marketing Association credits Dimensional Mail as the number one most effective and track-able advertising method with a 5.59 response rate compared to telephone (2.53), catalog (2.24), and direct mail (2.15).
Integrated direct marketing campaigns can consist of any of the following services: personalized direct mail, list acquisition, email, program analysis reports, dimensional mail, promotional items, customized flyers, envelope websites, personalized URLs, generic URLs, web page, online survey, and variable data.
I recently designed an integrated direct marketing campaign that consisted of a dimensional mailer, variable data, promotional item, website initiatives, and customized flyers. My campaign was themed so that it was relevant to my prospects and timely in terms of our economic recession. The package had a label on the box with a variable and posed a marketing uestion to my decision maker.
It wasn’t until they opened the box and saw the contents inside that they knew who had sent the package; and by then I had them hooked. They were already cooing over the goodies inside, personal touch, creative presentation, and information included about how to increase their business with my products and services. The informational piece discussed our differentials, directed them to our website for more information, and included a call to action that offered a gift card to a popular dining establishment if they set up an appointment. The package stood out from the typical direct mail clutter and caught my customers’ attention right away.
The most important part of an integrated direct marketing campaign is to analyze performance, follow up, and get feedback. Did prospects respond to your call to action (i.e. call for an appointment)? If not, consider sending a follow-up mailer, email, or make a phone call to be sure they received it. How successful a promotion is depends widely on the quantity and quality of the feedback you receive.
My campaign has had a 36% response rate so far and was a tremendous return on my investment! Ask yourself, what was the response rate for your last direct marketing campaign? Do you know what your ROI was?
Amanda Moore
Retaining Your Customers Does Not Need To Be This Difficult...
Need to grow your business in the upcoming year? Hoping to increase sales or profits? Worried about where you are going to find the customers to make that happen?
Your most lucrative customers are in your own database! Your current customers are your biggest untapped resource. These are customers that already know, like, and trust you and your business. They are already familiar with your brand and obviously see the value of your products and services because they keep coming back to buy from you.
Chances are that your customers are not aware of all the products or services that your business provides and they need to be enlightened. They may already subscribe to one or two of your services and don’t realize that you can help them in other ways as well. Take advantage of the opportunity to sell more by cross-selling or up-selling to your existing customers.
It is less expensive to market to current customers than to acquire new customers. You marketing and sales efforts will likely be better received by someone who already does business with you. You already know this customer, who to contact, how to reach them and what they buy. The decision maker is more likely to take your call or respond to your marketing efforts. You don’t have to go through the hassle of prospecting and doing detective work to qualify your list.
Marketing to current customers is vital to growing and sustaining your business. You may not be marketing to your current customers but I guarantee your competition is and you don’t want them to have the upper hand. Your best customers are you competitor’s best prospects and you don’t want to lose them.
Customer retention campaigns are essential in today’s competitive marketplace and your customer loyalty is a vital part of your business. An effective customer retention program can be the right solution to secure those valuable relationships.
Neglect is the most common reason why many customers leave. Think about yourself in comparison to your competition. You probably offer a similar product or service at a similar price so you need to be consistently reminding your customers of what differentiates you from your competition and give them a reason to keep coming back.
It is very important that you continue to acquire new customers but make sure that your marketing budget and sales efforts allow for a customer retention program that will keep them coming back for more.
Amanda Moore
www.piptampa.com
Watch your marketing grow your business!
I thought to get this blog rolling I would share our marketing strategies for 2009. These ideas have been compiled from our corporate headquarters, other colleagues, and trial and error from 18 years in the business that we have customized to fit our specific marketing objectives.
PIP Printing and Marketing Services is part of a large franchise that boasts hundreds of locations throughout the United States and we are lucky to have many extended resources. Corporately we have repositioned our brand, marketing strategies, and advertising efforts. With an updated new look, tagline, and message we are rolling out many new marketing and branding tools such as new brochures, business cards, stationary, and branded materials.
We are participating in a monthly direct mail campaign. Direct mail is important to our business as it allows us to reach out to current customers and prospects. Direct mail keeps our brand in front of our customers and regularly keeps them aware of our products and services. Our direct mail efforts are successful due to our cultivated mail list and consistent follow up efforts.
Our customer service representative is always trying to cross sell or up sell our current customers to inform them about our extended products and services that they may not be aware of. At the point of sale she will mention a complimentary product or perhaps a service they may not know we offer. We make sure to plant the seed with every customer, send them back to the office with a brochure, and follow up to offer more information.
For the first time ever, our particular location has created an integrated direct marketing campaign. This campaign combines several of our products and services into a unique marketing strategy specifically aimed at acquiring new customers. The campaign incorporates promotional items, graphic design, digital services, variable print, database management, mailing services, website, and fresh baked cookies! The program targeted specific prospects and required aggressive follow up efforts and has brought in a 30% response rate so far.
PIP Printing will unveil our long anticipated new website in the second quarter. The new site will have an updated look, interactive feel, and personalized touches. The new site will have a reverse approach to the typical marketing efforts and will tie all of our new and improved branded materials together.
An aggressive and outside sales force pounds the pavement the old fashioned way. New prospects are targeted with cold calls, phone calls, and knocking on doors.
We spent the first few weeks of the New Year combing through our current mail list to verify and update our contacts. This guarantees that our marketing efforts are reaching the right people and we are not wasting precious marketing dollars.
Networking and participating in community activities allows our company to spread brand recognition, meet new colleagues, and give back to our community. We actively support and participate in groups such as the Kiwanis Club of Tampa, Tampa Bay and Company, and The Special Operations Warrior Foundation.
Most importantly, we try to analyze the success of our marketing efforts. This can be as simple as asking every new customer how they heard about us. Or as elaborate as creating a personalized URL or special landing page to measure response to integrated direct marketing campaigns. It all comes down to ROI and no matter how simple or elaborate, it is important to know which of your marketing efforts are successful and which are not worth the money spent.
None of these efforts are guaranteed to be successful but with the combined approach, proactive marketing, and consistent follow up efforts we are seeing results.
Amanda Moore
