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
Think outside the box!
This is usually where most of the thought and work goes into a marketing piece, and rightly so. Eye catching, colorful, and meaningful creative will get the receiver’s attention more than a dull piece (but the message will keep their attention).
It is important that the creative reflects your company and what you are trying to advertise. First, you might want to choose a mood for your marketing strategy. If you were to characterize the tone of your marketing, what would you call it: professional, playful, informative, dependable, light hearted, comedic, testimonial? Is complex graphic design going to enhance your piece or might photos help you convey your message more effectively?
Branding is also very essential. The receiver should immediately know who sent the piece and how to contact you for more information. Your company logos, color schemes, and slogans should be prevalent on everything you distribute. It is also helpful to design a campaign around a particular theme, gimmick, character, or slogan that is static in all of your marketing efforts.
Good branding and creative will allow you to build brand awareness and protect your company’s integrity.
Amanda Moore
Timing is everything...especially when your marketing is involved!
Timing is everything, and sometimes a successful campaign can be completely dependent on when it is distributed. Be sure that your marketing is time effective if it corresponds with a particular holiday or season. If you have a marketing campaign that is relevant year round, even better.
Bakeries that are busiest in the spring would have more success marketing in the late winter or early spring when customers are preparing for events. Likewise, advertising clothing a school supplies during the late summer will be well received by parents who are anticipating sending their children back to school.
Recently while driving in my car I heard a radio jingle that included a Christmas song. The advertisement caught my attention because it was the middle of August, so I listened. Turns out the advertisement had nothing to do with the holidays but it stood out. That advertisement would not have caught my attention if I heard it in December on a radio saturated with holiday songs and advertisements.
Frequency is one of the most overlooked aspects of marketing. For a marketing piece to be effective it must have several touch points or follow-ups. I often hear customers who say they have had absolutely no response on their annual post card campaign. I am never surprised by this statement.
As a consumer, ask yourself if you remember something you got in the mail six months ago, six weeks ago, or even yesterday…chances are you don’t. It only makes sense that the more often you contact a buyer, the more likely they will be to remember you and show interest in your product or service.
Try doubling or tripling your marketing frequency. Instead of yearly mailers, consider mailing quarterly. Now before you cringe at how much it would cost to quadruple your mailings consider this: 4,000 post cards mailed once a year will cost nearly the same amount as mailing 1,000 mailers four times a year. Qualify the leads ahead of time and increase frequency; chances are you will get a better response.
Amanda Moore
Make sure your message helps you stand out in all the clutter!
The message and copy on any type of marketing piece is the most important component. Messaging should be clear and concise while communicating your offer to you buyer.
First you must decide what it is you are marketing. What is the single most important message that this project must communicate? Is it a specific product, service, event, or special? Be sure that the receiver will have a clear understanding of what you are advertising.
Next, you need to examine the content of your marketing piece. Is it meaningful? Does it add interest or value to the piece? If not eliminate it. Nothing kills a marketing piece faster than too much text (the receiver will overlook it).
Your buyer is just like you and will respond similarly to marketing. So think like a consumer and ask your self would I care enough to read this? Would I skim it and throw it in the trash? If you don’t care enough about the copy then chances are, your customer wont either.
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
Your marketing persistence will pay off!
A surprise phone call today from a prospect got me thinking that consistent marketing is the most effective marketing. After several months and many attempts to contact this particular prospect, they finally called me to set an appointment. Sure it was a very long sales cycle, but the fact is that they finally had a need for my service and they knew exactly who to call.
This is because I partake in consistent marketing efforts. My customers receive marketing collateral from me in the form of packages, emails, direct mail, personalized letters, phone calls, and I pop in regularly with sales materials. I continue to keep my brand at the forefront of their minds with a consistent marketing message.
The fact is that your customers and prospects are being bombarded by thousands of marketing messages every day. The questions you must ask yourself are this: Do your prospects know who you are? Do they know what you sell? Do they know how to find you when they have a need for your product or service? Why should they choose you over your competition?
- Effective marketing will generate leads for you.
- Consistent messaging can get your point across.
- Branding will ensure corporate identity and build awareness about your brand.
- Consistent messaging will get your point across.
- Repetition of these key items will ensure that this message is heard!
Keep marketing, stay persistent, have a clear message, brand yourself consistently, and it will eventually pay off.
Amanda Moore
Ask the right questions to uncover your marketing objectives...
Analyzing marketing performance is a key part of your marketing efforts. Tracking the responses to a campaign and analyzing its performance by utilizing valuable campaign data will drive better results.
How is the campaign performing? What is your return on investment? How much is your cost per lead? Is the campaign generating any new sales?
These questions can be overwhelming, but here are a few questions to ask yourself in order to diagnose the results of your current marketing efforts and identify areas that need improvement:
• What marketing initiatives have generated the most leads over the past few years?
• What is your conversion rate for leads to customers?
• What is the average length of a sales cycle? How are you trying to shorten this?
• Who is your target audience? Has this changed due to current economic conditions, pricing, or competition?
• How do you differ from your competitors? How do you communicate this to your customers?
• How do you grow the sales of your current customer base?
• How effective are your customer retention campaigns?
• What are the major forces driving change in your industry? How are you coping with this?
• What are the opportunities for growing your business in the future?
Asking yourself these simple questions will help you to uncover your business and marketing objectives. This exercise will allow you to figure out what is or isn’t working, what has worked in the past, and where you would like to be in the future. These questions will allow you to identify positive and negative trends in your marketing efforts, which is the key to successful marketing performance.
Keep in mind that not all feedback will be positive feedback, but it will be useful information in analyzing your marketing performance. For example, perhaps you launch a great new campaign with direct mail pieces and receive little or no response. First reaction might be to give up on direct mail because it will never work. After careful analysis you might come to realize that maybe the message or copy wasn’t conveying your company’s message. Or perhaps your mail list needs to be cleaned up or your offer didn’t resonate with the recipient.
Marketing campaigns are made up of multiple components that all need to come together in the right way in order to be effective. If you analyze and receive negative feedback…GREAT! At least it is feedback and it’s a step in the right direction to proactively managing your marketing campaigns to be as effective as they can be.
Amanda Moore
Cut through the clutter and get your customer's attention!
Keeping in touch with your customers regularly is a vital part of growing your business. How meaningful is the contact you typically have with them?
Regularly blasting your customer or prospect with spam emails promoting yourself, your business, or your special this month is not meaningful-in fact, it can be downright annoying. In an over populated marketing environment we must try to cut through the clutter and stand out with constant meaningful contact.
What do I mean by meaningful contact? Content that is meaningful to your customer not just bombarding them with self promotion…but it is possible to do both.
After you put together what you feel is a brilliant marketing campaign there is still the possibility that the phone won’t ring. It is said that it takes anywhere from 7-10 touch points to reel a prospect in, so it is important that you keep your brand in front of your prospect without overloading them with spam and junk mail-this is where constant meaningful contact comes into play.
Hand written notes or letters are a personalized touch that your customers will appreciate. Hand written notes are a lost art that will set you apart from your competition. They can be utilized as a short thank you note or a card to check in on them from time to time.
Hand written notes and letters take up some time, especially if you are trying to reach a large number of customers at a time. This is when variable print is most effective. Imbedding customer variables in the content of your direct mailer, letter, or email will feel less like a mass marketing piece and can give a more meaningful appeal. Variables can include the customer’s name, company name, images, or even a product or service that you think they might be specifically interested in.
If you are looking to really make a long lasting impression, take the time to get to know your customers and send them things they may be interested in. Send them newspaper clippings or email them a link to an online publication that is highlighting their specific industry or hobby. Include a personalized note or email message just to tell them you saw this and thought of them.
I myself send out monthly newsletters to my customers. This newsletter is not filled with self promoting information but rather useful business and marketing tips that could benefit every business or industry. It is another way for us to get face time with our customer but it is also filled with valuable content that they can enjoy and utilize.
Think of ways to promote your business in a way that will appeal to your customers. Your marketing should be useful to your customer and not seem like blind advertising. Think outside the box and personalize the message to suit the needs of your target market. When in doubt think to yourself: “If someone sent this to me, would I care enough to read it?”
Amanda Moore
www.piptampa.com
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
