How to Profit from Direct Mail
In the next coming weeks I will be talking about developing and running an effective direct mail campaign to boost turnover and profits. You see, if you really want to make dramatic improvements in sales you cannot simple rely on having great presence on line. You need to have a range of strategic marketing weapons to make the most of your target market. And direct mail is one of the most powerful marketing weapons you can have.
You are running a direct-mail campaign every time you mail an existing or potential customer a letter and ask them to respond or take action.
Direct mail is a marketing strategy that can help you achieve a number of business objectives. From lead generation to customer retention, direct mail campaigns are a highly versatile and relatively cost-effective choice for business promotion.
What you probably don’t realise is the direct mail is one of the most targeted marketing strategies you can implement, and one of the easiest to track, measure and analyse results.
It is also one of the most personal. Instead of an advertisement, flyer, newspaper insert or catalogue, you are sending each customer a personalised letter that is tailored to their unique needs and desires.
Getting the most out of your direct mail campaign is easy. With a laser-sharp mailing list and irresistible offer, your direct mail campaign can easily flood your business with qualified leads.
Let’s get started!
A List of Ideal Customers
Unless you spend time carefully crafting a mailing list of ideal customers, you may as well pack and up go home. The success of a direct mail campaign largely rests on the pinpoint accuracy of your mailing list.
The only people you want on your list are your potential “ideal customers.” The people who are most likely to buy from you – often and in large volumes – and who are a delight to deal with. They are the type of people who will account for 80% of your revenue, and just 20% of your total customer base.
You have a number of options when you are creating your mailing list:
• Existing customer database. This is a list of all of the people who have previously purchased from you. It is important to gather their full contact information at the time of sale so you will be able to get contact them again.
• Existing Leads database
This is a list of all of the leads that have come through your door, but have not purchased from you. This may include those who responded to your last direct mail campaign, but have not yet become customers.
• Outsourced list. This is a list that has been purchased from a market research firm, the government, or the post office. These lists are pulled based on demographic information – age, sex, location, income, family structure, etc.
Putting the mailing list together
Once you have determined the source(s) for your mailing list, you will have to spend some time assembling it and preparing it for your mailing.
1. Make sure all contacts are up to date. Phone old contacts to confirm their mailing address. An out-of-date list will cost you money in printing and postage.
2. Ensure all contacts are accurate to the list criteria. Take a read through your list to make sure there are no contacts that shouldn’t be on the list.
3. Use a database management program to manage your mailing. This will allow you to keep a master list, and create custom lists for each mailing. Remember to save the file name as something that describes the mailing so you can easily find it.
Next week we will talk about writing effective direct mail pieces, and the first two steps of the Five Step Direct Mail Campaign. In the meantime if you want some help in putting your campaign together visit: http://businessgrowthforyou.com
Until the next time.
Vernon Simpson, Nydes Business Coach
Coaching Business Owners and Executives to their next level of Excellence
Keep up the Momentum
In the last post we talked about negotiating with your big fish and how to nurture and build on the relationships you are creating. Today we’ll talk about the power your fish has and how to utilise that for your benefit.
One of the most important aspects of this is to keep your cheerleader cheering. This refers to the ally you created in the company and who needs to stay loyal to you for you to continue a profitable partnership with your fish. You can keep your champion going by offering or doing a number of things to show appreciation. Some of these things are:
- Share the limelight.
- Help them; thank their company with new products and services.
- Emotionally connect them to your company.
- Know when to leave them alone.
- Keep your “family” happy.
- Stay on the front lines.
Now that you have some ideas of how to build solid relationships, you need to seek out people to build these relationships with. These alliances will help you get bigger clients that stay with you forever. You can often get in the door by offering them something in exchange for something they need:
- Power
- Information
- Better work experience
These are all great ways to feed your alliance. You need to go into a relationship considering the things a big fish can offer you besides money. These can include:
- The opportunity for your business to expand
- The opportunity to learn from the experience and find ways to grow
- The opportunity to improve your processes, systems and other means of doing business
These are some of the best ways to keep your alliances going strong and your partnerships fresh and content.
If you need help with any of these tactics, try our FREE test drive on this site or make an appointment with me by clicking this link: https://my.timedriver.com/62NK1 for great tools and resources that can help you every step of the way.
Until the next time
Vernon Simpson, Nydes Business Coach,
Coaching Business Owners and Executives to their next level of Excellence
The Corporate Puzzle
The 7 specific areas you need to consider in your franchise prototype process:
- Primary Aim
- Strategic Objectives
- Organisational Strategy
- Management Strategy
- People Strategy
- Marketing Strategy
- Systems Strategy
These 7 areas will fine turn your plan for the ultimate level of success. In this lesson we are going to cover the first three.
Primary Aim
It’s essential in business development to set goals and see a vision for the future. This needs to go beyond the business and you need to think about what you want out of life. What do you dream about? How do you see your success unfolding? Knowing and understanding these things will give you the momentum to get started and the stamina to see it through. Even take a minute to write them down and tape to your desk for a constant reminder of what you’re aiming for.
Strategic Objectives
These are essential in taking your business from surviving to thriving. All of these objectives should offer solutions for how to get to your primary aim. There are many things you can use to set strategic objectives, but here are a couple of the most popular:
- Money: Setting monetary goals is a great, simple way to see how you are doing at any point in the game. It’s easy to measure and easy to find adjustments to help meet this goal.
- Worthy Opportunities: When considering partnerships and other business opportunities you need to think about whether or not they will help you reach your primary aim. Those that will are the best opportunities to seriously consider.
The key in setting standards and goals is not to limit you or stress yourself out. You need to find some quantifiable things you can use to measure your progress toward your primary aim. These are just two suggestions, but make sure no matter what standards you set you are paying attention to the details, as these are one of the biggest keys to your success.
Organisational Strategy
The strength of your organisational structure can make or break your business, so it’s important to take the time to put together a solid structure for your business to grow from. Generally a company is organised around the roles and responsibilities that need to be taken care of on a daily basis and the personalities that need to fulfill those roles.
No matter what roles and responsibilities you’ve defined for your employees, you must always keep your personal primary aim separate from your company’s primary aim or mission statement. Once you’ve identified the primary aim for your company it will be easy to set up a position structure that will work.
Don’t forget to put together position contracts or job descriptions. Your employees should sign a statement of their roles and responsibilities. This helps keep them clear for you, the employee and other employees/vendors or other individuals.
You can see how these areas all work together to build a solid structure on which to build your business. If you need help defining any of these areas, you can check out the resources, and tools we have at Nydes.
Until the next time.
Vernon Simpson, Nydes Business Coach
Coaching Business owners and Executives to their next level of Excellence
Are You Aiding & Abetting E-Myths?
We are going to embark upon a journey through the world of e-myths and debunk them to help you avoid falling into the e-myth trap.
First, let’s take a minute to talk about what an e-myth is. An entrepreneurial myth, or e-myth, is an assumption that anyone can succeed at business with:
- Desire
- Some capital
- Projected a targeted profit
This sounds great, but it just not realistic. Think of starting a business as a marathon. Sure, everyone starts out of the gate at record pace, but after a few miles people start slowing and some drop out entirely. Building a successful business takes stamina and agility.
The reality is that there are many different facets to a successful business and none of them can be ignored if you plan to find success.
Let’s take a minute to talk about entrepreneurial seizure. This defines the roller coaster of emotions that comes with starting, nurturing and the potential failure of a business.
The emotions that occur, in order, are:
- Exhilaration
- Exhaustion
- Despair
- Sense of self-loss
This is usually cause by the e-myths and assumptions we talked about. You can get your hopes so high on instant success that even the smallest lag and you are sent into an emotional tailspin. This is also brought on by the stark realisation that you can’t do it all and will need help in the areas where you don’t have the knowledge. Now, faced with limited choices you may feel like you need to back out and hide, but don’t do this.
You can get business coaching to help you avoid feeling overwhelmed and defeated.
Until the next time
Vernon Simpson Nydes Business Coach,
Coaching Business owners and Executives to their next level of Excellence
Make an appointment with me by clicking this link: https://my.timedriver.com/
Put them in a Trance part 1
We’re going to go through the 5 essential keys to a successful and reusable marketing campaign launch. Once you have these basics down, you can use them over and over again.
The 5 essential keys are:
- Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
- Put an effective sales offer to work
- Avoid the marketing pitfalls
- Use a world-class marketing perspective
- Get results!
We’ll go through each one of these, so you can see exactly how to use them and how they all affect the overall outcome of your marketing campaign.
Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Take the time to ask yourself some questions from the prospective of the customers/clients. What would it take to get your attention? What needs do you have that need to be met? What are the promises you want fulfilled?
Once you know the answers to these questions you can start putting together a plan to meet these needs. Then take a look at what USP your competitors are using to help you develop your own USP. Your USP is what you are “promising” your customers/clients. This is what’s going to set you apart from your competition.
Put an effective sales offer to work
To develop an effective sales plan, you need to:
- Put together a headline that gets immediate attention.
- Share benefits of your products/services speaking from the customers’ perspective.
- Identify the specific needs met by your products/services.
- Make it easy to do business with you by offering guarantees.
- Share your specific sales proposition.
- Walk your customers/clients through how they should respond and act.
- Motivate with a call to action.
What this all means is, you need to put together what makes your products/services special and compel customers to buy. If they don’t feel like they NEED your product, they won’t buy. You need to answer a question, solve a problem or feed an obsession.
You need to provide them with all the information they need to make an informed and confident decision. Buyer’s remorse is one of the worst things that can happen.
Avoid the marketing pitfalls
There are 5 major marketing pitfalls many businesses fall into and you should avoid:
- Ignore market testing and push on with an inaccurate plan.
- Offer an incomplete case, or reasons, throughout their marketing plan.
- Fail to notice the needs of their prospective customers/clients.
- Fail to diversify their marketing options.
- Fail to get market opinions on their offers.
These are all areas to avoid. If you’ve been working through these lessons, avoiding these pitfalls should be easy and natural.
In my next posting I will cover the last two of these five keys.
Until the next time
Vernon Simpson, Nydes Business Coach,
Coaching Business Owners and Executives to their next level of Excellence