One Minute Marketing Ideas

Direct Mail Advertising Ideas For Plumbers

Here are a few Ideas for Plumbers that have been used successfully by our clients. Use one or a combination, but don’t over crowd the postcard with too much information. The postcard must pass “The Glance Test”, which means the reader will know what the card is about with just a passing glance. This can make the difference between getting noticed or being tossed out as junk mail.

1. So Many Homes, So Many Opportunities!
   We’ve seen lots of plumbers advertise their services with the headline: “PLUMBING PROBLEMS? CALL US!” This approach can yield results. There is bound to be lots of folks with some sort of problem. However, why focus on just home owners with problems? Instead, consider every home as a prospect. Think about all the services you could provide in addition to plumbing problems. Services like: changing a faucet, upgrading bathroom fixtures, installing a water line for an automatic ice maker, adding a new outdoor water spigot, the list goes on and on.
2. Show The Price
   Give prospects an idea of the cost of your service. For example, Faucet Replaced $99 (plus parts), Regular Price $119, Save $20. In fact, you should include a menu of prices for a variety of services. Some will see a price and say, “that’s too expensive”, but others will remark “I didn’t realize it was so reasonable.” Prices pre-qualify prospects before they call.
3. Use Your Neighborhood As A Pipeline For New Customers
   Why not prospect in the neighborhood where you live. USPS Carrier Route Maps make it easy to target specific neighborhoods. People trust their neighbors.  You can even offer a neighborhood discount.
4. Call “The Honest Plumber”
   It may sound corny, but people are wary of tradesman. Everyone hates the idea of getting ripped off. Include your photo on the postcard. The photo also makes the postcard more personal (you may be surprised how many people recognize you). Remember, you are asking for an invitation to go inside someones home. If you have a crew, show a group photo and they should be in some sort of uniform (even a nice t-shirt).
5. The “No Fee” Service Call
   If you get the job, waive the service call fee. Your ad can say: ”FREE Service Call” the disclaimer can go on to say Service call fee waived if work is done (a $69 value).
6. Be Flexible
   “Service On Your Schedule: Evenings and Weekends At No Extra Charge!”.
7. Offer Residential Service To Your Corporate Clients
   No corporate clients? How about a “Friends And Family” Promotion. Offer discounts to the friends and family of your current clients.
8. If Offering A Discount Use $$ Not %%
   A discount expressed in dollars rather than percentage off is usually more effective. If you say 10% OFF, people will wonder – …”10% OFF What?”. A dollars off discount (even a modest one) usually works better (especially in these economic times). Try this headline: “SAVE THIS POSTCARD – $10 OFF ANY PLUMBING SERVICE”. 

Direct Mail Advertising Ideas For Political Campaigns

Direct mail advertising is one of the best ways to deliver a message to voters. Over the years we’ve launched hundreds of direct mail campaigns that have helped candidates become winners! Here are few factors that should be kept in mind.

1. Clarify The Goals Of The Mailing
   For example:
   - Introduce the candidate if he is not well known
   - Talk about the most important issues
   - Ask for contributions 
   - Ask for volunteers
   - Expose competitor’s weaknesses
   - Invite voters to a town hall meeting
2.  Putting Together The Best Mailing List
   USPS Mail Carrier Routes are the least expensive mailing lists and can be mailed at the lowest postage rates. Carrier route maps are available and can be compared to target specific voting districts or precincts. Even if there is a bit of overlap, the savings will probably outway the cost of a more targeted list.
   You can also purchase a targeted list by party affiliation (including independents), age and income, education levels, ethnicty and more.
3. Use Full Color Postcards With Lots Of Photos
   It’s true, a picture is worth a 1000 words, or more! But, don’t just use a head shot of the candidate that looks like it came from a drivers license. If the candidate is for Education, get a photo of him at a school with kids. If he’s pro-business, get a picture at a Chamber of Commerce Meeting. If he’s for moral values, a shot with the family on Sunday talking to the Pastor. You get the idea. 
4. Use Direct Mail To Drive Voters To Your Website
   Make sure there is lots of good content about the issues and the candidate. Don’t disappoint web visitors. Your website doesn’t have to be “Madison Avenue”. It can even have a “home-made” look, but it most deliver on content and be worth the voters time.
5. Send An Invitation To “Ask The Candidate”!
   Not always possible, but if you can manage it, get a cell phone and dedicate the phone number to taking calls from voters. Invite them to “ask the candidate”, “express their views” or just “sound off”. You can limit calling to specific times during the day or week.
6. Target Residential Communities With A Club House
   Use USPS mail carrier routes to target communities with a club house. Contact the homeowner or condo association and ask if you can use the facilities for a mini town hall meeting exclusively for their residents.

Direct Mail Advertising Ideas For Restaurants

The success of a direct mail campaign is determined by a number of factors, starting with having a clear objective for the campaign.  Once you have defined the goal of the campaign, the postcard must be designed to motivate the prospect to respond to your call to action, for example, come to the restaurant, go to a website, order over the phone, etc. We call this motivating offer “A Magnet”. 

Here are a few Ideas and Magnets that have been used successfully by our clients. Use one or a combination, but don’t over crowd the postcard with too much information. The postcard must pass “The Glance Test”, which means the reader will know what the card is about with just a passing glance. This can make the difference between getting noticed or being tossed out as junk mail.

1. Increase Lunch Business 
Mail to local businesses and offer a lunch special. Use a business saturation list. This is an inexpensive list that includes all businesses in a geographic area. It is addressed to “Current Business Owner or Manager”. Use a radius from your location, a half mile to a mile. For this campaign, it is better to have a smaller list and mail it frequently. 

Your magnet doesn’t have to be a discount. Take a lesson from the national chains like Subways $5 Footlong or McDonalds Value Menu. Feature value packed lunch specials, that are served up quickly and taste a lot better than the  ”fast food” competition. 

A word of caution, don’t try to combine this idea with a dinner promotion. In most cases, workers who are around during the day probably live in a different part of town and won’t be prospects for evening business. Don’t clutter up the card. Stay focused on lunch.

2. Build An “Earlybird” Crowd
 Is there a senior community near your location? They like to eat early and save money. You want to fill seats between the lunch and dinner hours. Sounds like you may have something in common! If there isn’t a senior citizen community nearby, ask about a targeted mailing list. Once you get them into the restaurant, keep them coming back with a frequent diner punch card. 

3. If You Show Them, They Will Come!
How many nearby residents have never been inside your restaurant? How many drive by without ever stopping? Show them what you are all about with a full color postcard. Start with a photo of the exterior that prospects will recognize from their daily travels. Then, include photos of the interior, your customers, your staff, you and especially your food. Include a partial menu of your best dishes. Finally, include a personal invitation with a special offer. Tell the prospect to ask for the owner or manager when they arrive, and then roll out the red carpet.

4. Build Your Delivery Business
 Use mail carrier route maps to target your delivery area. Direct mail is the best way to keep in front of potential delivery customers. Once again a smaller list, mailed very frequently will yield the best results. Experiment with different offers and track response carefully. Repeat your best offers, get rid of the ones that don’t work and keep adding new ones. Once you have fine tuned this type of mailing, it won’t cost you money, it will make you money every time you mail. Then, it’s time to expand that delivery area.

Make sure you include a menu with a “Bounce Back” coupon with every delivery order. Give them an incentive to order again, sooner rather than later.

5. Give A Really Big Discount
In this economy everyone is looking for a deal. So give them one. Just make it valid only on the days or hours that you need to increase business. Don’t measure the success of your campaign on this one discounted transaction. If you make a new customer as a result of this promotion, you’ll see benefits all year long. And don’t forget about the value of “word of mouth”. So be aggressive and make them an offer they can’t refuse.

6. Secret Recipe Revealed!
If you have a dish that you are really proud of, publish the recipe with some photos of the preparation on your direct mail postcard. The Olive Garden does this all the time in their TV Advertising. They make the food the star of the show (which it should be). Don’t worry about potential customers staying home and cooking instead of going out to eat at your restaurant. Most couples today have too little time and energy to cook a special dinner at home. But if you are worried, you could leave out part of the recipe (only kidding).

7. Use A Discount Coupon On Your Postcard To Test New Menu Items
Want to add a new item to the menu, but you’re not sure how it will go over? Mail a coupon with a discounted price, for a limited time, to jump start the introduction.

Like it or not, you are competing with Disney World and McDonalds!

Even if you are not in the restaurant or amusement park business, Disney World and McDonalds are marketing giants that have affected the way entrepreneurs promote their business.

When you visit Disney World, you expect the restrooms to be clean and the employees (or “cast” as they like to be called) to be smiling and helpful. You know that if you go into just about any McDonalds worldwide, their award winning French Fries will taste the same as all of their other locations.

Consumers have grown to expect excellence from theses and other world class operations like Wal-Mart and Netflix. Therefore, you can’t get away with using slogans in your advertising that have become cliche. “Lowest Prices”, “Personalized Service”, and “Best Selection” and so on, don’t have the same impact on prospects as in the past.

Consumers take those things for granted. They expect a business to deliver on the basics, and if they don’t get what’s expected, they will take their business somewhere else.

Answer this question: “Why should a prospect do business with me instead of my competition who is offering a similar product or service?” You should be able to answer this question in a brief sentence or two. And here is the real challenge – the answer must be compelling enough to attract more customers than your competition.

In marketing terms, your answer is called “A Value Proposition”.  Develop a good one and then use it in your direct mail advertising campaign!

Sign Up For Our “Bulk Mail Boot Camp” – It’s FREE!

Want to learn more about direct mail advertising? Sign up for our new “Bulk Mail Boot Camp” – it’s FREE. The course consists of 5 videos (each is about 3 minutes long), and includes all the basic training you’ll need to launch a successful campaign.

You receive one video per day for 5 days. Here’s what is covered:

• Day 1 – How Much Should You Spend On Your Direct Mail Campaign?
• Day 2 – How To Design Your Postcard
• Day 3 – Creating A Mailing List Using Neighborhood Saturation
• Day 4 – Creating A More Targeted Mailing List
• Day 5 – Response Rates and Results

Several hundred have already “Graduated” from the course since it was introduced in mid February 2010 and the reviews have been very positive. To find out more or to sign up CLICK HERE. 

How Much Would You Pay For A New Customer?

What if there was a store that sold customers? No, not a store that sells to customers, I mean a store where small businesses could go and purchase new customers. And let’s say that store has all types of customers on the shelves, like in real life, difficult customers, cheap customers, average customers and even best customers.

Let’s deal with factor one first. How much would you pay for a new customer? Isn’t the amount you would pay for anything determined by the value of the product or service. The same rule should apply to customers. So before we ask the question, how much are you willing to pay for a new customer, let’s ask how much is a new customer really worth. Here’s one method you can use.

Small Business Example: ABC Dry Cleaners

Work out the numbers for your business and go on a shopping spree! Buy as many new customers as you can. But wait minute, you might have a limited amount of cash on hand. Furthermore, your cash flow may not allow you to wait up to two years to recover the profit. That brings us to factor number two: your budget. The most important thing to consider here is being consistent. You can start with a small budget and expand it as cash flow permits. Determine a budget that you are comfortable with and then stick with it.

Don’t despair, you can get new customers with advertising. But you’ve got to pick an advertising method that is measurable. Direct mail advertising is very measurable and it is cost effective. You can even attract the type of customer your looking for (your definition of the best customer), by using a specialized mailing list.

Keep close track of the results of your mailing. Then compute your cost per customer: Cost of the mailing divided by the number of customers generated. By fine tuning your mailing list,  mail piece design and special offers you can increase the response rate and lower your cost per customer.

Advertising isn’t easy, but if you know the cost to generate a new customer and the value of that customer, you will be well on your way to running successful advertising campaigns.

We recently added an easy to use calculator at our website to determine the lifetime value of a customer. Check it out: CLICK HERE

Big Promotional Possibilities With Small Cards

In today’s economy, businesses are cautious about spending money on advertising and marketing. Here’s an idea that is both affordable and effective: Small Card Marketing.

So why use small cards instead of a larger flyer?

In this case, smaller is better.  Small Marketing Cards are the same size as a business card (3.5” x  2”). Prospects will tend to hold on to them because they fit into wallets, shirt pockets and purses. Furthermore, their stylish design, quality card stock and glossy UV finish give them a valuable appearance that gets attention and  more retention.

What will fit on Small Marketing Cards?

A lot more than you think. How about a mini menu? By the way, menus aren’t just for restaurants, if you’ve got a price list, it’s a menu. Realtors can use Small Marketing Cards as a mini listing card showing photos and features of a property for sale. They can be used as a “frequent buyer” punch card at the point of sale or a coupon card to attract new customers. The only limit is your imagination. Our marketing team will help you fine tune your ideas.

What about Small Marketing Card distribution?

Point of sale distribution is easy. Just give every customer a Small Marketing Card before they leave your place of business. Other promotions will require a bit more creativity. 

INVENTORY YOUR RESOURCES:

• How many employees and family members are available to hand out Small Marketing Cards?
• How about your business neighbors? Offer them a cross promotion opportunity – they display your Small Marketing Cards on their counter and you display theirs.
• Participate in networking clubs, organizations (i.e. chamber of commerce) and attend business card exchanges.
• Ask the owners of the establishments that you do business with (dry cleaner, florist, sub shop, your favorite pizza place, etc.) to display your Small Marketing Cards. Most will be happy to reward your patronage.
• Include Small Marketing Cards in all your correspondence, billing, shipments and packages that you send out.
• Don’t forget your most enthusiastic distribution person – yourself! Get in the habit of carrying and giving out Small Marketing Cards at every opportunity.

Set A Goal

Set a goal. Even a modest one of just a 100 Small Marketing Cards a week will bring results. Then try to increase that goal each week. Remember, the more Small Marketing Cards you put in circulation the better you’ll do. Be consistent and you’ll see a steady stream of new business.

Increase Results By Running Several Promotions Simultaneously
Small Card Marketing is so inexpensive, you can even afford to run several promotions simultaneously. Run a client Birthday Promotion with Small Marketing Cards and give them out all year long. It will only cost you $16.50 per month. Combine that with a Frequent Buyer Punch Card and a stylish Coupon Card to attract new customers and you’ll have a pretty comprehensive marketing campaign in place for less than $50 a month. By the way, Small Card Marketing is a great way to test promotional ideas before spending a lot more on traditional marketing methods.

Ready To Get Started With Small Card Marketing?

Have questions? Ready to get started?  Fill out the simple form on the home page at www.SmallCardMarketing.com and a member of our marketing team will contact you the next business day.

It Isn’t A New Idea But A “S W O T” Analysis Of Your Business Is Still A Good One

Direct Mail Advertising is an effective way to grow your business. However, all advertising should be part of an overall plan that sets your business apart from the competition and creates a demand for your products or services.

Most business owners do not have the time to contemplate and then write a proper business plan. Furthermore, they usually don’t have the budget to hire a professional to do it for them. Besides, no one knows your business as well as you do, so I recommend that you do it yourself by starting with a “S W O T” Analysis.

A “S W O T” Analysis is a simple yet effective marketing exercise (first introduced in the 1960′s) that can help a business focus on improving sales.

The initials stand for:

• “S” – STRENGTHS
• “W” – WEAKNESSES
• “O” – OPPORTUNITIES
• “T” – THREATS

You don’t need a marketing guru to conduct the analysis, you can do it yourself, if you are willing to be honest. Start with 4 blank sheets of paper and title each with the headings shown above.

Here are some examples to help get you started:

STRENGTHS could be -
Your location, a one of a kind product or service, a reputation built over the years, your staff, etc.

WEAKNESSES could be -
Your location, similar products and prices offered by nearby competitors, not enough parking, a bad reputation

OPPORTUNITIES could be -
A competitor goes out of business, new homes being built in the neighborhood, new products available from a supplier, using the internet to expand sales, etc.

THREATS could be -
New competitor opens nearby, gas prices go up, temporary road construction, etc.

With a completed analysis, you will be better equipped to develop an effective marketing and advertising plans, including a direct mail advertising campaign.

Designing Your Postcard: Try Adding Value Instead Of Discounting

Remember, the purpose of your direct mail advertising campaign is to generate leads.

No, not a "Chick Magnet", use a special offer as the "Magnet" on your postcard to attract new customers!

A good way to do this is to include a “Special Offer”. We call this your “Magnet”. A good magnet will attract new customers.

Try being creative. Many advertisers use the old “10% Off” approach. It may work, but it’s been over used and often the prospect doesn’t believe the discount is real.

Try adding value instead of a discount. Price your product competitively and then add more product or service for the same price. For example, a postcard for a carpet cleaner might say “3 Rooms Cleaned for $99 – Plus 1 Chair Cleaned FREE!” This is a “WIN, WIN OFFER”. He gets his full price for the carpet cleaning and lets the client know that he also offers upholstery cleaning – and after cleaning one chair the rest of the upholstery may look a bit dingy, which could lead to an additional sale.

The value added offer doesn’t always have to be free either. We’ve all been asked to “SUPER SIZE” our order at a fast food restaurant. That extra $1.99 for a larger fountain soda and a few extra french fries really adds up.

So take some time to think about the Magnet on your postcard. If you need some help, just give us a call and we’ll be happy to brain storm with you. Call 866-594-3069 M-F – 9-6 Eastern Time.

Use Direct Mail To Promote Your Website. Don’t Have A Website? Read This!