Are Your Newsletters & Mailings Drumming Up Business?

The first step in any marketing plan is to plan how you will determine if your marketing is effective.  This can be as simple as a tick sheet setting by your phone on which you mark off where the calls received are coming from.  For this to work, you must ask each potential client where he/she heard about you.  Then mark the corresponding area of your tick sheet (in this way you can track several magazine ads, radio or TV ads, mailing(s), sign calls, bus stop ads, shopping cart ads etc.  It is very effect and easy but you must be diligent in your follow-through.

Another way which may be easier for you, but not nearly as cost effective is to have multiple phone lines, each associated with a particular form of advertising or marketing.  For example if you consistently do one magazine ad, one mailing, and shopping cart ads, you would have three additional phone lines, the phone company or cell carrier can work this so that multiple numbers can all ring through on one phone.  At the end of each month you would know exactly how many calls you received to each number based on your phone bill.  As mentioned above, this can be very pricey, especially with the cost of the additional lines, or extra minutes needed on your cellular coverage.

The second step is to market effectively;

• Time or date sensitive materials should be sent at least a week in advance
• Marketing schedules should be kept – newsletters for example, it doesn’t matter if they are sent, monthly, every two months, or quarterly, as long as they are mailed on schedule, pick a date and make sure they hit the mail that day
• Always include a call to action statement – call me today, call for your free market analysis, email me for a homeowner’s fall cleanup brochure, etc.
• Make sure that your marketing material is easy to read, and that your contact information is on it – it is rather embarrassing to find out that you’ve left off your phone number after you’ve asked them to call you.
• Proof read your material – there is nothing more off-putting than to have something go out with spelling errors – please call me four more info – oops.  Don’t count on your spell check either, as you can see with for and four, both spell check as correct.
• Remember to the use of color, font size, bold, italic, font type, art work or clip art, etc. is eye catching, but too much of a good thing is – well, overkill.
• Run contests or giveaways in some of your marketing, it is another way to make the phone ring, coloring contest for the kids (always a hit), movie ticket give always, holiday give always, the first  ten (twenty etc.) callers will receive free…..
• Tips, recipes, how to guides are something that people tend to hold on to, include them but make sure that they work (if you send out a recipe test it first, nothing worse than sending out a recipe that tastes like dog food (unless that what it is for) or a how to guide with a step missing.
• Make sure that you have enough postage on your mailings – people shouldn’t have to pay for your error.
• Vary your mailings, sending out cute cards with kittens on them every month gets boring, not to mention the fact that as cute as kittens are not everyone likes them, change it up and you’re bound to touch on something that has appeal to different people at least once in a while.
• If you’ve been actively mailing to a specific area of town (farming) follow up with a visit to the neighborhood, ring door bells, hand out seed packets or refrigerator magnets, meet and greet the people your are mailing to.

The third and perhaps the most important type of mailings are client mailing, that is clients that you are currently working with or have worked with in the past.  Buy a supply of thank you cards, or blank note cards.  Jot notes to clients on a daily basis, if you spoke to them during the coarse of the day send a note reiterating your conversation, or a note thanking them for
their time.  You should be sending at the very least  client notes out per day.  Remember to include a referral request in your client notes, your referral is always appreciated, a referral is the kindest complement you can give me, my business is built by referral, do you have a friend of family member that could use my services, etc. and a call to action, call me, email me.

Keeping track of your marketing, and knowing where your business comes from is justgood business sense, and will keep your business moving forward.

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