Even if
you own an on-line business, it is important to promote your site off
line as well.
Post cards
are the best for this. They are the most inexpensive way to advertise
and they are direct mail, which is a very highly recommended way to
advertise your business or product.
Post cards
are great for announcing new businesses or sales or new items or whatever
you wish to promote at the moment.
They are
easily managed and don't cost much to send. You can send as many or
as little as you choose at any given time.
The great
thing about post cards is that they can be targeted directly to whom
you want to reach and they can be timed to reach them when you want
to reach them.
Post cards
are inexpensive. The best method is to print them on vellum stock. You
can use regular pastel colors and order 67lb. vellum bristol stock or
brighten up the cards by using neon colors or astrobrites, which are
ordered in 65lb. cover and cost a little more.
To save
money on neon or bright colors, you can use goldenrod, which is considered
a standard color and is priced as such, but it is brighter than the
usual standard colors and it costs the same.
You can
of course use more than one ink color and even go full color if you
choose. The choice is yours.
Post cards
can be economically printed. You don't need to have the back printed.
Just leave it blank and use that for the mailing label and stamp.
Have your
message on one side.
There are
two standard sizes: 4" x 6" and 4 1/4" x 5 1/2".
It is important to stick to these sizes or the post office may send
back the cards for more postage.
To save
money on printing, have the post cards camera- ready for the printer.
Print the same image "4-up". In other words, take an 8 1/2"
x 11" sheet and place the same image four times. They will fit
evenly, and when printed, you will have four on a sheet, which is then
cut. If you print 100 sheets, you'll get 400 cards (4 1/4" x 5
1/2" each).
4"
x 6" cards will not fit four on a sheet, they will fit three per
sheet. But just the same, 100 sheets will yield 300 post cards.
At present
the cost is 20 cents in the United States to send a standard post card.
We have many readers from all across the world, and I apologize for
not knowing the mailing rates of other countries, but I am sure they
are just as inexpensive.
You can
direct the mailings to potential customers in any area or field or zip
code you choose.
If you
are in the carpet cleaning business, you may want to concentrate on
certain zip codes. If you sell school supplies, you would want to mail
to schools. You can actually pick and choose who receives your mailings.
In this way, you are truly targeting your message.
You can
purchase mailing lists or make up your own. One way we have found is
to use an on-line yellow pages and just copy and paste the addresses
we need under any given category.
Make the
headline stand out. This is what will grab your reader. If you are selling
items for 50% off, let them know! Have "50% OFF!" as the main
large headline. If you are selling houses, have the headline
say something that will attract attention like: "MORTGAGES HAVE
NEVER BEEN SO LOW!" or whatever. But grab their attention.
Depending
on your message, you can usually expect a 1% to 4% return, which isn't
bad. You would be lucky to get that response from your banner ads on
line.
We have
gotten many big clients with post cards. From one small post card, we
once got a client worth $40,000 per year. This is no joke. We would
print their booklets quarterly for years. The post card we sent on book
printing caught their attention and we bid on the job and got it and
kept the account for many years.
Another
large client had kept our post card from a year before and called a
year later and asked if we still printed books. We did, and we got the
job.
Someone
else called a year later asking to re-order a product they had ordered
before. They had our pink post card in their hand when we showed up.
It is important
to mail on a consistent basis and we'll get into that in another issue.
But the best thing to do right now would be to start considering what
you want to say on your post cards and try to design a nice card to
print. Use any of the art or word programs on your computer and have
fun. Don't worry about being artistic. The message on the card is what
is important. If you are going to save
me 50% on something, I don't care if you are artistic or not!
It's a
great way to introduce new websites. The big ad agencies do this all
the time.
---------------------------------------------------------
Tom Falco
is editor of XpectMore.com Marketing eZine
you can subscribe by visiting: http://www.XpectMore.com
or mailto:ezine@xpectmore.com?subject=subscribe
Tom also is Quiz Master of "American Pop Culture Trivia"
Visit: http://www.xpectmore.com/pop.htm