Question:
Advise Please

I've had my website running for close to a year and have added my url tovarious search engines and directories. The traffic is still quite small.Has anyone tried postcard advertising. If so, what type of results did itaccomplish?Thank you

Answer: Why, yes, I've had experience with postcard advertising. It is one of mymost favorite forms of advertising. It is that because it's the advertisingof the underdog ... the little guy ... the upstart. Sort of like thiswebsite. ;-) Postcards are this because they are cheap, simple, direct,and can be wielded like a surgical knife. Done right it is highlyeffective. In fact, most major advertisers foolishly don't use it as muchas they should ... or use it improperly.

Now be warned. There are those here that will likely be against it.They're advocates of long-copy. I won't mention names, but one of theselong-copy fetish queens starts with the letter "George Demmer".

With postcard advertising, you've got to know how to target your markets.Note the plural. Do you know who buys from you? How many men as opposed towomen? What's the distribution according to ages? Are they in Canada orout? If they're out of Canada, are they foreigners or Canadians livingabroad? I don't have the space or the time to write down every demographicyou should know. What I will say is that you should know the exactdemographics of your customers. ALL the demographics.

Once you nail down the demographics, you've got to nail down thepsychographics. In others words, WHY do they buy from you? Each sub-groupcould easily have a different reason. Just taking a guess, I'd sayforeigners want a memento of their Canadian vacation,Canadians-living-abroad want something to remind them of home,Canadians-not-living-abroad ... hmmm ... not sure on that one ... hmmm ...national pride? [Oh, the temptation to do jokes here! If only you wereonly George "Maple Leaf" Demmer asking this question. *laugh*] Whatever itis you need to find it out. That is FIND IT OUT and not guess at it like Ijust did. You are part of at least one sub-group but not all so do NOTassume you know why those in other sub-groups buy from you. And this isn'teasy to do. Psychographics are probably the hardest and most unreliabledata you can try to nail down.

OK, now you have demographics and psychographics of your customers. Now youneed to try to figure out how to peg them with mailing lists. Mailing listsare very well developed these days. In other words, they do a very good jobof slicing and separating out sub-groups for you to market to. Nowdemographics are easy to do with mailing list companies. Psychographics notso. Some of it ... well, to be honest, most of it is guess work and usuallyonly comes with lots of experience. However, unless you're willing to hirea professional, you'll most likely learn how to do so as you go along.

Once you've got your lists all nailed down. You need to then start workingon the postcards. Not before this stage. A well-marketed postcard istailor-made for a sub-group. You know their triggers. You know how toaddress them. BAM! The postcard falls into place. Actually, the postcardSfall into place.

You should never send out just one postcard to one sub-group. You shouldalways send out two different ones. What you're doing is honing yourmarketing skill. When the customer replies, you should have done somethingthat will identify them according to which postcard they received. Theeasiest trick is simply giving the different postcards different toll-freenumbers to call or adding the mysterious Dept #X to the mailing address or adifferent URL to surf to. Yes, this adds another cost onto of everythingelse, but it is well worth it. The reason is because then you track howeach postcard does. If one pulls better than another, try to figure outwhy. Always be experimenting. Experimenting that should never end.Eventually, you'll get better and better results as your refine yourpostcards. But even after years of such refinement, you should never stopexperimenting. And some differences can be as simple as one postcard usingbigger font for the 800 toll-free telephone number than the other. Oh, anddon't be afraid to try out a radical idea. Even us professional marketersare commonly surprised by such experimenting. On top of all that, it's funto do. You can get your employees, family, friends, and neighborsbrainstorming for you. And if they do come up with an idea you use, givethem a glass picture case with the postcard they inspired in it with a smallthank-you note also encased next to it. Even if it the postcard bombs, do this.It's these little things that can really get their mental juices flowing foryou. ;-)

Lastly, with all your postcards, you need the people that receive them totake action. Your postcard should climax with a call for action. You'rejust too small of a business to do image marketing. Your headline hooksthem. Your body sells them. Your final sentences gets them to ... hmmm ...what do you want them to do? Visit your website? Call you? Purchase thatone item you pitched on the postcard? What? Whatever it is, the postcard'ssole job is to get them to do it.