Direct marketing is all about promoting your products and services to customers and prospects by making direct contact with them. It’s perfect for small businesses as it’s a cost-effective way to increase sales and your brand profile. From more the more traditional print through to face-to-face and online, there are a number of ways to effectively reach your customers and prospects with a direct marketing campaign.
TRADITIONAL DIRECT MARKETING
· Direct mail e.g. printed catalogues, mailers and postcards
· Door-to-door
· Leaflet drops and flyers
· Telemarketing
ONLINE DIRECT MARKETING
· Email
· E-newsletters
· Text messaging (SMS)
· Social media
All it takes is a bit of careful planning and your direct marketing campaign can take you straight to your perfect customer. Let’s take a closer look at how you can make the most of direct marketing for your business.
4 Tips for Successful Direct Marketing
- Update your Database
Your database is the key to any successful direct marketing campaign and if you want to target your ideal customer you need a process in place to make sure yours is always accurate and up-to-date. Regularly remove duplicates, delete the names of anyone who has asked to be removed and use your database to collect valuable information about your customers’ buying habits.
- Build Relationships
Once you have your database records up-to-date you will have reliable customer data that will help you run well-planned targeted promotions. Customers (and prospects) are far more likely to be receptive to business offers that demonstrate an understanding of their specific needs. Personalising your direct marketing campaigns helps you build relationships and improve customer loyalty.
- Reach New Customers
Direct marketing is a great way to reach prospects as well as being well-suited to reaching out to lapsed customers. Think about developing direct marketing campaigns that give people something they can easily share with others (whether it’s a captivating social media post or branded print collateral). After all, word-of-mouth referral can be the most powerful way to increase sales and generate new business.
- Test & Measure for Success
Commit to testing and measuring pre and post-campaigns and you will have valuable data for rolling out successful direct marketing. Test marketing emails and/or focus groups provide useful data to help you tweak campaigns before final roll-out and improve your end-result. But remember to monitor and review the results of every promotion so that you can use your findings to make adjustments to all future direct marketing efforts too.
For advice on direct marketing campaigns that get results for your business, speak to the team at your local Kwik Kopy today.
