Affordable Direct Marketing Tips For Small Businesses

Direct Marketing Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:24:00 +0000

They say that if you would like to start a business, you should find a very good niche where you believe you could excel. The reason behind this is that if you try to go head to head with the big companies or with those who have already established their businesses in that certain field, you would find yourself faced with a herculean task of marketing your business.

But finding a niche is not that easy. You may find one to your liking but probably, there are already some fierce competition there. A true niche where there is nobody else to compete with is almost nonexistent today. So what's a newcomer have to do to get his business noticed? The answer is a part of marketing that has been used for a hundred years: direct marketing tool.

All of us in one time or another, have encountered this marketing technique. The traditional type of a direct marketing tool is the good old mail. It can come in the form of a newsletter telling us about this certain company, what it does, and what they can offer to us. There are also catalogs of the latest product offerings. This last type is often used by clothing retail stores and membership only stores. We can also find brochures and fliers in our mailbox or our front door. All of these have been sent out to reach us, the potential customers, directly.

Why resort to using a direct marketing tool? Any business should use this technique for one good reason. To directly reach your target customers. And also for one thing, it is usually much cheaper to execute rather than doing a full blown advertising campaign. With this technique, you can choose only the type of audience you want to interact with. If you use, let's say a television ad, your target audience will be less specific because of the fact that you can never be exactly sure who will be watching your television ad.

With a direct marketing tool such as the mail, you can choose the right demographic. You can choose to send out your catalog only to housewives. You can select households with children, or a large family or a family with pets. You choose the kind of people you want to know about your business and this marketing technique will help you achieve this.

There are other types of a direct marketing tool. One of the most common nowadays is the email. It is called email marketing and it works in the same way as postal mail. You send out announcements, invitations, newsletters and more to your target customers' emails. This is an effective and very low cost technique. Perhaps the only problem with email marketing is that the recipients might think of the email they got from you as spam and just delete it. Therefore it is best that you create a well-written email that specifically and effectively communicates with your customers about their wants and needs and how your business can supply these for them.

A direct marketing tool is a very powerful technique, the sole reason why it is still used today. With all the advances in technology especially in online communication, this type of marketing is easily adapted to make it work to your advantage.

How to Write a Marketing Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:21:00 +0000

Whether you are a business owner, an executive or a marketing manager, it is important that you know how to write a marketing plan to help lay out what your business's focus will be for the rest of the year or even for the years to come. It also applies to whether you are managing a whole corporation or a small company with only a handful employees. When it comes to having a marketing plan, the size of the business matters less.

What is a marketing plan? It is a detailed plan of the marketing strategy of a company for its products and services. It can even deal with the brand of the business. A marketing plan includes the objectives and goals that the company wants to achieve within a given period of time which is usually a year or up to five years.

As anyone can see from the description, with the important and broad scope of a marketing plan and with the great effect that it has on the future of a business, it is therefore vital that the executives of any business should learn how to write a marketing plan.

How is it achieved? First and foremost, there must be what is called a strategic planning. During this stage, the executives conduct meetings, researches and various other forms of planning to formulate the general thesis of their marketing plan. These meetings and planning are normally very informal at first, but eventually every minute and every topic discussed and debated must be put down into a more formal written form. This will form the back bone of the marketing plan.

Perhaps the questions that must be answered are, “What are our plans for next year?” “What are our goals?” “What are the actions that must be done to keep us profitable and ahead in the market?” Questions like these are usually pondered upon during the early stages of planning.
The objectives of the marketing plan should be as specific as possible. The overall objective should cover all the products and services of the whole business. Later on, some parts of the marketing plan should also tackle the different objectives of each component of the company.
Other questions that should also be discussed are:

“What are our core competencies”
“What are the strengths and weaknesses of our business, products and services?”
“Who are our customers?”
“What are their purchasing habits?”
“How are our business, products and services perceived by our customers?”

In learning how to write a marketing plan, patience becomes a very important virtue. No part of it should be rushed in the same sense that a considerable amount of time must be set aside prior to formalizing the marketing plan. Keep in mind that it is the future of your company which you are planning. A wrong move can greatly affect the performance of your business.

One last thing, before you proceed with your planning, make sure that you have all the necessary data that can help you formulate your marketing plan. You should have the full breakdown of your products and services, the marketing and advertising strategies and expenses, the financial data of the whole company, and the sales and distribution data. Every piece of these data is vital in shaping the future of your business. Also, you should be aware of things like grants for small business.

Direct Marketing Software

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:19:00 +0000

A direct marketing software is a piece of computer program that helps a company to better conduct its direct marketing strategy either through email or the most popular and traditional form which is postal mail.

First of all, what is direct marketing? Direct marketing is the part of the overall marketing strategy which a company may resort to bring in more customers or to keep their existing customer base well informed about the company's products, services or any news and updates about the business itself. It has been around for almost a decade and I bet you have probably experienced it before.

It's the direct mail that you receive in the mailbox. It comes in all sorts of form: newsletters, product catalogs, flyers, brochures, invitations, greeting cards, business cards and so many others. All of these are trying to entice you to act on something either to buy these companies' products or get their services or at least to pick up the phone or visit their store and inquire about them. Direct marketing has been proven to create awareness and to increase the customer database in whatever kind of business you are in.

Now, with the advent of the Internet and its unprecedented growth starting from the 1990s, a new form of direct marketing has emerged. It is an online direct marketing strategy largely built around the capabilities and flexibility of the email technology. It is now so much easier and much less expensive to conduct direct marketing. All you need is an email mailing list of your target customers and with just a click of a button, you can send an email to hundreds or thousands of people. There are a number of good quality direct marketing software to help any marketer with an email marketing strategy.

There are three common types of direct marketing which the postal and email forms are part of.

Postal mail
This is the original type and still the most popular form of direct marketing. It involved everything I have stated earlier: sending out letters, flyers, catalogs, etc.

Email
It is just like postal mail the only difference is you do it online. It is much cheaper and easier to do.

Telemarketing
This is when telemarketers call customers and speak to them over the phone regarding their company's new product offerings.

With the Internet growing even bigger and faster than ever before and with more people going online and doing their business and personal communication over the Internet, the need to cope with this phenomenon in a more specific marketing level arises.

A direct marketing software can help even the busiest of all marketers and businessmen to sort out their databases or mailing lists. It can help them segregate their list of contacts and find the best recipients for their direct marketing campaign. This does not only save them time and effort, it also helps them save money and other resources.

The key to be successful in this age of online business and also if yours is of the brick and mortar type is to have a well-planned direct marketing campaign. It helps you to reach out to the right customers and to gain new ones.

Direct Marketing Mailing Lists

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:11:00 +0000

Direct marketing is an effective tool in launching a business as well as informing your customers about your company's new offerings. In line with this, it is important to make use of the right direct marketing mailing lists so you can target the appropriate customers. The problem with this approach is that since it is very easy to execute, most marketers use this method improperly and don't get the best results from this approach.

I have learned a few first hand lessons about the importance of direct marketing mailing lists when I once worked as a freelance copywriter for an online jewelry retailer.

Kevin is the marketing manager of a startup company engaged in selling jewelry on the Internet. He once hired me to write an email newsletter highlighting the different products his company was selling. We sat down one day in his office to discuss all the necessary information that I should put in the email newsletter. Right at the beginning of the interview, I knew we would have a problem with the kind of direct marketing approach that he wanted to pursue.

"First of all, Kevin, I have to know who will be the recipients of this email newsletter. I need to know so I can tailor fit the words that I would write so the copy can best appeal to them," I asked as I got myself ready to jot down notes on my handy notebook.

"Oh, that is not important. We just bought these great direct marketing mailing lists from an agency that specializes in online direct marketing as well as in gathering the necessary leads and contact details from people," Kevin said.

Now, I have been a marketing and advertising copywriter for almost a decade and I knew that the first and most important thing that any copywriter or marketer for that matter should know is who are his target customers. This is vital because he needs this basic information so he can write his message more on topic and narrowed down to fit the needs and wants of the right customers.

"I think, Kevin, we need to know who we are going to send these newsletters first and foremost so all our marketing efforts will hit right on target and not just go to waste," I said hoping he didn't really mean what he said earlier and that he did knew who will be our recipients.

I was wrong. He brought out on his computer monitor this spreadsheet of mailing lists he mentioned earlier. The name count ran to I guess almost a hundred thousand! That's a very big number considering that their business is just starting and they don't have that much of a share in the market. Plus, I honestly believe that they couldn't handle that great number of potential customers.

"Hit and miss, my friend. Hit and miss. We will send our email newsletter to all of these people. While I don't expect that everyone of them will respond favorably, I do expect however, that a few will do. And that's where we will get our business," Kevin said smiling. I could tell he was confident about this strategy and that he was convinced it would actually work.

To make the long story short, the campaign failed. For two reasons: one is that the mailing list didn't target the right customers and two, the emails which the company sent out were considered as spam by most of the people in the list.

Don't be like Kevin. Plan your email marketing strategy better.

Direct Email Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:00:00 +0000

Direct email marketing, when done right, it can prove to be a crucial part of a company's overall marketing campaign. For it to work properly, you must have a good grasp on who your target respondents should be, what type of information you think they are willing to read from your emails and how you can best execute such a campaign.

There are many companies who have resorted to this approach in reaching their target customers. Either they have completely switched to direct email marketing or conduct it to supplement their existing traditional mail marketing. These companies have found that this approach is much cheaper and easier to execute.

There are those who correlate direct email marketing with spamming. A spam is an unsolicited email targeted to a less focused group of potential customers. It is an unwanted email and it usually ends up in the trash bin. Some less than careful marketers purchase a contact list of emails which are not completely their targeted audience. Doing such a thing can have an adverse effect on your company's image as people would brand you as a spammer.

Your email campaign should not be considered a spam if it adheres to these following points:

They are solicited emails
Your recipients willingly and knowingly signed up to receive such emails from you. People should have a full knowledge that when they gave you their email addresses that you will be using them to send emails that are promotional in nature. For your part, you should explicitly tell them and promise that you will not send them spam and all your company's emails will be informational and beneficial.

Target your customers
Don't send out emails blindly. You will gain nothing but spite from most of the people that you send your emails to. Conduct a thorough research first on who should be your email recipients. Just because they are your customers doesn't mean that they should be automatically included in your list. Try your best to narrow down your list of recipients. The more targeted your list, the better are the chances that you will get favorable responses from them.

Your emails are personal
You must treat every customer or potential customer as a friend and with that in mind, you must address them personally with every email that you send. Don't write, "Dear customer". Instead, use the actual name of the customer. They will warm up to your email better if they read their names in it. Wouldn't it be nice to read an email with a "Dear Kevin"?

Now that you know the important things to consider to make sure that your emails are not considered spam, there is also one thing that you can do to make your customers read your email. This is one of the most important marketing ideas and consdered to be essential in internet marketing.

Beautify it. By this it can mean two things. One, you can make it as attractive as possible so your customers will be enticed to read it. Try to make it as eye candy as best you can. Think of it as a print ad or poster only that it's in email format. Second, you should make it easy to read. Don't put too many words in there. People cannot tolerate blocks and blocks of sentences. Break down everything into bullets. This has been proven more effective time and time again for direct email marketing.

Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:17:00 +0000

Hello, we have just acquired this domain name and we're working on creating some content for you. Ecometrist will all be about direct marketing resources.