Mention “big marketing budget” or “in-house PR team” to the average business on the Costa del Sol, and you could well be met with rolling eyes. Fact is that while there are some corporates operating from the south of Spain, the majority of enterprises around here are small to medium-sized, where margins are tight and every euro of marketing has to be hard won.
While magazine and newspaper advertising is still pretty much a given, if you’re ready to take your efforts up a notch, there are many cost effective methods to choose from. Over the next six issues we will be looking at a few simple tricks and tactics for getting your name out there in lean times, starting with direct marketing.
Letters
A short sales pitch, briefly explaining your services or latest offer and asking people to get in contact can be an effective way to introduce your business to potential new clients, or keep yourself at the front of existing clients’ minds.
In transient markets (e.g. the Costa del Sol) and hard times (like now), there is a reassurance about well-presented direct mail that can really help you to grow trust in your brand. Combined with an email blast, this kind of approach can be especially valuable.
If you set up and include a special web or email address for people to get in touch (www.yourbusiness.com/januaryoffer, or januaryoffer@yourbusiness.com, for instance) you can easily measure how effective a direct mail campaign has been.
Another simple tip to get more “bang for your buck”: Studies have shown that simply handwriting addresses can lead to a 300% increase in your “read rate”.
Email marketing
Ubiquitous old email, with all its faults, is here to stay. If you can cut through the clutter in someone’s inbox, it is still a cost-effective form of advertising.
Emails can be as simple as text-only messages, BCC’ed to your contact list from your desktop PC. Get above a few dozen though, and issues creep in – not least that there are email quotas on most public servers, and you could be blocked for spamming.
A branded email, possibly with a professionally designed template that looks great on all recipients’ PCs, is a far smarter step. There are many online services that can handle the sending of it for you (Constant Contact and Vertical Response are two of the most popular), and once you’ve had you template designed, it can be used again and again with minimal changes.
If you want to reach many new clients, it is possible to rent email addresses by the thousand. Once you get to this level, it does become essential to enlist professional help, as data rental is a somewhat cut-throat business, with potentially expensive pitfalls for the inexperienced.
Following up
One of the most important things is to follow up your direct marketing promptly. Research has show that following up emails with a phone call five minutes after they’re opened can dramatically increase the closing rate than if you leave it for a few days. Email software can show you in real time your customers opening their emails: make use of it!
Direct marketing needn’t cost a lot of money to be relevant and distinctive: a little thought and careful execution can reap big rewards.
This article first appeared in Essential magazine
Mention “big marketing budget” or “in-house PR team” to the average small business, and you could well be met with rolling eyes. The majority of enterprises the world over are small to medium-sized, where margins are tight and every euro of marketing has to be hard won.
While magazine and newspaper advertising is still pretty much a given, if you’re ready to take your efforts up a notch, there are many cost effective methods to choose from. Over this series of posts, we will be looking at a few simple tricks and tactics for getting your name out there in lean times, starting with direct marketing.
Letters
A short sales pitch, briefly explaining your services or latest offer and asking people to get in contact can be an effective way to introduce your business to potential new clients, or keep yourself at the front of existing clients’ minds.
In transient markets and hard times, there is a reassurance about well-presented direct mail that can really help you to grow trust in your brand. Combined with an email blast, this kind of approach can be especially valuable.
If you set up and include a special web or email address for people to get in touch (www.yourbusiness.com/januaryoffer, or januaryoffer@yourbusiness.com, for instance) you can easily measure how effective a direct mail campaign has been.
Another simple tip to get more “bang for your buck”: Studies have shown that simply handwriting addresses can lead to a 300% increase in your “read rate”.
Email marketing
Ubiquitous old email, with all its faults, is here to stay. If you can cut through the clutter in someone’s inbox, it is still a cost-effective form of advertising.
Emails can be as simple as text-only messages, BCC’ed to your contact list from your desktop PC. Get above a few dozen though, and issues creep in – not least that there are email quotas on most public servers, and you could be blocked for spamming.
A branded email, possibly with a professionally designed template that looks great on all recipients’ PCs, is a far smarter step. There are many online services that can handle the sending of it for you (Constant Contact and Vertical Response are two of the most popular), and once you’ve had you template designed, it can be used again and again with minimal changes.
If you want to reach many new clients, it is possible to rent email addresses by the thousand. Once you get to this level, it does become essential to enlist professional help, as data rental is a somewhat cut-throat business, with potentially expensive pitfalls for the inexperienced.
Following up
One of the most important things is to follow up your direct marketing promptly. Research has show that following up emails with a phone call five minutes after they’re opened can dramatically increase the closing rate than if you leave it for a few days. Email software can show you in real time your customers opening their emails: make use of it!
Direct marketing needn’t cost a lot of money to be relevant and distinctive: a little thought and careful execution can reap big rewards.
This article first appeared in Essential magazine
Twit This Post!
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 9:34 am and is filed under business.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
