2 Step Marketing

<b>Do it Right.</b>

I receive postcards all the time. The other day I received a postcard trying to sell me a copy machine. It had tiny, tiny lettering slathered all over the front and a large portion of the back of the card.

It was extremely hard to read, so hard in fact that I threw it away.

Several days later I received a postcard with 32 words on it telling me that I could get complete information on unrestricted long distance telephone service for 5.5 cents a minute with no additional monthly fee by calling the 800 number on the card.

I did call.  I got the information, had my questions answered and ordered my long distance service changed.
The company who offered me the long distance service was using a time tested 2 step selling process:

<i>Step 1.</i> Generate a lead - Get me to call their 800 number.

<i>Step 2.</i> Provide the requested information - Provided to me on the phone by one of their sales representatives, who was able to answer my questions and make me feel confident that I could save quite a bit of money on my long distance bill and that the service would be as good or better.

<b>What's So Good About 2 Steps?</b>

It is much easier to create interest (a lead) than it is to get a person through an entire buying process (a sale).

You aren't getting the prospect or existing customer to part with any money just yet.

You can use postcards to inexpensively promote to your target prospects and customers and generate leads (inquiries about your products and services) to then be followed up on and converted to sales.

This 2 step process also helps you to create a list of people who were interested enough in what you offered to contact you.

You can then recontact the one's who you didn't complete a sale with when they first inquired, preferably until they do buy from you.

<b>IMPORTANT:</b>  Be sure to get the information you will need to recontact the people who responded to your postcard offering.

Repetitive follow-ups with the people who contacted you <b>will</b> result in increased sales. Make it a company policy to follow up with those people who contacted you about your products and services.


<b>The Most Effective Use of Postcards:</b>

The purpose of your postcard's message is to generate a sufficient level of interest in the mind of your prospect to get him/her to contact you to ask you about your offer.

You are generating interest, not collecting their money (not yet anyway). That is what the 2 step marketing process is about. Generating interested prospects and customers who contact you for more information.

Your message needs 3 parts to be most effective:

1.    A clear statement of the biggest benefit of your product or service (in the long distance example, it was cost savings).

2.    A good reason for them to contact you NOW.

3.    A simple, easy way for them to respond (an 800 number for example).


Your message should be short and to the point. Short messages on postcards produce more leads than long ones.

<i>For example:

Call 800-555-1212 for Your Copy of Our Free Report:</i>

<b>What 99% of Business Owners Don't Know and Will Never Find Out About Using Postcards to Explode Their Profits </b>

<i>Offer ends 5-5-01 (Print a date 3 weeks from your mailing date to create some urgency)</i>

Lots of people will respond to find out what they might not know. Don't forget, they responded, which is least some interest in the information you have created a curiosity about.

This method works and is sure to produce a large number of inquiries if sent to your proper market.

<b>This 2 Step Marketing Process Works.</b>

Use the tips you have read here to create your next postcard's message and see what happens.

You will generate a bunch of leads from people who are truly interested in your products and services.

6 Things I Know About Postcards That You Don’t

In my plethora of experience tucked away between these ears, I have managed to cull out for you what I consider the “best of the best” – in other words, I took the most proven details about postcards that were significant to you starting a postcard campaign and really winning at it.  So here goes the most incisive highlights about postcards.

<b>1)  I know that a postcard is better than something in an envelope.</b> 

For many reasons, the main one being, in an envelope you can’t make your potential customer see your message.

People are fast.  We see and read very quickly – actually much more quickly than we even realize..  Think about yourself – how fast do you go through your mail and process out what you want to keep and what you don’t want to keep?   Pretty darn fast.  It takes fractions of seconds to go through and process in your mind “bill, bill, advertisement, bill, advertisement, letter…”  And it also takes fractions of seconds to decide whether you are even going to bother giving more attention to the pieces that you designated as advertisements.

With a postcard, even if they throw it away, they already saw your message regardless of whether they think they did or not.  They saw it enough to throw it away, didn’t they?

And the next time they get that same postcard in the mail, they see it again as they throw it in the trash.

Let’s face it - junk mail gets thrown away.  And postcards are junk mail to a lot of people.

Although they may be junk mail, postcards get read no matter what – even if thrown away without reading them, they get seen.  It’s like the phoenix rising up from the ashes.

<b>2)  I know that if you are not doing repeat mail with your postcards you are flushing your money down the toilet.</b>

Repeat mailings cannot be repeated enough.    DO REPEAT MAILINGS!  DO REPEAT MAILINGS!  DO REPEAT MAILINGS!  A one shot in the dark postcard mailing is not going to change your business, your bottom line, your life or your anything.

The long and the short of it is, if you are not up to confronting that you need to do a campaign then don’t bother being in business.  Sorry if I sound a bit harsh!

<b>3)  I know that the best price is not best necessarily the best postcard.</b>

The cheapest is not necessarily the best.  The old adage “you get what you pay for” applies here.  Get whatever potential postcard company you interview to send you samples.  Make sure the postcard is a very good, quality, stiff card that catches your attention.  Get them to give you customer references.  Call those references and find out what they think of that company’s service, product, etc.

There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into getting your postcard done right.  If they screw up printing, if they don’t get your mailing out on deadline, etc. – doing it dirt cheap might not mean getting the quality service you need or want.

<b>4)  I know that although most people, if surveyed, say they like full color on both sides, the truth is black on white on the back of the postcard gets a better response.</b>

Why?  Because full color on both sides is confusing.  On the other hand, if you have a very aesthetic, pleasing-to-the-eye front - with a great headline  - you just want to turn that postcard over and simply get the message on the back.  You want good eye trail.

Eye trail is where your eye goes when you look at the postcard.  You can have good eye trail with full color on both sides – but it has to be done correctly.  Usually when you give people a choice to do full color on both sides they go overboard and the creative juices start flying, not flowing, flying with, “WOW!!! full color on both sides?!!”  And they make it too busy.  You don’t want it to be dispersing – you want it to go like a trail.  Have a start, a middle and an end. 

<i>Example:</i>
     
<b>Did YOU Notice this Postcard?

Your Customers Will Notice Yours Too!
5000 Full Color

Super-glossy

Postcards

for only

$389</b>

Look at it from the customer viewpoint – really look at it from their viewpoint and you can see what I mean by eye trail.

<b>5)   I know that you should promote only one thing at a time on your postcard.</b> 

Even if you sell lots of different products, you only promote one of them.  It is fine to mention them on the back of the postcard bullet pointed.  But your main focus on the front of your postcard needs to be one product, service, item, what have you – just one thing.

Say you have a flooring store and a furniture showroom in the back.  Your postcard should only talk about flooring.  It is not that people who are looking for flooring are not also looking for furniture – it’s just too much information on the front of postcard.

The purpose of a postcard is to get your prospect interested with one thing.  You can put on the back as just a mention:  “We also have a giant showroom full of furniture.”

But on the front – one item!  ONE ITEM!

If a company sells hot tubs, above-ground pools and jungle gyms they need to pick the one that gives them the most income and make their postcard about that.

<b>6)    And I know that a person could grow a company with no other marketing media.</b> 

With postcards alone, one could take a company from zero to over a million bucks in revenue or more.  How do I know?  Because I did it.

We mailed postcards every single week, and the more postcards we mailed out, the more we grew.  Yes, it is good to diversify and as we grew and became more successful and had more money to try other media, we did.  Some we kept and some we nixed.  Postcards are a staple that works no matter what. 

These six points of postcard marketing data are proven techniques of making your postcards WOW your prospective clients while at the same time being faithful to the time-honored methods that have proven to get more bang for your buck.  These tips are what will put your postcard in a class all by itself.