By Marc Aronson
One of the biggest mistakes a business can make is to develop a great promotional mailer and think if they send it once, they will generate a significant amount of business. If you provide a competitive product or service, you need to change the buying habits of your non-customers to win them over. After all, they are used to buying from someone else.
Typically, at any given time, less than five percent of a given market is considering switching to another brand. Yet, some business owners will expect to generate a ten percent response to a first-time mailing. Do you see how unrealistic this is?
Your answer lies South of the Border
Many years ago, my family headed on a trip from our Long Island home to visit my brother who was attending the University of Miami. As we traveled down I-95 through North Carolina, we suddenly found ourselves blasted with billboards promoting a hotel located just past the North Carolina state line promoting accommodations, restaurants and fun for the family at a place appropriately named South of the Border. After eyeing about the 70th billboard, maybe 25 miles before we reached the hotel, my sister and I managed to persuade our parents, who had this trip tightly planned, to stop a couple of hours earlier than out itinerary specified to spend an evening at what promised to be an exciting adventure for us all. I don’t remember everything that what was offered back then, but today their 175 billboards promote an amusement park, a reptile exhibit, a 200-foot tower and plenty of shopping in addition to what I could recall.
When stopped at the hotel to register, my father walked out of their office with a chagrined expression to break the disappointing news. The hotel was booked solid. This was a weekday night in mid February!
South of the Border offers travelers a way to break the monotony of a long drive. However, it was their 100 plus billboards along I-95 that raised our excitement. After about the 20th billboard, we began reading each one’s content out loud as we passed by laughing and joking, and eventually wondering how we could possibly pass up this experience.
How convinced would we have been if there were only 50 billboards? What if there were only 10? We certainly would not have stopped. Chances are the same holds true for most travelers. The fact is their billboards have lured several millions people to their entrance over the 50-plus years they have been in existence. (Visit their website www.thesouthoftheborder.com).
“South of the Border” your prospects!
If you have great promotion, which we consider is a message that causes prospects to believe your business is the best choice for the type of product or service you offer, eventually you will mushroom that five percent who are looking to switch vendors to twenty, thirty percent or even more. This is because, if you effectively present the case for your product, you will cause many to become disenchanted with their existing vendor and eventually switch. But, you need to pound your target market to make this happen.
Should you only be able to afford one 20,000-piece promotional mailer, send twenty 1,000 direct mailers to the same people each time instead. Then put money aside from the revenue you generate so you can keep your direct mail program running. A few may respond to the first or second mailer. However, more often than not, the greatest number of those who take action will do so after receiving your mailings 20, 30 or even 50 times. Of course, this does vary depending on the type of product or service you offer and the demographics of your target market(s). The key is to continuously stay in front of your prospects with great promotion so that when prospects are ready to switch vendors, you will be the obvious choice.
There is much to know about developing your message and choosing the right tactics to ensure your program’s success. You will also need to know how to correctly test market and budget for your campaign. To learn more, visit our website at www.marketingstrategy.com.
