Using Flyers as Part of Your Targeted Marketing Campaign

Targeted marketing does not have to be expensive to be effective. It is the focused and personalized nature of targeted marketing which makes it both inexpensive and very effective. Chances are, if your marketing is not targeted, then your return on investment is proably quite low, and you are definately spending way too many marketing dollars on a per customer acquisition basis. Is it time to vamp your Marketing Plan to make it more targeted and cost efficient (i.e. a lot more profitable)?

Five Proven Targeted Marketing Tools and Methods

Letters:  Personalized letters are a thing of the past, but an art form which is worth using today.  Why?  Simple:  no one else is and you will appear unique.  The letter should solve a prospective customer’s problem or point to a website presentation that does.  Use online or offline questionnaires to capture valuable information which you can use to sell the prospect – it sets up your sale.  Here are some great tips:

• Follow up the first letter with a second letter and then a phone call.  All this should be done in 10 days time.  Follow up letters and calls should offer new information.
• Always ask for the sale!  oftentimes, the third time is the appeal.
• Include personal references, people you know in common and testimonials in your letters.
• Combine a letter with a Questionnaire, which asks a prospect to provide an Opt In Email address.  Send all further communications via email for cost effectiveness and immediate yet handy to the prospect contact.  Remember, an email can be a Newsletter, Audio or Video Recording, a Power Point Presentation – the sky is the limit!
• Remember:  Confidence, Quality, Selection and Price.  Address all four in your contact; a sale is eminent, provided the prospect is qualified.
• Letters are an easy, cost-efficient way to stay in contact with customers whether you make a sale or not.
• Personalize it:  Address to a particular person, hand sign it and write a personal P.S. by hand.  You can even follow a sales letter with a hand written note in a second mailing before or afterwards a follow up phone call.  This can be very effective!
• Your letters should not ask the prospect to respond.  Rather, it will tell the prospect when you will call to set up an appointment and/or answer questions lead to a sale.  Either way, on the phone call, Always ask for the sale.
• Stick with just a short letter.  No other enclosures.  You have a better chance to be read.  You can always email (save postage) a brochure once you have maintained the interest.
• If the prospect cannot wait for your follow up phone call, have a website address with an exclusive offer that points to a well crafted Sales Web Page.
• Sign your name in Blue color, along with the P.S.  The reviewer will read the P.S. first so put some thought into it.
• State your offering’s benefits to the specific prospect without really saying what it is.  This will drive the prospect to check out your Sales web page.
• Include a short Customer Testimonial with the Customer’s contact info.  Let your current Customers do the selling for you!
• The numbers:  Mass Mailings are deemed successful with a 1-2% Response Rate.  If a personal letter is done right, a 10-20% sales rate (not Response Rate!) can be achieved!
  • If you do Mass Mailings, a Personal Letter as stage 2 to your responses can be highly effective as well!
• On your Online Sales Page always give the prospect the opportunity to Opt In their email address so you can automatically send them Newsletters, Articles, Special Offers, Bona fides and the such.
• How to get a sale?  Simple:  Eliminate all risks of doing business with you and make sure the prospect understands the benefits and value of your offering.  Pair that with passion and straight forward ethics and you will close again and again.  You will have to ask for the sale at a minimum of three times on average; so ask!
• Partner up with other ethically sound business people to pair your offering and make a truly unique offering and/or tap the partner’s customer base.  An experienced partner can add a lot of credibility to your offering.
• Ask for Referrals from the beginning, whether or not the prospect buys from you.  If they don’t, make sure you offer them an Opt In so you can continue to stay in front of them with Specials, Newsletter, Company News and Events, Articles and the such.
• If targeting businesses, ALWAYS send you letter to the President and then follow up with a phone call after you sent a hand written note two days later.  Two things will happen, you have his/her attention, and your initial call will be routed to the right decision maker in the company.
• Remember, letters are all about psychology so keep the emotional sale in mind when preparing the letter.

Note:  A lot of these methods and strategies described under “Letters” can be applied to many different marketing tools – use them!

Telemarketing:  I am not a huge fan of cold calls (and this coming from individual who built initial sales and companies on cold calling).  Now, a professional telephone campaign linked to a mailing of some sort (letter, brochure, marketing piece) can be quite effective.  In-bound telemarketing can be profitable if done properly.  The bottom line:  51% listen to telemarketers when called, so it can be a worthwhile strategy.  Here are some keys toward running a successful telemarketing campaign and have it payoff for your Business Turnaround Strategy.   

• Research the prospect:  know the important things about your prospect and how they pertain to your business.
• Link your telemarketing with a personalized letter so your call is a follow up from an potential source, verses a pure cold call.
• I hate scripts.  Your telemarketing should come naturally and lead to pre-planned destinations and decisions (i.e. more info, website link, a free analysis, newsletter or article, or a sale).
• Know your hot-button words, such as, “profitability, increase profits, take down costs and expenses, increase cash flow, money and time savings, competitive advantage and edge, market share” and so forth.
• Remember, an Objection is a quicker way to a yes.  Address an Objection adequately; you are one objection closer to the sale (typically 3 objection average per sale).
• Keep it simple:  Contact, Warm Up, Present, Answer Questions / Address Objections and Close (try to close twice before your final close).
• Ask the prospect questions and clearly understand his or her issues / problems so you can provide a solution.
• When you close and ask for the sale, always state the benefits prior.
• A close doesn’t have to be a sale.  It could be you ask for the sale and the prospect isn’t convinced.  Do not ruin your sales opportunity by trying over and over for a final close.  Rather, set up an Appointment and send follow up information and a Sales Webpage link.  Stay in front of the prospect (I am assuming this is a well qualified prospect).
• Keep a Special Offer in your back pocket and only use it if you think the prospect is more motivated by price than your value added benefits.
• The hard numbers:
  • 100 calls to close a sale
  • 5 minutes average per call = @ 8 hours for a sale
  • 5 sales = @ 40 hours of time
  • The average call transaction when one business telemarkets to another is @ $550, which means telemarketing can be quite profitable
• You can certainly increase the before mentioned odds / percentages to the better by developing and implementing a warm-up campaign that involves a personal letter, other type of mailing, email, etc.  Warming up the prospect really pays off for the follow on Telemarketing.

Flyers / Circulars / Brochures:   Circulars and flyers contain a short, concentrated, targeted, single message. It is a specialty piece while a brochure is much more detailed and longer in length. These marketing mediums are not effective unless used in a well thought out and targeted fashion.  Here are some tips on how to use fliers, circulars and brochures. They can really add a lot of profitability to your SBA Business Plans.   

• Flyers and Circulars: 
  • If you need to distribute a large volume, in conjunction (as a follow on) with a Mass Mailing, use Circulars.
  • Gets Instant action if implemented correctly.
  • Clear Offer
  • Urgency
  • Straight to the Point
  • Instruct Prospect what to do Next
  • Clearly Ties in to a Previously Established Identity
  • Content is very important, as well as, Process.
  • Factual / Explain
  • Inform
  • Sell
  • Help a Prospect visualize your Content with a Picture
  • Use Headlines & Bullet Points
  • List the greatest benefits for the particular audience
  • Test out your Brochure with a Circular / Flier for cost effective Test Marketing
  • Use Action Words
  • Learn Desktop publishing and produce your own materials at a fraction of the price.  Get a Graphic Design Student intern to create your Artwork for a small fee.
  • Color and Gloss are expensive.  If you aren’t selling a luxury, premium product, consider colored ink and colored stock to bring your piece to life.  However, if you self produce, I prefer Gloss and Colored Pictures – it is worth the added cost but mitigated when self produced.
  • ROI:  One Sale / one job should handily pay for your entire creation and distribution costs, otherwise, reconsider your campaign.
• Brochures:  More expensive, more detailed, larger pieces which instill confidence and credibility.  Moreover, it provides a more finesse, elaborate sales process.  As a mailing, I prefer a Circular.  For customer location placement, I like a Flier.  Brochures are great for in-house advertising; give to existing clients with a referral section; perfect to use online in combination with Website Marketing.  I like all my referral sources to have a replenishable stack of brochures that contain a referral section.  Also if you don’t make a sale, send a few brochures and ask the prospect to give out for a referral fee (and to stay in front of the prospect). 
• • The best use of brochures in my opinion is online and as a PDF product, as well as, a Video and/or Power Point product.
  • Color is good.  It increases your retention rate by over 50% and affects the buying attitude by 40%.
  • A brochure that costs a $1 to produce can have 8 pages, so use them with wisdom.  Tell a story, build credibility, make it personal and keep a professional, clean look.
  • If you have products that change rapidly, consider using a pocket brochure for product update inserts.  Great for price lists too!
  • Customer testimonials are a must.
  • Have the brochure point to specific web sales pages for more information.
  • Call for Action in your brochure.  Direct the prospect.
  • A low cost way of producing a brochure is having a magazine, which you advertise in or publish in, produce the ads / story as a brochure for you.
  • A great combination if money is a premium (it always is with a small business, isn’t it?) is to run small print ads in many publications which point to a FREE Brochure, which could be an Online Brochure.  Give people a reason to request the FREE Brochure.
  • You can personalize a Brochure Request by including a handwritten sticky note on it (this can be done digitally as well).
  • Be sure to follow up with the Brochure Requester within five days.
  • Brochures should only go to interested prospects.  Circulars can be more mass market.  Brochures should bring you a closing rate of about 30%.
  • An Online Brochure can have links to Video, Power Point and Audio Presentations.  These really increase your chances to make a sale.

Classified Ads: These types of ads can be low cost, cover a specific region or even neighborhood or take you national and international.  For a targeted audience, concentrate on Magazines.  An important stat:  60% of Americans read a magazine entirely but from back to front.  So, your ad has a good chance of being read.

• Consider Classified Network for targeted, multimedia system ads at a great price.
• Use a short Headline in all CAPS.
• Only use abbreviations people will understand.
• Personalize it
• Direct the reader to a Web Sales Page
• Consider putting your phone number
• Read the other ads in your advertising section and write an ad that contrasts
• A great way to sell a Book, offer a FREE E-book or Article
• Use Facts in the AD
• Create momentum and call the reader to Act
• focus benefits
• Classified Ads are short and sweet but you need quality of message.  Start with a bigger AD and cut it down to the lines you need for the small Ad.  You need very tight copy.  Study competitors Ads to spark ideas and angles.
• I am not a fan of online classifieds.  I think they get lost on the websites which they are displayed.  For this reason, I recommend Print.  If you find a Classified Online Forum or Service or Directory you like, the downside is you have to resubmit the Ad daily to keep visibility.
• Offer something FREE!

Gift Certificates:   Wow, never ceases to amaze me how overlooked gift certificates are in businesses. Be sure to have them and promote them well, especially on your website. Differeciate your certificates for different holidays and be sure to place a link in your email signature highlighting your different gift certificate offerings. This is an excellent forum to brand your business name effectively.

About The Writer

Frank Goley is a Marketing Consultant for ABC Business Consulting. He is a expert in organization planning, marketing and advertising, strategic planning, enterprise turnarounds, on-line marketing and advertising and search engine optimization (SEO). Frank has composed over 170 Business Success Blog Posts and E-Books. He is author of a Business Plan Ebook and writes the Business Success Blog. Frank really likes supporting firms to start, develop, turnaround and succeed!