Small Business Marketing Guide - DIY (do-it-yourself) BRAND MARKETING STRATEGIES to HELP YOU GROW YOUR BUSINESS

People don’t want to be sold – if they don’t know, like or trust you they can block your messages in a staggering amount of ways.

So, what’s a small business that wants to target a very defined group of prospects to do? I mean, direct mail is still a viable tool for this kind of engagement, isn’t it?

I believe direct mail is a very powerful medium for targeting prospects, but the rules of engagement, just like about everything in marketing have changed.

If you want your mail offers to get noticed they must be more personal than you could ever have imagined something falling in the junk mail category could be.

Think one to one personal. Think of ways to create the smallest, tightest group of prospects and shower them with fully engaged attention, rather than a bulk list of suspects.

The good news is that technology can come to your aid in this quest. Drawing your prospects into a game of trust building with personal URLs or coded landing pages that alert you when a prospect has picked up the free report online can make your direct mail much more integrated into your online education machine.

On demand printing, even in-house on demand printing, that adds personal touches to your mail through database integration has evolved far beyond Dear [your name here] personalization. Adding individual photos and personalized headlines can enhance even the simplest of postcard mailings.

Another tried and true direct marketing strategy is something I like to call lumpy mail. Creating themed package mailings with trinkets or gadgets that reinforce your message is a great way to get your mail to stand out and get the message delivered.

I once sent a load of postcards that I paid my daughters to add a strip of duct tape to – response rates were through the roof.

Don’t look at your direct mail so much as a way to sell something, focus on building trust and engagement into to deeper levels of content. Your call to action should likely be a small move to the next step and then the next and the next. Move prospects along logically with a full set of lead nurturing online and offline touches that make them conclude on their own terms that you are THE obvious choice to meet their needs.

Today’s direct marketing efforts are more like candles lighting the way so that your prospects can find you rather than you going out and hunting them.

Photo credit: Oran Viriyincy