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

Unlike nearly all other forms of marketing, direct marketing allows you the unique opportunity to test the success of not just the complete marketing effort, but discrete pieces of the marketing program individually. This is called split testing.

A split test is a head-to-head test between two different versions (or variables) of a specific element of a direct marketing program. For example, when split testing a direct mail piece, you would send out two versions of the same sales letter.

Both letters are almost identical, except that one includes a bold headline that asks the customer to order. Both include different website URLs to visit to place an order. Each of the website order pages look and act exactly the same. The purpose is to record which sales letter the customer responded to. This type of split test would allow you to discover which of the two sales letters was most effective, the one with the headline or the one without.

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Your company is small. Your budget is small. You want good design, but you wonder, “Can I get good design at an affordable price?”

Yes. You can do it yourself.

But first, be aware of the common perils DIY designers fall into. Before you start any design project, keep these do’s and don’ts in mind:

DON’T fix it, if it ain’t broke

You need design for two major reasons:

1. Your goals have changed
2. You aren’t achieving your current goals

If your goals are the same—you’re satisfied and successful—then why redesign what’s already working?

DO define your goals

Unfortunately, goals rarely remain the same over time. Why? Because the environment or context of your business is always changing. For example:

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Large corporate businesses have one advantage over small businesses: they have more people and resources. Because they’re such vast collections of individuals, and it can be difficult for consumers to understand an organization that large,  branding has been developed to control how consumers feel about a company and its products and services.

A brand is a collections of symbols and mental associations connected with a company or product. When defining a company’s brand, marketers seek to develop and align the consumers’ expectations, creating the impression that a product has certain qualities that make it unique or special.

In a small business, your brand doesn’t have to be a collection of symbols because you, the small business entrepreneur, are the brand. What you do and say reflects on all aspects of your business. You humanize your business in a way that corporate brand marketers could only dream about.

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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.

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I wonder if you made the same assumption as I did when you read the title of this post?  Did you read “Direct Marketing” but think “Direct Mail?”

Direct marketing is defined as sending a marketing message directly to someone, instead of using mass media such as TV, magazines, billboards, etc.  Direct marketing channels include but aren’t limited to paper mail, telephone, mobile phone text (SMS), and e-mail.

This is an important distinction because the cost of a first class postage stamp in the U.S. is going up to 44 cents on May 11, 2009.  Each postage increase makes getting return on your investment in traditional direct mail a lot harder to come by.

Despite the price increase, direct marketing is still worthwhile.  It just means you have to be smarter at it. 

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