Traditional Marketing
Direct MarketingTraditional direct marketing is a dying industry. The typical response to direct marketing is about 1%-2%: therefore, if you mail out a thousand flyers, you might get about 20 responses. Given the increases in paper, printing and shipping, the cost-effectiveness of direct mail is dwindling, and telemarketing is ineffective and downright intrusive. Bottom line, whatever benefits may be accrued from direct marketing, it adversely affects your brand as an ethically “flexible” business.
Permission Marketing
The good twin of direct marketing is permission marketing. Permission marketing entails the actual request for information about your business by prospective customers - implicitly (like through a search engine) or explictly (through a form request or the like). In real terms, people who give you their contact information are in effect requesting that you send them noteworthy information – such as sales, new products, or new services. Permission marketing has a much greater ROI than direct mail, but it requires a bit more elbow grease in obtaining that permission. If you have a storefront, you should collect contact information, and ask whether or not you can contact them about sales or new services. If you have a website, you should have online forms that collect this info in exchange for something they might want. The more contact information you have, the greater you can expand your client base.
E-Newsletters
Online permission marketing is far more cost-effective, and one method of this is an e-newsletter: an electronic pamphlet that conveys pertinent info about you and your business. It can take any form you like, or that you think will resonate with your client base. It can be as simple as a big coupon, or it can be a mini-journal, with articles tangential to your industry or interests of your customers.
E-Books/White Papers
Often, one of our clients has had a wealth of information that they wanted to share with the outside public, but they were neither professional authors, nor did they have enough time or inclination to pen a full-sized book. What they can do, and have done, is write an e-book or a white paper. Essentially the same but different in size (e-books are usually longer), e-books and white papers focus on a subject and give authoritative education or elucidation. They can then be available for download.
A point of note: most people’s first inclination is to charge for an e-book. I understand the impulse: you have spent hours writing this thing, and there is no way you’re giving it away for free. I urge you to reconsider. There is a reason you’re not submitting this to Random House for publication, no? Despite how much you may be in love with your baby, chances are that others won’t be so moved into paying for a 40 to 50 page amateur e-guide.
Instead, look at it as a great marketing tool. Decide what business you are in – your business or writing? Allow your writing to enhance your business, not compete with it. For example, a consultant who writes an e-book has created a great billboard for her services as a consultant; she has given away enough information to educate her prospects that they need her consultation. But you will have to judge your own content…maybe you’ve written the next best seller!