4 Steps You Need To Do To Make Postcards for Business Work

What do you need to make a postcard for your business work? There are 4 basic steps that need to be present in order for a marketing postcard to work but before that, you need to have a basic strategy.

How To Make Postcards Work
1. Market Research. Find out who your idea client is.
2. Think of a Benefit. Why should a prospect purchase from you?
3. Call To Action. Why should your prospect pick up the phone and call right now?
4. Consistency. You need to mail to your prospects consistently.

The overall strategy for your postcard campaign needs to be thought out before you even get to the design step. Too often we see a business owner say, “Okay, time to promote let’s do a postcard” and then throw together a postcard for his business quickly.

The problem you will run into with the “throw something together quickly” strategy is that you are likely to just throw something together without much thought to it.

When it comes to any marketing and advertising, a campaign that is thrown together will likely fail.

The streets are littered with the failed hopes of many business owners who “threw something together” and hoped it would work.

The first step on the road to being broke is to hope your advertising will work.

Decide what service or product you want to promote with a postcard?

Step 1: Who buys this product or service?

• What characteristics does this group of prospects have?
• Where do they live?
• What is their income?
• Do they have families?
• Do they need to be creditworthy to buy this product or service?
• Anything else that differentiates and helps to identify this group of prospects?

The above information is important for two reasons.

One: for a targeted mailing list. This is one of the biggest reasons a postcard mailer fails. The postcard is mailed to the wrong people for your business!

We can get a mailing list that is very refined to reach a specific group of prospects.

Two: when you design a card it has to appeal to the recipient.  Knowing who the postcard is mailing to will help the designer make the message appeal to the prospect.

Step 2: What are the benefits of the product you want to promote using postcards?

Why do people buy the product or service?

What problem does it solve for the prospect?

Step 3: Offer or Call to Action.  An offer or call to action is important because your offer is often the hook that pulls the prospect in to do business with you.

• Before you set the offer or special, research what your competitors are offering.
  • FACT: 98% of the people who have an interest in your postcard and your business will go to your website first to do research, and also to your competitor’s site. If a competitor has a cheaper price the prospect will go to them.
• If you cannot compete on service, is there anything you can offer that will add value?
  • For example, we were working with an auto repair shop that offers a free car wash with an oil change. The car wash cost them little but was perceived as a value to the prospect.

Step 4: Consistency. Other than the above points, consistency of mailing is the main reason for a postcard mailer not working.

There is no such thing as one-and-done marketing. The one mailer to test to see if it works will always fail.

Every product has a buying cycle. The bigger the ticket item you are selling, the more people will shop and research. The buying cycle goes from:

1. Prospect notices they might want the product/service.
2. Prospect wonders where to get it and how much does it cost?
3. Prospect now really wants it.
4. Prospect wonders who is best to buy product/service from?
5. Prospect is ready to buy it.

Your target market has many prospective clients who are in the various stages of the buying cycle.  Over the course of several months, you will have more people who will come into the market for your product or service.

Just by mailing your postcard, you are in fact creating prospects. People who before they received your mailer were not even thinking about owning your product or service, or maybe did not need it but today their A/C broke down and now they are looking.

Incidentally, this is why direct mail is superior to internet marketing because the internet only reaches people who are searching right now. The “searching now “ prospects are being heavily marketed to by much larger competitors.  It is a very competitive space.

There is a rule in marketing that says 100% of people will buy from a company or individual they know over a company they have never heard of or just heard of. By mailing consistently to a group of prospects you are creating familiarity with your business which means more people will buy from you because they know of you.

Know that you have the basics down for your mailer. Here is a link to the 10 design tips that get your postcard noticed.