Direct Marketing:
Brochures and Flyers:
Brochures and Flyers are the life blood of most businesses. They are meant to provide information to your clients that they can keep and review in the future.
The trick, not just use it as a PR piece but as a way to make a complete package to your advertising campaign.
Incorporate your brochure or flyer into your other advertising methods
You can still use them for the regular handout and information sheets. You must learn to incorporate them into your other marketing campaigns.
Use them as part of a complete campaign. Using a combination of the other Direct mail and Internet techniques you will learn on this site.
Brochures and Flyers need to demand an action
Don’t just put your company name and contact information on them. Put a call to action on them. Ask the reader to call you, visit your site, provide an email or just reach out to you. Better yet, ask them to buy something that has great value but costs very little. This is what marketers call a Tripwire. Anyone buying your initial offer has proven to be a buyer and they are worth a lot of money to you.
Give them a Free report, book, sample product or coupon for replying. Even better, give them a bonus for acting quickly to your offer.
Use images and pictures to draw their attention
In today’s marketing world, images and pictures tell a story and draw attention to your pieces. It is important to use images and pictures that tell a part of the story or make the person look twice at the brochure or flyer.
Your job is to create attention and then ask them to respond to your offer is some way. There are few rules that apply when it is your money you are spending.
Experiment and test
You should never be completely happy with your ads. Testing and experimenting is critical to every business. Change is inevitable, you must adopt a mindset that you are never satisfied with the results that your advertising is getting. Find your best ad that pulls the best results and profit and use is as your CONTROL ad. You then test all other ads against it until one beats the original Control ad. YOu now have a new Control ad to try and beat.
To test your ads, you need to only change one thing with each test. If you change more than one thing at a time you can’t tell what change worked. It is important to change only one thing at a time. The headline, the copy, the images and the color and the call to action.
Use odd shapes to attract attention to your brochures and flyers
Different shapes tend to draw attention. If only to see what it is about, a different shape normally captures your prospects attention. Once you have their attention you need to keep it. Use different shaped brochures, flyers or postcards.
Now is the time to hook them, get them to take action. The fastest hook is to offer a free product. The product could be a free book, report, whitepaper or e-book. A digital product easy easy to ship, you don’t need to stock it and the cost is minimal to make and ship it.
Get their attention, then get their contact information
Your aim is to get the prospects attention and then to exchange something for their contact information. This can be as simple as a few tips or hints on a simple Word processor page. You can title it and then use it as a free report or gift. Tips or hints, even simple samples can be used as something to get their contact information.
Once they provide their email they can have it delivered instantly using an autoresponder. You can learn more about them and how they work in the Internet section.
An autoresponder will collect your prospects email and then deliver the digital product immediately. It can then send a series of future emails to that prospect for as long as you want. Of course the prospect can opt out of the future emails at any time. This is only polite and in Canada it is the law.
You can build a series of letters or postcards to send as a follow up program. When doing a mailing you should have multiple follow up options.
Always allow your prospects the right to opt out and quit receiving your emails or mailings. This is just good business. If they no longer want to get your messages and updates and free information than you do not want to have them on your lists. Not removing them is poison to your business. In most countries it is also illegal not to take them off your list.
Build your lists
You will learn throughout this website that a “List” is what creates your bread and butter. You MUST build lists for your business. You can build lists for your prospects and for your actual paying customers or clients. You can have lists inside your client list of people that bought specific items or services. This way you break them down into different lists.
Each list can then be marketed to using direct mail or the internet. You can continue to send emails or mailing pieces to these lists for months. Promoting your products and services in new and creative ways.
Your list can be a simple e-mail or can include the full name, address, city and province or state along with the postal code and phone number. The more data you can collect the more ways you can market to these clients in the future.
Using surveys can help you learn about your customers and find more ways to sell to them.
Combine your marketing methods to your lists
Use email and direct mail when sending your message to your lists. Send brochures, flyers and postcards.
Each piece needs a “Call to Action” so that you can measure the results of each ad that you do. You need to have a way to judge the results of each ad campaign. Tracking your results must be done on every ad you do. Knowing what is working and what is not is critical to your success.
If you use a brochure or flyer for an ad. You need to know the results of that campaign. Figure out how long it takes for the piece to be delivered and read. Then allow for 1 to 2 weeks for the results to stream in depending on what your offer is.
Track your results
When you start a new campaign have a way to track and measure the results. You can do this by asking your client how they heard of you or came to you.
If you use websites, you can track which page they go to. You can then see how many prospects visited your specific page.
You can build multiple pages (which work as testing as well). You can see which page produces the most results. You can use the same technique with which brochure or flyer or postcard brings in the best results.
You can key your ads with a simple code, such as suite #, or department #. This distinguishes your ads from each other, allowing you to track your results.
Brochures and Flyers work
They just need to be spiced up. Add a “Call to Action”. Make your brochure or flyer stand out from everything else they will get that day. The more outrageous you can make it the more chance it will be seen and read.
Stop copying all your competitors, STAND OUT
Quit copying bad advertising. Stretch your imagination and create something that no one else has done. Get outrageous, find something that will first surprise a prospect and then use that moment to get them to respond to you. Give them something in return for their contact info.
Once you have this information you can market to them for weeks and months to come. You have multiple chances to talk to them.
If all you do is a general ad like everyone else does than how will you ever find stand out from the crowd. What is your Unique Selling Proposition? What makes you different from your competitor? What makes you special or better then your competition. You need to provide them with something that can add value to their life immediately. If you do this, you will succeed. You can’t fail, people want to be entertained and mystified, use this human need to your advantage. Brain storm your next flyer or brochure now.
What can you do right now to shock your prospect and make them want more? Write down 2 or 3 things, more if you can. Get wild. No idea is stupid, write down everything you can think of. Do this for the next 30 minutes, heck the next 10 minutes. Try it now. Before you move on.
Take some type of action NOW!