The single most important part of your direct mail campaign is selecting who you specifically want to market to. Without a clear audience for your business’s service or product, you could find yourself with the greatest product in the world, but no solid customer base.
It’s incredibly challenging and expensive to advertise to everyone, so refining your target population is key to running an effective direct mail campaign.
Who Are You Selling To?
When first considering who you should market to, you need to think about who is most likely to want your product. There’s no sense in shelling out for a marketing campaign to someone if they have no interest in your product or service.
You can break down your customer base using a variety of factors: income, occupation, location, and family situation to name a few.
Who is your most likely customer? Are they parents looking for their next vacation? Do they currently commute to night classes at the local community college? Are they single, living in a rural area with plenty of disposable income for luxury goods? Do they own a business in a small town, but are also looking to expand?
These are the questions you should have some answer to prior to choosing a method of reaching out. You can start with a base understanding and as time goes by, develop a more comprehensive idea of who your most likely customers are.
How Do You Reach Them?
Once you’ve identified who your most likely customers are, the next step is choosing how you try to reach out to them. If your audience typically does not use the internet, an email campaign is not the best idea. If your business is purely internet based, a handout flyer for walk-in customers might not make sense.
Once you know what kind of sources your base utilizes, creating content for them is key. Creating the kind of content they will actively read, watch, or listen to requires further understanding of your customers.
Solving this riddle can be tricky, but it is necessary. Without understanding what kind of information your customers consume on a regular basis, you may as well be shouting into the void.
What Do You Say?
So you’ve found the group you want to reach, and you know what kind of content your audience wants, and that should be it, right? No! After the prior steps, you now need to conform your message to these customers. In most cases, you’ll want to establish that your customers need your product or service, and that it will benefit them now and in the future.
They should already understand what your trying to sell them, but how does yours differ from others? How is it better for the consumer? This is how you set yourself apart from the rest of the products like your own on the market.
This can be done with examples of your services or products you’ve already had success with. Additionally, utilizing reviews by other customers or users is usually a great direction to pursue. Potential customers tend to trust previous customers, so have their experiences work for you!
Never Stop Learning Or Adapting
As stated above, you will likely continue to deepen your understanding of who your best audience for your business is. Your future campaigns should shift focus to address new demographics in your customer base while still maintaining the base you’ve already cultivated. Building and reaching your audience is one of the most important aspects of running a business, so it should always be a key focus when preparing a marketing campaign.
