Saturday, September 6, 2008

5 Tips To Grab Attention with Business Cards and Postcards

By BGC


1. Perceived Value - The perceived value of your business to a potential customer is set quickly by his first impression. Business cards and marketing postcards are many times the first item a prospective customer receives from a business. In a few seconds that first item will establish whether the customer believes there is further value in learning more about your business. Hence, the design quality and organization of your cards will subliminally communicating your company's worth. If the design for your marketing postcards and business cards express high quality, good organization, and consistent information, then your company will be perceived to represent high quality, be organized, and offer consistent results.

Every business should carefully strive to develop first impression marketing items, like business cards and postcards, that create a high quality coordinated first impression for their business. One way to help with this goal is to have a single professional designer develop designs.

2. Brand Consistency - Your company's brand is what people think of you. When people notice a newspaper ad for your business or an ad on a direct mail advertising postcard, it's important that you present a clear and steady sense of who you are.

At every point of contact with potential customers an integrated campaign will have better results than a campaign that is not integrated. This is done by having every ad, every brochure, your website, business card, and every corporate identity element needs to be designed so the customer can easily identify it as being from you.

3. Message/Content Quality - As things change in your business make sure your advertisements reflect the changes you business offers. Keep the content of your ads fresh and interesting. If you offer high-quality information in your ads then your customers will value receiving them. Customers do not value receiving ads full of hype. Respect your customers with the content you offer in your ads and you will increase their respect for your business. Also, be very careful with your proofreading as errors are completely unacceptable. Informative interesting accurate content will make people want to do business with you.

In all your sales copy be confident and sure that you are emphasizing the benefits you provide to your customers. The benefits are what your customer craves to enjoy by means of the products or services you offer. Evaluate the qualities of your products and services and develop a list of how your customers benefit from these. As an instance, a low price can be a product feature which benefits the customers by saving him money. Do not make the mistake of assuming the customer will figure out the benefits your offer. Always positively express your benefits. The better you understand and communicate the benefits your enterprise offers the more success you achieve in your promotions.

4. Self Promotion: Be Your Own Cheerleader - If you're not promoting your latest occurences (new product/service offerings, company news, upcoming educational sessions, trade shows, sales, etc.), no one else is going to. All companies have things going on like listed above. Exploit the prospects of these happenings to be successful by keeping your marketing postcards current with content promoting the events of your business. Keeping fresh information on your advertising postcards tells customers that you are an active company that is on the move.

5. Understand Your ROI - The major means by which you can realize whether you advertising is being effective is to sum up the results and compare. Do not fail to give the extra effort needed to measure the results on how your promotion cards are performing. Discuss with your buyers how they feel about your business cards and keep their responses. Review those responses on a recurring basis and make design changes to improve customer feedback.

For your direct mail postcard campaigns you can almost always design in a feedback loop. For example, just have the customer bring in the card for some special offer. Then by knowing how many cards you sent out and comparing that to how many cards were brought back in you can measure results. By measuring the results you can make changes for improvement on the next campaign. It is surprising how many business just do not put in the extra work needed for collecting this data and never objectively understand why their campaign results do not improve.

The Bottom Line - The business cards and marketing postcards for a business make the marketing foundation for building a healthy successful endeavor. If you pay attention to developing a consistent image, keep your information up to date and valuable, and measure your results for improvement then your achievement will be high.

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