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Education Marketing, Sales, & Public Relations Using Post Cards to Generate Calls and Referrals
Education Marketing, Sales, & Public Relations Using Post Cards to Generate Calls and Referrals | Using Post Cards to Generate Calls and Referrals |
| Written by Jeff Dobkin | ||||
Page 1 of 2 Using Post Cards to Generate Calls & ReferralsI don’t have a lot of space so I’ll get right to the point: A personal letter is the best marketing tool for personal communication to your personal clients, even when sent to all 100,000 of them. What? You don’t have 100,000 clients. Me neither. Sigh... In a letter you have time and space to sell sell sell. You can explain benefits, features; show facts and figures. A consultative sell? No problem in a letter: you can explain what you’re selling, why you’re selling it, then why your customers absolutely need it because it will be so good for them and best for their family, just initial here and here and send back, and we’ll take care of the rest. But a letter is a lot of work and expense: printing, folding, including a brochure perhaps to add credibility; envelope, mailshop services for inserting, postage, affixing postage, applying names and addresses. Lots of handling, really. Post cards, on the other hand can be effective, and they’re a lot less work. High readership, because once they’ve picked it up and they’re ready to toss it out, hey - they’ve read it! But, they’re no good for lengthy consultive selling. In fact, they’re not much good for selling at all. Fortunately, you don’t have to sell anything from a post card. The objective of a post card is not to sell something. The objective of a post card is to generate phone calls. Look at the title of this article. Told you. I write a lot of post cards for clients and I never once have asked for an order; but I always, always ask for a phone call, usually several times, as well as displaying a large phone number. If the reader calls, the post card is a complete success. It has done everything we’ve asked it to do - now it’s up to my client to close the sale or get an appointment, and turn the prospect into a real customer. So, what’s the best way to get the reader to call? The best way to get people to call you is by giving them what I term a “Non-threatening reason to call.” Enough technobabble. In short, offer something for FREE. It’s really difficult to get people to call you when they think they’re going to get a sale pitch - much easier when they can ask for something specific, especially when it’s free. Offer anything but a brochure. A brochure is a sheet of paper folded in thirds. You can get free brochures at the drugstore or an automobile dealership. So free brochures have no value. But: offering a FREE Booklet works well. A FREE “Informational” Booklet works even better. And notice how by setting the word FREE in all capital letters it jumps out at you? Do this on your post card - when you say FREE Booklet, use all caps. A single 8-1/2” x 11” sheet folded in half is a good booklet. Two sheets folded and nested together is even better. The title of the booklet is what drives people to pick up the phone, so the better the title the more phone calls you’ll get. Can you think of a title that will make everyone call? OK, besides “FREE SEX!” No, not “FREE MONEY!” either. OK, “FREE Beer!” is good. Works for me, anyhow. |
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