4 Simple Steps to Effective Postcard Marketing

The postcard is an amazing direct mailing technique and can be extremely effective in capturing your target audience.  Unlike mailing delivered in an envelope, the postcard has the advantage to instantly grab the attention of its viewers since its advertisement message is immediately visible.  Despite this clear advantage many advertisers market the postcard incorrectly and don’t effectively know how to use this marketing piece to its full potential.   The most common mistake advertisers make it cluttering the postcard and actually making their viewer turned off and numb to the advertisement.  Let’s take a dive into the anatomy of the postcard and learn how we can make successfully win your audience over.

Step 1 – Determine Your Purpose

The very first step is that you must establish what the purpose of your postcard is and design the card according to what you want its viewer to do.  Here is some common purpose for a postcard:

• Call – You want your customers to call for lead generation.
• Website – You want them to visit your website to receive more information or purchase something
• Physical Visit – You want them to physically come visit your store front
• Branding – You want them to be aware of a certain product or service you have for future reference

Step 2 – Call to Action

After you determine the purpose of your post card you must tell your customers how to go about completing the action.  We call this a call to action and it can be aggressive or casual. The tone or technique of the call to action is completely determined by your demographic and your product. You have to do some research on your demographics and start some testing to figure out what would work best.  Some example of a call to action depending on your purpose is:

• Call – After displaying the pertinent information strategically place the phone number as the last step to completely the action.  The customers might be given something out for free, like a free evaluation, but must call to receive it.
• Website – The postcard might only generate buzz but leaves a lot of curiosity on the table.  The only way for the viewer to get more information is to return to a website.
• Physical Visit – You can offer a coupon that can only be redeemed by visiting the store.
• Branding – You might not what them to do anything but remember the product or service. So you may want to put something humorous or memorable on the postcard. Some people send refrigerator magnets so customers can stick them on their fridges.

Step 3 – The Design

Many people fail in the design process for several reasons. The first reason is the text. Often people understand their purpose but try to put too much on their postcard that goes beyond the point of the postcard. Stick to what you need to say. More is not always better and in postcard marketing it especially important to get to your point.  Make sure all text is clear, visible and easy to read.  Choose colors that do not clash with each other. Finally, when putting images you want to make sure that the image catches the viewer’s attention but you don’t want the image to take away from the message as well.  Find that balance and you’ll have yourself an effective postcard.

Step 4 – Testing

You may not be successful on your first mailer.  You should anticipate to send out several mailers, each distinctly different from the last so that you can properly measure the success of the campaign.  Try making variations to your to advertisement text, pictures, and overall tone of the postcard.

If your postcard marketing campaign does not show any results whatsoever in the first run it can also be due to the demographic you’re targeting.  The point is not to give up too soon but also to have a clear understanding of how the process of postcard marketing works.  To get started with your campaign visit ColorFX’s templates section and start designing your postcards.  If you need help we are one click away.

Tags: advertisementsadvertisingcommercial printingpostcard marketingpostcards

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