Then work out a simple, overall plan of major marketing steps needed to accomplish that (for example): 1.Publish a newsletter for all existing customers and mail out quarterly.

2.Work out 4 special offers in year and promote them to all our customers. 3.Set up on-line shopping and expand web site.

4.Direct mail campaign promoting web site to all customers.

5.Get mailing lists of (target markets) and do a series of 3 mailings of postcards to them and follow up on and close all leads.

6.Etc. You get idea. Don’t rush this. Do your homework. What worked in past? Read up on successful marketing campaigns.

Your business marketing strategy needs to be laid out in right sequence and you should have some idea of budget when you write it. “Run a series of 30 second TV ads during Superbowl” might sound like a good thing to do but can you afford it? On other hand, when you build your business marketing strategy you mustn’t try and cut corners. If you don’t promote heavily, it doesn’t matter how good your product or service is, no one will know about it and you will go broke. What really works when it comes to marketing?

Many business owners don't have a good enough answer to this important question. I learned by a combination of study and trial and error. From my own hard won experienceI have discovered that a real marketing campaign will take into consideration at least seven points which are outlined below:

1. Target Your Market

Your marketing will produce best results for lowest cost when you target prospects with greatest need for what you offer. Identify best people to send your postcards to. Design your postcards to appeal to their greatest need.

1) I know that a postcard is better than something in an envelope.

For many reasons, main one being, in an envelope you can’t make your potential customer see your message.

People are fast. We see and read very quickly – actually much more quickly than we even realize.. Think about yourself – how fast do you go through your mail and process out what you want to keep and what you don’t want to keep? Pretty darn fast. It takes fractions of seconds to go through and process in your mind “bill, bill, advertisement, bill, advertisement, letter…” And it also takes fractions of seconds to decide whether you are even going to bother giving more attention to pieces that you designated as advertisements.

With a postcard, even if they throw it away, they already saw your message regardless of whether they think they did or not. They saw it enough to throw it away, didn’t they?

And next time they get that same postcard in mail, they see it again as they throw it in trash.

Let’s face it - junk mail gets thrown away. And postcards are junk mail to a lot of people.

Although they may be junk mail, postcards get read no matter what – even if thrown away without reading them, they get seen. It’s like phoenix rising up from ashes.

2) I know that if you are not doing repeat mail with your postcards you are flushing your money down toilet.

Repeat mailings cannot be repeated enough. DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! A one shot in dark postcard mailing is not going to change your business, your bottom line, your life or your anything.

The long and short of it is, if you are not up to confronting that you need to do a campaign then don’t bother being in business. Sorry if I sound a bit harsh!

3) I know that best price is not best necessarily best postcard.

The cheapest is not necessarily best. The old adage “you get what you pay for” applies here. Get whatever potential postcard company you interview to send you samples. Make sure postcard is a very good, quality, stiff card that catches your attention. Get them to give you customer references. Call those references and find out what they think of that company’s service, product, etc.

There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into getting your postcard done right. If they screw up printing, if they don’t get your mailing out on deadline, etc. – doing it dirt cheap might not mean getting quality service you need or want.