New customer prospecting is a constant struggle. To keep your company rolling, you have to cross sell your past customers for additional services while constantly searching for new customers. You are probably using a variety of methods to reach new customers, but may be searching for a more effective marketing plan.
Effective marketing requires developing familiarity and awareness of a brand. While some companies rely mostly on traditional media such as tv and radio, the high cost and difficulty in measuring effectiveness is prohibitive for most.
These days, online advertising, social media, direct mail, & cold calling are the most cost-effective ways to advertise. But how do you know you’re getting the most bang for your buck?
Now, more effective new customer prospecting utilizes traditional direct mail campaign connected to online advertising and phone call tracking to improve performance, action and results. A new technology called DirectCONNECT™ links direct mail with both Google and Facebook advertising, offering an easy-to-use way to develop and nurture leads, effectively and with a measurable return on investment.
For one new customer prospecting campaign, 20,000 postcards were mailed to a list of prospects. While it’s important to mail on a regular basis to develop familiarity with the brand, this single mailing resulted in 146,726 follow-up ad impressions, with 78 people clicking on the ads to go to the website. Most importantly, the company received 43 unique telephone calls and converted 30 into jobs.
Since the great majority of people go to a company’s website for their first evaluation, a good landing page is needed for the campaign. Good means informative and easy to click and call or click and email an inquiry.
Next, a mail list is produced of past customers or of prospects.
Code is added to the landing page on the website for Google® and Facebook® advertising. Once someone lands on that page, as in response to the direct mail piece, they pick up a “cookie” (the code) and then will see ads as they browse and encounter one of the Google Display Network sites. This results in impressions, increasing awareness and familiarity with the brand, and generates clicks to the website.
For people on the mail list who are found to have matching Facebook pages, usually 40-60%, advertisements will be displayed during their time on Facebook, again generating impressions, familiarity and clicks to the website.
Inbound phone calls are tracked and recorded, producing reports on phone activity and allowing for quality assurance reviews (leading to training) of the inbound calls. Leads are critical, so the system carefully tracks leads and provides reports that can result in continuous improvement in future campaigns.
Evolving technology leads to more effective marketing tactics and better outcomes without more work. Connecting direct mail to online advertising leads to more effective marketing and higher returns on marketing investments.
