Postcard Marketing Success - 9 Steps to Success

We've covered a lot of material on this website over the years, and much of it has revolved around postcard marketing success and how to achieve it. So in this article, I thought I would round up some helpful articles from years past in the form of a new article. So without further ado, here are nine steps to achieving postcard marketing success (with links to further reading).

Step 1 — Identify Your Audience

When creating your postcard message, start by identifying your audience. This might seem obvious, but it’s a critical step upon which the rest of the process will rest. To identify your core audience, you simply have to ask yourself a series of questions.

What kind of person would really want my product or service? Where might I find these people? What's important to them? What do they fear or hope to overcome? What do they want to know? How can I solve their problems? What do I have to offer that might motivate them?

When you've answered these questions, you should be able to write a paragraph from the combined answers. This paragraph is your audience statement, and it will help you set your postcard marketing objectives accordingly. Once you've defined your audience, you can more easily determine the kinds of offers that might motivate them.

Step 2 — Determine Your Objective

For postcard marketing success, the best objective (i.e., most achievable) is lead generation or direct response. Why? Because postcards can actually achieve these things. A postcard cannot convince people that you're the best in your industry. But it can certainly generate a response. And once you generate a response, you'll have an opportunity to show them you're the best.

So if you really want to achieve postcard marketing success, you need to start by determining your direct mail objective.

Step 3 — Identify Your Idea

What's the big idea that will make your postcard different from similar postcards from your competitors? How will you make people say "Wow"? Have you brainstormed? A great postcard is born from the imagination. This gives it a solid skeleton. Then it gets "flesh" from the things we'll talk about next—the value, the offer, the message, etc. But it all starts with the idea.

Step 4 — Pile On the Value

So you've given them a good reason to contact you. But why stop there? Add "layers" of value to your original offer. If you're promoting a seminar, add on a take-home information kit, or some other item of value to the audience. If you're promoting your consulting services, offer a free e-book to respondents, just for calling to talk to you. There's also something to offer. So pile on the value.

Step 5 — Create Your Offer

You've heard me say this several times throughout this book—the value and relevance of your offer will determine the size of your response. That's a basic principle of postcard marketing that people overlook.

If you think of your postcard as a messenger and not a product, this will start to make a lot of sense. A messenger without an important message is worthless. But if the messenger has valuable news or information, everybody wants to hear what he has to say. A strong offer is a key ingredient for direct mail success with postcard marketing.

Step 6 — Shape Your Message

Notice how far down this list the writing and design are? That's intentional. Too many marketers plunge into the message and design before they even have an idea or an offer. What you write about is more important than how you write about it. An interesting offer will leap off the page even when described in plain English.

Remember how groundbreaking the iPod was when it first came out? They didn't have to work too hard to create a message for the iPod, because the iPod was the message. They simply said it's this small, it holds this much music, and it costs this amount. People went crazy.

When you have something interesting to say, the message writes itself. Refer back to my postcard samples to see this in action. Anybody could've written those headlines and messages -- but not everybody could offer a great seminar, a one-of-a-kind information report, or a massive informational website. It's what's behind the message that's important.

So once you've come up with your idea and your offer, the message should be fairly easy to write. All you have to do is describe the offer in clear, straightforward language. All you have to do is connect the dots. This is the essence of direct mail copywriting success.

Step 7 — Design Your Postcard

If you're not familiar with graphic design, it would be a wise investment to hire a designer. Your postcard's design will reflect directly on your organization, so you'll want it to look professional. Your marketing success depends upon it.

Most postcard printers have designers on staff. Their services usually range from $55 - $75 / hour. A competent designer can produce a postcard design in three hours or so. If you have a friend who's handy with Photoshop, Quark or Illustrator, you can probably design a decent card for free.

The important thing to remember is that the design should support the message. Sure, it can be eye-catching, but only as a means of focusing those eyes on the message and the offer before them.

Step 8 — Conduct Your Mailing

If you've decided to use a postcard vendor like I've recommended, this step is going to be fairly easy. Just upload your postcard design and your mailing list, and let the vendor do the rest. They will print it and mail it for you. Be sure to put your own name and address on the list (and maybe a couple of friends or family in the area). That way, you'll know when your postcards go out because you'll get one. This is called "seeding" the list.

Step 9 — Follow-up Activities

So what happens after you send your postcards? Well, hopefully you have some way to track the responses, even if it's as simple as asking people "How did you hear about me?" Tracking allows you to compare one postcard message to another to see which one performs better. Refer back to the "Tracking" section of the book for more on this.

What's Your Long Term Plan?

Before sending your first postcard, it's a good idea to have a long-range plan. You don't need anything elaborate, just a basic plan for how many mailings you want to do. A lot of the time, circumstances will tell you what course to take. For example, if your postcard is a big success and you get a lot of response, your next step should be to send that postcard again!

If your mailing performs poorly, it may be time to adjust your approach and try something new (perhaps by increasing the value and uniqueness of your offer).

Most importantly, keep learning. I'm willing to bet you learn something new each time you speak with a customer. Yes? Well postcard marketing is the same -- you'll learn something new each time you send a postcard. Sometimes the lessons are pleasant, sometimes they're painful. But you'll always learn something. This kind of perpetual education will help you climb the pyramid of postcard marketing success ... and that's the whole point of the process!