Many small business owners look for low cost marketing ideas. Have you thought of postcard marketing? Postcard marketing has been around for a long time – and some small business owners may not think of it at first glance. But postcard marketing can be very successful when done properly. The key is to understand how to harness the power of postcard marketing for your business.

Don’t just send postcards out and expect the business to come in. Wishful thinking needs hard work to back it up. Your small business postcards need to be carefully thought out before they leave your company so they have the best chance of success. Think of some of your most successful marketing pieces and what copy and graphics you have used. Take the time to create a postcard that will attract people and entice them to turn it over and learn more – and want to call your business for your service or products.

Use one postcard for one business idea. It is easiest to send out a postcard mentioning a sale or promotion or another topic. Try not to send out a postcard with several topics as it is probably too much information for most to absorb on a postcard. Remember that most people will spend a very short time looking at your postcard – probably less than a minute! One message per postcard is best and keeping it focused will help your audience respond at a higher rate.

Show your postcard to several people before you send it out. Ask them what they think – what they notice about it. Their feedback could be very valuable and save you lots of time and effort. Remember that first glance is so important. Having them notice your sale or promotion is important. Pay attention to what they notice and also what they seem to miss as they read your postcard.

The most important part of postcard marketing? Send your postcard to the people who will be most interested in what you have to sell or service you have to offer. Do you know who your target market is? Consider buying a mailing list to send your postcard to. Or if you are leaving postcards in places people will find them so they can pick them up, think about where your ideal customer would find them. For some this could be at the Laundromat and for others this could be an art gallery. Knowing who and where your target market is important to reaching them and letting them respond to your postcard marketing.

Soft skills are personal habits, qualities and attitudes that make people effective, easy to work with, and generally nice to be around. Examples include communication skills, maintaining a positive attitude, problem-solving, having self-confidence, and being flexible.

Topics that are considered “alternative” by some people include transformational work, alternative healing, and other personal growth events that focus on emotional healing. As with soft skills, many prospects have a hard time grasping the value of these events.

When training budgets are tight, soft-skills seminar often suffer. Many companies give preference to seminars that teach hard skills – the technical things individuals must do to perform their jobs. The reason is that it’s easier to observe and measure the impact of hard-skills training.

For example, if I take class on building presentations with PowerPoint™, it’s easy to observe what I learned at the course. It’s also easy to measure how the training investment will impact my business: I’ll now be able to create slides for webinars, sales presentations and live speaking engagements.

The benefits of attending a seminar that promises to help me become a more conscious communicator might be less clear. First, it’s more difficult to evaluate whether or not one is consciously communicating. Second, it can be more complicated to measure the return on investment. Because the payoff might be something amorphous like “less conflict” or “more confidence,” it’s easier for prospects to dismiss soft skills as a “feel good” luxury, not a necessity.

Tips for Selling “Soft”

Here are 5 tips for helping prospects understand the value of your soft-skills seminars:

1. Meet prospects where they are. Before you can convince prospects that your seminar can help them, they need reassurance that you understand where they are now. Try incorporating a list of challenges they may be facing or incorporate copy that demonstrates that you know what they’re trying to accomplish. A list of challenges also helps prospects recognize their need for your training.
2. Spell out the benefits. Present a detailed list of the many ways that prospects’ lives will change once they’ve attended your seminar. For example, rather than saying that “you’ll be a more effective communicator,” offer specific examples of that that might look like, such as “reach agreements more quickly,” “reduced conflict,” and “fewer misunderstandings.” Whenever possible, connect the benefits of your training to the bottom line. For example, how will more effective communication help you increase sales and revenue, reduce employee turnover, and/or boost productivity?
3. Use social proof. Use testimonials, case studies and videos to demonstrate that people just like them have attended your seminar and benefited. Incorporate comments from a variety of people – different ages, both genders, various industries, etc. – to cover a broad spectrum of prospects.
4. Provide background. As a practitioner, it’s easy to forget that not everyone knows what you know. For example, if you are offering a Reiki seminar, you would explain that Reiki is a form of channeled healing. This might be adequate for people who are somewhat familiar with energy healing. However, you might also want to back up even further, explaining that we are alive because life force is flowing through us and then continuing with a brief discussion of how Reiki works.
5. Offer a clear satisfaction guarantee. The purpose of a satisfaction guarantee is to remove risk. Prospects, particularly those working with a tight budget, are worried about making a mistake that will cost them and their company money. By offering a satisfaction guarantee, you remove the risk, making it easier to say yes.

After developing a product that has generated consumer interest, the originator is generally filed with a great sense of satisfaction. That feeling of accomplishment should not be used as a lingering disposition. Instead, the momentum should be used to accomplish the next step to market infiltration and eventual market domination. You will accomplish this by strategic placement of your product through existing retailers and industry influencers that will make your product available to consumers at little or no-cost to you.

A product placement campaign is ideal for those who have created a product with limited means to retail the product on their own efforts or originators who are seeking to increase awareness and Client Base for a particular product. The threshold inquiry before beginning your campaign is to realistically assess whether the product meets a two prong criteria: first, it must be a quality product as valued by your targeted Consumer Base and second, it has generated enough interest from consumers that is verifiable through sales generated, customer reviews or industry standard. If you meet both prongs, you are now on the precipice of coming up with a successful Product Placement Strategy as outlined in the three step action plan below based on coordinated Timing, Action and the actual Placement of the product.

Timing

The timing of the product placement campaign will determine how successful the campaign will be. There is an opportune time for each targeted market that will facilitate the conversation surrounding your intended product placement because retailers will be more responsive to promote new products during those times. To determine the ideal timing, you need to identify which industry the product will service. If there is an overlap with different industries, try to narrow down your list based on the primary function of the product. Next, you need to research that industry for peak times as there may be more than ones. For example, for the retail one of the major peak times is the holiday season. Now that you have identified the peak times, you need to coordinate your efforts so that your product placement requests occur before the peak seasons, but just in time to benefit from the increase traffic they generate.

Action

Your next step will include selecting a cluster of retailers within the immediate area where your product has earned some reputation for quality which should be verifiable on some level. Spend some time researching each prospect as to their strengths and their current targeted Consumer Base. Armed with this information, you need to create a sound bite which addresses or includes each of the following factors: (a) an elevator pitch about your product (2 -5 minutes); Identify the advantage the retailer stand to gain through the placement; (c) Some hard facts about your expected consumer base’responsiveness to your product. Finally, you will initiate direct (i.e. face to face or phone call) strategic communication, with the owner or decision makes for each the retailer.

Placement

The physical placement of the product itself does not guarantee that your intended consumer will purchase it. Unless you are Bethany Frankel selling Skinny Girl Margarita, a product highly publicized on Television, you need to take is a step further. Otherwise, your product may simply become a wall flower on a retailer’s shelf. This is your opportunity to get create and build a unique marketing campaign around the placement that will generate buzz about your product and the intended retailer. Generate ideas with thoughtful consideration of the sound bite you have created with emphasis on creating a mutually beneficial campaign for your product and the retailer.