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The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Medium Breakdown

Use this simple guide to feel confident and stay sane when choosing which new or old marketing media you want to use. Trust me, this can be essential in planning your marketing and give you a realistic timeframe for your creative process, production and mailing or ad placement.

Direct Mail:

How it benefits your business: With direct mail, especially postcards, you’re able to send a high quality ad directly to your target market with a specific message. Budget-wise, this helps you cut down on your cost-per-lead because you qualify the list before your postcards go out.

With a printed piece, your reader will be able to hold the ad in their hands and read it at their speed and convenience – enabling a higher chance of them keeping it in case they aren’t ready to call right away.

  • Bring in more new customers
  • Boost brand recognition
  • Send special promotions or sales

You can also track how many customers redeem the postcard and direct leads to your website.

Timeline: One month to leave time for changes and printing

Radio:

How it benefits your business: In radio, you can reach an enormous audience through drive-time talk programs, morning shows and shock-jocks. You can also narrow down your target market by advertising on a variety of stations such as sports, religious, country, Top 40 and more.

The biggest benefit is that it is affordable. The production of a 30-second spot and buying the ad time is well within most small businesses’ budgets. The only downside, it is hard to track your response.

  • Reach a semi-targeted, large audience at one time
  • Opportunities to partner with radio stations for giveaways
  • Works for a small budget

Timeline: 2 weeks to leave room for changes and editing.

Website:

How it benefits your business: 90% of consumers will visit your website before calling or visiting you. That’s a huge percentage! Your website may be the first impression you make, so having a professional, lead-generating site will keep your visitor interested.

  • Instant way to capture contact information
  • Generates leads that can turn into customers
  • Displays products, videos, company info and promotions in one location
  • Fast updates and changes

Timeline: 3 weeks to eternity! Changes can be instant, it really depends on your website developer’s timeline and how complex your project may be.

Email Marketing:

How it benefits your business: Email marketing is an effective follow-up tool that helps you close more leads – plus it’s VERY affordable to set up and you can send with little preparation.

  • Close more prospects
  • Increase re-orders
  • Educate and stay in front of your customer base with e-newsletter
  • Send last-minute special promotions

Timeline: At minimum, 3 days to a one week to plan for copywriting, design and HTML programming.

Social Media:

How it benefits your business: You can use social media both to talk directly to your customers and to find people who can help you build your business – it will also create a lot of positive word-of-mouth at no cost to you.

  • Keep your prospects and clients informed in real time
  • Create a platform to build customer relationships in a non-formal arena
  • Drive web traffic to your website
  • Feedback and generate leads through your posts
  • Post deals, events and other online or offline promotions
  • Portray a personal image/face of your company
  • Increase your Google and search engine rankings

Timeline: Instant.

TV:

How it benefits your business: TV allows you to convey your message with sight, sound and motion, which can give your product or service instant credibility. As a small business, go with a local ad or advertise on cable – this will keep your costs down significantly. Note: It can still be one of the more expensive ways to go – script writing, shooting, production and actors’ pay adds up.

  • Increase brand and product awareness
  • Reach large audience to maximize lead potential
  • Improve customer retention – schedule ads to appear several times during a targeted program to build brand retention

Timeline: Minimum 6-8 weeks to leave time for production, editing and voiceover work.


Creating a winning concept, getting the artwork together, choosing a mailing list, coordinating your message and hiring talent takes work – but it’s worth it!

Need help putting together a full, effective marketing program?

Call our marketing consultants now at 1-800-628-1804

Joy Gendusa

Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998 with a phone, computer and no capital investment. Since then, she has grown the company into one of the nation's most effective direct mail marketing firms, specializing in postcard marketing for small to large-sized businesses. Over the years, she expanded to offer mailing list acquisition, website development, email marketing–all while continuing to educate clients with free marketing advice.

She has been named Tampa Bay CEO of the Year, Business Woman of the Year in Tampa Bay and has been featured on MSNBC's "Your Business." PostcardMania is an Inc. 500 and 5000 company and has won awards for creativity, best business practices and leadership.

If you would like to interview Joy or book her as a speaker, please email joyspeak@postcardmania.com or call 1-800-628-1804 ext. 281.

Call or Text a Marketing Consultant 1-800-628-1804
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