Читать книгу Direct Mail in the Digital Age - Lin Grensing-Pophal - Страница 14

Before you can even begin to think about the specifics of your direct mail campaign, you need to determine what your goals and objectives are. You may want to —

• develop new markets,

• increase awareness of your company name,

• secure leads for your sales force, or

• increase sales.

The choice is yours — the key is to be specific.

Perhaps you’re currently selling lawn and garden equipment and would like to add a line of sporting goods, or you’re running webinars for administrative assistants and would like to introduce a new line of programming for a management-level audience. In each of these cases, your advertising objective might be to develop new markets through the acquisition of a certain number of prospects and/or customers.

If you use a direct sales force for some of your marketing efforts, you may want to qualify prospects rather than having your salespeople make cold calls. Direct mail can help you identify people who have an interest in your product or service before you send a salesperson to the phones or out on the road.

However, the most common objective for direct mailers is simply to generate sales. They want more people to spend more money on their products and services. While your objectives may change from one campaign to the next, it’s important that you do take the time to identify a quantifiable objective for each of your direct mail efforts. Since the big benefit of direct mail is its measurability, you want to take full advantage of the ability to leverage this benefit through a solid foundation based on specific, quantifiable, and measurable goals. After all, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.