Quick Offline Marketing Tips (Part 1)

(From the tutorial, Marketing Your Online Business in the "Real World")

Use Your Car.

One of the simplest ways to promote your business is to place your URL on your car. Think about how much time you spend commuting to work, running chores, stuck in traffic, parked at the mall, or simply driving around. Why not put it to good use?
Keep a few brochures and/or business cards in your car, just in case people stop you to ask more about your business (plus you might just come across a potential customer when you're driving around).

Use Postcards.

They're relatively cheap, quick to produce, visually appealing, and great for all sorts of purposes: an initial contact, limited-time offers, thank you cards, reminders, invitations to revisit your business, coupons, announcement of a 'grand opening'…

Calculate Your 'Break-Even' Point.

Before you decide to go ahead with a campaign, sit down and figure out your chances of success. For example, some of the costs you may need to include in your calculations are: printer cartridges, paper (including specialty paper), envelopes, postage, and your time (time you could be using for other productive purposes).
Example: let's say it costs 50¢ to mail a standard-sized letter, $100 each for toner cartridges which lasts for 2000 envelopes plus an equal number of flyers. Here's the math:
2000 stamps @ 50¢ each = $1000 1 toner cartridges @ $100 each = $100 4 packages of quality paper = $50 2000 envelopes = $40 Total cost: $1190
The estimated "typical" response rate on direct mail is usually around 1%. 1% of 2000 sales letters is 20. Let's say your product sells for $100. That means you would have to make 12 sales just to break even. If your product sold for just $50, you'd need 24 sales… or if it sold for $200 you'd need just 6 sales. The more sales you need to break even, the higher the required response rate.
While thinking about this, remember to consider the lifetime value of your customer. If you sell a subscriptions to a specialty print newsletter, you might find that your customers typically keep their subscriptions for at least three years. That means you can take a bit of a loss upfront in anticipation of future profits.

Don't get too caught up in analysis.

… such as, "What day of the week is the best day to do mailings?" Obviously, offline marketing can be expensive, so put some time and effort into designing great ad copy, a compelling reason to buy, nice layout, etc… but then you'll just have to try it to assess the results. There is such a thing as "too much analysis" if it prevents you from taking action.

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