Direct mail is all about the targeting.

While you may never know who opens your emails, visits your website, or clicks on your online ad, you can guarantee that when someone receives your postcard, they read it. It’s a brilliant hand-held billboard that they can’t help but glance at, and with USPS tracking, you know precisely when it arrives.

But, (and it’s a big but) for them to take action on that postcard, you have to be sending the right message to the right person. That’s the role of targeting.

In order to come up with the right message and the right recipient, you’ll need to look no further than your current or potential clients. As much as you think you know about them, you’ll find that there’s always more, and the more you know the more your business can grow.

Kick it all off by asking the right questions.

Existing Clients

If you have clients, start here. Reach out to them to gain some perspective on what’s working and what needs to be changed. If they’re not thrilled with the service, it’s very likely that you’ll have trouble attracting and keeping more of them. If they are, you know exactly what you need to be advertising to the others.

It would be wise to start with your best and longest standing customers, but make sure that they feel comfortable being honest with you. Here are the questions to ask them:

1. In what ways do you use our product (or service)?
2. What problem has it solved for you?
3. What similar products have you tried, and how do we compare?
4. What is the most useful feature of our product for your purposes?
5. What is the least useful?
6. In what ways would you improve our product?

From this, you’ll better understand their use-case which informs your marketing message. You may find answers that surprise you, and can help you reach a market you may not have considered before. For example, a landscaper client of ours learned through this process that many real estate agents in his area needed help manicuring yards for sale, and began advertising to them on this basis.

Once you understand the problems your product solves, you can start shaping your message to suit a market with those needs.

Potential Clients

Now that you understand how your product is used, you can start looking for new clients.  To find them, you’ll want to start reaching out to your test markets and asking:

1. What problems do you currently need to solve?
2. What products or services are you currently using to solve those problems?
3. What issues do you face with your current solution?
4. Who are the decision makers in your family or company?
5. What budget constraints do you face?

While collecting these answers, you will want to group your respondents by demographics, and look for trends that are specific to each group. In doing so, you will be able to understand how different demographic factors impact a clients’ needs. This will help you shape each marketing message effectively and pointedly.

Once you’ve collected all this data, there’s nothing left to do but put it into action. You can use our web-to-print platform to design a new offer based off a tried-and-true template and target your ideal customer!

Here are your targeting options:

• Map My Mail: Draw an area on Google Maps using tax assessor data.
• Demographic Search: Choose from hundreds of data choices and in-depth property information.
• Psychographic Search (Powered by Nielsen PRIZM): Understand your customer at a deeper level by choosing pre-selected personas who match your ideal customer.
• Upload your own list!

Need marketing advice? Our agents have seen it all and would love to share what they know. Just call 1 (877) 222-6010!

Or, if you need someone to handle it all for you, Opportunity Knocks can act as an extension of your team to attract customers. Call them at 1 (866) 319-7109 and start the conversation!