For a regrettable number of business owners, the answer to this question is to throw their hands up in the air and to assume that it just won’t work for them. Perhaps they’ve tried creating a website, tried sending out emails, or tried postcard marketing, didn’t get enough replies, and now feel turned off to the entire process.
That’s a shame, because you know how an expert small business marketer would take that news?
They’d be elated! Yeah, as in “ecstatically happy,” because they know that feedback is the only way they’re going to eventually make it work. Or as Thomas Edison once said,
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”
Every marketing campaign that doesn’t work is just another lesson in what not to do, and after enough of these (you’ll have plenty over the course of running your business), you’ll narrow in on what does.
You can isolate and test different factors of your campaign, for example perhaps you chose one phrase over another. Next time, you can A/B test them. Perhaps you chose the bright red image rather than the bright blue one. Next time, switch them up.
Test everything, but just don’t test too many factors at once – do it one at a time so that you know precisely what the winning change was.
3 ways that you can test your campaigns
Now, just because you’re about to experiment doesn’t mean that you have to make someone else’s mistakes too. Here’s what we’ve learned over the past few million postcard sends that you can test, using our DOD method.
1. Data – try targeting different people
If you don’t yet have an extremely clear sense of who your target audience is, perhaps you’re going after the wrong one. Companies make this mistake all the time, and they confuse their end-users with their actual purchasers. A full 59% of women, for example, feel compelled to buy clothes for their partners, and any ads targeted at those men who have (as the article alleges) “given up” on their appearance would be completely wasted. Similarly, any car ads targeted at first-time drivers would be completely missing who actually pays the price.
Try switching up your targeting. If you were very specific, try being more broad. If you were broad, go specific. Mix it up and test just the audience.
2. Offer – try offering something different
Perhaps you know your target audience well, and that they come into your store and buy from you all the time. In this case, it’s probably the offer that’s falling flat and needs to be pumped back up. Is what you’re offering phrased well? Were you concise or are the words too flowery or rambling? Or did you forget to include the almighty call-to-action?
Mix up the offer and see if something else sticks.
3. Design – try changing the design
If you’re certain that you’re targeting and your offer were on-point but you still didn’t get your results, it might be the design. Visual cues are everything and studies show that your brain processes images about 60,000 times faster than text. If your images are bad, it could be that they’re turning people off to your postcard before they even know why.
Follow our guide to supercharging your images and try a few of these effects!
Put it to the test!
What do you suspect is your marketing issue? Change that one thing and keep sending, each time tweaking one factor on your original postcard. Include unique offer codes on each so that you can track the results and when one of them hits, double down and send more of those!
Expert small business marketers know that marketing that doesn’t work is their training ground to develop marketing that does!
When you’re ready, call us at 1 (877) 222-6010 and we’ll send that postcard!
Could you use an expert hand?
Opportunity Knocks are marketing experts and they can diagnose why things aren’t working and get you back on track in one phone call: 1 (866) 319-7109