Thoughts on Marketing
Direct Marketing
Any marketing aimed directly toward an individual. It has unique concerns and opportunities. By direct marketing, we would include postal mail, direct mail, and many targeted mobile campaigns.
The Value of QR Codes
0290 days
QR codes are a fun new outlet for creative talent. I know, people complain about the fact that the user must have a smartphone with a scanner and know how to use it, and it only works with mobile. Your laptop is unlikely to have a scanner on it.
But if your audience is smart phone friendly, it is a really cool tool to have available. I think that is true because making it effective demands some imagination.
For those who don’t know, QR codes are barcodes that are read both horizontally and vertically, unlike traditional bar codes that read only one way. Because they are read in two directions, they contain a large amount of information, and are used to send those who scan the code to a URL.
I will tell you right now, that if you are sending people to your website’s home page with your QR code, stop reading and stop working in marketing. The value of a QR code is where you send the audience. It has to be somewhere that enhances what the audience was experiencing as they came across the code. So if you make bottled water, place a QR code on the back of the water, so your audience is taken to a place that explains or demonstrates the value of your bottled water over tap water and over your competitors. Give them an instant value.
Here are some other ideas for using QR codes:
1. On your front window. Lets say people love the warm rolls from your bakery in the morning. Offer a QR code in the window that takes them to your twitter feed and let them know that you will tweet each morning the moment those rolls come out of the oven.
2. On the back of your running team Tee shirt. During the race, other racers can scan your shirt as they run. It can take them to a place that shows a fun and inspiring video of the course, the cause the race is run for, your team, etc. It is an audience that has a bit of time on its hands.
3. The hole you sponsor at a golf outing. It can be a preview of the hole, show where the traps are, and how best to approach the green.
4. As a decoration on the cake at your next company anniversary. You have done the logo before, so this is unique. It can link to a special video of your team celebrating.
5. In your corporate video. You can interrupt the video with a QR code that will take the viewer to a related site as you explain your product offerings. Many in your audience may not need additional background info, but those who do can stop the video as their smartphone brings up the new URL. They can continue the video once the side presentation ends. The your multi-media presentation will not soon be forgotten.
Bonus Suggestion:
5. On your headstone. You heard right. Visitors can scan the code that will take them on a slideshow of your life so they remember that it is a person not a grave. Go ahead and write a Go-Daddy URL into your will now.
The point is, it QR codes are not necessarily successful or unsuccessful as a tool. It is a matter of what you can come up with as a way to use them that counts.
Use the Postal Increase to Your Advantage
2685 days
What would it be worth to have the only piece in this mailbox?
Lets do the math on the postal increase planned for next year. Most direct marketers are upset by their delivery costs going up another five percent, and are surely going to try to beat the increase by mailing as much as possible prior to the increase.
Before you adopt that strategy, you might consider the advantages of the increase…Yes it does have advantages.
It is tough to generalize this way, but a pretty popular rule of thumb calculation is that postage represents about half the costs of a mailing. The exact amount really doesn’t matter, but it gives us something useful for an example.
So say your mailing costs 80 cents per piece right now, for simplicity, 40 cents of it is postage. That postage will go up by about five percent in general or to 42 cents, for a new total cost of 82 cents.
In exchange for those two cents per piece, you are guaranteed a premium opportunity to gain the attention of your audience. There is very little else in their mail box, because you competitors hurried to all be in the mail days before the increase.
They tripped over each other for attention, while you have the stage to yourself.
Is it worth it? Don’t just look at the increased cost. How much is the increased exposure worth?
