How to get started with Post Card Marketing

1. Create a Budget
2. Know your target market
3. Develop a “Dripping System” for your post card “campaign
4. Determine follow up

Post Cards are:

–      Lowest cost of direct mail
–      Your message isn’t hidden
–      Your internal list is the best list
–      But mail list is unlimited, as oppose to email, since you can rent or buy a list
–      Post cards have little “bounce” as email does get bounce for many reasons
–      Undelivered post cards do get returned to you by the post office
–      Post cards also helps build branding
–      It’s a good way to keep “top of mind awareness”
–      Post cards are used to support cross platform (digital) as en example
–      Like email lists, you can buy targeted demographics or psychographics

How or Where to Use Them

–      Trade shows
–      Farming your geographic or vertical markets
–      You can insert post cards as inserts in publications, such as community newspapers or trade journals

How to Get Your List

–      Develop your own list
–      Purchase a list; it gives you multiple mailings, but purchased lists are more expensive then rental lists
–      Rental lists are very affordable, but they can only be used once
–      B2B: Dunn and Bradstreet (dnb.com, hoovers.com, Hoover, infoUSA are reputable sources for list
–      B2C: InfoUSA.com, melissadata.com

How to Build an In-House List

–      Your web site
–      Guest books, Fish Bowls
–      Collect business cards, grow you LinkedIn network

What’s Important on Message or Offer

–      What are you offering
–      Develop your CTA, Call to Action
–      A repetitive mailing, or Dripping System
–      Test A/B

Other consideration Tmeline

–      Design and Printed
–      Know the print and
–      Avoid delivery on Mondays and Federal Holidays
–      If post office is closed one of the days your post card is in the mail” add an additional day for your delivery
–      Determine that your average response is 1-3%
–      Determine a termination for offer
–      Make sure the mail list is current

Here is a post card we designed to promote a new line of acid stains and used to drive traffic to their distributors.

This post card was designed to promote this client’s product line to a trade associate in Southern California, their marketplace.

This card was designed to announce local training classes. The post cards were used to mail to the distributor’s mailing list, but supplied and cross-branded with manufacturer.

This are just a few samples we have produced for just one of our decorative concrete clients. If you are interested in post card or direct mailing and we like to discuss your marketing needs, please email us at LI-postcard-discusison@toolsforthecapitalist.com and get 10% off on your printing.

The mobile wealth creation/destruction* cycle is in its earliest stages. The proliferation of better devices and the availability of better data coverage are two trends driving growth; having better services and smaller, cheaper devices has led to a huge explosion in mobile technology that far outpaces the growth of any other computing cycle.

A brief note on Creative Destruction. The term was incorporate in Joseph Schumpeter’s analysis of capitalism, where he introduces the term Creative Destruction to market shifts due to innovation. For example:

1. FedEx created the overnight delivery market as Fred Smith, FedEx’s founder, developed a hub and spoke delivery method that allowed for packages to be gathered and distributed overnight.
2. Apple’s Mac computer created an interface for their computers that became the standard for creativity, ease of use and a choice for the Microsoft/Intel “personal computer”.
3. iTunes changed the way people purchased, listen and shared music.

Mobile Web Site technology is another disruptive technology.

Including devices such as the Kindle, the iPhone and other smartphones, web-enabled tablets, GPS systems, video games and wireless home appliances, the growth of the mobile web has been exponential — and we’re still just at the beginning of this cycle. Morgan Stanley’s analysts believe that, based on the current rate of change and adoption, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet use by 2015.

What does this mean for you, the small business entrepreneur?
Mobile Web Site technology will be even more critical for positioning small businesses branding and marketing component particularly catering to the mobile-savvy and affluent consumer.

Here are just a few reasons why now is the time for you to embrace in Mobile Web Sites:

– For the decorative concrete contractor, the most influential decision makers are women
– By the end of December 2011, women represented 65% of all smartphone-based searches
– By 2013, more people will use mobile phones than PCs to get online, according to Gartner. In mid-2011, we also reached the point at which consumers were spending more time on their mobile devices than on their PCs.
– One half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices.
– 60% of your current customers/clients are accessing the Internet with their cell phone EVERYDAY.
– Only 33% of US based businesses have a mobile optimized website.
– In 2010 the average person on the planet looked at their phone 150 times per day.
– 51.3% of US adults aged 25-29 live in “mobile-only” households.
– Yelp reports that 35% of its search volume is now from mobile devices.
– Google found that about 15% of search queries across major categories (1 in 7) are now coming from mobile.

Two big market shifts that just took place: Facebook just announced the acquisition of Instagram and Glancee.

Want to get started? 

Call us at 760-828-2313 or
email us mobile@toolsforthecapitalist.com

Get your Mobile Site for $699 including one year of hosting with monthly Google Analytics report.

Go to our site on your smartphone, fill in the opt-in form and get $100 off your project.
*Destruction Cycle here references the classic economic term coined by Thomas K. McCraw: Joseph Schumpeter’s Prophet of Innovation: Creative Destruction (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), published by Belknap/Harvard.

Chart source: mashable.com

Obviously beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but most people recognize design or high-end from the rest of the crowd. This article touches on several elements of good design I have shared with many clients, some have gotten it others have not. However, if this year is the beginning of esthetics in the overall design-experience online, this is going to be my year!

Here is an excerpt to the article as the source for my comments today:

Unsurprisingly, the tech community didn’t really seem to notice. Instead, we spent a lot of time this year talking about measuring, quantifying and creating influence. We focused on our reach, response metrics and the algorithms we use to quantify it.

But most normal people aren’t deeply motivated by their Klout scores or the statistical impact of their activities on others. In fact, most of the services we saw explode in 2011 aren’t even measured in your Klout score. Instead, they focused on the other side of the social equation — enhancing the quality of our emotional connections with each other.

 

Looks Matter

What do I mean? The successful web companies of 2011 and beyond are just simply better looking. I don’t mean that on a surface level regarding their precious gradients and logos. I mean, quite literally, visual experiences are starting to become the gold standard of web success.

Before humans ever wanted to be influential, we wanted to be beautiful. Not just beautiful in just the attractive sense, but we want people to look at us and feel things; desire, intrigue, interest. For hundreds of years we’ve been carefully curating our appearance, clothes, jewelry, cars and houses for visceral impact (and judging others). 2012 will be the year these emotions come online full scale. They will change the way we interact with each other, the way we buy things and change our online experiences.

 

Do you what to have a smart, hard-working web site that is beautiful, please email me or call 760-828-2313, and get ahead of your competition now! Better yet, fill out a request for information in the form below.

I highly recommend this gentleman and his company.

See the Fortrans web site 

Facebook’s New Business Page link to complete story

Our country is changing. Unless you understand these changes, your advertising can miss the mark. Here are five findings to remember:

1. The U.S. population is an older one.

2. We are an ethnic soup spread throughout the country.

3. The growth of the Latino population is substantial.

4. Multiracial identification is growing.

5. Internal migration from the North and East to the South and West continues.

Read the entire story

Need to know how to grow your business during demographic shifts? Give us a call at 760-828-2313 before tomorrow is your today.

This proves the power of the interest graph, and could convince more startups to build around what people care about instead of the social graph of who they care about.

Unlike most web startups, Pinterest’s core user base is not the typical early adopter set from the west and east coasts of the United States. While the Pacific and North East regions contained the most Pinterest users in May, now its strongholds are in the East South Central and West North Central States, such as Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, and Mississippi . . .”

Read the complete story

Here is what you need to know to  take advantage of this trend for your business:

1. BRANDING:  This allows for brand association. You can include your products or services on your Pinterest account and do brand association. This means that your followers who are looking at known brand on your “boards” can then see your offerings and have a chance to be recognized to consumers looking for your product.

2. CONSUMER TRENDS: Almost 80% of Pinterest members are women. According to the comscore research in this article, these women are ” . . . upper income women . . . ” What this means to my audience, the decorative concrete industry, this is good news.

Here are several reasons why it’s good:
– It’s free to set up
– You can update very simply, no need to hire outside services
– You can create original content for Pinterest
–  You can attract the right consumer to your “boards”

3. SEO-wise, Pinterest is now as big as Google and Facebook in terms of Unique Visitors. Having posts on your web site also in your “boards” gives you a huge, free, “link back”.

If this makes sense, but would like some help with setting your “boards” according to your brand architecture, please call me: 760-828-2313.

If you’d like to learn more, please email me

Happy Pinning

Visit my Pinterest and Like it 

When the FBI made front-page headlines recently with the arrest of a coterie of  financial traders and analysts charged with tens of millions dollars worth of securities fraud, it was only the most recent of dozens of similar cases over the past two years. Yet, such big-time rip-offs, spectacular though they are, represent only a tiny sliver of the nation’s total business-related cheating, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, which estimates that U.S. business lost close to a trillion dollars from employee fraud in one recent year.

Is such a massive amount of cheating indicative of  a work force that is hopelessly corrupt? Research in the new issue of the Academy of Management Journal suggests not. It finds that, confronted with clear choices between right and wrong, people are more than five times more likely to do the right thing when they have some time to think about the matter than they are when they have to make a snap decision.

See the complete story here

In an interview with Justin Fox of Harvard Business Review, Professors Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin define U.S. competitiveness, illustrate why it’s crucial to look at drivers of competitiveness holistically and make a call to action for all Americans, especially those in business, to meet the competitiveness challenge. “While government policy sets the stage, it is companies that ultimately win or lose in the marketplace,” says Professor Porter.

“. . . If our nation’s exceedingly slow economic growth is ever going to pick up, we need these millennials to start acting more like baby boomers. After all, they outnumber them — the 2010 Census found 85 million millennials and only 79 million baby boomers. And in any case, the nation certainly can’t depend on boomers to spend like they used to. As they edge ever closer to the magic age of 65, boomers are telling pollsters they’re scared witless they will run out of their skimpy savings long before their time on this earth is up. At the same time, many are also draining income and savings as they help support their slow-starting millennial kids.

So, what are the prospects for millennials pulling our economy out of the doldrums? Well in 2015, just three years from now, millennials will all be adults and will be approximately 20 to 39 years old — prime child-bearing and home-buying years.

The latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics tells us that in 2010 women in the age range 20 to 39 produced 88% of the four million children born in the US that year. Since the recession started, the total number of births has declined 7.3% from 4.3 million in 2007 to 4.0 million in 2010. If total births return to pre-recession levels over the next three years, it will only be because millions of millennials will feel financially secure enough to start a family.

In the first year of a child’s life, busy parents and free-spending grandparents will probably spend an average of $15,000 to $20,000 on a vast array of stuff, particularly if the baby is either a first child or the first baby girl.

Every 100,000 babies above the 2010 base of 4 million will add $1.5 to $2 billion in annual consumer spending. New mothers are the real job creators in this country. . . ”

Read the complete story here