Direct Mail Campaigns for Irish Businesses
Better Business Results can work with you to create and execute a direct mail campaign to acquire new customers and also to reactivate old ones. We have access to huge archives of successful campaigns and can tailor something to suit your business with relative ease.
Some of the results achieved with direct mail are fantastic here are details from a typical small business client:
“ Our first marketing campaign was a mail out to 120 of our non-active clients. The result: 30 of them have booked the appointments, spending in excess of €750”
We specialise in multi contact nurture marketing campaigns where we develop a series of mail pieces (letters or cards) that can be sent out to your prospects in sequence.
The following table shows that it can typically take up to 9 contacts with a prospect before they chose to do business with you.
We know that sending out 9 or more sequential mailing pieces to your prospects can be time consuming and hard to manage.
You no longer have to worry as we can automate this process for you. All you need to do is pass us the contact details of your prospects and we will take care of sending out the mailings to them each month (or at whatever interval you require).
There is no minimum order amount we can set up a campaign to follow up with 1 prospect or thousands – you decide. For more information please call Better Business Results on 1850 943122
Don’t use your company name as the headline of your adverts
Flick through any Irish local newspaper or perhaps the Independent directory and you will see the same basic error time and time again. Business owners who have created there own advertisments and who think it is a good idea to use the name of their company as the headline for their advertisements. So you see adverts which proclaim in large letters ABC Carpentry services. This is a most unsatisfactory waste of space and effort and shows a huge misunderstanding in the way that people react to advertisements.
Lets take a step back. If you are in the newsagents and are browsing the papers and magazines what is it that makes you read a particular article or pick up a certain magazine? It is the headlines for the article either on the front cover or throughout the paper. The reason for this is that when we are reading we subconsciously scan the headlines to decide what to read next and tend to read the articles that interest us.
It is the same when looking at advertisements. A headline like ABC Carpentry services is not going to really attract us to read the advertisement. On the other hand something like ‘Homeowners: How to Get a Solid Wood Floor Laid in One Day For Less Than The Cost Of A Laminate’ is going to raise curiousity and attract all those people looking for wood flooring.
Headlines act as a filter for your advert, they should work like magnets to attract those looking for your products and services and filter out those that are not. Remember not everyone is going to be looking for your particular product or service. The idea of a headline is to appeal and attract those that are.
Having a good headline is the first step in making the advertising for your Irish small business more effective. Future issues of the Better Business Results Blog will look at other ways you can improve your response rates and get the most from your marketing budget.
Small business marketing in Ireland: The importance of following up with enquiries
We worked with Joe the owner of a small irish kitchen design, manufacture and fitting company. He used to run what we call advertise and pray type campaigns.
He would take out adverts in newspapers and run radio adverts telling people about the existence of his business. This advertising would convert a small % of people who would come to his showroom and look at his kitchens. Of these an even smaller % would be ready to buy a kitchen then and there and he would do business with them.
We showed Joe how extremely wasteful this was. What about all the people who came to his showroom, liked his kitchens, but for some reason or another were not ready to buy due to their own specific circumstances? After all, you need to remember your potential customer is busy. Very busy.
We showed Joe how to capture these prospects details, and we then wrote 12 mailing pieces which included testimonials, case studies and facts about what makes his kitchen company different, for Joe to keep in touch. We then scheduled these articles to be sent once every month and took care of the fulfilment of this for him. Now there’s a good chance the first few times Joes prospect receives his information it will go straight to the wastebasket. But after 5, 6, 7, 8 times they will start to notice.
And when they are ready to purchase a kitchen who do you think is going to be their first point of contact? The person they have never heard of in the Golden pages or local newspaper, or Joe who has been keeping in touch with them for months? It goes without saying, doesn’t it? Better Business Results can work with you to create effective marketing and lead generation campaigns for small and medium businesses in Ireland.
Spend your start up funds wisely
I was in a recent discussion with a designer about whether or not start up businesses should hire a fully experianced high priced designer to create their business logo and stationery or would it be better to use a cheaper freelancer or a service like the sitepoint contests.
Whilst I agree that you get what you pay for to a certain extent I also believe that if you are starting a business with a limited budget then spending a large chunk of your start up budget on design and fancy business stationery may not be the best use of funds.
I often encounter small businesses that have spent a tonne of money on getting a fancy website and business stationery designed but have not gained any customers from it. I believe that perhaps getting a lower cost logo created initially and channeling your resources into what really matters – making sales – would be a better use of start up funds.
After all getting enough customers is the key to any new business. When the phone is not ringing and you are wondering how to pay the bills sitting looking at a fancy logo and stationery isn’t going to be much consolation.
How to get things done
One thing that can make you more efficient is to make a to do list for the next day the night before, that way everything that needs to be done is fresh in your mind. You can hit the ground running the next morning. If you leave your to do list until first thing the next morning you can lose valuable time trying to remember what you needed to get done.
Another suggestion is to make yourself unavailable and turn off your mobile and email and skype. In these times of instant communication and making ourselves accessible to everyone and anyone it can be difficult to actually find a block of time to get things done.I recommend turning off phones and email for set periods of time during the day and making your staff know that you are not available. You might also consider hiring an assistant or telephone answering service to take messages from callers. You can then assign a block of time during the day when you call people back.
Try and determine which time of day is your most productive and then plan your do not disturb time around that. Likewise then try and determine when you find it harder to concentrate on written work and use this time to return calls and meet with clients.
Set yourself realistic goals and targets. For example if you are writing a new brochure or book then set yourself a target of a certain amount of words per day. This way it will seem less daunting to try and write say 400 words per day rather than trying to find time to write 2800 words during a week.
One suggestion that works for me is to keep a daily to do list on a 125mm x 200mm spiral bound pad and tick off the daily tasks as you complete them. This will give you a feeling of accomplishment as you cross items off and allow you to see at a glance what needs to be done. This is far more effective than trying to keep a to do list in your head. My final tip is to try and complete unpleasant tasks as early in the day as you can. It is human nature to try and put unpleasant things off and this can affect our performance throughout the day as we subconsciously keep thinking that we have this unpleasant task to deal with. You are far better to get the unpleasant things out of the way as soon as possible and then they are done and out of the way.
Remember successful people and unsuccessful people all have the same amount of hours in a day. What separates the two groups is what you choose to do with your time. We all have a finite resource of time, it is up to you to spend it wisely.
Great service and good marketing in Ireland!
Like many people with the advent of a new year my thoughts turn to what goals can I set to improve for this year. Top of my list was to start to take regular exercise, with two young children and busy business commitments one thing I have let slip over the last two years is my fitness. So this year like many others I vowed to get myself fit.
I did consider joining a gym, but initially I felt that I’d start with something that I could do from home without having to get in the car for. I decided to start with running, we live near the Griffeen Valley Park and there is plenty of space for running so I thought I’d give that a shot.
The next thing to sort out then was a decent pair of trainers (or runners as they call them here in Ireland) like most people I had experienced pretty poor service when it came to dealing with sports shop in the past. So I turned to google for advice (as I find I seem to do for most things these days). I searched for running shoes in Ireland and straight away at the top of the search results in the paid google adwords spot, I saw an advertisement for a running shoe specialist company called Amphibian King. They offer the specialised free fitting service where they film you running on a small track and then analyse the way your foot hits the ground. Based on this information they then recommend exactly the right running shoes for you.
Being a bit of a gadget fiend I liked the idea of someone filming and analysing the way I run so I hopped in the car and drove over to Bray in Co Wicklow where Amphibian King are based.
To cut a long story short Amphibian King and Darren Kelly who served me impressed me with good service and savvy marketing in the following ways:
1) They were using google adwords to attract targetted prospects to their business
2) They use a website to provide further information
3) They give you one on one dedicated service – Darren spent over 45 minutes with me measuring my shoes and trying on and testing at least 3 pairs of potential matches – all based on the requirements of my feet not on how much they could sell me.
4) Darren was able to add value by giving me additional advice on how to start a running program, he even showed me his website with free exercises for warming up and strenghtening my legs
5) When I decided on a pair of shoes and was purchasing I was asked to complete a customer details sheet which captured my contact details (very important for following up with clients) and also where they record details of my feet so they can serve me better next time
6) They gave me a €10 discount voucher to give to a friend – a great example of a referral program getting your exisitng customers to talk about you to their friends and then have a reason to visit you is a great marketing tool.
7) They also gave me a €10 discount voucher to use for myself for when I need a new pair of runners. In about 500 miles time as Darren suggested – so in my case in about 5 years time 
As you can see none of this is rocket science, but how many businesses in Ireland do this – not many that I come accross.
Good on you Amphibian King and Darren Kelly.
Now I just have to get out there and use them!
Low cost approach for getting outside catering customers for a Dublin cafe
I posted the following reply on the askaboutmoney forum to a Dublin cafe owner looking to expand his business by winning customers for outside catering:
There are a number of ways you can generate this type of business. Probably the best place to start is by compiling a list of all the neighbouring businesses that fall into your target market, i.e are likely to be having meetings.
Once you have compiled the list then the next step is to target them the most effective and low cost way will be by calling in and leaving a brochure/menu with the owner/main admin person most likely to be responsible for booking catering for meetings.
You should make some kind of good offer to try and get their business, such as a free sandwich platter so they can try you out. This might sound expensive but you need to consider that giving away a little bit of free food in this manner is likely to be much more cost effective than spending a fortune on advertising.
Be sure to build up a database of prospects and customers and just keep following up with them to remind them you are there. Then over time when they need a outside caterer you will be top of their mind.
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