With all the online chatter of social networking, paid search campaigns, and online PR, many retailers are reporting that their best marketing results come from good old fashion Direct Mail and Public Relations.
While companies are addressing some issues with their social networking and online efforts, they are having a hard time drawing a link between those efforts and new sales. The key to finding out how to improve those results is to follow the Direct Mail model and adjust it to your online efforts.
In other words, what does Direct Mail do right? For starters, are you achieving face-time with a specific target market? If so, is that market taking actions you measure most? Even if they are not interested in your message, with direct mail they have to be exposed to it and therefore you have planted a seed about your offer. In addition, the response from direct mail can be trackable with a specific phone number or zip code that lets you know where your lead is coming from.
When you try to emulate that effort with online media, keep in mind that the user is likely to click instead of call, so you will not see a phone tracking number similar to direct mail. That is not a bad thing, in fact, if you get their attention and give them a reason to click through to something special, you will often have an even more qualified buyer on the hook.
The key here is what action can users take online that will give them the same satisfaction as calling on a direct mail piece. Try a call to action that sends them to a landing page that offers them something special and that is relevant to their inquiry. Make sure the call-to-action can be fulfilled whether or not you are open. And if you are not open, make sure that you have a tracking system in place that allows your sales team to receive a follow-through request on that click the very next business day.
Now you have a plan on improving the actions taken by new media leads that is more comparable to traditional methods. For more information on how to improve your results, contact Tailor-Made Advertising in Torrance for a FREE 30 minute consultation regarding the challenges facing your ad tracking and results.
