Hey Everyone, Have any of you recently or in the past used direct mail to send out post cards to advertise your business? What list company did you use or did you go through the post office? Thanks Marshall Marshall I tried Direct Mail a couple of times, with almost no results. The one I tried was called Valpak. It's an envelope full of coupons, delivered to all address in the zip codes of your choosing. I did a 10,000 mailer once, and got barely enough customers to pay for it. I tried various other direct mail promos, and coupons with grocery stores, all with the same dismal results. Marshall, the most effective advertising is word of mouth, followed by the Yellow Pages. The other successful ad in in the classified ad in a local weekly newspaper. (Not the big daily) This needs to be a long term commitment on your part, with a short, to the point ad: "Marshall's piano service, 555.1223". Keep that ad in there for a year. People will see it, but it will take some of them 6 or 8 weeks to decide to call you. They see it and say, "that's interesting". They see it the next week and say, "maybe I'll call", but then forget. The third week, "I'll have to ask my daughter if she thinks it needs it". By the fifth week, she'll forget to look, but in the 6th week, after she has asked her daughter, she'll call, but the line will be busy. She'll finally call you after seeing the ad the 8th week. If you had the ad in there for only 4 weeks, you would have lost her. Or, someone will see the ad who just had her piano tuned. She'll remember to look in the paper 6 months form now. When I was in St. Louis, I had my ad in the local weekly paper for 15 years. I probably got an average of 6 calls per month. That's not bad for $20 a week. Good luck Wim -----Original Message----- From: Marshall Gisondi <pianotune05 at hotmail.com> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Tue, Apr 27, 2010 8:12 am Subject: [pianotech] mailings Hey Everyone, Have any of you recently or in the past used direct mail to send out post cards to advertise your business? What list company did you use or did you go through the post office? Thanks Marshall Marshall Gisondi Piano Technician Marshall's Piano Service pianotune05 at hotmail.com 215-510-9400 Graduate of The School of Piano Technology for the Blind www.pianotuningschool.org Vancouver, WA The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail. Get busy. = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100427/c794928f/attachment.htm>
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