It makes sense that the easiest customers to capture are those who live or work near your own business location.
They’re nearby and will realize that your shop is a quick and easy visit. They might even already be passing by each and every day on their way to and from work. If not, they know the neighborhood so it will be easy to find and remember your location. All this is especially important when it comes to special promotions. So many businesses have learned the hard way that people will drive quite a way for a great special deal, but never show up again for regular purchases. A nearby customer is far more likely to come back again and again. If you offer delivery services, there’s one more advantage. Close-by customers mean shorter routes and quicker deliveries.
Limitations of Broadcast Media & Online Marketing
Television, radio, and newspaper advertising certainly have their place. They’re great for reaching large numbers of people and building brand awareness. But they’re expensive; often too expensive for the number of customers they actually bring in the door. Paid online ads are also great, targeting only those people searching for topics relating to your product or services. With Facebook ads you can even focus in on a few demographics. But you really can’t restrict geographically to anything more specific than a city. For small towns with only one or two shopping areas that’s fine, but otherwise you’re likely to be paying to cover an area much wider than you really need to.
Even More Direct Mail Benefits
Besides some pretty amazing demographic and other mailing list filtering, direct mail (DM) campaigns let you focus in tightly on just your neighborhood. With DM you can focus down to a single zip code, range of street addresses, or even a radius from your business. That is to say, all homes within some set distance (even less than a mile) from your place of business.
A more advanced form of “radius mail” starts with the address of existing customers and adds everyone within a given radius of those locations. The idea is that people living nearby will have similar incomes and quite possibly similar interests and buying habits. Some professionals say that this approach can also encourage word-of-mouth and elicit recommendations from trusted neighbors. That’s definitely the case for lawn care and construction companies able to include the address of a recently completed job in the mailing.
The content of a neighborhood mailing can also be better personalized, such as mentioning local parks and schools. These mailings can also be quite small, often as few as 100 pieces, and still bring noticeable results. That makes them a great way to get your feet wet and come up to speed on direct mail marketing.
Summing Up
Targeting only your local neighborhood can make print mailings extra effective and greatly reduce the size and cost of a campaign. It just might be the most cost-effective way to promote your business, bringing in new customers and increasing repeats. Here at Dynamicard we have experts ready to help you turbocharge your direct mail with plastic postcards, advanced response tracking, and superb mailing lists for demographic and radius mail targeting.
