Typically, small business owners play copycat marketing. They do what they see others do. As a result, they imitate the image advertising of giant corporations with million dollar marketing budgets, when that is the last thing they should do. Why?

Image advertising - which generally blasts vague messages designed to improve a company’s visibility - wastes money by targeting no one in particular. When your budget is small you cannot afford to spread your marketing budget around in such a wasteful manner.

Instead, small companies should carefully target their best customers and use tactics and media to speak directly to them. That’s the power of direct marketing. Every word goes directly to the audience you have identified - those most likely to connect with your message.

This doesn’t mean you should never use mass media, but it does suggest that you should always craft messages that elicit direct responses. And since most people never buy the first time they see your message, you should wage a direct-response campaign in several steps.

Most savvy marketers engage in tactics designed to identify leads or prospects who have enough interest in a product to want to learn more.

Typical lead generation strategies include:

• Outreach marketing - public speaking, offline seminar marketing or tele-seminar marketing.
• Networking - at clubs or trade associations, online networking, or charity involvement.
• Publicity marketing - writing articles or sending press releases to media online or in the real world.
• Direct marketing - using direct mail or email marketing to a list.
• Referral marketing - through word of mouth or by asking for referrals from existing clients.
• Website marketing - Building traffic to a website while using opt-in forms to build a list of prospects.

All of these are more effective ways for a small business to spend its tight marketing budget. If you must run an ad or commercial in a mass market vehicle, use your time or space to drive prospects to a phone number or website address.

Be sure to use some sort of coding system that will let you track the source of each response. If you use a phone number, you can add a different extension for each advertising message. If you send prospects to a website, you might send them to a special page.

Don’t forget to record all responses so you can determine which direct marketing tactics worked best. After a period of time, you’ll be able to eliminate the losers and devote more of your advertising dollars to tactics that generate the most leads.

Other articles on this topic:

Your Direct Mail Success Depends on the List

by Marcia Ming -

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