3 Tips to DOMINATE with your print marketing!

Yesterday we were driving along route 9 here in NJ, Route 9 is a long road that stretches from one part of NJ to another.

Along that road are a ton of billboards. I have always found it intriguing that people often get so lost in different marketing mediums but ultimately everything has the same simple concepts whether it be a billboard, a website, a flyer, a post card, or a door hanger.

The concepts don’t change much.

What does change is the “real estate” you are working with. As I am driving we noticed a bunch of billboards, some where very well designed while others were very hard to read and lack luster. One of the things I noticed was that the ones that were designed like they were postcards didn’t nearly have the effect that the other more well thought out stripped down simple approach did.

Of course driving by at 65 mph, who has time to read a 20 word title or call to action, plus a phone number, and a bunch of small almost impossible to read offers. You literally have about 5 seconds to make your case or be forever in the rear view mirror. This got me thinking, what tips can we talk about to really help our clients and you guys dominate with print marketing.

WHY PRINT WORKS.

A little back story on print marketing it is still one of the most highly effective methods of marketing today. Even though we have websites, and Facebook, twitter and Instagram, print marketing gives you something all of those don’t. A tangible object, you can hold, save, pin-up, use later, use as book mark, or whatever. It still is the closest thing to face to face marketing without being face to face.

That being said let’s go right into these 3 simple tips that will change the way you look and create print pieces for your school or fitness center.

Books magazines and paper print, will never go away. For a while people touted print was dead. But it has never been MORE alive than ever before. Matter of fact statistics show that print marketing STILL has the highest conversion rate than ANY other type of marketing out there. Specifically in comparison to marketing like email marketing or Facebook marketing the conversion rate is LIGHT years ahead of both.

We run spam filters, we have rules set and toss emails in the trash without opening them. But almost EVERY single piece of mail or hand out gets at least a tired eye and hand over them before the decision to act or scrap them.

Every single time. Think about that.

Even to toss a piece in the garbage you have to actually touch it! Email you can click trash, without opening it.

In todays day, print marketing drives MOST of the offline traffic online. Print marketing statistics are as such taken from the DMA from July 2012, Comparing rates over time, the report indicates that the response rate for direct mail to an existing customer averages 3.4%, compared to 0.12% for email.

Let’s look at this for a moment.

Some of the amazing things you can do now if you own a martial arts school or gym to bolster your marketing INSTANTLY.

1) Use Trial Offer Cards

A great entry card that is low-cost, and easy to distribute. Trial cards are great, they are small and they are easy to place in a wallet, or pocket. They are also affordable and easy to distribute in bulk. Hand them to students, and parents to give to their friends. Hand them out at community events, give them out just about anywhere. They are quick to digest, quick to understand and direct to the point. You can find some awesome designs here. http://www.dojomuscle.com/collections/trial-cards

2) Recognize Renegade Rack Card Routes

Rack cards have been a massive staple to guerrilla marketing for your gym or your school. One of the things that rack cards do well is being impactful with not too much time placed in reading them over. A rack card is a perfect solution if you want to offer information is bigger than what you can fit on a standard business card.

Rack cards are affordable and the best way to use them is to use plastic see through rack card stands. They don’t take up much counter space, they’re easy to hand out and you can fit a fair amount of information on them.

They are also perfect to promote events and promotions, and they fit easily into a regular standard envelope if you need to mail them out. A great solution to get people interested and acting on your latest promotion. You can find some amazing designs right here. http://www.dojomuscle.com/collections/rack-cards

3) Everyone Loves Excellent EDDMs

Every Door Direct Mail Hottest Mail Product out now. These are probably the kings or queens of print marketing now. In the past you had to build or worse buy (those over used and over sold) direct mailing lists that were supposed to be quantified and qualified (which as time went on and they became more over used, they became more spam lists than anything worthwhile).

Don’t get me wrong building your OWN custom email list is still the MOST beneficial way to market to prospects. But building your own list takes time, costs money, takes man power, and has it’s own set of issues.

Enter EDDM. You can learn more about EDDM here at the USPS site. https://www.usps.com/business/every-door-direct-mail.htm Let me just sum it up for you. EDDM does just this, it drops off a mailer to every single door in an area of your choosing. You can scale it up or scale it down however you see fit. You can sort by zip code and mail route.

You can use various places around a place or multiple locations. It is really great. And from our own experience it seems the US post office has started to really see an increase in their conversion rates so they seemed to have place these mailers on the top of your stacks of mail and not in the notorious coupon (junk pile) section.

One thing that EDDM has over all marketing is that by default, your customer or prospect is FORCED to touch your card, even if it is to throw them out. They MUST touch them to do so. And that betters your chances greatly.

Email is easily discarded without even opening it. But try to get that piece out of your mailbox without hands and you are either David Copperfield, David Blane, or still dreaming. Here are some killer EDDM designs if you need. http://www.dojomuscle.com/collections/eddm-every-door-direct-mail

We live in an over stimulated over connected world where we long for real connection real world ideas and using more than just one sense. Print marketing is your best once again unused weapon to cut through the noise of everyday and get right in front of your prospects.

Remember anytime anything in life is used too much it becomes ineffective. Email and Facebook are still a staple to marketing (after you have built trust) But nothing builds trust like real world physical marketing. The more nooks and iPads are sold it still seems that books are not going anywhere. So use them and see growth in your gym or school.

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