Should you send a physical collateral marketing piece or a free online report?
August 20, 2008 by Glenn
This is a debate that will always be present in marketing, on one side people feel what is most important is just getting the contact information. A free report can do that, yet it really does not have any shelf life at all. Free reports that we download, join the hundreds of others we have clogging up our computers already.
Sending a physical collateral marketing piece like a CD or DVD has it’s benefits. For starters it’s not likely that it will get lost inside a computer, well maybe that’s possible. With CD’s and DVD’s people tend to hang on to them for quite awhile.
With a physical piece it does require more expense in marketing whether it be a CD or a product sample. Yet as I’ve spoken about in the prevous post Marketing Collateral it outperforms other methods of marketing.
With either method, it is imperative that we do effective follow up. This tends to be the downfall of most people, in that they really do not want to talk to prospective customers. The hope is that a good autoresponder system will do all the work for us.
While a good email campaign can and often does help, verbal communications with a prospect (potential customer) goes even further towards closing the sale and quite possible a long term customer.
When you really stop to think about it, where would you rather do business? With someone that knows who you are and treats you well, even though their product maybe higher in cost. Or would you rather just get the cheapest price, put up with lousy customer service?
When I think about this, I’m reminded of one of the famous electronics stores. Great low prices always lots of stock on hand or so it appears. They would always be my first choice when it came to computers, computer parts etc….
This went on until one day, I had to return a computer motherboard and processor. After the first return and the policy they had of exchange only I picked up a replacement. When I ran installed this system it had the exact same problem as the previous unit. After several hours of digging around online, I found that the combination they had advertised where not compatible and their policy of course was no refund, only exchange.
The moral of the story is they’ve lost a customer for life! I would rather order parts from out of state or visit a smaller store, with higher prices, where I know I’ll get great customer service if I have any problems.
In the next post we will look at: How can you implement collateral marketing into your business model?
Related Posts- Marketing Collateral Is it Part of your Home Business model?
Collateral marketing is one of the most misunderstood facets of marketing today, especially when it comes to those involved in home business. This is method... - How can you implement collateral marketing into your business model?
When it comes to implementing collateral marketing into your home business, we need to first look at what our companies provide for us or where... - Sales In A Bad Economy Is It Possible?
This is a question that is going through everyones minds as they are struggling. Some companies are doing well, to holding their own, while many... - Network Marketing
These web site links are listed as a convenience to our visitors. If you use these links, we take no responsibility and give no guarantees,...
Comments
Feel free to leave a comment...