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Be Prepared by Martha Retallick

I just finished e-mailing a couple of women who are helping me with a volunteer recruiting project here in Tucson.

I'm the leader of one of our city's Community Emergency Response Teams, and we need more members.

If you're not familiar with CERT, here's a 30-second explanation:

The Community Emergency Response Teams were started in Los Angeles during the 1980s. CERT trains ordinary citizens to prepare for, and respond to, major disasters.

And why is this training valuable? Because when disaster strikes, fire, rescue and ambulance services may not be available for several hours, or several days.

During such times, people may have to rely on each other for help in order to meet their immediate life-saving and life-sustaining needs.

My CERT will be publicized in one of our local newspapers this week. It was also featured on a postcard that was sent to neighborhood associations late last week.

The news story is the result of my sending three news releases to the paper, and the moral of that story is that if you want publicity for your project, you must persist, persist, persist...

The postcard was sent out by the Tucson City Council Ward 3 Office, which is providing classroom space for the CERT training. The card featured text that I provided, including Becky and Juannie's phone number at Pima Community College.

That's why I just sent them e-mails. Becky and Juannie need to know about the card and the newspaper story so that they'll be ready to take phone calls from people signing up for CERT training.

The point of the above story is this: If you're doing any sort of marketing effort, whether it's getting news coverage or sending a postcard, you must be prepared for what happens next.

That's why I had to give Becky and Juannie a heads-up so that they'll be ready to do their part.

If you're sending postcards promoting your business, and you have people working for you, tell them that you sent the card.

There's nothing worse than having your customers, postcards in hand, coming into your business and being greeted by an employee who says "Huh? What special promotion?"

Fortunately, there's any easy way to solve this problem. Here's an idea from one of my November 2003 postcard marketing workshop participants: Whenever she has a mustn't-be-ignored announcement for her coffee house staff, she puts it in their pay envelopes.

So, in a nutshell, chance favors the prepared postcarder.

If you'd like help with creating an easy-to-use postcard marketing system for your business or community service project, check out my Postcard Marketing Secrets downloadable manual. It's available in The Passionate Postcarder Store.

Martha Retallick, "The Passionate Postcarder," hails from Tucson, Arizona, USA. She is the author of Postcard Marketing Secrets, a downloadable PDF manual will show you how to put postcards to work for your business—profitably. Learn more about it at: http://www.PostcardMarketingSecrets.com