Brought to you by Concept Marketing Group, Inc.

Unsubscribe instructions, past issues, and additional information can be found at the bottom of this email or by visiting http://www.marketingsource.com/newsletter/

In this issue:
• Marketing Article: Postcard Marketing Checklist: 5 Things to Consider Before You Mail
• Marketing Article: Boost Trade Show Traffic Outside Exhibit Hall

Associations and non-profit groups are a powerful resource for building and expanding networking and business opportunities, finding jobs, evaluating goods and services, and industry publications.

Our database puts you in direct contact with these organizations.

Your postcard-marketing program can benefit from a good checklist. Checklists keep us focused on the task at hand and help us remember all of the finer points. Doctors use them. Mechanics use them. And yes, postcard marketers use them -- at least those who take postcard marketing seriously.

The checklist that follows is not all-inclusive, but is meant to provide a solid enough list to get your postcard marketing campaign underway.

The List

Your mailing list (a.k.a. database) should be the result of asking tough questions and doing some hard research. To build a good mailing list, you need to find out who wants and needs the products / services you sell.

If you're mailing to your customer base, your list requirements are simple -- just mail to your best customers. But if you're mailing to "strangers" in the hopes of making them customers, you'll have more homework to do.

Questions to ask:

* Have you obtained your list from a reputable list vendor?

* If using your in-house list, have you checked it for accuracy, duplication, etc?

* Does your list match your message? Is your message relevant to your list?

The Headline

Direct mail postcards have a major advantage over their enveloped counterparts -- immediate impact, right out of the mailbox. This is where your headline comes into play. The reader will give your postcard a "golden glimpse" during which you have a chance to pull them in. Whether you do so or not will depend largely on your headline.

Questions to ask:

* Does you headline identify your target audience?

* Does your headline promise a benefit?

* Is your headline clear and to the point?

* Did you test your headline to make sure people understand at first glance?

The Offer

In postcard marketing, it's the offer that generates the response. It answers the reader's fundamental questions: "What's in it for me? Why should I bother? How is this worth my time?"

The offer is usually related to the product or service being sold, but it doesn't actually have to be that product or service. A company selling software might offer a discount on the software, a free trial, a free 28-page software buyer's guide, or a number of other things related to what they are selling.

When using direct mail by itself (not in conjunction with TV or radio), it's best to keep your offer related to your product. You're not after "freebie hunters" with no real interest in what you're selling. You're after qualified prospects -- the kind of people who might actually buy your product or service.

Questions to ask:

* Is the offer related to your product or service?

* Does it have enough of a perceived value to generate a response?

* Have you described the value of your offer (dollar amount, time savings, etc.)?

* Is the offer specific and relevant to the reader?

The Call-to-Action

Think of the call-to-action as a road sign. It points readers to the offer and tells them how to capitalize on it. It is part of the offer, but it also needs to be considered on its own.

If the offer is a 30-day free trial, the call-to-action might be the bold sentence that says: "Sign up for your free trial at www.fakeswebsite.com/trial."

Questions to ask:

* Is your call-to-action simple and easy to understand?

* Does it stand out from the copy around it?

* Does it make responding easy?

* Does it offer multiple ways to respond (web address, 800#, etc.)?

The Tracking

One of the great things about postcard marketing is that it's fairly simple to track. Compare the number of postcards you sent out to the number of responses you get back, and you've measured your response rate. You can then compare the results of two mailings to see which postcard performs better.

For instance, you might send the same postcard to the same audience but with different offers. The offer that pulls the biggest response wins. The other one goes away.

Question to ask:

* First off, do you have a tracking program?

* Have you considered the technical details of tracking responses?

* Do you know what elements you want to test (headline, offer, etc.)?

* How will you modify your postcard if it doesn’t get the response you want?

Conclusion

As your postcard marketing program evolves, so too will your checklist. Before long, you'll have a list of things that have worked well for you (as well as those that haven't). And that's a valuable checklist to have!

* You may republish this article in its entirety as long as you include the byline and author's note. If publishing online, please leave the hyperlinks active.

--------------------
Brandon Cornett is the editor of PostcardSmart.com, the Internet's largest library of postcard marketing advice. For more expert articles on postcard marketing, visit http://www.PostcardSmart.com

New Do-It-Yourself Press Release Kit

We show you how to write effective press releases to get journalists to "take notice". We don't stop there! Our book gives you the tools to locate the niche media for your distribution. The end result: reaching your targeted audience.

Included in the book are:
• What Makes a Press Release Newsworthy
• The Key Components of a Press Release
• Guidelines for the Various Types of Media
• Writing for Radio and Television Media
• Press Release Templates for Specific Industries
• Sample Press Releases
• Top Newspapers Nationwide - With Contact Information
• Media Newspaper Associations - With Contact Information
• Tips and Tricks of the Trade

Now available! - Only $29.95 for the E-Book, $49.95 in print! Order online or call 800-575-5369 for more information.

To be competitive today, trade show exhibitors not only need to grab attention to their trade show displays inside the exhibit hall but also beyond the exhibit floor.

More and more, creative trade show exhibitors attract crowds to their trade show booth by using nearby venues as a springboard. Attracting attention at neighboring hotels where the trade show visitors are staying or public places where attendees frequent, is a good start. This goes for neighboring restaurants, bus routes, cabs and local night clubs as well.

Increasingly, instead of letting a custom or trade show display rental at the expo stand on its own, savvy marketers are adding value by identifying key places outside the trade show to tee up traffic to the trade show display arena.

Event Marketer Magazine spotted three brands that successfully made the tie-in connection to their trade show booth from sites outside the exposition hall.

The first was in Chicago. GE Healthcare launched their campaign, Healthcare Reimagined at the Radiological Society of North America trade show in Chicago in 2005. They were on the lookout for popular locations outside the trade show hall to enhance awareness of their trade show display presence. According to Sean Burke of GE Healthcare’s Diagnostic Imaging and Services, “We were looking for something different that would create word of mouth and buzz.”

The trade show had over 60,000 attendees staying in Chicago. GE came up with the concept of all-white-clad “molecule people” that roamed Chicago sites before and after show hours, in nearby hotels and on the RSNA bus routes, as well as at neighboring restaurants and night clubs.

Wearing branding for GE Healthcare, the all white molecule actors batted around giant inflatable molecule structures and used bubble machines to complete the look and feel of what they wanted to portray. They were able to visually and kinetically capture the health care aspect of GE Diagnostic Imaging. This played directly to the imagery created at their trade show exhibit.

The second was at a consumer oriented show in Washington DC. A month before the Auto Show, Chevrolet started its awareness campaign at sites around the capital city. They set up mini tailgating parties out of the backs of Chevy Silverado Hybrids at construction sites, George Washington University, Home Depot stores and commuter rail stations. Consumers got to drink coffee and play Xbox 360 games. Chevy representatives gave out cards to visitors they could redeem at the trade show for a chance to win a Silverado Hybrid.

Chevy wanted to drive traffic to the trade show display. It worked. The results were measurable and dramatic. Because the scan cards were handed out at dealers and at the tailgate parties, over 20,000 consumers visited the trade show booth or were able to scan their cards with Chevy reps in the convention main lobby. The scan cards brought in 1,900 dealer leads.

The third one was in Las Vegas. That city is a natural for all types of trade show display marketers every hour of the day. At the Specialty Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas in 2005, Yahoo! wanted to draw attention to a custom auto web site among car enthusiasts. So they decided to customize two Mitsubishis inside their trade show display booth.

To complete their exposure they went outside to showcase their cars on the Las Vegas Strip. Yahoo! hit it big. Knowing that Las Vegas is always wide awake 24/7, they were able to shut down traffic on the Las Vegas Strip at 3 a.m. Even at that time, throngs of people watched their two custom Mitsubishis race down the strip. “We didn’t want to just do a booth and pass things out,” says Bennett Porter Yahoo!’s senior director-buzz marketing. Emulating Frank Sinatra, he continues, “We wanted to do it our way.”

The above are just a few of the examples of how you can use outlying venues to tie into your trade show display.

So let’s say your firm is in the electronics field and you want exposure for your upcoming trade show appearance in the San Francisco Bay Area. With the high tech industry so heavily concentrated in Silicon Valley, California, many of the high tech leaders live there.

There’s Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Apple Computer Inc. based in Cupertino, eBay based in San Jose, and Google headquartered in Mountain View, to name a few. You can focus on Silicon Valley executives and market to them within close access to Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland, and the Santa Clara and San Jose Conference Centers.

The hotels, restaurants, athletic clubs and other popular sites make them targets for high tech trade show tie in messages once the high tech trade show comes to town.

It’s smart to think outside the trade show exhibit hall box to compound your trade show exhibit investment.

----------------
Dick Wheeler is President of Professional Exhibits & Graphics, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California with a showroom in Sacramento. The firm is a full-service premiere trade show exhibit, graphics and management services company. http://www.proexhibits.com