The Key To Unlocking A Perfect Marketing Puzzle Piece In One Easy Step
With all the different types of marketing puzzle pieces out there, how do you know which ones to use or which ones will work best? Should you use notecards or email, a brochure or a coupon, a gift card or landing page, an info graphic or a personalized letter, an infomercial or billboard?
Think first about your location, location, location
Let’s take a real estate firm for example. Typically, a real estate firm or office services a particular area within a community—and that alone can be a part of a positioning strategy as a local expert, knowing the inventory, and buying and selling activity within a five-square-mile radius. But I digress.
Effective local puzzle pieces can be things like newspapers, magazines, direct mail, and bench ads.
Let’s look at bench advertising
Bench ads can do several positive things:
- Promote a real estate agent servicing a particular area
- Show a friendly face, since real estate in particular is a relationship business
- Convey to a passerby that the agent or firm is serious about its business, because it has paid for the bench advertising after all.
Let’s look at direct mail
Direct mail is clearly a winner in local advertising.
Getting a postcard in the mail that says three homes SOLD in your neighborhood can do three important things:
- It sparks competition to see what someone else got for their home
- It taps into the greed mechanism by making you ponder the money you could make on a sale
- It can tap into someone’s desperation if they are having financial hardship
All of these very subtle things can get someone to pick up the phone and call the agent. Very effective, if you ask me.
If you have a localized business, give these puzzle pieces a try.
But, I’m a national business you say?
Location marketing still works. You still need local patrons in local markets to buy your products or services. H&R block is a “national company”, but they certainly use direct mail to solicit new and you guessed it…local customers.
