If effectively used, direct mail local advertising can be a very powerful direct marketing tool to promote your business in your neighborhood. It serves a vast array of direct marketing functions. You can use it to inform the local community about the product, induce call to action, get people to try your product or services, etc.

In order to make your direct mail advertising successful, you need to know the steps involved in creating and running a direct marketing campaign. But before we begin talking about how to create a successful direct mail local advertising campaign, let’s first look at the benefits of using this medium.

Benefit of a direct mail

• It is a low-cost alternative to mass media advertisement, and is very effective in reaching local community.
• It is highly customizable, and can be built to suit the need of any product segment in any neighborhood.
• It can be given a local touch without much fuss.
• If done with care, it can be very powerful in inducing call to action.
• It can be used to build, maintain, and renew relationship with existing as well as potential customers in the local community which your business is serving.

How to build a direct mail local advertising campaign

• In order to build an effective local direct mail advertising campaign you need to follow the following steps.
• Identify the needs, wants, and desire of your customers. Find out what they are looking for, and what problem you are out in the market to solve.
• Define the objective of your campaign.
• Identify the direct as well as indirect target audience, and categorize them into the first, the second, and the third tiers. The target audience most likely to be receptive should be in the first tier and on the second run place the ones who follow the first group and so on.
• Find a way to build cohesion between customers’ demand and your offering.
• Obtain address database of the customers in your neighborhood. You can rent a database from the database marketing companies in your niche, if you don’t have your own. In case, you do not have a database of addresses then I will suggest building one by using one of the following strategies:
• Place a guestbook on the billing counter, and request everyone who makes a purchase to fill-in her address and telephone number, so that you can contact her whenever something of value hits the store. Assure her that she will not be spammed.
• Give something of value for free on your website in exchange of the visitors’ address.
• Seed buzz element in your direct mail, and promise to give some exciting gift in exchange to 5 or 6 referrals from the recipients. Include postage-paid envelop to keep the entry barrier low for the recipients.
• Ask your in-store visitors to give 5 or 6 referrals that may be interested in a communication from you, and in exchange of the names and addresses offer them something of value for free.
• Set your budget.
• Depending upon the budget, decide on the frequency and length of the message to send.
• Decide on the tone of voice to use in the mail, and mood to create through it.
• Craft the mail.
• Do the test run.
• Fix the errors, if any.
• Do one more test run prior to setting the direct mail local advertising mail out on sail.
• Measure the outcome, and review the campaign.

These are the precise steps you need to follow to make your direct mail advertising campaign a success. And do not forget to send a follow-up mail. It is very important.