Direct Marketing - Finding your audience.

Business Computing Tips

By Karen Fainges

Direct marketing gets its name from talking directly to the customer.
The are quite a few ways to do this, face-to face, phone, fax, e-
mail, mail, leaflets, the list goes on. The important thing is to
work out whom you are going to be talking to.

The people who buy might not always be the people who make the
decisions. The decision-makers are the ones you really have to talk
to. Anyone that sells cereal will tell you that kids say what is
going to get eaten, mum just buys it.

Think about how you want to come across. If your audience is
conservative, you may want a conservative image as well. A suit,
bonded paper or a well-rounded telephone voice, all these things add
that little touch of class. If your audience is kids, you might want
to go with a more casual approach.

So now how are you going to talk to them? Often this comes down to one
thing, what have you got. If customers regularly come to the store,
talk to them, if you only have phone numbers call, etc. The cheapest
is e-mail, followed by fax. We will talk about collecting these later.

Now, what to say? More of this next K-tips, but basically, find their
problem. What are they trying to make better by buying your product or
service? Then solve this problem. "Hungry? Bored with your current
cereal?
Try Puffy wheat sugars. They make rude sounds when they hit the bowl
and are full of lovely sugar."

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Please feel free to pass this newsletter on to your friends, just
keep my name on it.

Karen Fainges holds a Bachelor of Business, and a Grad. Dip. of
Vocational and Educational Training. A tutor for all ages, she
specialises in helping people get started on the long road to
technology. "It has to be practical,it has to be cheap, and it has to
work."

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