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Almost every superhero has a sidekick. It’s not that Batman isn’t capable of amazing feats on his own, it’s just that he can accomplish so much more with Robin at his side. Duo do-gooders, or even partners in crime, can be unstoppable together rather than alone. Would Abbot be as funny without Costello? Would Bonnie be able to get away without Clyde?
Take your pick of combos; it stands true that two are better than one, and the same goes for your marketing!
At my business, PostcardMania, we have the unique advantage of closely tracking successful client campaigns to determine what made them work — and we delivered just shy of 30,000 campaigns last year … 28,091 to be precise. So, I have some insight into what works and what doesn’t.
In this article, I’ve picked out a few marketing duos that I know will help supercharge your results.
Related: Invest in These 5 Technologies to Redefine Your Marketing Efforts
Website + direct mail
Business owners used to see their website as a mere host for valuable information about products, services, locations, contact information and more. But today, savvy business owners understand that a website is a valuable tool — it can attract prospects (with good SEO), build trust and (most importantly) convert visitors into qualified leads and customers.
That said, not every website is as optimized as it could be.
Your website is a powerful lead-generation engine. All it takes is a little backroom tinkering behind the scenes of your website, and you can turn it into a powerful follow-up tool that targets your most interested — yet unconverted — visitors offline. It’s called direct mail retargeting, and it can turn your website into a huge catalyst for closing sales.
With a little bit of code and an integration that connects your website to a direct mail automation platform, you can automatically retarget your website visitors with a postcard at their home. Simply set your budget, and let it run on its own (if you’re a little tech-shy, some companies like mine will even set this up for you).
You can also adjust which visitors you want to target to ensure you’re pursuing the hottest leads. Only mail to visitors who spend more than 30 seconds on your site or only those who add something to their shopping cart and then abandon it — it’s all possible and a lot more.
And I’m not mentioning direct mail because I happen to sell it. The research shows that tangible advertisements make a greater impact on prospects than digital ones alone.
In a study done by the United States Postal Service (USPS) and Temple University’s Center for Neural Decision Making, researchers concluded that direct mail has a more significant emotional impact than digital ads, resulting in stronger recall up to one week later. They also found that participants’ brains were more stimulated and participants felt more excited when interacting with direct mail.
Utilizing direct mail at key points along the buyer’s journey could sway them more significantly than digital interactions alone. Adding a discount code or free offer to your follow-up mailer may just be the extra incentive they need to go from “maybe” to “yes.”
Even if you start slow, with a small budget and very tight targeting parameters, I encourage you to give retargeted direct mail a try. One of my clients, a real estate investor, let it run in the background for the better part of a year. He didn’t have much website traffic, so he only sent out a little over 100 postcards, which cost him $647 — but he closed a deal off of those 100 mailers that made him $70,000.
That’s the magic of combining targeted mailers with your website traffic: It’s low-cost, targeted and hugely impactful.
Related: 3 Ways Technology Helps You Make Money With Direct Mail Marketing
Geofencing + targeted digital ads
While geofencing isn’t the newest technology to enter the marketing spectrum, it is improving exponentially day by day. Geofencing creates virtual geographic boundaries around targeted areas, and when someone crosses into one of those areas, it creates a triggered response — your ads will show up while they’re browsing their favorite sites or checking their email.
For example, a veterinarian could target pet owners who visit local dog parks, pet supermarkets or animal shelters. Or a yoga studio could target people visiting their local health foods store. There are a ton of possibilities.
Recently, geofencing has become more reliable — meaning you won’t spend money accidentally targeting people who really visited the tire shop next door. And once you’ve targeted enough of the right people, their profiles can be used to target larger lookalike audiences with similar demographics.
Then, if these prospects click on your geofence-triggered ad and visit your website, they could automatically receive a mailer, too (that is if you have automated direct mail in place like I mentioned in the first section).
With all of these integrated marketing channels in place, you can create a compelling sales funnel that finds and nurtures new leads into customers on autopilot. That’s the power of automation. All you have to do is set it up once, set your budget and check in periodically to make sure your return on investment (ROI) justifies your costs.
Soon, prospects will feel they’re seeing you everywhere and have your brand planted firmly in their minds. This powerful recall is exactly what you want the next time they need your product or service.
Related: 6 Technologies That Will Reshape Marketing In The Next Decade
AI + content marketing
Website content can be a major trust builder for your businesses and therefore can play a vital part in turning an interested prospect into a buying customer. But many a business owner has cringed at the thought of writing copy for their website … let alone regularly updating it with blog posts or e-newsletter articles.
Creating large amounts of content can be a constant challenge for business owners, and I get it. You’re already busy running a business!
But what I want small business owners to realize is that they have access to many tools — some of them free — that will do 95% of the writing for you.
Some of the most popular content-driven AI tools include ChatGPT, Jasper, Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI.
You can simply type in a subject and a tone of voice, and the AI will produce copy for you in seconds. Even professional copywriters are trying out AI to produce more content in short amounts of time.
I suggest trying out an AI tool to write something that will be beneficial to prospects and customers. What do they always ask or want to know about your industry? Do you have a recent case study you want to share? Maybe you can create a page that explains the buying process so prospects know what to expect.
Focus on creating content that builds trust and removes common barriers you encounter when taking someone from interested to purchasing.
However, keep in mind that AI can only take you so far. You’ll still need to double-check the copy for accuracy and tailor it to your business’s style, purpose and level of expertise.
The more content you produce, the more your SEO rankings will improve, the more your prospects and customers will interact with you online, and the more you’ll see long-term results.
Put all these integrated marketing duos together, and it’s as if you have a host of secret weapons to accomplish your master plans.
