Good marketing is unlikely to damage your existing relationships. If done well, it can support them by reminding your clients of all the good reasons they came to you in the first place, as well as encouraging lapsed clients to come back and buy from you.
The key is to ensure a mix of marketing activity that reaches new clients while supporting your existing clients.
Advertising is a good medium for raising awareness as it reaches a wide audience, but it can also be expensive if you want your campaign to run throughout the year. Rate cards in your area, for example, can vary from £450 to more than £900 for a quarter page insert, without any artwork costs.
As an addition or alternative, local press also have their own websites offering rates from between £150 to £500 a month, depending on type and frequency.
Other web-based marketing could include ‘affiliate’ marketing, where businesses with complimentary products refer customers to each other and also share the costs.
Public relations directly cont- ributes towards business by generating leads and helping the referral process, as well as building your reputation in the community. Providing journalists with relevant case studies can also be extremely effective for lead-generation.
Direct mail or leaflet distribution can also be a successful, low-cost method of reaching a wide range of customers, usually achieving a 1%-2% response rate.
Whichever ever media you decide on, you should always have a response mechanism in place to ensure you can measure the effectiveness of your spend. This will help you with your future marketing planning.
Gina Collman
