As well as deciding on a budget for your marketing campaign, there are certain things to consider and put in place to maximise your return on your promotional activity.

Most people consider the basics but forget about the bells and whistles that can make a marketing message resonate that little bit more. Here’s a summary of things to think about before ordering your collateral:

1) Precision: Keep your message clear and above all brief. Overloading with information can dilute your message and make it less likely to be understood and properly received.

2) Action: Be clear about what you want people to do after reading your marketing collateral. Are they supposed to contact you? Go to your website? Include directions that make the call to action obvious and easy for your intended audience to follow.

3) Relevance: Make sure that you are hitting the right notes for your intended audience. How well do you know them and know what they want? You don’t need to undertake extensive and expensive market research to do this, ask your existing customers what they like about your service, how they found out about you and what you could offer to improve your service.

4) Channels: Once you’ve identified who your audience are, think about how best to communicate with them. Here are some examples:

• Leaflet drops are great for bricklayers and builders when they’ve recently completed a job in the neighbourhood
• Forming alliances with other local businesses in related sectors (for example, beauty salons and hairdressers) and displaying your services at their point of sale
• Referral cards: encouraging existing customers to recommend a friend that enables them both to receive a special discount or offer is a simple way of drumming up more business

Don’t forget that the more channels of communication you use, the further reach your marketing will have and the more people will receive your message.

5) Promotion: include incentives that are time-bound to encourage your audience to act quickly in response to your campaign. Think about including a promotional code so you can track the success of your campaign and learn from it for future marketing activity.

6) Follow up: sometimes people won’t act on your collateral alone; it can take a reminder email or a follow-up call to bring the customer to action. Even if they don’t require your services immediately, the more contact you have with them the more likely they are to remember you in the future when they do need you.