The thought of working for yourself from home sounds amazing. However, new entrepreneurs start to find it tough when they need to acquire new customers. Earning an income from home is possible, but it depends largely on your new business strategy and the tactics that you implement to acquire new clients.

There are new tactics through online marketing that can help to grow a business, but there are some offline tactics that stand the test of time. Direct mail has been one of the most effective marketing tactics for centuries. The good thing about this tactic is that it can be done on a relatively low budget.

Here’s what you need to do to make direct mail work for your home business.

Firstly, set up a strategy.

You need to set your customer acquisition goals so you can workout the amount of prospects that you need to reach and the amount of money that you need to invest into this marketing activity – if you’re struggling where to start with this, you may find this https://www.sheerid.com/business/resources/customer_acquisition_and_new_user_strategies/ SheerID resource to be useful to help you define the stages of your strategy and what you are going to do for each stage. For example; if you run a local kids party business, you may decide to generate awareness by sending targeted letters to parents with children under 10 years old in your local area.

You can get data from the local school. So, a school in the local area may have 100 students in one grade. Assuming that you target those children aged between 4 and 10 years old, you will target 7 age brackets. This will see you target up to 700 parents.

You then need to work out the potential conversion rate. As a rule of thumb, the conversion rate tends to be approximately 2%. This means for every 100 parents that you contact, you would get 2 customers. So sending out a direct mail campaign should get you 14 new customers.

The next thing you need to assess is the profitability. In Australia, the price of sending a letter is approximately$1.50. So, the cost of the campaign will set you back $1050. You need to set the pricing of the product or service that you are offering so that you will make a profit from your efforts.

Based on the strategy, you the cost per new client will be $75. It’s likely that you will need to sell a higher priced product that is at least 3 times the value to cover your costs and to make a profit. Therefore, if you can ideally sell your product or service at $225, then you will be able to make $3150. This will leave you with a profit of $2100.

How can you get started?

• Purchase a printer and an ink cartridge solution that will allow you to print high-quality direct mail material. You can click here to browse through a good selection of branded printer cartridges.
• Purchase paper and packaging for your direct mailing needs.
• Create, find or purchase a database of qualified prospects that you can reach out to.

What type of mail can you send?

There are a few options, but you will need to test the different types to see which ones your market responds to. You can opt for written sales letters, brochures, postcards or satchel bags. The cost differs between each type. You will need to assess the cost vs the potential return on your investment.

Before you start sending, check any local rules about sending unsolicited mail.

It’s a very effective strategy, but you don’t want to get in trouble for sending junk mail. You can learn more by visiting the ADMA website.

Don’t let the fear of big budgets hold you back from growing your home business. Use direct mail to your advantage. There are many others that have grown their home businesses to earn hundreds or even millions of dollars every year. Create your own success story by doing direct mail advertising today!