| When my daughter complained recently about
the prohibitive cost of news media
advertising, we had a discussion
about the ways in which she could
sell her range of body products
(hand creams, lip balms etc).
I explained to her that huge firms
like K Mart wouldn't spend millions
of dollars annually for advertising
if it wasn't necessary. But every
week, a K Mart catalogue arrives
in our mail box. Every week, like
clockwork, ads appear on television
for K Mart specials ... there
are always specials. All of us
in business, whatever our size,
need to have an effective, efficient
advertising strategy. If you can
afford an all bells and whistles
television advert and run it in
prime time like K Mart, that's
great. Most of us however, can't
afford that type of advertising
and have to find alternatives
that are cheap, but still bring
home the bacon. A few years ago
email looked like being a cure-all
for those of us without huge budgets.
Unfortunately, spammers killed
the golden goose; it is now only
effective for selling to those
who have agreed to receive our
messages. And even then, there's
no guarantee that the messages
we send will not be deleted by
overactive spam filters long before
they reach their intended destination.
Adding to our misery is the anti-spam
legislation in the US, AUS and
various other countries that makes
the task of legitimate marketers
unnecessarily difficult when it
comes to email marketing. Fortunately,
the "Spam Act 2003", at least
in Australia doesn't outlaw sending
commercial fax messages*. So suddenly,
the fax has fallen back into favour
because it has several additional
advantages: It's cheap. Not as
cheap as email and some pay-for-click
advertising, but much cheaper
than advertising in news media.
You can target specific markets
You can send as many pages as
you like (but don't irritate recipients)
It's quick and simple You don't
need a fax machine While it's
true recipients can discard faxes,
most arrive and at least have
a chance of being read You don't
have brochures left over when
a product or price changes There
are many service providers out
there in cyberspace who provide
a comprehensive faxing service.
I pay my provider up front and
can do a broadcast message to
as many fax numbers as I please
by clicking one button ... Send!
When the broadcast has finished
I receive an email message telling
me how many were successful and
unsuccessful and the cost for
the transmissions. It beats hell
out of doing it manually. The
last transmission I sent involved
58 destinations that cost me $10.44
AU or $0.18 per A4 page. Of the
58 sent, all arrived. Here's how
I run my campaigns. First I decide
on a strategy eg, the first part
of my current strategy targets
real estate agents across the
Australian continent to whom I'm
selling a marketing package. I
look up real estate firms using
the Google search engine and almost
without exception, each agency
is listed with phone and fax numbers.
I use a great little program called
Web Data Extractor to extract
the fax numbers from each of the
addresses. It takes a couple of
minutes to collect them and save
them in a data file. When I import
the data file into the list management
section of my fax service provider,
I'm ready to broadcast. Automatically
extracting fax numbers in Australia,
unlike extracting URLs is not
illegal. After the broadcast,
sales and queries flow in up to
a week or so later. So far, sales
have far exceeded the expense
for faxing and I've just completed
faxing to real estate agencies
in one Australian State. There
are still thousands more to go
in the remaining five States and
two Territories. My sales message
consists of a standard A4 page
that I created and saved as an
Adobe PDF file. It is worth noting
that many target markets do not
have their fax numbers displayed
on the Internet. This being the
case, do a little research as
you design your strategy to determine
whether getting fax numbers will
be problematical. If so, find
another target market. Once you've
found one with fax numbers, the
rest is fairly easy, provided
your products or services fit
their range of needs. Another
benefit I receive from the fax
provider I use is a free fax number
whereby people can fax me and
the fax arrives as an email. This
suits me perfectly as I only print
those faxes for which I need a
hardcopy. The rest I file in a
relevant folder on my hard drive.
You should now be thinking about
some opportunities to use broadcast
faxing in your business. If you're
in doubt, spend a few bucks to
give faxing a test run. If it
works as well for you as it does
me, I'm sure you'll take to it
like a duck to water. Here's to
many successful fax campaigns.
* - You need to check out the
spam laws in your own country
before embarking on a fax advertising
campaign Published June 2005.
Copyright Robin Henry 2005. |
