Step 1) Describe your products and/or services in easy-to-understand terms. Include what sets you apart from your main competitors and the benefits/value your customers will receive.

Step 2) Carefully identify your target audience. Be specific with respect to the demographics and product/service preferences of your ideal buyers. Focus your company’s resources and marketing tactics on these groups.

Step 3) Establish both short- and long-term objectives for your business. Make your goals meaningful, specific and measurable. Pursuing concrete goals such as revenue earned and new customers acquired will help keep your marketing efforts fruitful and focused.

Step 4) Laser-focus on your prime competitors. Are they small local businesses or larger regional or national companies? Understanding the competitive landscape will enable you to sharpen your target marketing and maximize the impact of each dollar spent.

Step 5) Formulate a detailed marketing budget. Dedicate a specific monthly or quarterly amount. Compare expenditures to results and adjust accordingly.

Step 6) Execute! The best marketing plans often fall victim to lackluster follow-through.

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SOLUTION
P3P helped this store create two different direct mail postcard offers: one to customers who had bought furniture in the past and one to those who had purchased garden accessory items. The mailers were each personalized specifically to the customer, noting their last purchased items and offering a discount on a similar item with an additional discount on other items in the store. The mailing was targeted to only those customers who had not purchased anything in the last three years.

The postcard also included a personalized URL which led the recipients to a website landing page with a few questions that were designed to help the store learn more about their clients’ interests so they could recommend certain products or even consider adding to their store inventory if it seemed they didn’t have what customers wanted. Shortly after visiting the website and answering the questions, the dormant customers received a thank-you e-mail from the store manager referencing their area of interest received from the survey. The e-mail also invited them to visit the store within a certain time period to receive additional discounts.

RESULTS
Store traffic was much higher during the specified time periods, and the store saw a five percent increase in sales for the month of September. Additionally, they realized that some of the customers had moved, so they deleted these names from their database to optimize budgets. Reports generated by the system used to manage this integrated
direct marketing campaign helped the company learn that many of the dormant clients were generally happy with the company’s products, but they just needed reminders of all the other items the store carried. Now the store does more frequent direct mail marketing to ensure that their customers keep coming back for more.

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Recyclable materials include many kinds of glass, paper, metal, plastic, textiles, and electronics. Aluminum (e.g., cell phones and computers). Although similar in effect, the composting or other reuse of biodegradable waste – such as food or garden waste – is not typically considered recycling. Materials to be recycled are either brought to a collection center or picked up from the curbside, then sorted, cleaned, and reprocessed into new materials bound for manufacturing.

In a strict sense, recycling of a material would produce a fresh supply of the same material, for example used office paper to more office paper, or used foamed polystyrene to more polystyrene. However, this is often difficult or too expensive (compared with producing the same product from raw materials or other sources), so “recycling” of many products or materials involves their reuse in producing different materials (e.g., cardboard) instead. Another form of recycling is the salvage of certain materials from complex products, either due to their intrinsic value (e.g., lead from car batteries, or gold from computer components), or due to their hazardous nature (e.g., removal and reuse of mercury from various items).

The Green Trash Can is a small group of Oceanographers, Biologists and Environmental Researchers, all with a driving focus of promoting global recycling, sustainable living and developing a GREENER planet. To learn how you can help the environment, or to join their team, visit http://www.greentrashcan.com/

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