In marketing, oblique advertising is perhaps the most wasteful of all. Marketing guru Jay Abraham says, "Institutional advertising, the practice of running ads that are designed simply to keep your name in front of the public, is folly." He says these ads are ineffective, non-trackable, and a waste of your money. He suggests the best ad is one that stimulates immediate action with a result that can be objectively tracked. Make a specific offer. Provide a coupon that can be brought in. If all you want to do is get your name in front of people, a far cheaper and more effective approach is to go after free publicity. Sponsor a team. Put on an event. Get free press.

In direct mail, the least effective mail is addressed to "occupant." From that lowest point on, effectiveness increases from "Unknown sender to known recipient" to "Known sender to known recipient." Or, someone may know you or your company by name. Better still, they may have been to your shop and met you in person. Then a letter signed by you, sent to them, will have a fair chance of being read.

Phone calls are generally more direct and more effective than mail -- unless they're from a telemarketer. At that point we're back to "a message from an unknown sender to an unknown recipient" -- like the telemarketer, the lowest form possible.

Next up will be a call from a caller who is not known personally but is calling from a known business. Your estimator calls a prior customer, but identifies him or herself as a representative of your shop. Your customer is likely to take the call and listen to your estimator. If it's a customer the estimator knows personally, the call will be doubly effective. If you're the one calling and your customer knows (and hopefully likes) you, you have reached the top of the phone call effectiveness scale.

One of the best P.R. guys I've ever known had his own golden rule of marketing: NEVER LUNCH ALONE. I've watched one shop owner who followed this rule whenever possible, even to the point of inviting appraisers and adjusters to lunch. He would even go to lunch with sales people who would stop by-- paint company reps., software salesmen and more. But his most effective lunch dates were insurance agents, claims managers, and DRP coordinators.

Many of these luncheon engagements required much detective work and many phone calls to arrange, but they paid off handsomely in the end. Often just finding out whom to take to lunch is a major task, but it is by far the most direct approach to getting referral business. After a live contact, personal phone calls and even letters will be more effective.

Mailing holiday greeting cards and occasional postcards keep your shop name in front of your customer, but if there is no call to action the message will have little or no effect. A letter with the following message would be more likely to bring in an occasional job:

We haven't seen you in quite a while. We hope that means you haven't had an accident or needed repairs on your car. We wouldn't want you to have an accident just to come in and see us, but we know that many cars get minor dents and dings from inconsiderate drivers in parking places. You might be surprised at the low cost of fixing those dents and dings at our shop.

Also today's acid rain can harm the fine paint finish on our cars. Ordinary car washes may fail to remove oxidation and contaminants from a car, but by using our professional buff and polish equipment we can do the job. Keeping you car in good condition will maintain the resale value of it and will give you greater pleasure from seeing it look like new.

So it may be beneficial for you to stop by for a brief estimate, and to meet some of our new personnel. Give us a call and we'll arrange an estimate at a time that is convenient for you.

Ten such letters a day, five days a week, will add up to fifty prior customer contacts per week at a cost of less than $20 for postage. Kept up for a full year, 2500 prior customers would be contacted. A simple five percent return would bring in 125 customers a year, about 10 a month. A ten percent return would bring in 250 customers a year, more than 20 a month -- not a bad return for less than $100 in postage each month.

But best of all is the directness of the communication with a request for immediate action and an easy way to track the effectiveness of the promotional effort.