There are two approaches to getting new business:
Fishing: you throw your net out and hope to get any prospects that happen to be passing.
Hunting: you go for one prospect at a time.
Fishing uses high volume/lower cost materials. Hunting uses low volume/higher cost materials.
Newspaper/Yell/Internet advertising are examples of fishing. Direct mail is more like hunting. Having a list of carefully screened qualified prospects is real hunting.
AJ reckons that fishing is better than hunting. That's a very bold statement. It really depends on where you are and what kind of game you're after.
Hunting can lead to immediate results: you hunt down a qualified prospect and bag him on Monday and you're doing the job Tuesday morning. Fishing ALWAYS has a lag time. Like jampot said, it's hit and miss. More miss than hit.
I don't think that it's possible to say that this method is always better than that method. The truth is that both methods work to some extent. Advertising is a very inexact science.
In order to be most effective you need to ask yourself two questions:
* Who is is my ideal target customer? (Eg - shop, office ,manufacturing, school, etc)
* How can I best influence him/her that I am the natural choice to supply his/her needs.
Then, when you know (i) what kind of customers that you want and (ii) the kind of advertising you are going to do, you go for it.
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Jampot, is that fishing for customers or fishing for your supper ;-)?
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