By Joy Gendusa
June 8, 2012

If you are running a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign and not using direct mail postcards, you are missing out on a ton of leads and sales. And if you use direct mail to promote your business, but not Pay Per Click (PPC), I guarantee potential sales are slipping through the cracks.
 
That may not be great to hear, but here are three reasons why you just can’t get the most out of your hotel’s marketing budget unless you use direct mail and PPC together.
 

1. Postcards are proactive. PPC is reactive.

Pay Per Click can achieve great results for many hotel managers, but it will never be anything more than a reactive marketing strategy. PPC is reactive because it relies on a prospect to search for rooms in your area in the first place. PPC ads don’t appear to those who may actually want a vacation or need to book accommodations but are not actively planning their stay yet. PPC is great because it generally brings in qualified prospects who are ready to book their rooms, but it also means that you are missing out on a large block of potential sales.
 
Postcards are proactive, which means you can reach prospects directly at their home or office and present a message and offer that shows them exactly why they should stay at your hospitality business. Not only that, but a postcard is dominated by your message and ONLY your message. On the typical Google search page, there could be 10 to 15 other ads the prospect has to consider.
 

2. Postcards raise awareness. PPC directs that awareness.

PPC is great for directing prospects to your website when they are already looking for accommodations or meeting locations. But you can’t announce a new service, location or special offer with PPC because these types of ads are designed to work based on common keywords, so you need to tailor the ad to those keywords. On the other hand, targeted postcard campaigns can be customized with a variety of messages and designs that will raise the general public’s awareness of your business and services.
 
PPC helps direct the prospect to what they are looking for, but it can’t tell them what to look for in the first place. In order to control your message and announce special discounts and other news, you need to raise awareness, not just direct it.
 

3. Both direct mail and PPC get customers you otherwise would have missed.

By using direct mail and PPC together, you mend many of the holes in your marketing net. For example, you could mail a postcard to a targeted mailing list of prospects that fit your demographic, but of course that couldn’t guarantee that you reach every possible interested prospect. What about the people who may not be on that mailing list but could still use your services? Most likely, they will be searching for you online. You want them to find you, and a postcard won’t help them do that but PPC will.
 
But as I talked about earlier, PPC only targets those people who are actively searching. There are many, many people right now that know they need to book their hotel rooms for that business trip or their next vacation, but they just haven’t made the time to do it yet. They are not searching. But, if a postcard shows up in their mailbox offering them a discount if they book right away, they’ll flip the card over and call the number.
 
BOOM. You just got a booking  - one that you couldn’t have gotten with PPC.
 
For all the reasons above, you need to have direct mail and PPC working in tandem with each other. With both PPC and direct mail, you will maximize the effectiveness of your marketing and increase your bookings and revenue.
 
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About Joy Gendusa:
Joy Gendusa is the owner and CEO of direct mail marketing firm, PostcardMania. Joy began PostcardMania in 1998, with nothing but a phone and a computer, never taking a dime of investment capital. Joy originally started PostcardMania as a full-service postcard marketing company helping clients create turn-key marketing campaigns with graphic design, printing, mailing list acquisition and mailing services. Since then, PostcardMania has expanded to offer its clients more services including website and landing page design and development, email marketing and full marketing evaluations — all while continuing to educate clients with free marketing advice.
 
In 2010, PostcardMania reached more than $19 million in annual revenue and the company now employs more than 190 people, prints 4 million and mails 2 million postcards each week, and has more than 50,000 customers in over 350 industries. Please visit www.postcardmania.com for more information.