InfoBarrel > Business & Money > Careers > Self Employment

Fax Marketing - Yay or Nay?

0 Comments | Rating: 0 | |

Fax marketingthis sounds like something from another era right? With the advent of the Internet fax machines don't have much use in the typical office anymore. You will often see them relegated in a dusty corner of the room, looking all sad. Fax marketing can be used in two ways: to prospect for new clients and/or to maintain your relationship with existing clients.

So does fax marketing still has a place in your marketing strategy or has it been completely overshadowed by faster, newer, cheaper way of marketing your services like email marketing? What is the best way to do fax marketing? First of all, whatever you do, don't cross the line between marketing and outright spamming, it's sometimes a blurry line it's true but the rule of thumb is if it doesn't feel right, do not do it. Know that there is such a thing as fax marketing laws, which of course you should always respect when starting a fax marketing campaign.

Some of the advantages of fax marketing are:

- Cheaper than traditional mail marketing (cost of local/long distance call Vs. cost of stamp)

- Older industries still value traditional paper and its more personal touch

- Possibility to leverage your efforts through working with fax marketing services.

You should know that the fax equivalent of cold calling is actually going against federal law as stated in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Before you can send a fax to advertise your products or services this law states that you should have a pre-existing business relationship with the person. Note however that it doesn't mean that the person must have bought your products or services before but that you two were in contact in some way (business-wise) prior to sending the fax. There are also State laws concerning fax marketing which may or may not align with the Federal law so check your local State laws in this regard.

Fax marketing is marketing. Knowing your target market is essential to the success of your marketing campaign, whatever the medium used. Knowing your target audience tastes, likes, dislikes and general "universe" will greatly improve the chances of success of your marketing campaign. This is not always possible if you are just "cold calling" (if your State laws allow it). In this case, you will have to go with sheer volume. The more targeted the market the better the conversion rate you will have. The only way to have chances of selling your product/services when sending faxes to faceless prospective clients is to go bulk.

For bulk, fax broadcasting companies are hard to beat. They can often offer list that are sorted by cities, phone area code or other ways to target geographically a campaign. In addition they can accommodate small fax marketing campaigns (few hundreds faxes) as well as large ones. Another advantage of using their services, without taking into consideration the huge amount of time they save you, is that they comply with the local laws, giving you piece of mind.

At the end of the day, the only way to test if fax marketing works for you and your products or services is to launch a campaign. If the campaign fails you lose a few hundreds of dollars but if it succeeds you can make many times that amount and then schedule regular campaigns, thus snowballing your profits. If you have tested fax marketing let me know below and share your experience.