Last week I held a monthly call with a client who is in the top 5% of business owners in his sector. He has done what all successful business owners do which is to remove himself from day to day operations so that he can work on his business, he has clear goals and develops himself as the owner as well as the business.

All things that most business owners won’t do.

He has invested in his own development with great success, has carried out research  and has become an expert in a niche he is passionate about. It happens to be a niche which is under-served and in which he can identify all the major players.

So we discussed how best to market to this niche to grow a successful new service.

Not surprisingly we started with digital. Everyone is online these days…right? But then we started to think about how he could show up differently and really get the attention of the owners in the businesses he wants to target.

And the answer is direct mail.

Yes, good old fashioned shove something in the post. But not just anything. In his case a well-written, evidence based report on his research findings detailing how these businesses can benefit from his expertise.

Not even a sales brochure. Because the objective of the report won’t be to sell his service. It’ll be to attract their interest sufficiently to get a meeting with them…which a well-designed and written report dropping through their mailbox in a brightly coloured envelope will do.

Unlike most e-mail it’ll be opened and read. It’ll be kept rather than deleted. It’ll be passed to other members of the management team…and it’ll result in a meeting.

Simple but so effective.

As always there are some key learnings:

• Neither of us would have come up with this solution alone;
• Your accountant should be a key business adviser able to advise on not just your numbers;
• Don’t ignore tried and tested marketing pillars;
• Be different!

I love my monthly meetings and calls with my clients. It’s rare that we don’t come up with at least one idea to develop and grow their businesses. I’ve said before…you can’t do it alone.