Target Practice

I'm back in the game. I've got business cards in hand; I'm LinkedIn: I'm Freelanced; I'm on Craig's List, Facebook, and Twitter. It's a whole new world of trying to get clients. I've gone back to the client list of ten years ago, only to find many of my past clients are either out of business or are freelancing themselves, getting the overflow work I used to get. One is back, giving me work almost weekly. But, one agency does not a freelance career make and so I continue to search for ways to drum up business.

In the past, I used direct mail with a lot of success. I had a letter, posing as an ad, that I mailed to prospective clients (PC). It contained a self-addressed, stamped postcard that the PC could check the best time for me to contact them and the nature of the project. When I saw a gray postcard in my mailbox, I knew I had an invitation to call. In my experience, it's better to be invited than crash a party. Nine times out of ten, if I got in the door, I came out with work or a pretty good promise of work, which usually materialized in a few days.

Fast forward to now. Different ballgame. Everybody's online. Is snail mail still a good way to go? All my recent research says save the money it takes to purchase postcards and postage and stick with promoting yourself online. Create a website or "portfolio" site to showcase samples of your work. Then it becomes about promoting the web site, by increasing your presence online with twitter feeds, facebook postings, blogging. This is where tag words become important to increase your chances of moving up the search engine ladder.

But, what do smart advertisers do? When everyone leans left, they lean right. Has all this Internet insistence replaced good, old-fashioned target marketing. Is the Internet just a bigger, broader audience, that's harder to hit and easier to get lost in? Isn't it still better to narrow the scope and aim for something specific, bettering your chances of actually connecting with results?

Maybe the answer is in both scenarios. While launching myself into cyberspace, I can reinforce my search by developing a mailing list for local and regional PC's. Maybe a piece of paper mail will be something unique to those young creative directors.

Ironic how something old might become new again and I'm not just talking about mail here.