How to sell by Mail Order

Mail Order is about distance selling. You can send your products absolutely anywhere in the world. So it is all down to lines of communication.

There are two sides to this:

1. Letting people know – advertising

2. Delivering the goods

Before launching off into any form of advertising two main points need to be considered:

1. What do you intend selling? You need to have a good product which you are either manufacturing yourself or have identified a source which can keep supplying.

2. Who do you intend selling to? Get a picture of your target customer. Who is it most likely to be? Young man, middle aged woman, athlete or dog lover? Once you know who it is you can ’talk’ to them specifically.

For your product and your target market there is a best way to communicate. Each type of product and each type of person has newspapers, magazines, radio and television programmes devoted to them. So research the best channel for your new business.

These days there are many ways that can be used by the Mail Order business to let people know about your products.

• Newspaper and magazine adverts. These can be classified, or lineage, advertisements. Just a specified number of words or lines. This is probably the most inexpensive way to get started for some items. Or it could be a display advert which requires layout design and a picture or other graphic.

• Radio and Television commercials. These are prohibitive for the newcomer with a low budget. This method can be used once the business is bringing in sufficient funds.

• The Internet. It makes sense to have a website. This allows you to show as much or as little as you want. Here it is a level playing field with the big guys. The drawback is that the website itself must be advertised in order to get people to visit. Don’t understand about building websites? Don’t worry, newcomers or the experienced will find that Site Build It is just for them. SBI takes you step by step to the site you want. Have a look at some case studies