Promotional campaigns are PLANNED if you want to get good results from them. Most large companies plan their campaigns for the year to come; they know exactly what they will be doing, as far as promotion is concerned for each season of the year. Then they repeat campaigns with adjustments year after year. Remember that repetition is sometimes the best way to get results year after year.

Let's make a list of the most important things to consider when planning a promotional exercise.

1. Decide exactly what the goal of the campaign is. For example: to increase child portrait sittings by X number, or to increase the family portrait sales by X dollars per sitting; to do X number of commercial projets; or to add X number of people to your email client list…
   
2. Who is your target market and where will you find them? It is important to know who you are writing for, will it be young couples with new babies, grandparents, graduates… etc. Don't try to write for everyone, make your promotional materials very pertinent to the target market. Always start with your client list, it is much easier to market to people who already know and love you.
   
3. How will you reach your potential customers? What will you send, a letter, an email, a postcard? What offer will you make? What time delay will you set so that you get an answer quickly? Take into consideration the period when these sittings will need to be done and then calculate the delivery dates. Time your promos so that the work comes in and is delivered during slower periods in your studio. How many will you send? Will you do a follow up?
   
4. Write your promo materials very carefully, use a theme. Have them reviewed by other business associates (Master Mind Group). Refine and develop these communiqués because once they are done they will become the backbone of your promo pieces. You can use them again at the same period next year if they work out to your liking..

Once you have all of the elements of the promo campaign together. Decide how many you will send out. It is very important to have a way of determining how well your campaign worked so make sure that you have a return coupon, or a promo title which the client will give you when they call.

You should be able to know exactly what your return on investment is for each promo campaign. As you move along and try different campaigns, you will find that repeating them year after year may get you a better and better return each time. Repetition works.

Try to keep your campaigns manageable, there is nothing worse than getting a huge comeback from the 10,000 letters you sent, calls and appointments like crazy and then NOT being able to handle them.

Send out very targeted pieces in small numbers 500, 1,000, keep notes on your rate of responses and of your rate of conversion into customers. For example, if you get a 1% response rate (which is good) from 500 send-outs, you should get a response from 5 people; if your conversion rate is 60 % this means 3 new clients from that particular promo. So if you wish to have 9 new clients then you should send out 1500 promo pieces. This helps you to keep control of the workflow of your studio and to fill in those slow periods with some fun projects.