Why Not Use the Humble Fax in Your Advertising Strategy?

There are many service providers out there in cyberspace who provide a comprehensive faxing service. When I import the data file into the list management section of my fax

When my daughter complained recently relative to the prohibitive cost of news media advertising, we had a discussion nearly the ways in which she could sell her range of body products (hand creams, lip balms etc). I explained to her that huge firms like K Mart wouldn't spend millions of dollars annually for publication if it wasn't necessary. But every week, a K Mart alphabetize arrives in our mail box. Every week, like clockwork, ads emotionalize on television for K Mart specials ... there are all over specials.

All of us in business, whatever our size, need to have an effective, efficient publication strategy. If you can let have an all clappers and whistles television insert and run it in prime time like K Mart, that's great. Most of us however, can't give up that type of publication and have to find alternatives that are cheap, but still go after home the bacon.

A few years ago email looked like living thing a cure-all for those of us without huge budgets. Unfortunately, spammers killed the golden goose; it is now only effective for selling to those who have consenting to receive our messages. And even then, there's no guarantee that the messages we send will not be deleted by overactive spam filters long in advance they reach their intended destination. addition to our misery is the anti-spam legislation in the US, AUS and various other countries that makes the task of legitimate marketers unnecessarily difficult when it comes to email marketing.

Fortunately, the "Spam Act 2003", at least in Australia doesn't outlaw sending mercantile fax messages*. So suddenly, the fax has fallen back into favour for it has several renewed advantages:

1. It's cheap. Not as no-account as email and some pay-for-click advertising, but much cheaper than publication in news media.
2. You can target specific markets
3. You can send as many pages as you like (but don't irritate recipients)
4. It's quick and simple
5. You don't need a fax machine
6. While it's true recipients can discard faxes, most attain to and at least have a what is possible of latest read
7. You don't have brochures left over when a product or price changes

There are many service providers out there in cyberspace who provide a comprehensive faxing service. I pay my provider up front and can do a televised message to as many fax numbers as I please by beating one ensigns ... Send! When the convey has finished I receive an email message telling me how many were successful and unsuccessful and the cost for the transmissions. It beats hell out of doing it manually. The last transmission I sent involved 58 destinations that cost me $10.44 AU or $0.18 per A4 page. Of the 58 sent, all arrived.

Here's how I run my campaigns.

First I decide on a strategy eg, the first part of my current strategy targets real estate agents athwart the Australian continent to whom I'm selling a marketing package. I look up real estate firms using the Google search engine and pretty near without exception, each workbench is listed with phone and fax numbers. I use a great little program titled Web Data Extractor to extract the fax numbers from each of the addresses. It takes a couple of minutes to extract them and save them in a data file. When I import the data file into the list management section of my fax service provider, I'm ready to broadcast.

Automatically extracting fax numbers in Australia, unlike extracting URLs is not illegal.

After the broadcast, sales and queries flow in up to a week or so later. So far, sales have far exceeded the expense for faxing and I've just completed faxing to real estate agencies in one Australian State. There are still thousands more to go in the remaining five States and two Territories.

My sales message consists of a standard A4 page that I created and saved as an walling PDF file.

It is worth noting that many target markets do not have their fax numbers displayed on the Internet. This as long as the case, do a little research as you design your strategy to determine whether getting fax numbers will be problematical. If so, find not that sort target market. Once you've found one with fax numbers, the rest is fairly easy, provided your products or services fit their range of needs.

Another point I receive from the fax provider I use is a free fax number whereby people can fax me and the fax arrives as an email. This suits me perfectly as I only print those faxes for which I need a hardcopy. The rest I file in a relevant folder on my hard drive.

You should now be thinking nearby some opportunities to use short wave faxing in your business. If you're in doubt, spend a few to give faxing a test run. If it works as well for you as it does me, I'm sure you'll take to it like a duck to water.

Here's to many successful fax campaigns.

* - You need to alveolar out the spam laws in your own country historically embarking on a fax proclamation campaign

Published June 2005. Copyright Robin Henry 2005.