by Joe Wallace

A recent post on (heh) postcard marketing suggests they might be a good way to market your freelance business. Now to be sure, this piece isn’t aimed at the freelance magazine article writer, but the article does apply to anyone writing commercial or SEO projects.

The article suggests using postcards is a good way to reach “the majority of the local community.” Too true–IF you do it the smart way.

There’s a rate quoted for postage–26 cents–but a suggestion that you look for bulk discounts. It would cost in the neighborhood of $30-$50 based on some quick research we did on mailing out 200 postcards. Not awful, but at those rates we’d suggest any writer working on SEO, custom publishing projects, web content for high-paying niche markets or other types of commercial writing to take a much more targeted approach.

How can you do that?

First, a bit of homework. In Chicago you can’t walk four blocks without running into at least one business mall with a web content company. They usually have names like “Proven Content” or “Online Visibility” or even “Corporate Cheese Log.”

I refuse to admit that I just made that last one up.

You can do Google searches on the name of your city plus the phrase “online content” or “marketing and PR” or a combination of the niche topic keywords most applicable to your type of writing.

Find these companies online and get their addresses and mail postcards to them. Don’t waste your money sending postcards through the mail to places you aren’t sure will even be interested. Have the cards printed and definitely get them to those iffy prospects just in case–but hand deliver them when you’re out and about town.

Save yourself the postage, get a little exercise and most importantly, be prepared to meet the people who might wind up being your clients. We like the ideas put forward in the postcard marketing article and the associated links, but we felt the concept needs just a bit of extra thinking time to be as cost-effective as possible.