As I've noted, the marketing challenge we have is that we have a very small "footprint" in a very large media market ... so anything "general" we do is wasting 90% from the get-go ... we're hoping that the direct mail option will work better for us. The list we bought is for households with childred 6-17 years old, which is our prime tutoring market, with income levels to make it plausible that they could afford tutoring, and in our key zip codes. We only need to get a ¼ of 1% (0.0024) response rate to "break even" on this, so we'll see.
That's the frustrating part of this particular model ... we don't need HUGE numbers of clients, only about 50-100 on-going, but the business primarily feeds on word-of-mouth, so we can spend a LOT of money on advertising which really doesn't do much. Heck, last month we got a new client with an 11¢ imprinted pen (that I'd left a bunch of at the post office) when a $500 ad didn't draw squat! While we do get good word-of-mouth, that takes so long to build, and it's largely out of our control. At least with the direct mail we're putting the info exactly the right hands ... and using a post card means that they'll at least see it (if only in passing on its way to the wastebasket).
At least that's over for now. Tomorrow is Daugther #2's 6th birthday, and I need to shift gears to deal with that!