My Best Promotion

Self-promotion is an important skill for any distributorship to master. Besides the obvious benefit of increasing your business through marketing, it shows your clients that you're able to practice what you preach and make an impact with the products you're selling.

Seth Weiner, MAS, president of Sonic Promos, Gaithersburg, Md., shared an example of an effective self promotion the company has run and won awards for. A simple, yet carefully executed direct mail piece, the promotion has not only earned Sonic a large amount of business, but has also been repeated by clients successfully to promote their own businesses.

The Promotion
A direct mail self-promo campaign, handled by Weiner and his staff. The company used two tumblers, a ceramic coffee tumbler that resembles a paper cup and a clear plastic tumbler with straw. Weiner explained the message centered on "hot and cold promotions.

Notably, the tumblers were packed into an oversized box and paired with a personal note, two steps generally accepted as effective at increasing a direct mail piece's success rate.

The Goal
"Our self promotion goals are always the same," said Weiner. "Get in front of our clients or prospects, make a statement and generate a response," he said. "Any response―even one that says 'Take me off of your list.' At least then we know who we don't have to waste money on."

Thoughts on the Process
Weiner and his staff carefully worked at preparing and fine-tuning the promotion to ensure a high rate of 
success. "Before we did anything, we worked hard on concepts and copy to ensure that we got the best response from the recipients," said Weiner. "Being our own worst customer, we painstakingly go over every detail which tends to make the project drag on and on," he said. "In the end though, we always seem to get a huge response from people, the most flattering of which is when the buy the same item that we used and ask us to customize it for their business."