Direct mail campaigns are the shotgun of marketing. Basically, you send as many pieces of mail to your target market as possible and hope that interest will generate. There's only two ways you can tell if your campaign has worked though. You can go down the list of recipients and call, or you can wait for them to respond. If you call your list, you are wasting valuable time and negating the advantages of direct mail. However, research shows that, left on their own, only as much as 5 percent of recipients will contact you.

There are ways to increase the percentage of direct mail responders. You can use a list that is as narrowed and targeted as possible. You should make sure to use variety in the pieces you send to your recipients. An often overlooked key to getting responses is how you present your contact information. Hard to read phone numbers, or complex email or web addresses almost guarantee that no one will try to get in touch with you. Make your contact information highly visible, memorable, and simple.

A great tip to boost the response to direct mail campaigns is to provide benefits and incentives to do so. Discount pricing for responders should work very well these days. Complementary gifts could be an enticement as well, with the added bonus of your logo on each and every gift.

Conference calls are a great, mutually beneficial, addition to your direct mail campaigns. Include the date, time, number, and access code to a conference call you are hosting as an enticement. You don't see conference call invitations every day, and the uniqueness will be eye-catching. An additional bonus is that when you start your conference call, you get instant feedback on how many people responded to your campaign. All you have to do is count the participants.

Advertising can be expensive. This in itself is an understatement if you have ever priced TV spots, or slick magazine ads. Even email blasting can come with a cost if you don't do everything yourself. In this environment of saving money, you may have an opportunity to advertise your business that won't cost much, if any at all.

If you started your business, chances are that no one knows the industry better, and others can benefit from your expertise. Why not offer to speak at local functions and at organizational meetings? No, they won't pay you, but think of it as an investment of your time. They get to learn something from an expert and you get to spread the word about your business and what you do.

An additional advantage to this idea comes from Speak Shmeak. Use these little speaking engagements to work on your public speaking skills. Especially if you have difficulty getting in front of a room full of people and speaking, getting comfortable in "no-risk" situations will help you be more comfortable when the chips are down.

Another good idea is to incorporate conference calls into your charity talks. If an organization cancels or cannot get all of its members together on the day you are supposed to speak, offer to set up a conference call for them. You get to practice your speaking skills, they get to meet, and your ingenuity will not go unnoticed. Even at normal, face-to-face engagements, you could announce a conference call at the end of your speech. The content would be about your business or products, and even if people don't attend, they'll most likely pass the information on.

To quote Seth Godin, "It only takes 10% effort to hire someone in the bottom 90% of the class." You've got a spot to fill, so you put out a classified advertising market wages. You get a bunch of resumes, do interviews and background checks, and you're done. Not very many, but other organizations put in so much more effort into their hiring process. They go out of their way to get the most qualified. They offer higher wages, and might spend even more to keep the employee and keep them happy.

Why do they go through all of that extra effort? If you only put 10% effort to hire someone and pay as little as you can get away with, the extra effort - and money - is not saved. The rest of that 90% will be spent dealing with problems both professional and personal. The money will be spent on fixing mistakes, or even hiring an extra person to help the first complete their work.

Seth's solution is to market a job opportunity like you would your products. Spending the extra money on marketing makes sense for your business. It also makes sense to spend that kind of money on attracting excellent people. After all, they are next in line for dealing with customers once your marketing works its magic. If you buy fine crystal, you don't want to cheap out on the shelf.

As you court these exceptional hires, show them how much you want them to be a part of your company. If they aren't local, set up conference calls for the interviews. Put their resume up in a web conference as you talk to them about it. Use video conferences to introduce them to their future bosses and co-workers. Incredibly, these aren't normal business hiring techniques. Their use will set you apart from your competition, and will be appreciated by your future employee as well.

While conference calls are amazing for collaborating with people around the globe efficiently and inexpensively, they do have one constraint: they are audio only. Incredible amounts of information can be transferred by voice, but there is no substitute for a simple picture. Expanding your audio conference calls with a web conference or video conference will take your virtual meetings to new heights.

First of all, let's distinguish between the three types of webinars. Conference calls are audio only. Video conferences allow you to see who you are talking to. Web conferencing can be added to audio calls and/or video conferences, and include desktop sharing, application sharing, whiteboard, chat, and the list goes on.

Web conferences are easy to get started. All the participants need to do is navigate to a link you send them and temporary files are downloaded and run. In less than a minute, their screens are filled with whatever you want them to see. Why not begin by greeting them with your smiling face through video. You can have the view be the whole screen, or have your video box in the corner with the first page of your PowerPoint taking center stage. Note that no one but you needs to be on video, or even have a webcam to do this.

With your participants watching you, flip through your PowerPoint. Open the chat box so that they can ask questions without interrupting your flow. Instead of talking about a document, picture, graph, website, or what have you, open it up and share it with everyone. You'll get your point across clear as day.

They say, as humans, our biggest critic is ourselves. This seems to only apply to our bodies or personal accomplishments. It doesn't cover love, children, or our businesses. How many times have you seen a friend make a terrible business decision because they refused to look facts in the face? Have you ever done something like that?

In BusinessKnowHow, we have a business check-up checklist from Laurie Hayes. The point of such a checkup is to make sure you business is truly doing as well as you think it is. For example, could you be personally working too hard, i.e. working harder, not smarter? Or, is the new phone system really better than a conference calling plan?

It's one thing to have a checklist and to go through it, it's quite another to really make the checklist of use to your business. This means you can't just put down answers from off the top of your head – or the bottom of your heart – you have to go and see, and put down answers that are based in reality. This might hurt a bit, or make you angry, but in the long run, it's best for your company.

Business can move at a very fast rate and you have to be quick to keep up. When a situation arises where you need to get a group of people together quickly in a conference call, the last thing you want to do is waste time getting the call going. If your conference call service provider has reservationless conference calls, you are good to go.

A conference call with reservations is not a "doubtful call." It's a conference call that you have to contact someone to setup or reserve the lines you need… all before you and your participants can get on the line. Reservationless conference calls are ones where you have the numbers and the codes, and can call in whenever you like. Depending on your provider, the difference between reservationless and not could be as little as ten minutes or even ten hours.

Some larger calls - such as those with fifty participants or more - require you to give a head's up to your provider beforehand. This isn't to inconvenience you; it's to make sure that there are enough telecommunications resources available so that you have a quality call. But if you are having that many people on the call to begin with, you'll know it in advance and can add a large conference call notification to your preparations.