Rack Card Marketing Strategies

Rack card marketing is an extremely successful way to drive customers to hotels, restaurants, events, water parks, golf courses, theme parks, museums and other attractions. Unlike many marketing methods, customers actively seek out rack cards for direction — and rack cards are incredibly cost-efficient to print and distribute.

The following rack card marketing strategies will help you boost your business overnight:

Know your audience

The foundation of your rack card marketing campaign is your ability to cater to your audience. By playing into your audience's desires and needs, you can craft a compelling rack card that grabs attention and gets results. Are you a hotel geared toward traveling sales people, or a water park aimed at attracting families? Your design, promotions, headlines, features and benefits will all sprout from your audience — your controlling idea.

Study distribution points

Before you hire a copywriter or designer, study your distribution points to identify how you can stand out from the competition. Collect your competitors' rack cards and compare visuals, colors, headlines, promotions, discounts and other important factors then make your rack cards even more compelling. You'll also want to pay attention to the types of travelers at your distribution points. If you're catering primarily to families, you might be better off placing your rack cards at tourist centers versus airport lobbies, for example.

Help visitors find you

Your rack cards only need a few things: visuals, headlines, short descriptions and bullet points. You'll also need to include your address, phone number, website URL and a map to help customers easily find you. Sometimes it helps to include popular landmarks, especially if you're trying to attract second-hand traffic from these locations: "Across from Old Man's Cave!"

Tell visitors what to expect

Your copy and visuals should be enticingly compelling and should tell your visitors what benefits you offer. Let's say you run a mining museum: Instead of simply including the line "gold panning," try saying, "Pan for real gold - you keep what you find!"

Pick one or two main attractions for the front of your rack card and bullet point secondary attractions on the back. If you have many attractions that target different audiences, you might be better off with two or three rack cards for maximum return on investment. Keep your rack cards simple and to the point, but include enough information to help your visitors realize that they simply can't miss what you have to offer.

Include coupons or other special offers

Coupons, discounts and other promotions are a great way to drive visitors and to track your rack card response rate. You should include special offers whenever possible. You can also create cross-promotions with complementary, but not competing, businesses. A hotel might partner with a restaurant, for example, to offer couples a "Lover's Paradise" package through rack card marketing. Couples save money, and the shared marketing cost doubles your return-on-investment potential.

Rack card marketing strategy is simple when you pay attention to the finer nuances of attracting travelers. Study the competition to see what works, and then make your rack cards even better. Track response, test your campaigns and tweak your cards for the best return on investment possible. Eventually, you'll craft an infallible rack card marketing campaign that delivers reliable results.