What is Direct Marketing?

Get Great Results by Taking Your Offer to the Right Prospects

Direct Marketing refers to a type of marketing where you approach an individual prospect or group of prospects (demographic) with an offer. This can be to buy a product, redeem a coupon, sign up for a newsletter, download an eBook, enter a contest, or “like” a social media page. Often the prospect is encouraged to act immediately. Such marketing is sometimes characterised by the buyer dealing directly with the seller (as opposed to buying through a retailer, affiliate or other third party). Direct Marketing can use a variety of media, including television, direct mail, radio and the Internet.

Direct Response Marketing is a sub-type of Direct Marketing where you ask the prospect to take action right within the ad or offer. For example, a direct response could be completing a website form, pasting a sticker on a mail-out and returning it, or telephoning the number in the ad. Direct Response Marketing is by far the most effective, in terms of ROI, form of Direct Marketing.

At its core, it’s about your company reaching out to a prospect with a tantalizing offer.

The Direct Marketing Advantage

The chief advantage to Direct Marketing is that you’ll start to see results from your campaign very quickly. By its very nature, Direct Response Marketing requests the recipient to respond immediately. Unlike Inbound Marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and branding/awareness you don’t have to wait weeks, months or years to see the results of your efforts. Nor do you spend enormous amounts of time generating new content, ads, and offers.

Another benefit is that the results of such marketing plans are easily trackable and testable. If a customer responds to a direct mail piece or ad, you know where they heard of your company and what marketing campaign prompted their visit to your website. Since you can easily track the results of a campaign you can also test different variations of your offer with scientific accuracy. Thus you can quickly adjust campaigns to better resonate with your target demographics. This learning can be transferred to all of your other forms of marketing too!

Direct Response Marketing is an affordable and effective way for any size business to market its products and services. It’s easy to know your return on investment.

You Can’t Question this Long Proven Marketing Technique

Direct Response Marketing via Google AdWords (Pay Per Click), direct mail, or email delivers the most “bang” for your dollar. For instance, here are a few statistics to prove the point:

• 88% of companies rate “Paid Search” (also known as Google AdWords or Pay Per Click advertising) as either very effective or somewhat effective. According to a survey by MarketingSherpa.
• 73% of US consumers and 67% of Canadian consumers said that they prefer direct mail over other types of marketing messages. According to a study by Epsilon.
• Direct Response Advertisers on average spend $167 to earn $2,095 worth of goods sold; a 1,300% return! According to PrintisBig.com.

 

Sounds too Good to Be True

Of course, like any marketing strategy, Direct Response Marketing also has a down side. Primarily, this lies in reaching your prospect at the wrong time, either before or after they have a need for your product. Because a Direct Response advertising piece is time specific (by definition), the customer may not remember your company in a month or a year when they DO have a need for what you sell.

You can also waste a lot of money doing it wrong. We’ve all seen ads that flop or offers that stink. There’s more cost involved in just creating and delivering the ads. You’ve got to build a solid list and provide some value to your prospect for free (whether its a discount or a free sample – it costs you money).

In this generation, advertising is so common we tend to ignore it. So even if you get in front of the perfect candidate, they might not even take note. Not too mention that converting the world into customers one person at a time is not always the most efficient method. This is why massive brands like Nike and Coca-Cola tend to prefer a branding/awareness marketing approach.

The good news is that there is a marketing method that comes along-side your prospects. And meets them when and where they are. If you missed it, you should go back to part 1 of this series. It’s on Inbound Marketing.

Your Thoughts

What has been your experience with Direct Marketing? Has it helped you grow your company or did you lose on it? Please share your thoughts with everyone below.