Direct Marketing FAQs in the Internet Age

What is Direct Marketing (or Direct Response Marketing)?
How do you know when you should use Direct Marketing?
Isn't Direct Marketing more for postal direct mail?
Isn't Direct Marketing old-fashioned?

DIRECT MARKETING TOPICS

What is Direct Marketing (or Direct Response)?

Direct Marketing, Direct Response, Response Marketing, Trackable Marketing - all names for the same type of marketing efforts. Direct Marketing is designed to:

• Generate (immediate) response (via phone, direct mail, email, or website).
  Direct Marketing efforts encourage the audience to take action NOW (by making a specific Offer). You'll have the best chance of getting a response when you motivate your audience to take action immediately after (or while) viewing your Direct Marketing effort (ad, direct mail, email marketing, website, etc.).

• Create trackable, measurable results from individual customers (through a specific Offer and a request to take a specific action). You want to know who responded, and to what they responded, to track the effectiveness of each direct marketing effort.
• Use any medium, including print (magazine, newspaper), postal mail, websites, email, television, billboard, radio, package inserts, door hangers, transit ads, aerial advertising, postal direct mail, websites, email marketing, television, etc. Anytime your marketing effort is focused on a trackable, measurable response (hopefully as a result of an irresistible Offer), it's Direct Marketing.

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How do you know when you should use Direct Marketing?

Use Direct Marketing . . .

1. When you want an immediate measurable response. Direct Marketing usually is designed to generate an immediate response from a radio or television commercial, magazine or newspaper ad, direct mail, email marketing message or website page. Direct Marketing efforts include a specific Offer, and generate trackable responses and measurable results.
2. When you need to generate immediate sales. Direct Marketing efforts usually include an attractive special Offer, designed to generate immediate sales.
3. When you need to generate leads (to support a sales force, etc.).
4. When you need to generate traffic -- for a retail location, trade show booth, or website.

Isn't Direct Marketing more for postal direct mail?

Direct Marketing techniques started hundreds of years ago with the first catalogs in Europe. Early mail-order catalogers learned how to effectively sell their products with printed words, rather than face-to-face through a retail store or salesperson, paving the way for the Direct Marketing industry.

Direct Marketing is an overall approach to marketing, rather than related to any one medium. You can include an Offer designed to generate a trackable, measurable response in virtually all media, making every medium a Direct Marketing medium.

View our Direct Marketing Projects – from traditional offline media to all website marketing options.

Isn't Direct Marketing old-fashioned? Is it really being used by state-of-the-art marketers now?

Only those marketers who want to be successful rely on Direct Marketing techniques - for online marketing, for email marketing, for virtually ALL types of media that are trying to generate a response.

Direct Marketing is based on translating face-to-face or telephone selling techniques into selling with printed (or on-screen) words. So Direct Marketing is based on the sales process. Has the sales process changed in the Internet age? There's more information available to prospects on the web, but prospects are still sold the same way:

• Attract attention, by promising to either relieve a pain and/or deliver a pleasure.
• Generate interest, by "sizzling" those benefits - making them sound irresistible to the prospect
• Drive desire, by giving a specific reason to act now ("going for the close")
• Drive action, by telling the prospect what to do

Some marketers find the prospect of "selling" distasteful. They would rather focus on creating beautiful website pages, HTML email marketing, print ads, or direct mail. But when you track response, beautiful designs rarely win over strong sales copy.

Of course, ideally we want to combine great design with killer sales copy. But . . . ugly can still sell, where poor sales copy and lack of an attractive Offer rarely generate response even from the most beautiful marketing efforts.