There are 3 major
differences where direct marketing, also known as relationship marketing veers
sharply away from traditional marketing and advertising. You’ll see why it’s the most cost effective
method any business can do. But especially small business because let’s face it
– we’ll never have the money to throw at marketing and advertising that BIG
business does.
There
are 3 major differences where direct marketing, also known as relationship
marketing veers sharply away from traditional marketing and advertising.
You’ll see why it’s the most cost effective
method any business can do. But especially small business because let’s face it
you’ll never have the money to throw at marketing and advertising that BIG
business does.
And the good news is you don’t have to. These
proven principles will work on or offline across the board, for any business,
in any media, with any product or service.
But first let’s be clear that direct
marketing is not just direct mail. It includes mail of course, but that was
just the beginning it’s now expanded to include all the mediums available
today. Remember the media is just the delivery method.
So here’s the 3 major differences between
traditional marketing and advertising AND direct marketing using direct
response advertising.
The first
is – Direct Marketing is based on a one-on-one customer relationship which
gives the ability to have 2-way communications.
Unlike traditional marketing direct marketing
relies on dialogue. We all know that people do business with people they know,
like and trust and that is best achieved by building the relationship. So it’s
not the “catch and kill” approach here.
Getting the contact details of your
prospective customer is goal number one because it puts you in control of the
communication process. You are no longer at the mercy of the crowded
marketplace when you are “talking” to your list.
It’s also easier to find more people like
them.
The second
is – Direct Marketing always has a call-to-action so the customer is asked to
do something.
And that’s because you “ask” them
to take the action you want them to take either request more information or
place an order immediately. Whatever is
the next logical step in your sales process. In fact it’s called “a call
to action” or “asking for the order” which doesn’t happen in the
traditional advertising model.
You see there are actually 2 types of
advertising.
The dreaded awareness advertising and the
champion “direct response”.
It’s important to understand this because the
biggest mistake I see small business owners make is they copy big businesses.
You won’t make this mistake now you know about direct response advertising but
naturally people think that big companies are successful so they must know what
they are doing and they “copy” their type of advertising. It’s the
last thing you should do.
Big companies use Awareness advertising which
is image based advertising or brand awareness. These big companies, with well
known brands have expensive ads that aren’t really selling they are promoting
their brand trying to get you to “feel good” hoping when you are out
in the marketplace making a buying decision, you’ll remember them.
They never ask their customer to do anything
think about all the ads you see on TV.
It takes many years and many millions of dollars to make an impact. So
dont waste your money on this. You need ads that sell NOW.
And we’ve all seen those print ads that don’t
ask the reader to do anything just check out the yellow pages. People pay
many tens of thousands of dollars for just one advertisement, depending on the
size. And what do they do? Put a big fat logo at the top, boring feature
after boring feature in bullet points and a phone number at the bottom. All
about the company and product and NOT about the customer.
Direct response ads, on the other hand are
all about the customer, their needs and problems because your customer is
listening to radio station WIIFM or What’s in it for ME. And they offer a solution,
make an offer AND ask the customer to “respond” using a call to
action.
It’s obvious the difference this must have on
your advertising response and now that you know this you’ll never look at
advertising the same way again!
The third
thing is – Direct Marketing results are measurable which means you know what
works and what doesn’t.
Unlike mass advertising you can make an offer
in any media and track the results. It’s simple. So once you know what works
and what doesn’t you can test other ads or media to try to improve the results
and increase your profit margin.
Tracking can be simple or sophisticated
depending on your systems and resources and will vary for online and offline
activities. But all you need is a way to identify where the responses came from
and count them.
You can have proven
, predictable results to
build your campaigns on and who wouldn’t want that?
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