All About Direct Marketing

Written by businessideas.info

Direct marketing is a method of marketing in which you target prospects one by one, instead of advertising through mass media vehicles like television and radio.  With direct marketing, only qualified prospects see your message, which makes direct marketing much more efficient than mass media advertising.  Also, direct marketing responses are very easy to monitor, and you can personalize messages to have a more powerful effect.  Those are the basics of direct marketing; one-to-one targeting, high level of control, and easy monitoring.

Much of direct marketing is direct-response advertising, which are ads that request prospects to take immediate action, mainly buying the product (or in some cases, just visiting the website or requesting more information).  The purpose of direct marketing is not to brand or create awareness, it is to create sales immediately (although there may be some beneficial branding in the process as a side effect). 

The most commonly used forms of direct marketing are direct mail and direct e-mail.  Direct mail is ads sent through the postal system as letters or packages.  They are usually colorful, eye-catching, and attention grabbing.  The computerized version, direct e-mail, is very similar in format, although obviously nothing tangible can be sent through e-mail, as sometimes it is with direct mail. 

When a sale is made over a distance, such as a person deciding to buy a product they have read about in a direct mail letter, that is referred to as direct sales.  All e-commerce falls under the category of direct sales, because there is no face to face contact in transactions of that sort.

Telemarketing is simple the communication between buyer and seller over a telephone.  Inbound calls are calls made by consumers to the business, and outbound calls are made by the business to prospects.  Inbound calls have a much higher success rate, since the prospects are on the ones making the calls, while outbound calls are seen by many as an annoyance (yet there still is a relatively high response if the consumer is interested in the product). 

Even if a premium, high-quality direct marketing campaign is established, the best response rate you can hope for is only 1-3%, and that's the best.  If you compile a list of prospects yourself made from past customers and other excellent sources, the response rate may be as high as 10%, but first-class lists like these are very hard to create.