What is direct marketing, you might ask? Well, direct marketing means an advertising technique that targets only your customers or prospective customers without the use of an advertising middleman to get them to follow a course of action. Direct marketing is a marketing strategy that gives marketers a chance to create campaigns targeted to people genuinely interested in their product or service. Due to the focused nature of these marketing campaigns, any promotional message sent out-produces maximum effects or positive output.
The next question that might come in mind after "what is direct marketing?" is "what then is digital marketing, and how is it different from direct marketing?" Digital marketing, unlike direct marketing, is a lot less cost-effective. It simply means online marketing efforts like social media, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, and blogging. Digital marketing usually targets a lot more people than direct marketing that only focuses on customers and prospective customers.
Direct Marketing Channels
There are different channels marketers can use to reach their prospects and customers. Some of the direct marketing channels marketers can use are:
1. Mail (physical mail and email)
The direct mail marketing channel involves any physical correspondence a marketer sends to customers with the hope of getting them to patronize his/her business.
2. Telemarketing
Telemarketing is the use of telephone or web-based video conferencing to connect with customers.
3. Short Message Service (SMS)
Short Message Service marketing means using text messages or SMS as a way to send transactional messages and promotional campaigns to customers for marketing purposes.
4. Broadcast Faxing
Broadcast faxing is the process of sending a single fax to more than one customer at the same time.
5. Couponing
The coupon is a powerful promotional tool that's a cost-effective way to grow customer base, drive brand awareness, and increase sales. Coupons can be found in either document or electronic graphic form and can be redeemed for a discount when making purchases for services or goods.
6. Direct Response Marketing
Direct response marketing is any television advertising (commercials or infomercials) that asks the audience to send their response to the company directly. The audience is to call a toll-free telephone number or send a message, or even to visit their website.
7. Insert Media
Insert Media is a cost-effective, powerful direct marketing form that involves the use of newspapers or shared mail in delivering advertising messages directly to the hands of their potential customers.
8. Face-to-Face Marketing (F2F)
Face-to-Face Marketing (F2F) is the use of in-person communication to directly market products or services to potential consumers.
9. Door-to-Door Flyers/Leaflets
Door-to-door flyer/leaflet marketing, as the name implies, involves the use of flyers/leaflets. Here, marketers use flyers/leaflets as business promotional tools to be directly sent to customers or potential customers.
Target Customers in Direct Marketing
When preparing a mailing list, you should target mostly those that opted for your mailing lists because they are usually the most responsive.
Although, you can as well target customers that didn't opt into your mail even when you know the mail might end up in the junk mail or spam. There is a chance that when your mail lands there in their mailbox, they will read it. The key thing when sending mail to this kind of person is to target your audience carefully.
Benefits of Direct Marketing
The benefits of direct marketing are not limited to promoting products and services and yielding quick results. Here are some of the benefits of direct marketing:
1. High Segmentation and Targeting
With direct marketing, you can use personalized messages to reach your specific audience segments.
2. Create New Opportunities for Business
Direct marketing gives you a chance to respond effectively more to your customers and also to always adapt to the demands on the market.
3. Test and Analyze the Results
Direct response marketing campaigns allow you to measure your results directly.
4. Optimize Your Marketing Budget
When you properly optimize your direct marketing online, it'll help you in setting realistic goals and improve sales even on a tight budget.
How to Start Your Direct Marketing Campaign
Here are the steps to follow in starting a direct marketing campaign:
1. Contact List Development
The first step to take in developing a campaign for direct email marketing is knowing your target market. Finding people that are genuinely interested in patronizing your product or service is very important. When you find your customers on your contact list, segmenting it into people that patronize you and more is very important.
2. Create the Ideal Mail
When creating a mail, creativity and segmentation should be aligned to ensure that nothing in the marketing campaign mail is random.
3. Enter a Code or Identification Pixel
One of the direct marketing keys is the ability to measure precisely all the results your campaign plan can yield. Including pixel codes in your mails is a way to identify which users visited your site because of that campaign.
4. Test Direct Marketing Campaign
An email campaign is a way to perform different tests using different possible variants to discover which one works with your audience.
5. Place an Ongoing Campaign
Before launching your campaign, send a test email to ensure everything is in place. When launching your campaign, you must launch it at an appropriate time. If you launch it at the wrong time, there's every tendency that it will not yield anything.
6. Gather Consumer Responses
After launching your campaign, leave a window of reasonable time before checking the reaction of your target market. Not everyone reads mail immediately when it is delivered, so you need to consider that before concluding.
7. Analyze Campaign Results
The next and last step is to measure how well your campaign worked. The analysis you make on this campaign will help you conclude how your next campaign will be.
If there comes a situation where you wish to hand out the responsibility of your direct marketing campaign to professionals, you can use Direct Marketing Solutions (DMS). Direct Marketing Solutions (DMS) is a direct marketing company that's multi-channel. Direct mail marketing and digital marketing is their specialty.
Conclusion
Running marketing campaigns in haste without looking at the pros and cons is very dangerous. For this reason, the key to a successful direct marketing campaign is good planning and preparation.
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