A lot of businesses utilise direct marketing nowadays to help promote their products and services. It is more important than ever to try and cut through the crowd by delivering marketing that will lead to people buying products and services. There are more companies out there than ever before, each trying to grab customers' attention. So you need to appeal to more people than ever while offering personalised advertisements. Direct marketing is a great way to do this.
But what specifically is direct marketing, and what forms can it take? Read on to find out more with this guide to direct marketing from Latcham.
Direct marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on direct communication to individual people or target groups, rather than a mass media campaign that anybody may be exposed to. It is called direct marketing as it typically consists of a business advertising directly to a customer, cutting out any other third party.
Third-party marketing can work, but will never impact a customer in the same way that direct marketing will. Third-party marketing is an ideal choice for advertisers who don’t have the tools or resources for direct marketing, so rely on selling their ads to websites or companies to then display for them. It’s also a great option if you’re looking to reach a wider audience and not a specific target group, as you do not need to tailor your marketing to any specific group, just advertise your product or service in general.
Direct marketing strategies are normally a lot more focused than general ones, usually focusing towards a specific group of people. This target audience could be existing customers, an age group, a gender or geared towards a specific interest. It can truly be anything but is normally quite specific so the marketing can target it properly.
Direct marketing works at its best when it is sent to only those to whom it is relevant. For example, a male customer has no need for a clothing brand to be emailing him about women’s clothing or a woman will not be interested in advertisements about men's deodorant.
This is why many businesses that utilise direct marketing will make up lists of buyers that they can then target the work towards. This allows them to create either completely different marketing for these groups, or the ability to tweak their existing messages to reach their target audience.
As it can be a quite specific audience, direct marketing tries to personalise itself as much as possible. This can just be as simple as putting the recipient's name on the marketing piece. This way a potential customer feels like they matter to a business, instead of just being a nameless source of money to them. This isn't to say direct marketing is small as it can be used to reach thousands of people. The personalisation is just a method of enticing customers in and can normally be done automatically.
A call to action is an essential part of direct marketing, encouraging a customer to respond to the marketing piece. This could be ‘read more’, ‘buy now’ or anything that tells a customer to do something. The aim of the piece should always be to make the customer engage with the call to action, leading to a prospective conversion.
Call to action buttons are important as they can help analyse the effectiveness of a direct marketing campaign. They are a useful statistic, as a business can track how many people have clicked on them and then purchased a product or service. They can then make adjustments to the marketing strategy if they are not getting enough engagement and click-throughs.
Direct marketing is quite a broad term, as there are a number of different marketing strategies that can be done which could as direct marketing. One of the most commonly used is email advertising. This way a company can send information about themselves and their services straight to a potential customer's inbox.
The customer can then read the email and directly respond to it if they choose, making the marketing strategy a success. A person will probably get hundreds of emails of this type every week, advertising new products, sales and any other information that the business would like to promote. It’s important to make your content worthwhile and not too frequent, or else it might be dismissed as junk or spam that may cause a customer to unsubscribe or block you.
Email marketing is great as you can utilise existing data from customers. If a company has a sale happening, they can use the data they already have on the customer to see what products and services they have been looking at, and target the email towards them. This way a customer is more tempted to click through and buy whatever they have already been tempted by.
If you’d like existing customers to find out about new products and services you offer, another method is to utilise a text messaging campaign. Companies will do this if they want to make sure a customer sees the service they’re advertising, or if they have key news they wish to share. They’ll end the text with a link the customer can easily click through to reach the website.
Email and text marketing only works if you already have email addresses and phone numbers, so there are other direct marketing strategies to reach a wider audience and bring you business despite not being existing customers. One example is a social media account. If your company has a Twitter account, you can utilise direct marketing by talking to other users, tweeting about products and answering any questions people have. This way you can still offer personalised service but on a much larger scale.
Another popular strategy is sending out catalogues of your products and services to consumers who have indicated an interest. This form of direct marketing is one of the oldest methods, only paling in popularity due to the rise of the internet where direct marketing can be done more easily.
Ads on websites are another form of direct marketing that is extremely popular. Businesses can pay for their advertising to be on websites, leading potential customers to click through. These ads can still be personalised, using cookies to inform details about a person such as their name or location, which can then be put on the ad.
An effective direct marketing campaign can have a whole range of benefits for your business. It can target your ideal customers by delivering tailored messages to them. Taking a personalised approach to your marketing campaigns has the best chance of achieving results.
Direct marketing can also save your business money, as a more focused advertising campaign will generally cost a lot less than a mass campaign designed to target a more general audience. Therefore you’re spending less for a better chance of making money
Direct marketing can also improve customer loyalty, as customers love to shop with brands that they get a more personalised connection from. Direct marketing is great for this, as you can send invites to exclusive sales, birthday discounts or any number of methods to build a relationship.
You can also reach customers who haven't shopped with you in a while, re-establishing a connection with them. This could be a discount for coming back, or just a message asking if they still want to receive emails. This can normally be enough to entice a customer back to your business, at least for a browse.
You can also use direct marketing to target a specific purpose and create new business. This could be advertising a product that is discontinued so you can get rid of stock, boost sales of new products or follow up on a specific promotion.
If your business is looking to use direct marketing to improve client relationships or bring more business to your organisation, work with Latcham today. We work with you to produce a direct marketing campaign that will engage your target market and lead to real results.
This involves working with you every step of the way, from planning a campaign in conjunction with your vision, then helping deliver the marketing exactly how you want it. We use data-driven targeting, optimised to get the best possible results for you, using resources produced at our state of the art green print facility and online marketing strategies.
So if you’re interested in direct marketing for your business, call now on 0117 311 8200 to talk through your requirements with one of our knowledgeable staff. We offer document fulfilment, print management and consultancy solutions, so visit our website today to find out more.