Understanding What is Direct Marketing and Why It Never Gets Old

Every day and wherever you go, you see advertisements for different companies. In these innovative and progressive times, you can simply use anything to market your product and the services you offer.

You can use the all-time favorite television commercials or make an engaging video that is a bit similar. Did you know that radio commercials do exist, too? Otherwise, just share your products through print ads in newspapers and magazines.

Moreover, you can also send emails, text messages, or even make telephone calls to market your way into the consumers' hearts. The options are just endless. You also have the internet, which makes marketing and advertising much easier to broadcast worldwide. As you can see, there’s a limitless possibility on how you can do marketing.

However, you have to realize that each marketing campaign entails costs, risks, and proper planning. What if you’re just starting up? Yes, you may have a budget for the marketing but not enough for a television commercial, not even a radio commercial. How about print ads? Still too costly? The internet is one great option! That shouldn’t be too costly. You can also make use of the mail, the telephone, and text messaging as well!

All of these marketing options won’t make you break the bank. These aren’t complicated to and have proven to be effective. But there’s another question. Are these marketing options going to be effective? Absolutely! You can use these as tools to do direct marketing. You might ask, what is direct marketing? That's why we’ve come up with these ideas on how you can execute it properly.

What is Direct Marketing?

As per Investopedia, by definition direct marketing consists of any marketing that relies on direct communication or distribution to individual consumers rather than through a third party such as mass media. Mail, email, social media, and texting campaigns are among the delivery systems used. It is called direct marketing because it generally eliminates the middleman, such as advertising media.”

To understand what is direct marketing, it is marketing and advertising your products and the services you offer directly to your consumers. As the word ‘direct’ suggests, you engage directly with customers.

It’s like you’re talking to one of your customers or just to be conservative, potential customer, face to face and explaining to them what your product is, what it can do, how much it is, and how they can purchase it.

With direct marketing, you won’t have to spend on an advertising agency or a network to broadcast your products and services to the public.

You and your team will be your advertising agency and network to publicize your products to your target consumers. This explains what is direct marketing and how you can successfully do it.

To do the advertising and marketing yourself can be quite tedious. However, in a direct marketing plan, the people you’re going to advertise to are limited.

Just imagine yourself if you’ll have to meet with a hundred random clients and explain to them one by one your product or the service you are offering. It will be exhausting.

Aside from being exhausting, it could just be a waste of your time, energy, and resources since some of those people might not be interested in your product or service, just like if you are into print on demand or similar.

That is why you need to learn what is direct marketing. You must identify specific people you are going to “talk” to. Distinguish those who are interested, the interested, could be interested, and the uninterested. You’ve got to find out about them all. It’s the essence of knowing what is direct marketing, plus the good results it can give at the end.

This way, you can prioritize those members of the market that have a better probability of purchasing your product or using the services you offer.

As previously discussed, you can use several tools to get your direct marketing started. You can have mail, telephone, and SMS messaging.

However, with the emergence of the internet, your tools have grown better, and you have a wider range of tools. You have the Email which can bring your message to your consumers faster than the postal mail. You also have social media platforms that can help you become more creative in advertising to pick more of your consumers’ interests.

Direct marketing may drain your energy, but with the help of your tools, you can make all those hard work pay off, and you’ll be surprised with the success you’re going to reap after.

Examples of Direct Marketing

Now that you have an idea of the tools you can use and what is direct marketing, let’s get some examples of how you can use these.

∙ Telemarketing

By the name itself, Telemarketing is an example of direct marketing using the telephone or other forms of calling. One example of this is your telephone company calling you for a promo they want to offer you. This is a good example of what is direct marketing. They can get a hold of you on the phone.

Another is a bank company offering to apply for a personal loan at a very competitive interest rate.

These kinds of direct marketing campaigns can be intrusive, so be careful. If you don’t want to lose a potential customer, make sure to get consent first. Otherwise, you might end up not selling your products at all. Always keep in mind your goal and the essence of what is direct marketing.

∙ Email Marketing

Email marketing is an example of direct marketing or direct marketing campaigns using email addresses. Marketing spiels and promo codes are broadcasted to the specific target market via email. Examples of these are promo advertisements by airline companies. They usually send email notifications to their email subscribers about an upcoming seat sale or discounts they can avail themselves of upon purchasing a ticket on a specific date.

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Again, ask for your customer’s consent and refrain from asking for their account details in your email. They might think that you’re phishing for information with the intent of using it in bad faith.

There are more examples of direct marketing that you can use and explore. You can even use different ones simultaneously. Just keep in mind how your consumers might react. They might feel bombarded with way too many advertisements and be annoyed.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Direct Marketing

In every decision you make in life, you must always consider the pros and cons.

So here is a list of the pros and cons of direct marketing.

1. Advantages of Direct Marketing

∙ Less Costly

Direct marketing is less costly because it is targeted to a specific number of consumers only.

So because you already know which people and how many of them are there, you won’t have to waste your time, energy, and money on those not part of the list.

For example, suppose you are launching a new product (beware of duplicates, by the way) line in your business, and you want to send a PR package to your ten loyal subscribers. In that case, all you have to prepare are 10 of that new product line you are launching and ten wrapping papers or baskets to put those in.

You can send it door to door or via mail. That's easy. And those ten loyal subscribers you sent those packages to will probably patronize your new product line as well because they know you and your products.

∙ Loyalty

In line with the example above, through direct marketing, you can increase your consumers’ loyalty. Why? Well, today, business is about bringing a great customer experience.

So, because direct marketing lets you customize your direct marketing campaigns according to your consumers’ preferences, you are more capable of making your consumers feel that they are listened to and taken care of.

∙ Easy to Measure the Effectivity

Direct marketing, aside from being less costly, its success is also easy to measure. Take, for example, if you’re sending discount coupons to your targeted consumers, you can easily count or measure its effectiveness by counting the number of coupons used. Simple, right?

So, those are the advantages of direct marketing. Now, let’s move on to the disadvantages of direct marketing. What is direct marketing and its downfalls?

2. Disadvantages of Direct Marketing

So far, there’s only one disadvantage to direct marketing, and that is it's being limited.

Limited in a sense that not everyone can learn about you easily, which takes a toll on your branding.

As the direct marketing definition states, it “relies on direct communication or distribution to individual consumers”. Hence, the need to establish a list of loyal and probable consumers.

Although this is a disadvantage, it doesn’t mean your business won’t be successful. It just means that it might take some time for your brand to be seen out there. So just be patient. You’ll get there.

Direct Marketing Plan or Strategies

Now, you can’t just make an email with advertisements and promo codes and send them away to your target consumers or just randomly call them and tell them, “by the way, I have a promo code that you can use when you check out any products from the website”. No! It’s not how it works. Like any other marketing strategy, you have to make these as appealing and interesting as they could. How do you do that?

First, you have to identify your target market or consumers. Again, this is very important in applying the core of what is direct marketing.

Second, after identifying your target market, understand their behavior, likes and dislikes, and preferences.

Third, you can use those preferences to create effective direct marketing campaigns when you have understood your target consumers more. You can use their interests to develop captivating advertisements. In that way, they won’t just ignore your emails or say that they are busy and can’t talk with you right now. So take the time to know your consumers and take advantage of that.

Now that you have learned about direct marketing don’t hesitate to start that business. Don’t worry about not being able to afford a television commercial or print ads. You can still make your way to success with direct marketing. There will always be an easy way out if one doesn’t work out right. But one thing is for sure; direct marketing is the most effective plan that never gets old. It has the sense of personalization that most customers would prefer. You give options and personal recommendations based on their taste. With Strikingly, there are limitless possibilities on how to develop the best marketing plan for your website. All you need to do is take the first step and bring your business online. Talk to us about building your website now.