The Direct Market Approach

When most people think of direct marketing they get visions of piles of junk mail filling their garbage, time wasted deleting email spam, and the frustration of having their meal interrupted by an unwanted phone call. With all the negativity that surrounds direct marketing from the consumer’s standpoint, why do businesses continue to use it?

Marketing, and advertising, are big business. Every business has to have a way to reach potential customers, and to turn them into paying customers. Without customer, there is no business. Since there are so many businesses out there, there is a lot of competition to get those paying customers, you have to be on your toes and have good advertising. There are some, specialized, businesses that can rely simply on word of mouth to keep them turning a profit, that is not the norm though. Marketing and advertising companies know the competition is tough, and because of that can capitalize on their offerings to other businesses, advertising isn't cheap. To get the most for their money a business wants to be able to see how well a marketing strategy worked, how much response did they get from it? This is where direct marketing comes into play.

Junk mail usually has some type of coupon attached to it, email spam can be directly linked to the email, and telemarketers know exactly what customers bought which promotion. Let's face it; direct marketing leaves a nice, neat trail showing just how effective it was. A company can figure just how much money it spent, they know the ratio of cost to sales.

A television commercial, radio ad, or a billboard have very few ways of proving their effectiveness. Sales may have increased, but can you ever really be sure that the money you spent was what caused the increase? Even a small catalog mailed out can show how many people used it, it may not show all of the people that were brought in because of it, but if they use it to place an order you can trace it to the catalog.

Next time you get an envelope full of different coupons, go ahead and look through them. There is sure to be one ad in there for the company that sets them up and mails them out. Check out the other offerings in the mailing, do you know the businesses? Check out the pricing, you may be very surprised at just how affordable direct marketing is compared to other avenues.