Direct marketing is a specialized interactive system that provides direct contact with each individual client. Such contact is manifested in the form of an individualized dialogue with the buyer in order to provide an immediate feedback. Forms of direct marketing can include a variety of tools, including telephone, mail, fax, Internet, as well as a number of other tools and methods.
What does it look like?
In this case, some specific or several media are immediately used in the ongoing advertising campaign in order to ensure the maximum possible response from consumers or to achieve a transaction in a certain area of the company's business activity. Of course, such operations are necessarily entered into the database.
Direct marketing is a constantly maintained targeted communication with certain companies or individual customers who show obvious intentions to purchase a particular product.
Unlike the vast majority of other communication tools, direct marketing is distinguished by the fact that it excludes the presence of various intermediaries, as well as retailers. This sales option uses contact with customers to distribute a particular product directly, that is, it relies on advertising that requires an instant response, and is not designed only to familiarize consumers with the features of the product it offers.
A long-term, mutually beneficial and, more importantly, developing partnership between personally known customers and a manufacturing company is exactly the essence that direct marketing pursues. A variety of tools can be used to achieve this, but in any case, the result must be the same.
Benefits
- Extremely high focus, due to which direct marketing is in certain cases much more effective than other types.
- A great way to achieve recognizability and demand for goods among small or limited circles of people.
- Profitability, especially when it comes to a small audience, since in this case the contact is directly tête-à-tête.
- Providing feedback with a potential customer.
- You can always measure extremely accurately the results, and all elements are extremely flexible.
disadvantages
- Efficiency directly depends on how accurately and correctly the database was created.
- Quite often, this option goes unnoticed because customers are overloaded with information.
- It requires considerable costs if work is carried out with a large audience.
What types are there?
There are different forms of direct marketing, which are divided among themselves by the way the messages are delivered:
- Direct mailing. Delivery of any goods or messages in this case is carried out through the postal service or any private delivery service. The success of this system is based on how good the mailing lists are, as well as the text and packaging.
- Catalogs are divided into four categories: offering a complete product line, retail, business-to-business format, as well as specialized consumer ones.
- Media.This option is one of the most common advertising options when advertising information about a specific product is distributed in various newspapers, magazines, television channels and other media.
- Telephone marketing through outgoing and incoming calls.
- Interactive marketing, which involves the use of interactive computer systems that bring together sellers and buyers in real time. There are two main formats for marketing channels: the Internet, as well as specialized commercial online services.
Mailing list
Direct mail calls for the compilation, production, and subsequent distribution of an advertising message to specific people who are interesting companies as potential consumers. It is worth noting that this is a rather expensive direct marketing. Direct marketing channels in this case provide a rather high degree of selectivity of circulation, since preliminary work is being done. It is for this reason that this method is considered to be quite effective today and is widely used.
This marketing option is based on lists, which ensures an extremely high degree of selectivity in determining the target audience, and also allows for a flexible and personalized approach to potential consumers with the possibility of further evaluation of the results. In the predominant majority of cases, a variety of brochures, bright order forms and many similar products - this is the main thing that uses such direct marketing. Direct marketing channels provide a lot of advantages, but there are many disadvantages.
What are the benefits?
Among the characteristic advantages that distinguish direct mailing, it is worth highlighting that a wide variety of formats can be used here, but at the same time, a rather attractive description of the merits of the proposed commercial products can be provided. Thanks to this, applying such direct marketing, the channels provide a stream of the audience, which simply cannot be attracted if only some other means of communication are used.
What are the disadvantages?
If we talk about the shortcomings, it is worth noting that the bases on which such marketing is based, in the majority of cases, are formed according to general criteria, as a result of which it often happens that in the end the message goes to those consumers who are not interested in receiving it.
Everything that together constitutes the design of direct mail, should be distinguished by its harmony, as well as contain a certain design concept. A classic package often contains a mail envelope, an advertising brochure, a letter, an order form, as well as an answer envelope and a certain number of other papers that are necessary to achieve a certain effect.
The use of such new types of mailing, including fax or email, allows you to engage in mailing as efficiently and quickly as possible. Market participants today are all sorts of offers, trade and other announcements distributed primarily by e-mail, including both small, limited groups, and a fairly large audience.
Catalogs
Elements of direct marketing using catalogs provide for the sale of goods that are placed in a catalog, mainly in the area where it is not possible to offer a wide selection of marketable products or to provide them to those consumers who are limited in time.To date, consumers consider the catalog as an acceptable alternative that deserves confidence, and this applies to the acquisition of almost any type of marketable product. A sufficiently high printing level, as well as extremely effective methods of supplying material, provide the opportunity to show the goods in the best possible way, because if necessary, you can, for example, add a standard description of the goods also with some kind of video description.
The catalog itself is also a rather attractive marketing product that provides an appropriate contribution to the formation of a holistic view of what the proposed product and the company that produces it are.
Considering the features of direct marketing using directories, you must first of all understand that its cover must have an attractive appearance, that is, the photographs placed on it should arouse interest, and it should contain easily perceived texts, as well as illustrations that can demonstrate the attractiveness and unique design of the products.
Kinds
Direct marketing includes several types of directories:
- Retailers. They contain a complete list of items of goods that are equivalent to the proposed company. The goal of such catalogs is to provide more people visiting the store, as well as more volume sales through mail orders.
- Full blown. They contain a large amount of information about all the goods of department stores, as well as those goods that are delivered from other outlets.
- "Business-to-business." Such catalogs include product names that are offered to each other by industrial enterprises. The use of this option catalogs is carried out in order to minimize the costs associated with personal sales.
- Specialized. They include the names of products that will be most in demand for a certain circle of potential buyers.
Media
The media are a fairly broad topic, because in this case everything directly depends on which particular media are used to promote a particular product and how direct communications in marketing are provided. Thus, it is worth considering all types of such marketing.
Magazines
The goals of direct marketing using magazines are to bring certain information to the audience who reads such magazines, and at the same time coincides with potential consumers of the products of a particular company. For example, business magazines in the vast majority of cases are read by people who can be divided by occupation, and readers of entertainment magazines are divided into groups according to their lifestyle and individual interests.
Quite often, in order to place a card that is filled out by the consumer, it is necessary to provide additional journal space, which quite often costs much more than the price of a direct mail. The organization of direct marketing of this type provides for the placement in magazines or newspapers of a specialized form for receipt of subscription to this publication or to other publications published by the company of the same name. For example, in magazines there may be coupons for ordering certain books that are printed by the same publisher.
Radio
To date, the main difficulty in applying this method as an advertisement is that in our time it is more of a "background" media.For example, if a driver sits behind the wheel and listens to the radio, he is unlikely to decide to suddenly stop the car in order to record the telephone number that sounded on the air. As an exception, one can select any daytime or evening programs, the audience of which is determined in accordance with the psychographic and demographic characteristics, while it is known in advance that the situation provides an opportunity for listeners to immediately respond to advertising.
In the event that direct marketing will be based on the radio, the methods used in such advertising should contain an extremely easy-to-remember number that will not be forgotten for a long time.
It often happens that television and radio are used as an additional means of transmitting data about in which newspapers, magazines or television programs it will be necessary to look for a proposal in which there will be a possibility of direct reaction. In addition, if advertising with a direct reaction is not used for the direct sale of goods, but to form the basis for personal sale, then in this case it will already be auxiliary.
Phone
In modern telephone marketing, the phone is used not only for the direct sale of goods, but also provides the opportunity to conduct all kinds of research, surveys, clarify offers and create complete databases. This type of marketing is used separately or in conjunction with advertising, and can also be used in parallel with mailing and other forms.
In itself, this type of marketing is divided into two categories - outgoing and incoming. Incoming messages come directly from consumers and represent their feedback on the offer from the seller. In the vast majority of cases, a free telephone number is used to implement this form of marketing. For example, some companies actively use the customer service, which provides round-the-clock reception of calls from potential customers with an operational response to each such call and the subsequent collection of various statistical information that is necessary to ensure marketing planning.
To implement such a technology, a staff of specialized specialists is trained who are able to correctly answer questions regarding the technology, types and history of production of certain products, understand the geography of production, and also know how quality control is carried out. Specialists answer all questions posed by the caller, while simultaneously providing the information that could prompt the buyer to purchase the goods.
Outgoing telephone marketing is used by those companies that take the initiative to establish dialogue with potential consumers. Immediately it is worth noting the fact that this tool has a rather high price for its implementation, however, with its help it will be possible to focus only on those people who really need to correctly convey the advertising message. It is worth noting that such marketing also has certain disadvantages, namely:
- Many people do not want to be bothered by phone, as a result of which they can negatively react to such calls.
- Telephone marketing can be carried out only in a certain time range, and is also used only for a limited number of products.
- Only verbal means of persuasion are used.
The use of this form of marketing is relevant if the target group has been successfully selected, and almost any subscriber is a potential consumer, which is determined in the process of performing a number of market research. In this regard, it is used in the following cases:
- Acceptance of orders.
- Customer service.
- Account management.
- Sales support.
The verbal nature of such advertising, providing direct sales in marketing, determines its use exclusively in the service sector or those goods that are previously familiar to consumers and do not require their preliminary demonstration. Indeed, by telephone it is almost impossible to provide visual brand recognition, and the only solution here is to recognize the name of a particular brand.
If we talk about creative content, then this type of advertising is very similar to radio, but the advantage in this case is that the advertising appeal is oriented to a certain circle of the target audience. When all telephone marketing processes have been professionally debugged, a constant relationship with customers is ensured.
Special attention should be paid to the so-called direct response telephone marketing and mobile marketing.
The first direct marketing tools are various promotional video clips that explain the benefits of a particular product, and customers who want to place an order are given a free telephone number, upon calling which you can get a free sample or professional advice.
Mobile direct marketing tools are a relatively new means of communication. The innovation of this tool is that advertising or direct mailings are realized by means of a mobile phone. Recently, the penetration of mobile communications has reached a sufficiently high level, in connection with which there are all prerequisites in order to successfully use this marketing option.
The main types of direct marketing of this type are receiving customer confirmation of purchase, all kinds of information and game marketing communications, sending out coupons, trade promotion and many other tasks. For example, if you want a person to take part in a certain quiz or get a discount coupon, he must send a message to a specific number, and then get a response with information about whether he won or lost. Also in the message may be a discount coupon, an offer to continue participating and much more.
