Direct Marketing– this type of promotion, which involves the transfer of information about a product, service, or company directly to the customer. Thus, the target audience receives all advertising information without intermediaries and third parties.
Direct marketing strategies include email marketing, print and online advertising, database marketing, outdoor advertising, SMS, phone calls, and more. While other advertising methods are aimed at informing potential customers about the brand’s services or products, direct marketing is aimed solely at motivating the recipient to make decisions. This approach helps to achieve results through the use of CTAs that encourage customers to take action.
Examples of CTAs in direct marketing:
- More products on the site
- Visit the store
- Call us for detailed product information
- Subscribe to the newsletter and get a 25% discount
- Use promo code
The success of direct marketing strategies is measured by tracking the achievement of goals. Please note that direct marketing will be more effective if you use segmentation. In addition, choosing the right communication channel is essential for success.
Most companies that use direct marketing today avoid intrusiveness and inappropriate advertising. Therefore, they use services such as SendPulse to promote their products. The tools of email marketing, SMS, and web push notifications help to increase the effectiveness of campaigns.
Why direct marketing is important
- Accelerates the process of attracting leads
- Promotes effective promotion of services and products
- Allows you to send personalized content
- Easy to measure the effectiveness
Direct marketing is important to brands for a number of reasons. We have listed the main ones below.
- Accelerates the process of attracting leads. Direct marketing campaigns allow you to quickly connect with your target audience and make the right offer at the right time.
- Promotes the effective promotion of services and products. Unlike other strategies, direct marketing allows you to create targeted campaigns to attract highly motivated leads. This ensures maximum efficiency when sending promotional emails to a segmented audience.
- Allows you to send personalized content. Marketers collect information such as age, income, and behavioral factors in order to send personalized messages. Thus, with minimal effort, brands show interest in every customer.
- Easy to evaluate effectiveness. Brands track the success of their campaigns based on metrics such as the number of customers who clicked on ads, the revenue generated, and the ROI. What’s more, direct marketing lets you know how much customers are willing to spend on certain products or services.
Direct Marketing Benefits
- Targeted advertising
- Relatively small budget
- Increases sales to existing customers and reactivates passive customers
- Increases customer loyalty
- Helps in promoting new business
- Allows you to measure and evaluate the consumer quality of products
Direct marketing has many benefits for different companies. Here are the most useful ones.
Targeted advertising
Direct marketing ads target specific customer groups to maximize profits. To do this, marketers track customer behavior and offer the right products, depending on the interests of the audience.
Relatively small budget
Direct marketing targets specific demographic groups. This helps companies offer relevant products and services and increase sales on a tight budget. It helps you launch effective campaigns for a fraction of the cost of major promotions.
Increases sales to existing customers and reactivates passive customers
Customers are more loyal to companies that care and build personal relationships. Direct marketing allows you to increase sales to existing customers through analytics of the effectiveness of mailings. She helps to adjust the strategy.
Also, with the help of direct marketing, they reactivate customers who have not interacted with the company for a while. Firstly, it makes it possible to find out the reasons for the loss of interest of potential buyers, and secondly, it helps to restore relationships. The information collected from previous customers is used by brands to improve the effectiveness of campaigns and increase sales. Analyze the effectiveness of your mailings regularly and monitor the quality of your mailing list.
Increases customer loyalty
Direct marketing is a great way to build and maintain relationships with customers and potential buyers. It allows marketers to personalize advertisements and offers to forge and strengthen personal connections with their target audience.
Combine direct marketing with loyalty programs. For example, give discounts, send congratulatory messages, send out invitations to upcoming sales, and so on.
Helps in promoting new business
Direct marketing is a great launching pad for starting a new business. It helps to effectively interact with the target audience and increases sales. Moreover, the introduction of direct marketing tools allows you to attract new clients and form true brand advocates. With this approach, companies adapt easily and quickly to respond to market demands.
New companies can use direct marketing to:
- Improving sales of specific products;
- Sales of goods that are no longer produced
- Sales Activations
- Customer retention and loyalty increase
- Tracking advertising offers
Allows you to measure and evaluate the consumer quality of products
Direct marketing can be used to assess audience demand for specific goods and services. Moreover, it helps to test new markets, evaluate the tactics of promotion, efficiency, and effectiveness of sales. To improve strategy, marketers track and analyze the results of each campaign.
Direct and indirect marketing
In direct marketing, they build personal relationships with each client; in indirect marketing, all messages are conveyed to the audience through intermediaries.
Compared to these marketing strategies, direct marketing helps brands generate revenue faster. Moreover, if the campaign was well thought out and received by the audience, then the results are easy to measure.
It takes more time to achieve results using indirect marketing techniques. Building a brand on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, using hashtags and SEO are long-term strategies. Therefore, companies have to wait a long time to generate income.
However, it is impossible to say which of the two types of marketing is better. Plus, they work better in combination.
Types of direct marketing
- Email newsletters
- Mobile Marketing
- Push notifications
- Messenger marketing
Now let’s take a look at some of the most popular direct marketing methods.
Email newsletters
Email marketing is a simple, affordable, and measurable way to communicate with customers. Here are some examples of effective strategies: promotional emails, newsletters, and trigger emails.
Mobile Marketing
This type of direct marketing is based on sending promotional materials to mobile users. With the help of mobile marketing, marketers talk about current offers, sales and inform buyers about the status of the order.
Push notifications
Web push notifications are messages that are sent to users through a browser and appear in the corner of a mobile screen or computer. Push notifications allow marketers to interact with potential customers one-on-one. There is no need to collect email addresses or other personal data. And subscribers are identified by information stored in the browser used.
Other types of direct marketing
The list doesn’t end there. There are several other types of direct marketing that companies use:
- Social media. Brands promote and expand their audience through social media. They help you get instant feedback from your audience in the form of comments and discussions.
- Telemarketing. It involves making calls to potential customers to sell specific services or products. This tool helps you generate leads and track your marketing campaigns.
- Direct sales. This includes sending company promotional materials that are aimed at promoting the brand, products, and services. For example, sending out catalogs, postcards, and letters.
Direct Marketing Strategies
- Using loyalty cards
- Application of guerrilla marketing
- Clothing branding
- Issuance of coupons
- Advertising gadgets
Tips for implementing direct marketing
Here are a few tips to help you improve your direct marketing strategies:
- Personalize and segment content
- Develop a lead nurturing strategy
- Use effective CTAs that are relevant to both potential customers and repeat customers.
- Update your customer data regularly
- Use different marketing techniques for better results
- Order professional marketing services