What is Direct Marketing? And How Do You Build a Direct Marketing Campaign?

Direct marketing is a marketing strategy; building a direct marketing campaign is a marketing tactic.

Direct marketing has been used for many years and originally was used very successfully in business to consumer selling, but in more recent years direct marketing services have expanded to include marketing to the business to business selling community.

Direct marketing conveys marketing messages directly to consumers or customers usually through direct mail, direct telemarketing or direct email (although broadcast marketing and voice marketing are more recent methods of directly contacting customers).

Direct marketing is focused on asking its audience for a specific call to action (buy a product or service, return a phone call, book an appointment, use a coupon, and more).

One of the benefits of direct marketing is that it is highly measurable (through the call to action) and therefore it is relatively easy to assess the return on investment on the direct marketing campaign costs.

What is direct mail marketing? It is a form of one-to-one marketing that reaches customers through personalized mail.

In this era of anti-spam (through email blasts) and do-not-call registries (for telemarketing), your direct marketing campaign needs to focus on direct mail marketing tactics.

How to Build a Direct Marketing Campaign?

1. You need to understand what result you want before you build your campaign. Are you interested in educating, communicating, building your contacts list, getting a commitment to buy, and more? Pick one desired result (don't mix messages and try to do to much with one campaign) and work with that.

2. Then you need to consider your strategy and write your marketing message. Focus on being clear and direct. Target the message to the specific customer group you have defined.
   Identify what the product does, use your product differentiation strategy to communicate your product’s uniqueness and competitive advantage early on in the messaging, and explain how those strategies and advantages benefit and impact your audience – make sure your potential customers understand the benefit to them. Make your call to action very clear (I like to put it in the top third and the bottom third of the piece; repetition is okay). Be creative.

   
   For example, if you are doing a small postcard marketing campaign, do a little bit of research on your audience and personalize the handwritten message:
   "Dear Robert: Just read about your sale of your existing building in the local paper. Congratulations on the sale and on your expansion. My company, ABC Movers, specializes in moving manufacturing operations. We’ve successfully moved XYZ and VUW companies in the last 4 months. We’d like to help you move your facility. Please call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx and I’ll arrange to come by for a quote. Thanks, Sam"

3. And then, you need to consider your audience:

• You will need a contact mail list of existing and prospective customers. (Remember to use your target marketing techniques to develop this list.)
• You can buy these lists; but make sure that the list meets your direct mail campaign criteria – you want to have your mail go to qualified leads.
• You can develop these lists on your own: ask your suppliers to share information; go through the business directories at the public library; go through the yellow pages or online directories; go through your customer lists (also include customers who've been 'lost' , that is those customers who have gone elsewhere); and more.

4. Deliver your marketing message through a measurable direct mail marketing program and always do a test of a smaller sample size of your target direct mail list before you release it to the whole list.
   Your purpose in testing is to make sure the message is understood and actionable. If you have no/low response in the test; adapt the message content and re-test. When you are satisfied with the response rate (don’t expect unrealistic numbers like 60% and higher – if you get those kind of rates let me know how you did it), release the direct mail marketing piece (perhaps a postcard marketing campaign) to the whole mail list.

Building a direct marketing campaign is not easy.

It does require a marketing research plan; a clear, actionable marketing message; putting measurements and test programs into place; developing contact lists; following up on the campaign; and then when one campaign is complete, another one needs to begin.

Consider the advantages of outsourcing direct marketing services to help you with your direct mail marketing programs (advantages include not only someone else doing the 'heavy lifting' of this work; but also experienced marketers will look to constantly improve your response rates and programs. For more information or a quote for your specific project, use the Contact Us form.

Return From Direct Marketing Campaign to Definition of Marketing.

Or Return From Direct Marketing Campaign to More For Small Business.