What Is Direct Marketing?

All about Digital Marketing

Simply put direct marketing is a personal way of branding. With modernisation, traditional direct mail has now lost its space. Modern and digital advertising techniques have taken over. Modern marketing techniques do not rule out tangible mails sent through direct marketing campaigns.

If done right, direct marketing campaigns help in the effective promotion of a brand, besides creating a memorable impact on the customer’s mind. A customer receiving a personalised event invitation in a brochure or a coupon in the mail feels valued rather than just being informed about a new event.

Companies need to assess the target market intricately to understand their audience reach effectively with direct marketing. Merely investing in extensive social media marketing campaigns and billboards do not help for the 360-degree approach.

How does it Work?

Direct marketing is a form of the advertising campaign that prioritises the attempts to trigger results from the target market. It does not have to be expensive contests, giveaways, and campaigns. It can be a form on a landing page requesting the customer to fill out some details about the brand.

The primary advantage of direct marketing is the option to manifest it in several formats. You can do direct marketing via physical mail, email, telemarketing, or POS. For example, a brand offering a discount in the online store informs its registered users via physical mail. When applied while checking out, the information sent out contains the secret code that can be used to access the discount. It becomes easy for your organisation to track the number of people using the physical mail information by way of a pixel or a cookie.

Direct marketing creates two-way communication. Advertisers tend to create dialogues between the organisation, brand, and the customer. This form of marketing also maintains the relationship between the organisation and the customer for a long time.

Besides customers, organisations prefer offering individualised discounts to clients via direct marketing. It further helps in client retention. The base of direct marketing relies on databases created with detailed information about each client or lead generated. The organisation uses the information, with the help of a marketing agency or a marketing team, and further carries out promotions.

Mediums of Direct Marketing

1. Digital Marketing

Investments in online advertising have increased and beat records of those using television advertisements. Today the most popular method of digital marketing is the use of social ads.

Social ads make way via custom audiences. The social networks created by the organisation help them build personalised campaigns and upload the databases into social networks.

2. Kiosk Marketing

Companies make use of public areas that attract crowds and are full of opportunities. It helps brands gain attention from the unknown audience and grow business.

3. Catalogue Marketing

The use of a catalogue has been in practice since time immemorial. Physical records have now migrated to the internet, and today digital catalogues have taken over. The best way to send catalogues is via email.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing uses reminders, offers, advertisements, and a plethora of other types of messages informing the customer of ongoing offers, events, and new products or services. With email marketing companies make use of those customers whose data is present in the company’s database.

5. Direct Marketing With Leaflets

Physically handing out leaflets to the targeted audience invites potential customers to contact and make an informed purchase decision.

Kiosk marketing also includes leaflet handouts to encourage a positive environment and build prospective customers. Besides handing out company information, leaflets also contain coupon codes and discount offers redeemable up to a specific period. Such marketing tactics tend to entice the prospect and make a guaranteed purchase within a specified period.

6. Targeted Advertisement

With the advent of the internet, users’ activity is recorded in the form of a cookie. Advertisers use the user’s demographics and internet usage to showcase personalised ads directly on any website that the user visits.

The most common form of targeted advertisement is re-marketing. For example, a user visiting an e-commerce website did not purchase any product. The e-commerce website takes the demographics into account and starts showing up an online advertisement on every other website that the user visits.

7. Television Infomercials

Although the internet took over television advertisement way back, infomercials continue to be a successful direct marketing method, whether a national or a local channel, a massive section of the targeted audience relies on infomercials.

But before placing an advertisement on TV, it is crucial to consider the target audience based on young or old, and where they live. The infomercials on TV can also be categorised depending upon the time of the day.

Direct Marketing Strategies

1. Increase Customer Loyalty

The primary advantage of direct marketing is to interact directly with your customer. This provides an opportunity to build a good relationship with the existing as well as the potential customer. Combine direct marketing techniques with any of the customer retention strategies and build better customer relationships.

2. Power of the Internet

Gone are the days when direct marketing was limited to the offline world. Today online advertisements have taken over to a great extent. Besides online advertising, employ email retargeting, re-marketing Facebook, and Google ads to increase your target audience area and derive more results.

3. Use a 360-Degree Approach

When it comes to direct marketing, using a 360-degree approach will help harness the maximum direct marketing strategy. You should employ all available mediums of marketing to convey the ultimate message.

A 360-degree approach relies entirely on content used for communication. The content has to be improvised such that a leman is also capable of understanding.

4. Market Segmentation

In some cases, using the list of the targeted audience for promotional messages may be more helpful than sending a message to everyone.

A customer interested in your service will help turn the direct marketing strategy into a success. Collect information about your audience via a survey and monitor regular customer behaviour.

Advantages of Direct Marketing

There are multiple benefits derived from direct marketing, depending upon the goals of the user. A direct marketing strategy accompanied by appropriate content goes a long way.

1. Budgeted Marketing

Organisations get the benefit of targeting a particular demographic through budgeted marketing. This helps the business to set achievable sales goals. And these goals further improve the sales count and also formalise a tight marketing budget. This marketing technique also allows companies to run effective marketing campaigns at a fraction of a cost compared to broadcast promotions.  

2. Improve Customer Loyalty

One excellent advantage of direct marketing is building and maintaining relationships with prospective customers and already existing ones. Marketers benefit from personalising advertising messages and creating solid links with customers to strengthen existing connections.

The best way to begin direct marketing will be by combining customer loyalty programs with other direct marketing techniques. You can try by providing discount offers, birthday wishes, or inviting customers for sales events.

3. Boost Sales

Customers are ever ready to accept new businesses capable of understanding needs and building personal relationships. Direct marketing is a great way to boost sales, given that the scope of reaching out to the customer on an individual basis is way more than other marketing techniques.

Maintain customer records and combine them with effective marketing techniques for an effective output. Besides creating new relationships, focus on re-establishing connections with customers who have been loyal to you.

This way, you can understand why customers are moving on and what techniques you can use to rekindle the lost relationship.

Also read:

1) Digitalisation - The next step in the evolution of Digital India
2) Digitalisation in Business – How it Changed the Buyer-Seller Equation?
3) Which affordable digital marketing course is best for a startup and small business owners?
4) How Influencer Marketing Can Help Small Businesses?