Direct marketing is making direct contact with a specific audience to promote your products or services. It can be executed through various channels, including direct mail, email marketing, and telemarketing. Unlike indirect marketing, which includes billboards and social media posts, direct marketing lets you target a specific audience with a personalized message.
It’s a cost-effective and efficient way to generate sales and spread brand awareness to people who have a higher chance of purchasing from your business. A key factor in direct marketing is the “call to action,” also known as CTA. While indirect marketing mediums like billboards can promote a brand or product, they lack a CTA, which more often than not results in the viewer unable to act upon the promotion and forget all about it shortly thereafter.
Direct marketing allows a business to generate a response from a target audience, which lets businesses of all sizes focus their marketing budget and resources where they’re most likely to get results. Also, results are much easier to measure than indirect. Businesses can use analytics to track how many customers have responded through a message’s call-to-action. From there they can optimize the message and audience even further according to what has the best interaction rate. The following are 3 of the most popular types of direct marketing outlets used to obtain customers and boost sales.
Direct Mail Marketing
Direct mail is physical advertising material sent directly to a mailing address and is one of the most successful forms of direct marketing. According to statistics by DMR, 39% of customers say they try a business for the first time because of direct mail advertising. Direct mail can be sent in many different formats including envelopes, postcards, catalogs, brochures, and packages. Tracking a direct mail campaign is easy. You can implement a tracking phone number, landing page, coupons, or simply ask the customer to bring in the mail piece to your brick-and-mortar store. Make sure you know who you want to target and make sure to use a targeted mailing list. If you don’t have an in-house list, list companies (like us) can help you. We have the ability to build custom targeted mailing lists based on demographics, geographic data, interests, income, and much more.
Email Marketing
Email marketing has become a very popular direct marketing medium recently and is often the most effective. Email marketing involves businesses reaching out to their target audience via email. These emails usually consist of news and information about the brand’s products or services with contact information. Email marketing is a great way to reach customers, find new prospects, and make sales. According to research by the Data & Marketing Association, email marketing yields a 4,300% return on investment for businesses in the US. Email marketing can be beneficial to a variety of businesses. It’s low costing and responses can be generated quickly. With email marketing, businesses can easily reach target markets without the need for large quantities of print space or high production costs. US Data Corporation can help both new and established businesses with email marketing by providing email lists of your target audience and an email sending service that does not end up in junk inboxes.
Telemarketing
Telemarketing used to be the most effective form of direct marketing, back before TVs had color, but it has since been surpassed by email marketing and direct mail marketing. That being said, telemarketing can still bring in a handsome return on investment. With a targeted telemarketing list (that we can provide) and the right phone script, spoken by a real human being, of course, telemarketing can set appointments, sell products, and schedule services.
Conclusion
A direct marketing campaign with a clear CTA can help you boost your sales to existing customers, increase brand loyalty, and generate new prospects. It offers great potential for increasing any business’s revenue by allowing access to a precisely-targeted audience. Whether you’re targeting businesses or consumers, direct marketing can work for you, and we can help. Get started on your direct marketing campaign today.