What Is Direct Response Marketing?

Since even a mature business like advertising is not clearly understood by many of its practitioners you can hardly be surprised that few understand what direct marketing is.

Indeed, whilst preparing this article, I saw that, in a survey of 133 leading American direct marketers, no clear agreement on what the business is emerged.

When the phrase direct marketing comes up, most people, in my experience, immediately think of the medium of direct mail.

Others think of direct marketing as a method of selling, like off -the-page selling.

Others confuse it with a channel of distribution, like mail order.

Producing a definition as simple as ‘Salesmanship in print’ for advertising proved an insuperable task for the industry’s pundits. So much so that (in what I can only assume was a moment of despair) Direct Marketing magazine – then the industry’s leading American organ – summoned not one, but three experts to do so.

The result of their labours was placed at the beginning of every issue of the magazine.

It occupied two half pages, featuring one of those gloriously complicated flow charts which always throw me into a state of utter confusion.

You may consider the need for a simple definition unimportant; indeed, few people using direct marketing bother to speculate on what it really is.

But I consider it crucial.

Imagine spending millions of pounds without clearly understanding what you are spending them on.

Not an imaginary scenario, I assure you.

In fact, not long ago, I recall a debate taking place with a leading automobile company, which we shall call Ford for the sake of argument, covering many countries and multifarious marketing problems.

Was direct marketing an advertising activity?

In that case the people in charge of advertising should make the decision.

Was it ‘below the line’? In which case that company’s policy meant that a different department, usually concerned with purchasing everything down to stationery, would deal with it.

I will not go into detail, save to say that in the end different decisions were made in different countries for different reasons – most to do with these varying views of direct marketing.

This is obviously stupid.

And it is not likely to become any more intelligent if everybody involved has to understand and memorise a long, illustrated definition before they start work.

Moreover, the pool of understanding has been muddied further by the fact that many practitioners are not even agreed that direct marketing ought to be called direct marketing.

As a result, combined with the desire to give brand names to particular companies’ approaches to the business, all sorts of names have cropped up: terms such as ‘curriculum marketing’, ‘dialogue marketing’, ‘personal marketing’, ‘database marketing’ and – currently the most fashionable one – ‘customer relationship marketing’.

But the most common term remains direct marketing.

It is certainly the one I propose to stick to.

Nevertheless, these terms do reveal important facts about the nature of the business.

Certainly direct marketing revolves around the building and exploitation of a database – though there is more to it than that.

Equally, building a relationship is one of our objectives – but only one.

The approach is personal; and in the process of building  a relationship, you can guide your prospect through a curriculum whereby you learn more about them and they learn more about you.

But my simple definition of direct marketing is: ‘any advertising activity which creates and exploits a direct relationship between you and your prospect or customer as an individual’.

If you and I can agree that we ought to call direct marketing ‘direct marketing’, and you accept my simple definition, then you will immediately appreciate that a wide range of activities is encompassed.

I am sure you have been stopped by people standing on street corners with questionnaires bearing such inane queries as: ‘Are you able to save as much money as you’d like?’ If you are not careful, these will lead to a visit from an insurance salesman.

Clearly these people are engaged in direct marketing: they are making a direct contact and trying to initiate a relationship with you as an individual.

In the same way, somebody who offers you a leaflet inviting you to go into your local hamburger joint and win a prize; or the ad for the introduction agency offering love everlasting; the note in the shop window selling a used ghetto blaster; the ad suggesting you apply for shares in British Telecom; the leaflet coming through your door in praise of your local Conservative Party candidate – they’re all direct marketing.

In fact the most popular section in many papers – the classified section – is nothing but direct marketing.

And almost everything that happens on the internet involves direct marketing.

Perhaps it is worth stating here what I believe to be the differences between direct marketing and some of the other communications tools. (This is not made any easier by the fact that in the case of sales promotion, people are no more agreed about what they do than are direct marketers.)

How Does Direct Marketing Differ From Other Disciplines Like Advertising?

• Advertising usually speaks to people en masse, not as individuals. Although today the vast majority of ads do allow people to respond, especially by going to a website, advertising does not usually aim above all for an immediate response. It seeks  to influence customers so that they choose your brand when they reach the point of decision – the shop, for instance.
• Sales promotion is normally designed to get action at the point of sale. Often it uses the same methods as direct marketing. It can also generate lists. But rarely is there a continuing effort to build a lasting relationship with  respondents by exploiting the full possibilities of a database.
• Public relations employs media controlled by others to create a favourable climate of opinion. It too can create a database, for instance of replies to editorials, which are usually of very good quality.
• Packaging protects and draws attention to the product. It can also strengthen people’s belief in your product, reassure them, make offers, and collect names cheaply for the database.
• Experiential marketing, a fashionable new name for what used to be called events, certainly creates opportunities for building relationships, although few are doing this with it. Certainly practitioners in all disciplines are  increasingly aware of the potential of the direct relationship, but very few appreciate its full possibilities.

The above is an excerpt taken from Drayton Bird’s book, ‘Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing’.

To discover how direct and digital marketing can — and most probably will — make a difference to your business, click here.

Best,
Rezbi
www.directmarketingcourse.com
www.hotbuttoncopywriting.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com

P.S. I just found a great article by Seth Godin where he also talks about the difference between direct marketing vs. mass market thinking. You can read that article here.