An Introduction To Direct Marketing

What is Direct Marketing?

Direct marketing is a type of advertisement to reach customers directly and demolish all the channels and intermediaries in between. It is used to promote specific products, discounts and other sales vehicles suitably crafted to meet customer’s needs. This concept is implemented through plethora of techniques. In today’s world with constant proliferation of mobiles, emails and social media; new avenues are opened which further broadened the implementation techniques.

Direct marketing is very popular in today’s world and practiced across different industry verticals and from the smallest start-up to the top tier business houses. Direct advertising campaign can prove lucrative provided it’s well conceived and executed. The critical aspect of direct marketing is emotional quotient attached to sales and getting customer feedback directly. The tangible output and direct impact to sales and customer behavior are key elements fueling Direct Marketing’s increasing popularity.

Some of the immensely popular methods and schemes of Direct Marketing are given below

-E-Mail marketing: It’s an email that reaches to the customer’s inbox with the message addressing the customer directly. The most common reason for its immense popularity is being low on cost and also has the highest chance to get feedback.

-Telemarketing: Another way to reach out where the customer service wing of the business unit calls up the customers directly and explains the product, sales, discounts etc. to entice the customer to buy the product and increase the propensity of sales.

-Broadcasting: This is less popular in recent days but was used profusely in yesteryears where a mass email or fax was sent to many unnamed recipients in a single go. It lost its charm as other avenues gained prominence and there were some law infringements to stop this behavior of mass advertising in US.

-Insert media: In this direct marketing, marketing materials are inserted into other communications, such as newspapers, magazines or packages. Several promotional offers are sent to consumers via a single envelope through US mail.

-Mobile: Direct marketing via mobiles reaches the customers through SMS and MMS. There are other interactive methods of connecting them, and there are features like push notifications for alert and automatic updates to customers for a specific sales or promotion.

-Couponing: Couponing is a popular technique to exploit the reader communities to excite and convert them into potential buyers. Coupons are of both types print as well as digital.

Conclusion

The bottom-line of any business is sales. Marketing departments always look for different ways to connect to customers to increase the reach. Direct marketing is a way to build relationship with customers. This new style of interactive marketing has brought significant changes in the communication process between producers and consumers helping business houses to improve sales.

This article has been compiled by sam g, who is an educational instructor.