Marketing Management

Direct Marketing (I)

What is the Direct Marketing? What is the advantage of direct marketing versus traditional mass media advertising?

Posted: Jun 2011

Direct marketing is a sales method where advertisers approach potential customers directly with advertisement, products or services. The most usual methods of direct marketing are telephone sales ( tel-sell ), solicited or unsolicited emails, catalogs, leaflets, brochures, direct visits etc.

Direct Advertising is a sub-niche of the marketing. There are two main differences that distinguish it from other types of marketing. The first characteristic of direct marketing is that the message is sent directly to consumers, without use of intermediate communication media and mass media campaign. The second characteristic is "call to action" principle of communication.

For many companies the traditional forms of advertising through mass media such as radio, newspapers, television, etc. may not be the best use of their promo budgets. Simply, the targeted population is too small comparing the cost of advertising on mass media. For example, advertising of professional fishing equipment would be too expensive, since mass media advertising is too expensive for such a small niche. Direct marketing is more suitable for such product.

Direct marketing is attractive to many companies since the campaign effect can be measured directly. For example, if a marketer sends out 10,000 messages by mail and 500 respond to the promotion, the company easily calculates that campaign gave 5% response rate.

On the other hand, the measurement of other media ( TV, Radio ) must often be indirect, since there is no measurable calculation of message recipients. Measurement of results is a key element of successful direct marketing.

Direct marketing does have some negative aspects as well. The personal information obtained by advertisers and used for the campaign can cause anger and negative response by the people contacted through direct marketing contact.

Direct marketing is practiced by businesses of all sizes - from the smallest start-up company to the multinational corporations. The decision of using of direct marketing approach is not related to the size of the company. If the niche of targeted population is too small, the direct marketing may pay off more than large scale advertising campaign.

The Direct Marketing practice of delivering promotional messages directly to potential customers on an individual basis is the opportunity for the company to target the specific group of potential customers.