Business memo. What is direct marketing and how to apply it in sales

29.12.2022 15:05

Author and content analyst on trade automation

Direct, or direct, marketing is a tool in trade when a company or brand interacts with a customer directly: the target audience receives information about the product, goods or services directly - without intermediaries. Forms of personal interaction can be: e-mail, SMS, direct sale, call, personal discount. What are the types of direct marketing and how is it used in business?

The essence and purpose of direct marketing

The main goal of direct marketing is to elicit an immediate response from consumers in order to stimulate sales and find potential buyers. This method allows you to attract customers without traditional and rather expensive media channels such as television.

To succeed, entrepreneurs should know which types of direct marketing are best suited to their product promotion strategy and how to implement them.

Types of direct marketing

There are many direct marketing methods, each of which has its own characteristics. Choose the one that meets the needs of your business.

Printed advertising products: brochures, catalogs, flyers

Direct marketing with brochures is a traditional way of promoting products and informing customers about changes in the store's assortment. Brochures usually contain images and information to advertise a certain type of product or group of products.

Product catalogs are a popular direct marketing tool, especially among retail stores. Catalogs contain information about the full range of products or services, structured by sections. Customers can slowly choose products from printed catalogs and then order them on the website.

Flyers or leaflets are a cost-effective way to inform and interact with a large number of potential consumers. They can be distributed at specialized events, in public places. Surprisingly enough, sending flyers by mail is also still a workable option. Flyers work well to increase brand awareness in a particular region, area or among a group of people.

You can use flyers for individual products or to drive customers to your store website. Common reasons for using flyers are store or department openings, company events, new product launches, etc.

E-mail marketing

Email newsletters are used to attract different groups of customers. Mass mailings are easy to set up, automate and personalize. Compared to other types of direct marketing, email is an inexpensive way to reach a large number of customers.

Statistics in the field of email marketing

According to the American consulting agency HubSpot:

There are 4 billion registered daily email users in the US.
Smartphone users prefer to receive information about brands by email.
Email testing leads to higher ROI.
87% of retail marketers use automation for email marketing setups - HubSpot Blog Research, 2021.
Email open rates will be higher if you send no more than five newsletters per week - a study by GetResponse, an American online marketing software company, 2020.
Almost 22% of all email messages are opened within the first hour after sending, - GetResponse, 2020.
15.8% of all emails disappear or get caught in popular spam filters - Email Tool Tester, 2022, an email marketing services company.
59% of respondents say marketing emails have influenced their purchases - research by UK marketing consultancy Salecycle, 2022.

Phone Calls

Phone calls can work to attract customers who are not familiar with your store. The announcement and sale of goods is sometimes carried out by means of cold calls - when the manager calls the customer himself. However, this method of contact often distracts and annoys people. Therefore, instead of cold calls, use warm calls - when the client has already left his contact number and is interested in your offer. Optimally - leave a message with advertising information in Viber or Telegram.

Increasingly, companies are turning to voice bots, which in certain situations can replace contact center employees and answer common customer questions. For example, tell about current promotions in the store, terms of purchase, help the customer place an order, etc.

You can also call customers after making a purchase to find out their impressions of the service and contact with the store. However, use this method of direct sales wisely - too many calls from your store will annoy customers.

Phone calls are also used to quickly resolve customer issues when they send a request through the "Call me back" form on your website or chatbot.

Advantages and disadvantages of direct marketing

+ Attracts the attention of potential customers.

+ Allows you to send personalized content: the seller focuses on the needs and desires of a particular client.

+ The seller informs the consumer about the product or service.

+ The seller builds a long-term relationship with the client based on personal liking and expertise.

+ Easy to evaluate and analyze the number of orders placed.

- Low conversion rate with the wrong selection of the customer base.

- Success often depends on competent communication, professionalism and personal qualities of sellers.

Direct marketing vs. indirect marketing

Direct marketing involves direct communication with customers, usually through personal interaction between the manager and the buyer. Indirect marketing uses indirect means to attract users, such as TV advertising, video advertising, content marketing, or print advertising.

Direct marketing is targeted, specific, and measurable. Indirect marketing focuses more on building brand awareness and the return on investment may be less quantifiable.

Direct marketing in social networks

Users can communicate with the company in different ways in different sales channels - on the website, in social networks, messengers, etc. Depending on this, direct and indirect contacts are distinguished. Indirect contacts in social networks involve independent ordering by the client when he views an advertisement or post and decides to make a purchase without the help of a manager.

Direct marketing campaigns in social networks, on the contrary, aim to help the customer to make a purchase when he finds the desired product on the page in the social network, but before placing an order, he calls the contact center and finds out what worries him. Then a manager intervenes in the process and accompanies this client until the purchase is made.

You can include in your direct marketing strategies sending private messages to interested buyers - those who have already made purchases, or who have left their contacts without deciding to order.

Thus, social networks can be a tool for both direct and indirect marketing.

Success factors of direct marketing campaigns

To begin with, you should determine what types of interaction will suit your product and customers. However, you should not focus on any one tool - test different ways and analyze their results.

To use all the possibilities of direct marketing, we advise you to follow the recommendations:

Choose the right time to send messages. For example, if you sell snowboards, then start "warming up" customers with advertising messages at least a month and a half before the start of the active winter season.
Create messages based on the needs of consumers. Listen to the problems and desires of the audience - read thematic telegram chats, forums, comments on Facebook. Make portraits of customers using various marketing tools. After that, you will be able to form databases for sending messages.
Combine available communication channels. They should be convenient and familiar to your audience. If your customers are young people under 25, then you can not do without social networks TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. to promote your products.
Make a conversation plan and prepare your salespeople to work with objections. This will help them to build a competent dialogue, get out of a difficult situation and smoothly lead to a purchase.
Save money and time by avoiding sending messages to people who are not your target audience.
Record every contact with the customer and work on mistakes. If you have IP-telephony - listen to how sellers communicate. Compare which way of direct selling brings more customers and money.

Components of successful direct selling campaigns

The main components of successful direct marketing campaigns are: offer, list, creative, call to action and results analysis. For a campaign to be successful, include all five elements.

The offer is what you give your customers in exchange for their attention: a discount, coupons or promo codes for a free item, a product test drive, etc.

A list is a customer base to which you send your offer. Test mailings to different customer bases, then analyze the results and record them in CRM. If possible, set customer statuses: "cold", "will call back", "interested", etc.

Creative approach is the way your potential customers will receive the offer: email, postcard, printed catalog or SMS. Brainstorm within the company on how best to frame the message - what problem your product will solve and how best to tell the target audience about it to sell it.

A call to action is a form that will tell your customers how to take advantage of the offer. The call should be clear and concise, not too expressive. It is usually placed at the end of the message in the form of a clickable link or button, for example:

More products on the site
Visit the store
Call us back to find out more information about the product
Subscribe to the newsletter and get a 25% discount
Use a promo code for a discount

Results analysis is the process of measuring the success of direct response campaigns. Each campaign should be analyzed in special programs. For example, the accounting program Torgsoft will help to measure the results of the campaign, find out how many sales were made, how managers accompanied the leads, form a customer base by interests and conduct mass mailing.

Steps to implement a direct marketing campaign

Identifying the target audience through market research and analytics.
Segmentation of customers and choosing the best method of influence and communication. It can be a combination of different direct marketing tools: targeted emailing, telemarketing, distribution of leaflets, launching advertising on television or the Internet.
Subscriber segmentation is an email marketing strategy that always works.
Creating a message and template for mailing. In particular, in the Commerce software you can create an unlimited number of templates with prepared messages and design.
Tracking the results and adjusting them.

What do you need to make a mass mailing?

The program for sending SMS messages - Tradeoft Ultra or Terminal,
Additional option "Mass mailing",
Agreement with the Turbosms or AlphaSMS mailing service.

Additional useful features of TradeSoft for mass mailing

CRM-system for categorizing the customer base, working with upsells.

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