How A Direct Response Marketing Campaign Can Help Grow Your Business
A direct response campaign is a commercial message that solicits an action from the consumer – the difference between a standard branding campaign and a direct response campaign is that there is always a call to action for the audience to take action in one way or another imminently. The advantage of using this method is that it can bypass the traditional method of selling to consumers using traditional channels such as retail or a direct number to call.
The Direct Response Business Model
There are some categories of business that do not have a business model based on retail or a phone number, and as such a direct response campaign of this sort can help these business' to engage with their customers better such as contests, feedback or product promotion.
A DRTV marketing agency can help establish this model, but it does not always guarantee a return on investment simply because there are always elements that affect appeal although a strong point of direct response is the immediate read on results.
A large focus of the service is tracking results of media events, TV spots, print ads, online presence – and tracking the call to action that prompted an online sale, a form on a website or retail purchase. This allows to lower the overhead of methods on the advertiser prior to finding out if there techniques are effective or not.
Testing Your DRTV Campaign
A typical direct response test campaign is typically not longer than 2 weeks and so the financial outlay is much shorter than a branding campaign which may last 6 or 13 weeks to gauge the effectiveness of the campaign. What is DRTV?
Examples of base tracking metrics measured include:
- Website visits and phone calls
- Website visit time and phone call time
- Orders purchased of dropped
- Were the up-sells offered followed though
Effectively, tracking if the response from the market being monitored is initiating the reaction from the customer that is expected.
Information technology has had a profound impact on minimizing the time between a customers retail purchase and the time it takes to receive that information to analyze – it is now real-time which allows campaign managers to monitor and analyze statistics from retail outlet in conjunction with secondary and tertiary information sources – web, call-centers – to cross reference and adjust marketing strategies accordingly.
DRTV Campaign Management Effectiveness
There are instances where a direct response marketing campaign may not work for your particular brand – in instances where brand awareness is high or it is a low-value item, the branding campaign may work better with a traditional approach. Although there are promotional initiatives which will work well for lead generation to track contests for deeper customer engagement and crossed-over to CRM's (customer relations management) to further brand development.
With the ever-changing marketplace, due primary to the rise of the internet over the last few decades, the order-focus from 100% phone orders 20 years ago, to a dramatic shift within the range of about 50%/50% between phone and internet, some niche markets now forgo the phone order system all together and focus solely on the internet.
The current outlook for the future includes balancing all data-points accurately and determining the correct metrics to utilize, as many business' web presence is a solid starting point to relay back to other media events and cross-reference.
A direct response campaign can help marketers identify weaker areas of their campaigns, and focus in on stronger points to drive consumers with a stronger return on investment (ROI) – it may be harder for some brands to implement these direct response elements, although with the right management the insights gained can help marketers gain a better understanding of their customers, and their needs.
For more information, visit our DRTV Campaign Management service.