Fundamentals of Direct Marketing.

Posted by Puja Walia Mann on April 30, 2010

I. MEANING OF DIRECT MARKETING

Direct Marketing is the interactive use of advertising media, to stimulate and (immediate) behavior modification in such a way that this behavior can be tracked, recorded, analyzed, and stored on a database for future retrieval and use.” Direct marketing is a sub-discipline and type of marketing. There are two main definitional characteristics which distinguish it from other types of marketing. The first is that it attempts to send its messages directly to consumers, without the use of intervening media. The second characteristic is that it is focused on driving purchases that can be attributed to a specific “call-to-action.” This aspect of direct marketing involves an emphasis on trackable, measurable positive responses from consumers regardless of medium.

Direct Marketing (DM) is an interactive system of marketing that:

• Uses one or more advertising media to effect a measurable customer response
• Or transaction at any location
• And stores information about that event in a database.

Features of Direct marketing

¡                    Two way communication between customer or prospect and company.

¡                    Sometimes called interactive marketing.

¡                    No middle man.

¡                    Copy writer is the “sales person”.

¡                    Measurable, database always used.  Direct marketer always accountable.

IMPORTANCE OF DIRECT MARKETING

Ú     Many chain stores have dropped slow  moving specialty items , creating an opportunity for direct marketers to promote these items to interested buyers

Ú     The growth of the internet, e-mail, mobile phones and fax machine has made product selection and ordering much simpler.  or direct marketers to promote these items to interested buyers

THE BENEFITS OF DIRECT MARKETING TO CONSUMERS

Direct marketing benefits customers in many ways –

• It saves the time and introduce customers to a large selection of  merchandise. They can do comparative shopping by browsing through mails catalogs and online shopping services .they can order for goods.
• Business costumer also benefited by learning about available products & services without tying up time in meeting sales people.

THE BENEFITS OF DIRECT MARKETING TO SELLERS

• Sellers can buy a mailing list containing the names & addresses of almost groups-

- doctors

- engineers

- chief executives of companies.

they can built a continuous relationship with each customer .

SCOPE OF DIRECT MARKETING

.OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Research should focus on direct selling as a communication process. Hypotheses involving adapt ability, negotiation; listening, trust-building, and various rhetorical and  persuasive device could be tested in a direct selling setting.

TACTICAL PERSPECTIVE

Under what condition (e.g. products or services sold, market targeted, competitive conditions faced) are various tactical combinations most effective ?— telemarketing , catalogs, electron merchandising.

STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE

What about with direct selling in the future ?

Is direct selling emerging as the marketing strategy best suited to succeed with micro-market segmentation ?

OTHERS

• .Marketing revenues is probably significantly underestimated.
• There is a need for basis research on direct marketing.
• Sales people and consumers who purchase through direct
• selling.
• The motivations of direct salespeople and customers
• would appear to be a fertile area for research.
• International and Comparative Analyses of Direct marketing.

CONCLUSION

Direct marketing is the use of consumer direct channels to reach and deliver goods and services to consumers without using marketing middlemen. Direct marketing is one of the fastest growing avenues for serving customers. More and more business marketer  to direct marketing and telemarketing in response to high and increasing costs  of reaching business markets through a sales force.

Benefits and drawbacks

Measured directly

Direct marketing is attractive to many marketers, because in many cases its positive effect (but not negative results) can be measured directly. For example, if a marketer sends out one million solicitations by mail, and ten thousand customers can be tracked as having responded to the promotion, the marketer can say with some confidence that the campaign led directly to the responses. The number of recipients who are offended by the junk mail/spam, however, is not easily measured. By contrast, measurement of other media must often be indirect, since there is no direct response from a consumer.

Measurement of results

Measurement of results, a fundamental element in successful direct marketing, is explored in greater detail elsewhere in this article. Yet since the start of the Internet-age the challenges of Chief Marketing Executives (cmos) are tracking direct marketing responses and measuring results.

Privacy and environmental

Direct mail that is irrelevant to the recipient is considered junk mail, and unwanted email messages are considered spam. Some consumers are demanding an end to direct marketing for privacy and environmental reasons, which direct marketers, are able to provide by using “opt out” lists, variable printing and more targeted mailing lists.