When most business owners decide to start looking at marketing and say to themselves "hey, let's get some customers", usually the first place they go is to a traditional marketing consultancy.
The sad truth is most business owners are sold on the marketing strategies and media they use by default - meaning they drift into a strategy or a medium almost by accident rather than as a logically thought out and considered step in a sound marketing strategy. As often as not they'll choose a marketing vehicle simply because the Yellow Pages rep happened to knock on the door that week, or a magazine or local paper made a well-timed cold call.
And with most agencies the person who handles your advertisement is an account manager and not a marketing person at all. That means salesman; and the first question they'll ask you is how much money you've got in your budget. Because they're selling media and it's obviously in their interests to sell as much of the expensive media they can, isn't it?
So what they do is pick the most expensive media fitting into your budget and then create the marketing around that. As often as not it will be your name and logo followed by a list of things you do, and ending with a "here's our number, and if there's anything we can help you with, please give us a call". This is bad marketing and the most expensive you can ever do no matter how cheap it seems - because it won't bring you any business. That means image marketing is a COST.
With direct response marketing the idea is to get away from selling a nebulous, uninteresting, unspecific and uninteresting image, and start selling the specific benefits of you, your business, and your products and services.
So, with direct response marketing you're telling people what you're about. Your Unique Selling Proposition. You absolutely need a strong USP; otherwise, no matter where you advertise or how "clever" or "creative" your advertisements are, why would anyone want to buy from you rather than the competition? And not only do you need your USP, you also need to weave it into an irresistible and specific offer, an offer that your people would be completely stark-raving mad not to take advantage of.
As you can see, unlike "image" marketing, direct response marketing is an INVESTMENT because it necessarily involves putting very SPECIFIC offers out there into the market and then measuring response with careful testing and tracking, which means over time it brings you a positive Return On Investment (ROI) and so is an INVESTMENT.
This is why savvy business owners and entrepreneurs queue up to pay copywriters and top direct marketing consultants large sums to create killer materials; and it's also why short-sighted business owners and entrepreneurs steeped in the scarcity and poverty mindset don't. You can guess which ones are the most successful, can't you?
The sad truth is most business owners are sold on the marketing strategies and media they use by default - meaning they drift into a strategy or a medium almost by accident rather than as a logically thought out and considered step in a sound marketing strategy. As often as not they'll choose a marketing vehicle simply because the Yellow Pages rep happened to knock on the door that week, or a magazine or local paper made a well-timed cold call.
And with most agencies the person who handles your advertisement is an account manager and not a marketing person at all. That means salesman; and the first question they'll ask you is how much money you've got in your budget. Because they're selling media and it's obviously in their interests to sell as much of the expensive media they can, isn't it?
So what they do is pick the most expensive media fitting into your budget and then create the marketing around that. As often as not it will be your name and logo followed by a list of things you do, and ending with a "here's our number, and if there's anything we can help you with, please give us a call". This is bad marketing and the most expensive you can ever do no matter how cheap it seems - because it won't bring you any business. That means image marketing is a COST.
With direct response marketing the idea is to get away from selling a nebulous, uninteresting, unspecific and uninteresting image, and start selling the specific benefits of you, your business, and your products and services.
So, with direct response marketing you're telling people what you're about. Your Unique Selling Proposition. You absolutely need a strong USP; otherwise, no matter where you advertise or how "clever" or "creative" your advertisements are, why would anyone want to buy from you rather than the competition? And not only do you need your USP, you also need to weave it into an irresistible and specific offer, an offer that your people would be completely stark-raving mad not to take advantage of.
As you can see, unlike "image" marketing, direct response marketing is an INVESTMENT because it necessarily involves putting very SPECIFIC offers out there into the market and then measuring response with careful testing and tracking, which means over time it brings you a positive Return On Investment (ROI) and so is an INVESTMENT.
This is why savvy business owners and entrepreneurs queue up to pay copywriters and top direct marketing consultants large sums to create killer materials; and it's also why short-sighted business owners and entrepreneurs steeped in the scarcity and poverty mindset don't. You can guess which ones are the most successful, can't you?
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