Direct Response Advertising

Life Cycle Values
You also need to read our section about the Life Cycle Values of a client. This will enable you to qualify your spend on advertising. (Please read this information first and then return to this section).

The main purpose of an Objective Marketing direct response advertising campaign is to produce a clear response; calls, clicks and sales!

The type of response may vary depending on what type of business you are in, and your overall marketing strategy.  You may want the response to be an immediate sale, or you may want the response to be someone to contact you to ask for a catalogue, brochure or go to your web site.

Direct Response Advertising is immediate and you can instantly tell whether it is working. It either produces a result or it doesn’t.  One of the reasons that small business advertising does not work is that it’s a combination of highly ineffective brand advertising and poor sales messages that do not encourage a direct response.

The art of good marketing is summed up in three words - test - test - test! It is imperative that you test and measure all of your advertising.

You need to know how many people responded, and how many of them converted to sales, and what that is worth to you.  Then you need to compare that figure to the cost of the ad, and then you can immediately work out how profitable the ad was, or whether you should stop running it.

Know what your response rate is
So many businesses allocate a certain amount of money to an advertising budget, spend the money every year… and they’ve only got a vague sense of whether the ads are working or not. We hear this scenario almost daily.

If your ads are working, you may want to roll them out on a large scale.  If they are not, you want to stop and use your money on a whole selection of other marketing strategies that can bring you a better return on your investment.  You’ll find much information on these strategies contained within the pages of this web site.

You will obviously need some sort of system for asking people who contact you for the first time where they heard about you. Implement a system where you ask this every time and record it.  If you are a larger business, you may even want to set up a separate ‘phone line with a dedicated number that only appears in your ad.  This will ensure that you can clearly identify when people are responding to your advertising.

Landing Page
If you are directing people to your web site, you need to set up a landing page.  We discuss this in depth elsewhere.  This will ensure that you can clearly identify when people are responding to your advertising.

Radio & TV Advertising is High Risk
One of the reasons that Radio and TV Advertising can be so high risk, is that it’s very difficult to test on a small scale.  You should never invest in Radio or TV Advertising unless it’s money you can afford to lose.

Headline & Ad Design and Presentation
At Objective Marketing, we create the most important part of your ad “Your Headline”.  This headline needs to grab people’s attention - it must be punchy and it’s about your readers and not about you.  Furthermore, the design of the ad is paramount in reflecting your branding, style and buyer confidence.

We hope you found this information useful. We would like to remind you that this subject is best served, and more effective as part of a complete marketing plan or strategy, rather than in isolation. For further expert advice please contact us to discuss your requirements or post a question in our blog. 

Be Seen, Be Found, Be Accessible, Be Successful!