Now is the time for the home health products industry to employ direct response marketing for their products and services. The reasons are simple: The media landscape is becoming increasingly fragmented – and it is therefore more challenging than ever before to successfully target your consumer through traditional methods. Secondly, increasing competition – and a tougher economy – mandates the need to go beyond conventional advertising to a form of marketing that is instantly accountable and measurable.
Accountability, combined with the ability to squarely target your consumer, are at the core of the direct marketing approach. Traditional advertising is delivered in mass media form, usually with the goal of generating awareness. This means a vast number of those in the audience are not prospects the campaign is trying to reach. Direct marketing allows you to identify your customers specifically, based on demographics, and target only them with your message.
Only via direct marketing can you build and mount a marketing campaign that actually pays for itself…Direct marketing empowers marketers to rapidly re-position their message to constantly maximize the campaign’s effectiveness…Plus, direct marketing helps companies generate a valuable consumer list for future product or service mailings.
Most important, the lifestyle category – where matters of home health reside – has emerged as the most potent force in direct marketing. Consumers are committed to feeling and looking better – and they rely increasingly on direct-marketed products to achieve these self-improvement goals.
Here is where direct response marketing’s singular ability to conduct product demonstrations, offer product endorsements and, finally, the ‘Call To Action’ come into play: Direct response marketing provides a vehicle that effectively showcases the product (Product Demonstrations); Direct response marketing then underscores how the product is used by people just like your targeted consumers (Product Endorsements); and, Direct response marketing creates the kind of compelling environment that paves the way to ‘close the sale (Call To Action).
There is an old ‘joke’ in traditional advertising – the advertiser knows that half of his budget is being wasted, but he doesn’t know which half. Direct response eliminates guessing. Marketers know in real time how their campaign is working – or not working.
While offering tremendous upside potential, direct marketing has to be done right. The right print, TV, radio or online campaign needs to be developed and produced. The right media needs to be purchased and managed. The right telemarketing organization needs to handle the inbound customer calls. Companies such as Warren Direct are able to take clients through the entire process of direct response marketing, making this form of marketing far more viable and affordable than piece-mealing out the campaign.
As with any advertising campaign, you begin at the beginning: Who is your target consumer? Where are they? What media do they use? The creative of the campaign can only be designed once there is a thorough understanding of the target consumer profile. Direct response campaigns need to speak their language. Indeed, copy is extremely important in direct response marketing. Not only the copy used for the TV spot or print ad, but the copy – or ‘script’ – used by the telemarketer as they interface with consumers.
Notice that the campaign’s copy will address head-on the aspirations of your targeted consumer. That’s why research into the needs of consumers is fundamental to the success of a direct response campaign. Traditional advertising can speak to a broad demographic – direct marketing speaks to your target customer. In addition to aspirations, you need to uncover your customer’s attitudes and motivations.
The message is everything – but it’s not the only thing. Fine-tuning your media plan is critical to success. Selecting the right medium for your message and negotiating the best possible rates are essential elements in the direct response process. It takes experience and expertise to properly manage the media mix.
Importantly, direct marketing offers the ability to test in the implementation stage. We start by implementing only a small portion of the campaign, or even try two or three different messages to see which resonate the best with the target audience. It is during the test phase where we make any necessary modifications prior to full implementation.
When you enter the world of direct marketing, you will be introduced to a whole new marketing language, such as the cost of customer acquisition. The “Allowable” is the amount you can spend in marketing to obtain a customer. The dynamics of determining the cost-per-customer of a campaign can be complicated depending on the extent of the campaign. Regardless of the amount, basing your marketing in terms of customer acquisition gives you the ability to expand or retract your direct efforts. This scalability will allow you to keep your marketing in line with the growth of your organization: so no matter how big or how small, your direct marketing efforts will always be adding value – yet another benefit to direct response.
Once the research is done, you’ve identified your targets, the vehicle is chosen and the offer is determined, you are ready to implement. Oftentimes, direct response campaigns require marketers to buy some sort of list. The lists can be as general as a list that includes all people who subscribe to a newspaper, or as specific as a list that includes people who tend to eat at the restaurants of the hotels in which they stay. The target you want to reach will determine what type of list you need. Good resources to find lists include your own database as well as list brokers that can help identify the right list for your marketing goals. A direct marketing agency would have access to any number of lists and might be helpful in locating very specialized targets.
For companies whose goal is simply to generate awareness, traditional advertising may be a better vehicle. However, if you need to drive measurable sales through your marketing efforts, direct response marketing is one of the most effective and affordable means available. In a climate where executives must account for every dollar of the marketing budget (and the “awareness” promised by traditional advertising is impossible to prove), the measurability provided by direct marketing is the most practical and effective choice. For those in the home health industry – direct marketing is the perfect approach to the health of your bottom line.
Leave a Reply