Direct Marketing

Direct marketing

What is direct marketing?

The business of selling products or services directly for the public e.g. by mail, telephone or selling.

Direct mail is one of the most overlooked yet one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to dramatically increase the leads to your business.  The majority of advertising does not work, is not trackable, and is usually a waste of money.  Direct mail and direct marketing is trackable, inexpensive, and the results are easily measurable.  No matter what your business is, lead generation is vital.  Direct mail is a great way to have a predictable number of leads coming into your pipeline each and every week or month for a low cost.

Direct marketing gives you the opportunity to promote your products and services directly to the customers who most need them. A good direct marketing campaign will:

·         help you build relationships with new customers

·         test the appeal of your product or service

·         tell you which marketing approaches reach your target market

·         Increase sales.

Advantages of direct marketing?

-          The results are trackable

-          Businesses can quickly determine if this specific campaign they have created is successful

-          You are able to test consumer responses before launching a full, expensive campaign, this can save a business money

-          Brand loyalty can arise due to the fact that customers are frequently informed and they are aware of the businesses products, deals, price & offers. Customers feel valued, as they are being contacted and informed.

-          Direct marketing develops a personal relationship

-          Direct marketing allows customers to trust that business

-          Direct marketing overall allows a business to understand customer needs more.

Disadvantages?

-          Customers may get frustrated with the on- going, annoying junk mail; this could create a bad reputation for the business.

-          The distribution of flyers and street advertising if often prohibited by law in certain areas, this therefore limits the business from promoting and getting customers.

-          Time wasting going to door-to-door and extremely time consuming.

-           

Types of direct marketing: -

-          E-mail marketing

-          Door to door marketing

-          Catalogue and home shopping

-          SMS marketing

-          Field marketing

-          Mail marketing

Factors considered:

Cost

Businesses have too check if it’s affordable

Response rate

A business needs to be organized and has a plan of how they are going to keep track of the success of a campaign

Targeting

The business needs to be accurately target offers to consumers. It is important to know the target audience prior to composing the message you expect to dispatch to them. This is helpful when coming up with relevant information based on the needs that such people have. Business are then capable of actually being certain about deriving the most benefits if they come up with a catch message that will attract the target group.

Engagement

The business needs to consider the delivery mechanism for the offers and messages.

How successful is direct marketing?

It is quite successful using direct marketing because you can communicate

DIRECTLY with the chosen target market, this therefore should give a business a better sales success rate than communicating to the mass marketing, many of whom MAY not be interested in your products and services.

Direct marketing let’s a business adapt and respond quickly to the needs of the market, this therefore allows a business too achieve fast and flexible sales results.

Public Relations (PR)

Public relations, also re offered to in its abbreviated form PR, is a promotional tool that, like advertising, uses media and events to achieve a range of business objectives. These include:

• ·         To sell
• ·         To inform
• ·         To attract
• ·         To promote
• ·         To brand
• ·         To create, reinforce or change an image or public opinion. Although PR may have similar objectives to advertising, it works in a different way. The main difference is that, whilst advertising relies on communication through paid-for media space, PR is based on the use of editorial space and broadcast time that is not paid for directly like advertising. For example, when a business launches a new product it may send a press release about the product and a photograph to the newspapers and news programmes on the radio and television. The news media want to use the information provided by the business to report on the new product. The business hopes that it will generate awareness of the new product in a way that it is not obviously advertising and ultimately that consumers will buy the new product. The use of press release is just one of the tools that PR experts can use to create awareness without it appearing to be explicit advertising. PR techniques can be used for all kinds of promotion and publicity and include press and customer receptions, open days and publicity generating events.in addition to creating awareness, public relations can be used to change the image and perception of the product. Like advertising and other promotional tools, PR must be planned to be effective. Different PR techniques can be used, depending on the aims and objectives of the business. Most PR plans will have a primary aim, but may also have secondary aims

Advantages

Disadvantages

·         In addition, if it is a TV advertisement, it can reach an even greater audience and they will see the information which introduces your business on TV. ·         The second advantage of PR is a great appealing power and responses. The information, which the highly public mass communication picks up from a lot of information, becomes at a premium for the readers and audiences at that point. Therefore it is the greatest characteristic of PR to bring an effect which creates needs by shaking up the targeted consumers' minds, who receive the information. ·         The third advantage of PR is inexpensiveness of the cost. The cost to carry out the PR activity always occurs, but you can control the expense if you compare it to the other ways of advertising.

·         At first, PR is a very difficult discipline to understand conduct successfully. A strategy supported by the professional knowledge of the media will be needed if you want to get into the media where you can get high responses to your promotions. ·         Secondly, it is hard to predict the responses of the audience. However, the responses of the PR last around 3 days to 1 week at most. So then a business plan will be necessary that utilizes the media exposure well without getting influenced by the needs which temporally went up. ·         It draws the end users who have bad quality and you haven't had before into your business as your business is introduced in the media. Therefore the claims that your business never had before might take place or it often happens that the problem of the product is picked up on. The PR may end up with a result that gives the opposite effect, unless the management which involves the assessment of risks is done.

The different forms this type of promotion could take. The below image is of the different types of PR there is. For example news, social media, online marketing and so on.
In public relations it is important to identify:

• ·         Goals
• ·         Objectives
• ·         Strategies
• ·         Tactics

Another approach to public relations is to follow the R.O.P.E. process, there are four steps:

• ·         Research
• ·         Objectives
• ·         Programming
• ·         Evaluation

In the RESEARCH step of the process, identifying and learning about the client, problems and public's are essential.

The second step is the OBJECTIVES that must be made clear in order for a program to solve the problem.

The third step in the process is to implement a PROGRAM to accomplish the objectives.

The final step is the EVALUATION, which is mandatory to find out if the program worked and if the goals were reached.

Each step in the R.O.P.E. process may be altered depending on the publics, employees, customers, media, community and the shareholders.

Advertising

Advertising

What is advertising?

Advertising is a very popular method of promotion. Advertising refers to the use of any paid-for space or time in the media that is used to meet the aims and objectives of a business. Advertising can be used to achieve a range of objectives.

Advertising is designed to sell or to carry a message to an audience. It can be presented in many highly creative ways and can be seen in a range of different media.

Examples of advertising can be found:

• On television
• In newspapers and magazines
• In the street
• In shops and town centres.

Advantages:

• Gets details about products to consumers.
• Helps businesses stay ahead of the market.
• Lets consumers know all their different choices so they realise what is the best option for them.

Disadvantages:

• Creates competition.
• Creates problems for smaller businesses that don't have the necessary resources to advertise on larger scales.
• Can be deceiving to consumers.

The main types of media available to most marketing teams can be grouped as:

• Print, such as newspapers, magazines and posters.
• Audio, such as radio and recordings
• Moving image, including television or cinema
• Ambient media, a wide range of non-traditional media and branding opportunities
• New media, includes texts, SMS, screen pop-ups, and other web-based opportunities

Factors to consider when planning advertising:

Media profile:

• This is a description of the reading, viewing or listening market for a particular medium.
• The description will take the form of a geographic a d psychographic segmentation.
• When planning advertising for a product, it is important to match the profile of advertising media used as closely as possible to the profile of the target market for the product.
• If the profiles match, advertising is more likely to be successful.
• If the profiles do not match, the advertising may not achieve the marketing objectives.
• There will be a lot of wastage and expenses as a result of advertising to people that are not in the market for the product.

Example:

If a new computer game is advertised in a gamer’s magazine the profiles of the reader of the magazine and buyers of the game will be very close. If that same new game was advertised in a national daily newspaper, it may have the same number of games buyers among its readers, but the advertisement could be wasted on the majority of readers who are not in the market for computer games.

Coverage:

• This is the percentage of the target audience that will be reached by a particular advertisement.
• Coverage can be increased by repeat advertising because each time an advertisement is shown the individuals within the percentage that are exposed to the advertisement will be different.
• Another way of increasing coverage is to advertise across a mix of different media.

 Example:

A business may use television advertising to reach a mass audience and support the television advertising with posters. This mix will increase the exposure to heavy television viewers and also pick off the part of the target audience that does not watch much television.

Frequency:

• This refers to how often an advertisement appears.
• It may be once a month or once a week in newspapers and magazines or, in the case of television and radio advertising, the number of times during a day the advertisement is broadcast.
• It can also be used to describe how often an individual in the target audience is likely to see a particular advertisement during an advertising campaign.
• Advertising plans often compare the likely effects of short, high frequency campaigns with longer, low frequency advertising.
• The decision about which to choose will be a balance of the cost and the impact of both campaigns against the objectives for advertising in the first place. 

Timing:

• A business needs to consider when advertising will be launched to make sure that it makes a big impact and maximises its potential.
• When planning the advertising of a product that has a definite start date, such as the opening of a new film, the timing of the advertisement is vital.
• Starting too soon could mean that the target audience may be stimulated, but frustrated that it has to wait before the film is launched.
• Starting too late could mean that the advertising may not have a sufficient time to achieve full coverage of the target audience and will be wasted.
• It is important to plan the timing of advertising at the same time as other marketing plans to make sure that they co-ordinate and support each other.
• Equally, it is important to have to cut off date in advertising plans, to decide when not to advertise.

Reasons for stopping advertising may depend on:

• The budget
• The overall marketing plans, aims and objectives
• The product life cycle
• Seasonal factors

Example:

It would be a waste of money to continue advertising an old product that has been replaced by a newer version. Like production processes, advertising will be subject to lead times, the time it takes to produce the advertisement and book it into media ahead of a start date. The lead-time must be built into the marketing plan.

Appropriateness:

• It is important to consider how appropriate a particular medium is for the product being advertised. 
• A particular medium may appear to match the profile of the target market.
• Also may appear to be cost effective.
• However, if it is not appropriate the image and reputation of the product may be affected.
• A small classified advertisement in a magazine, that has the right profile for car buyers, may not be as appropriate for a new model as full-page advertisement in the same magazine.
• It is also important to consider what the audience can do as a result of seeing the advertisement.
• It would be no good advertising a direct sell product in a cinema where the audience will find it difficult to use their mobile phones to call and buy the product.
• In this case it would be better to advertise to people in their homes.
• Here they will have access to the telephone, light to see to dial and are less likely to disturb the rest of the audience.

Cost:

• All advertising costs money.
• Advertisers are likely to have a limited budget to spend on advertising.
• Balancing the two to get the most effective advertising out of a given budget is an important part of planning promotional activity.
• The cost of advertising can be divided into two areas.

The cost of production

• This is how much it costs to create and put together an advertisement before it can be used.
• At the one extreme is the cost of producing a television advertisement, which is likely to be many tens of thousands of pounds.
• This will include not just the creation of the ideas and concepts for the advertisement, but the writing of the script, the hiring of actors, production crew, the film studio and the skilled technicians that make the film.
• During an evening’s viewing of any commercial television channel there are many advertisements that vary in the cost of production, from lavish mini films with actors, through animated commercials to simple commercials that just show products on a simple set.
• The production of advertisements for other media is relatively less expensive as they require fewer resources for production. 

The cost of media space:

• This is how much it costs to actually show the advertisement to the target audience.
• Like production cost the cost of media space varies according to how many people will see the advertisement, the proportion of the target audience that is reached and the impact it makes.
• Its own market and competitive forces also affect the cost of media space.
• Newspapers and magazines compete with each other for advertisers as much as they compete for readers.
• As a result, they will use promotional tactics to attract advertisers, price being one of the most common.
• There is similar competition for advertisers between commercial television channels and commercial radio stations.
• Media space is also subject to supply and demand.
• This means that when demand is high the price of advertising space rises.
• For example – at the time of important sporting events, when demand falls, the cost of advertising will fall to attract advertisers back into the market. 

Business objectives:

• The most important consideration when planning any advertising is ‘Will this advertising help meet the aims and objectives for this product or for the business in a cost-effective way?’
• If the answer is yes, the advertising is a marketing plan to consider.
• If not, then another marketing strategy may need to be found.

Advertising controls:

• All advertisements should be legal, decent, honest and truthful.
• In addition to the terms and conditions laid down by individual media owners, all broadcast advertisements, sales promotions, direct marketing communications and other marketing communications concerned with promotion in the UK are subject to the British code of advertising, sales promotion and direct marketing.
• This code is like a rulebook for the industry and for any business that is involved in promotion.
• The code is revised and enforced by a self-regulatory industry body, the committee of advertising practice (CAP)
• The rules of the CAP code apply not only to the advertisements in newspapers, magazines and on posters, but to many other methods by which companies communicate with consumers, including direct mail, emails and text messages, cinema commercials, special offers and prize promotions.
• Advertising is also subject to consumer protection legislation, the most important being the Trade Description Act, 1968 that protects the customer against false claims.

Control	Effect
The BCAP Radio Advertising Standards Code	Sets out the rules that govern advertisements on any radio station licensed by Ofcom
The BCAP Television Advertising Standards Code	Sets out the rules that govern advertisements on any television channel licensed by Ofcom.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)	The independent body that endorses and administers the CAP code. It is also responsible for investigating and adjudicating on complaints about advertisements by enforcing the BCAP code.
Ofcom	The UK’s communications industry regulator with wide ranging responsibilities across the UK’s communications markets. At the end of 2003 Ofcom inherited the duties of the five existing regulators it replaced – The Broadcasting Standards Commission, the Independent Television Commission, Oftel, the Radio Authority and the Radio communications Agency.

New Media.

New media 

As the media becomes more popular in our world, businesses decide to promote on new media. They could be promoting on:
1)    Social media networks
2)    Email newsletters
3)    Online video
4)    Online forums
5)    Content aggregators
 

Advantages ·      

Majority of people use media these days, for instance social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or just a normal T’V that people watch daily. Which means the promotion will be easy to notice, meaning the customers will likely to purchase the product or service that the business is promoting.
    
There could be word of mouth advertising, as when you promote something online, the customers could then send the promotion to their friends eg, facebook or twitter, which is completely free for the business, meaning less costs and more income.
  
Disadvantages 

·      This type of promotion might be costly for the business, as advertising on the media would normally cost from $200 to $1,500 to create a 30-second commercial. If the promotion doesn’t work out for the business, they could then probably face a loss. 

·      Sometimes customers might think that the product that the business is promoting is too expensive, as usually the businesses that decide to promote online, on TVor on the radio are quite wealthy. Therefore customers might think that the product or service is too expensive which they cannot afford.
  

What factors are considered when planning this type of promotion. 

·      How much would it cost for the business to promote.
·      How long should their promotion be.
·      Where exactly should they promote, eg radio, T’V, social network
·      Who are they planning to target (target audience)