How To Advertise: An Analysis of Contemporary Advertising (part 25)

The Importance of Direct Marketing to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

by

Charles Lamson

Perhaps the reason for direct marketing's (Direct marketing is a form of advertising where organizations communicate directly to customers through a variety of media including cell phone text messaging, email, websites, online adverts, database marketing, fliers, catalog distribution, promotional letters, and targeted television, newspaper, and magazine advertisements, as well as outdoor advertising. Among practitioners, it is also known as direct response.) current growth is that marketers and agencies realize that they cannot do the job with just one medium anymore. As the mass audience fragmented and companies began to integrate their marketing communications (Integrated Marketing Communications ensures that all forms of communications and messages are carefully linked together. At its most basic level, Integrated Marketing Communications, means integrating all the promotional tools, so that they work together in harmony.), customer databases became key to retaining and growing customers.

Direct marketing is the best way to develop a good database. The database enables the marketer to build a relationship by learning about customers in-depth, their nuances, what and where they buy, what they are interested in, and what they need. With a database, companies can choose the prospects they can serve most effectively and profitably---the purpose of all marketing. You do not want a relationship with every customer. In fact, there are some bad customers out there.

People like to see themselves as unique, not part of some 100-million-member mass market. Through direct marketing, especially addressable electronic media, companies can send discrete messages to individual customers and prospects. With different types of sales promotion, a company can encourage individuals, not masses, to respond and can develop a relationship with each person. By responding, the prospect self-selects, in effect giving the marketer permission to begin a relationship. The direct marketing database, then, becomes the company's primary tool to initiate, build, cultivate, and measure the effectiveness of its loyalty efforts.

By providing a tangible response, direct marketing offers accountability. Marketers can count the responses and determine the cost per response. They can also judge the effectiveness of the medium they are using and test different creative executions.

Direct marketing offers convenience to time-sensitive consumers, and it offers precision and flexibility to cost-sensitive marketers. For example, to reach small BTB (business to business) markets, there is no more cost-effective method than the database-driven direct-response media.

Also, the economics of direct marketing are becoming more competitive. It used to be easy for big companies to spend a few million dollars for prime-time network TV spots when everybody was home watching and the average cost was only a penny to 10 cents per person. But those days are over. Everybody's not home today. And if they are, they are watching 150 channels or a DVD. They have a remote control to mute ads or a TiVo to skip them. Further, network TV advertising is far more expensive than it used to be. Thus, targeted direct-response media (magazines, niche TV, direct mail, email, kiosks) are more cost-effective than ever before.

Finally, unlike the public mass media, direct-response media can be more private. A company can conduct a sales letter campaign without the competition ever knowing about it.

Drawbacks to Direct Marketing

At the same time, direct marketing still faces some challenges. In the past, direct marketers were sales oriented, not relationship oriented. This gave direct marketing a bad reputation in the minds of many customers. Some people enjoy the experience of visiting retail stores and shopping. They like to see and feel the goods personally, and they are hesitant to buy goods sight unseen. This is why the objective of many direct marketing campaigns is now to help drive traffic to retail locations.

Direct marketing efforts often have to stand on their own without the content support of the media that advertising enjoys. They do not always get the prestigious affiliation offered by some media. This makes it more difficult (and costly) to build image for the product, something mass-media advertising is particularly good at.

Direct marketing also suffers from clutter. People are deluged with mail from commercial sponsors and drum-beating politicians. Cable channels are filled with infomercials for food processors. And telemarketing pitches for insurance plans intrude on consumers at home and at work.

Many customers are also concerned with privacy. They do not like having their names sold by list vendors. At one national forum of direct marketers, attendees were told they must self-regulate, give consumers more control, and treat privacy like a customer service issue---or risk legislation restricting access to the information they desperately need. Wise marketers have heeded these warnings and developed methods for responsible direct marketing. Using IMC theory, they integrate all their marketing communications and focus on building the relationship value of their brands.

*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING 11TH ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD, CHRISTIAN ARENS, PGS. 311-314*

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