Direct Response Advertising aka Dial-In-For-Dollars

Let’s get this straight from the start. Dial-in-for-dollars is not the same as “dialing for dollars”, although there are some similarities. 

 

Direct response advertising requires that you find a way to connect to your target customer and ads that are opened by smartphones are the most successful methods of doing that. 

 

As millennials become more sophisticated about how they achieve goals and acquire goods and services, business enterprises must increase their methods of reaching them. It’s a matter of knowing who your potential customer is and where you can find them. 

 

For companies that primarily relied on television, radio and direct mail advertising, changing to digital marketing frightens them. Yet, the stalwarts of multi-national corporations who have been dragging their feet are discovering to their dismay that millennials really don’t watch that much television and pay for “ad-free” radio. 

 

Some have reverted to direct mail marketing, sending coupons and brochures to every address in a specific zip code, hoping to trigger upticks in their company’s sales. For the record, their sales are continuously falling. 

 

Understanding“Right Now” May Be “Tomorrow”

Perhaps you are familiar with what were called the “yell-and-sell” ads on television where you are told that you should buy this or that “right now”. In the digital version, there is no “yell” to sell style and “right now” is not necessarily “this instant”. 

 

The entire purpose is to put your best foot forward and put a “buy” button in front of every potential customer in case they decide that “right now” is actually “right now”. Understanding how to use direct response marketing spares businesses from unrealistic expectations. 

 

The time parameters and methods of approach must be different. According to Wesley Yuhn, here are some of the best:

• Email marketing with a link to your store, a special sale or one particular product ranks number one right now
• Click2Call advertising as cutting edge marketing is coming in at a strong second, especially if used through twitter
• Video ads that are opt-in (and opt-out) are placed second for current approaches

There are new techniques that are to be released in the next 6-months that are showing a lot of promise, according to the beta testing results. Until then, using the above three methods are the most efficient and effective with proven strong ROI. 

 

Switching to Digital Direct Response Advertising 

 

Regardless of the size of your business and whether or not it caters to local, national or international customers, in order to gain and retain marketshare in today’s world you need to dive into digital marketing.

Wesley Yuhn at Media Oasis has helped many multi-national corporations understand the necessity of making the switch, developing budgets that allowed them to ease into the new methods of connecting with both B2B and B2C targeted demographics. 

 

Mr. Yuhn explained that even in the age of instantaneous results from Google, it still takes time to gain a footing among all the competition. 

 

For mom-and-pop local businesses, direct response is one of the fastest ways to push the big name companies over to the side in their own market area. 

 

Still, it does require at least a one-year commitment to using multiple methods of marketing to your local area. Overall, it is cheaper than radio and television and reaches more people than the old-fashioned, traditional methods.