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.
