Erik KoenigDirect response is a vital component in omnichannel marketing strategies due to its ability to drive immediate conversions during lead generation, prospecting and sales, and customer loyalty efforts. Here is a closer look at how you can use direct response strategies to grow your brand, including major channels and key elements to get started.
What is direct response marketing?
Direct response is a marketing strategy used to provoke an immediate action from the audience. Direct response campaigns are designed to generate leads and sales quickly by driving customer conversions with an offer prospects simply cannot resist. Direct response tactics can be activated throughout the buyer journey to help nurture prospects from one stage to the next.
Although fundamentally different from traditional brand marketing, it is common for marketers to use direct response and brand marketing strategies in tandem to build awareness, increase conversions, and propel brand growth.
What are the major channels used for direct response campaigns?
Here are the most popular direct response channels used by today’s marketers:
Direct Mail
Even in our digital world, direct mail response rates are six times higher than all digital channels combined, and six out of ten marketers prefer direct mail over other offline channels. Neuro and behavioral science research have also confirmed direct mail is proven to subconsciously appeal to human emotions and drive purchase intent. Brands looking for advanced targeting, scalable growth, and attributable performance trust mail as the foundation for their direct response program.
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing can be used to describe all advertisements built for an electronic device or the internet, such as email, social media, video, search engine, display, etc. This channel is significant for growing DTC brands due to its flexibility and lookalike modeling capabilities.
Radio
When you consider that 92% of U.S. adults listen to the radio each week, this media can be an effective and affordable direct response channel to reach a mass audience. In addition to demographic targeting options, brands often enlist local and national personalities to deliver customized messages to their market.
Linear TV and CTV
As a legacy channel, linear TV is still recognized for its ability to reach large audiences and boost brand awareness. Although still young, the CTV (connected TV) and OTT (over-the-top) industry is booming, valued for its ability to reach a targeted and captive audience.
Influencer Marketing and Celebrity Endorsements
Both influencer marketing and celebrity endorsements act as a form of “social proof” for your brand and products. Utilizing professional brand advocates can be a great enhancement to your social strategy and help expand your audience reach.
Identifying the right direct response channel for your brand depends on your budget, industry, offer, and audience. It is common for marketers to leverage multiple channels to connect with customers and prospects across platforms via unified messaging and creative.
What are the key elements of a direct response campaign?
Successful direct response campaigns include these critical elements:
Audience Targeting
To achieve the highest likelihood of conversion, direct response campaigns are targeted for the audience who is most likely to purchase your product or service. The attributes and characteristics of your best customers are used to create customer profiles that drive audience selection. This ensures your advertisement and messaging is both relevant and personalized, and your budget is optimized.
Offer, Call to Action (CTA), and Deadline
We have nicknamed the offer, CTA, and deadline the direct response trinity. All three work together to create the sense of urgency that makes direct response advertising so effective.
Your offer tells the prospect what you are willing to give them for a response. The more compelling your offer, the higher your response. We have found the best offers give the perception that you are giving something valuable away, such as an exclusive discount or a free gift. The CTA is arguably the most important direct mail design element, as it tells your audience exactly what they need to do to claim your offer. It needs to be noticeable, easy to understand, repeated, (and repeated again) throughout your medium. Including an urgent deadline will play on a consumer’s natural fear of missing out, convincing them to act now.
Engaging Copy
Regardless of your overall campaign goal, you must optimize every element of your creative package and every word in your copy to provoke prospect response today, rather than tomorrow. Seasoned direct response copywriters keep the prospect focused and engaged by directly addressing their challenge, and using words such as you, your, and you’re. They make your brand relatable and lower any perceived risks with customer testimonials and believable guarantees. Lastly, they use your unique selling proposition to clearly state why your products and services are the prospect’s best choice.
Robust Testing Strategy
In the direct response industry, the clear route to success is marked with one word: test. Your testing strategy can be used to investigate any campaign variable such as which audience is most responsive, what offer generates the most conversions, and even which channels perform best together. The key to accurate testing is isolating the challenging variable against your control. A regular and robust testing strategy includes a mix of small and large elements. Not only will this keep your campaign fresh, but it will also allow you to maximize your profitability while managing performance risk.
Is direct response marketing right for my brand?
Whether your brand is B2B or DTC, national or local, brick and mortar or e-commerce, direct response marketing can be beneficial for sales growth and audience reach. The versatile strategy can be used for lead generation, prospecting, cross-sell or upsell opportunities, winback and retargeting for speedy conversions and long-term retention. Most direct response channels show an ROI quickly after the campaign is launched, as targeting data and directly attributable elements (such as campaign specific URLs, toll-free numbers, promo codes, etc.) allow marketers to track the channels that impacted the final sale. Partnering with a reputable direct response agency will help you quickly, and cost effectively, test channels and strategies to identify the winning combination to meet your program objectives.
