Determining the Media Channel That's a Natural Winner for Your Product

About 30 years ago, the Direct Marketing Association was the Direct Mail Association. Then, mail was considered the primary direct marketing medium. Today, the media choices available to direct marketers are vast. With the advent of the Internet and high-speed modems, direct marketing is truly coming of age.

Now that you’ve made the decision to market directly to your customers, you’re con-fronted with the important choice of a media channel. Of course, you don’t have to limit your choice to only one medium, but you should start with the one that offers you the greatest chance of success.

I divide media choices into two primary categories: addressed and non-addressed. With addressed media, you, as the marketer, have the information you need to contact prospects directly and individually. The two most common addressed media are direct mail and telemarketing. With addressed media you have the ability to not only personalize your message, but you know exactly who did or did not respond. This is a very important dynamic, because you can then build history and control the amount and type of solicitation activity to a specific individual or household. By the way, creating valuable suppression files and select or suppress scoring models is a must if you are heavily involved with addressed media.

Non-addressed media is real mass media or the shotgun approach to selling your product. Although some non-addressed media choices are highly targeted, e.g., ads in small trade publications, you should not expect response rates as high as addressed media to the same audience. Examples of non-addressed media include:

Space or Classified Ads in Magazines, Newspapers, Trade Publications and Newsletters; Inserts or Circulars such as Package Inserts, Statement Inserts, Co-op Inserts, Card Decks, and Free Standing Inserts (newspapers); Television and Radio Spots (short form) and Infomercials (long form).

It’s important to note the classification of media by addressed or non-addressed is not always as clear-cut as I have described. For example, I consider saturation or occupant mailings as non-addressed, while some co-op insert programs are so highly targeted and selectable, that they should be considered addressed. Advertising through the Internet can easily be addressed or non-addressed depending on the type of effort you implement.

And when I refer to advertising through the Internet, I’m primarily referring to the distribution of promotions to email addresses—not simply putting up a home page or web site. The latter is really not much different than an ad in the Yellow Pages (probably even less effective), and many businesses have been quite disappointed after spending thousands of dollars developing a web site and seeing very little business come from it.

This is not to say that a web site is not an important part of a well-planned direct marketing effort. In fact, if you consider yourself primarily an e-commerce merchant, then obviously your site is your store and email will be a key part of both your acquisition and retention strategy. And don’t forget about all the places you can advertise your web site, both on line and out in the ‘real world’. One of the best ways to drive traffic to your site is through performance based, partnership marketing, or affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is an area that I’ve spent a great deal of time learning and working with. For more information about affiliate marketing, I suggest that you visit my site devoted to this powerful channel: LinkProfits.com.

“Directing prospects to your website is good direct marketing — building it in hopes that “they will come” is not.”

When deciding between media channels, you should consider these attributes:

Your Target Group:
Is it small or large? Is it easy to identify and reach, or difficult?

Your Product or Service:
Is it highly visual and/or technical? Is it high or low priced? Is it unique or available from other sources?

Your Offer:
Do you expect cash with order, or is it a free or soft offer (bill me), or lead generation only?


Let’s explore how some of these attributes will affect your choice of media channel...

If the size of your target group is small, then it’s important to get the most out of every solicitation. To penetrate a small target group, utilize the media choice that will result in the highest response rate. Besides personal selling, telemarketing may be your best choice. If it’s difficult to obtain phone numbers, a strong or elaborate direct mail promotion may be called for.

If your product is both directed toward a small audience, and is highly technical and expensive, then use direct mail or telemarketing to provide leads for your sales force.

If the size of your target audience is very large, your product is not very technical, and it’s low priced, then an insert program with a lower cost per solicitation may bring in all the responders you need. Take the example of photo finishers and label manufacturers. Because these products need no explanation, are low priced, and are purchased on an as needed basis, these marketers need to make their offers available to buyers almost constantly. To accomplish this economically, they often concentrate their efforts on one of the lowest cost per solicitation mediums—newspaper inserts.

Given that the cost per exposure can vary greatly between your media choices, you should heed the fact that response rates can vary just as much. It’s very exciting to see your product on TV where millions of people are exposed to it at a very low cost per person or exposure. It’s just as tempting to place an ad in a magazine that reaches a mil-lion readers for the same cost of sending out 50,000 direct mail pieces. But these are mistakes marketers make every day because they have not done an adequate job of analyzing their choice of a media channel. Remember that it’s not what you pay per solicitation, it’s what you pay for each order and how qualified each responder is to continue to purchase from you.
 

Proceed to Chapter 4...