It doesn’t matter whether you are marketing online or offline, the principles of running a successful marketing campaign are essentially the same. For every thousand people that you contact through a direct marketing campaign, you can traditionally expect to turn around 50 of them (5%) into customers. However, if you follow the tips outlined below, you can increase this figure up to 20%. Keep reading to find out how to do this.
How to Run a Successful Direct Marketing Campaign (Royalty free photo)
1. Know Your Target Market
The first thing you need to do is decide upon who your campaign is going to target. Describe your potential customers in as much detail as possible as this way you will know more about what they are interested in and can target your campaign effectively. Whether you are targeting women between the ages of 18 and 25 who live at home, or elderly couples with a disposable income – you need to know who your market is and what type of advertising they are most susceptible to. Then you can obtain the right data lists of people to contact.
2. Decide on the Format for Your Campaign
Taking the two examples described above, you can see that both demographics will react to different forms of media. Women between the ages of 18 and 25 are going to be more likely to open an email advertisement than those over 65. Whilst the elderly couple will be more likely to read a flyer posted through their letterbox. Don’t waste money on advertisements that won’t even reach the people that you are targeting.
3. Decide on the Message
Again, thinking about your demographic and your product, you need to decide on the best message to use to sell your product. Say for example that you are selling life insurance. If you are targeting young people who don’t currently have anyone relying on them, you may want to promote the price of the insurance – for less than the price of a beer a week you can have peace of mind. For young couples with children, however, you will want to focus on the fact that their children will be taken care of should anything happen to them.
4. Consider the Design
Just as important as the message is the design of the marketing material. Lots of people are drawn to a flyer or an email based on the way that it looks, so again consider your product and demographic before deciding upon a design. For an insurance product you will want your design to be professional and sincere, whereas for an ecommerce store you may want to create a bright, vibrant design that draws attention.
5. Monitor the Campaign
Finally, it’s important to monitor the campaign to ensure that it is working successfully. If it isn’t, you can tweak it to see if things improve. In an email marketing campaign you can track how many people opened your message, and can contact those who don’t respond for feedback. You can do the same with offline marketing by phoning people who haven’t responded to see what they did or didn’t like about your campaign. Often you will get a higher response rate by doing this.
Whilst a successful marketing campaign depends on many factors, by following the tips above, you should see an above average success rate.
