There’s an old marketing adage that dates back too many years to consider which states that people only notice something after they’ve seen it three times. Of course, back then people only saw ads on TV, in magazines, and on billboards and they hadn’t yet been trained to studiously ignore all forms of advertising.
Nowadays, ads are everywhere and because we’ve become inured to the onslaught, we no longer notice anything unless it strikes a specific chord. Which is where Direct Marketing comes in.
Whereas indirect marketing serves to shout a company’s marketing message to the skies and hope it connects with someone at some useful level, direct marketing aims to directly impact a customer’s buying decision through carefully targeted messaging. Let’s take a look at the different ways that can be beneficial.
Direct benefits of direct marketing
1. Shape the ideal purchasing experience
A store owner can create a certain feel and experience just by choosing the right décor and layout for their space. A B2B manager doesn’t have that luxury. Customers aren’t coming into a specially designated area to make their purchasing decisions, they have to be converted through a website and marketing materials.
By crafting a great direct marketing campaign, B2B owners can shape the ideal purchasing experience that leaves the customer feeling supported and understood and help usher them from discovery all the way through to purchase.
2. Build strong relationships with potential and existing customers
Direct marketing campaigns, such as email drip campaigns, can go a long way towards building and maintaining strong relationships with customers. Since direct marketing campaigns are sent to very carefully selected target audiences, it’s easy to know exactly what tone to use to engage them and drive click-throughs. Every message can build on the previous one, increasing the impact of each while nurturing a personal rapport between the customer and the brand.
3. Better targeting means better engagement
If you send a broad message to a broad audience, you might strike a chord with a handful of people who might be delighted to find out that your company exists. You’ll also be sending out an email or mailing a letter to a whole bunch of people who won’t care in the least and will be quick to discard what you’ve sent.
If you take the time to send a target specific message to a specific target, your engagement numbers can only radically increase.
Targeting a specific group or population can allow you to
- Take advantage of the data collected by your SaaS management software to email customers who aren’t using specific services you believe would be beneficial to them.
- Re-engage potential customers who, at some point, fell out of your marketing sales funnel.
- Contact past customers to entice them to renew their subscriptions or come back to you.
- Customize your direct marketing messages to a group’s specific needs.
- Promote products that will specifically meet the target’s wants.
4. Improve customer loyalty
Remember above where we hinted at the sheer number of messages that consumers are inundated with on a daily basis? That constant stream of new information means that people very easily forget things they haven’t heard about in a while. Strong direct marketing campaigns can keep brands and products front-of-mind for customers, ensuring they not only continue to use your SaaS, but that they’ll remember to recommend your products should someone ask them about a service like yours.
5. Enjoy greater measurability
Let’s be honest, relationships and loyalty are lovely, but nothing beats a good ol’ batch of numbers to get a marketer’s heart pumping. And numbers, or rather, data, is where direct marketing really excels. Whether you’re sending out direct mail post cards, setting up an email drip campaign, or designing online retargeting ads, you can include any number of tracking elements that will give you critical information about how your campaign is progressing and how your consumers are being affected by your messaging.
All of that tracking makes direct marketing the ideal way to do small batch testing of campaigns before launching the full version, or to test a new product you’re not sure will be well received.
But, most importantly, all of that tracking serves to improve the impact of your next direct marketing effort, and the one after that, and so on, and so forth.
6. Never ending targeting improvement
All marketing efforts, other than to drive sales and conversions, aim, at their core, to improve a customer’s brand experience. In order to deliver the ideal experience, you need to understand the customer’s needs and preferences. What better way to do that than by carefully analyzing the data collected by your direct marketing campaigns?
And then, when you’ve analyzed the data and acted on it, you’ll have more data to analyze, which will in turn make your next campaign even better targeted and more effective. Really, the benefits just keep adding up.