Direct Response Marketing - what is it and why is it important?
Direct response is one of the two primary types of display advertisement campaigns that your business needs to get a grip of.
Here we’re talking about what could be the backbone of your marketing efforts.
Direct response copywriting is a huge topic within the copywriting community, and it’s taken seriously by all sales copywriters. But direct response advertising is often overlooked by business owners, especially at the early stages of growth.
Direct response campaigns typically promote a specific product or service, and have a very specific follow-up objective that advertisers want visitors to take after clicking on an advertisement.
Direct response campaigns typically de-emphasise traditional metrics such as click-through rate (CTR) or cost-per-click (CPC) and instead evaluate the success based on custom metrics such as cost-per-account, or cost per acquisition.
The list is long, but the responses for which advertisers are looking may include:
Opening a new account / creating a new membership
Starting a free trial
Downloading a whitepaper or other document
Signing up for an upcoming event
Subscribing to a newsletter
Completing a survey / form
Visiting a website
It’s an action to be taken by the potential customer, that can be measured.
Business and marketing metrics are extensive when you set the right analytics tools in place. I’m not just talking about Google analytics, but when researching Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies I use SEM Rush - the figures can make your eyes water.
I’ll post more about User Experience in the future, but even for UX analysis of your website tools such as Hotjar can tell you exactly where a viewer has been on your website, and what paths they’ve taken. You then need to capture data to see exactly how many people have responded to your advertisements.
Branding campaigns, on the other hand, promote a company more generally and aim to raise awareness of the products and services offered. A branding campaign would be more concerned with maintaining a high share of voice and less concerned with the new accounts created or direct sales generated. You can’t particularly put a price on branding awareness campaigns. Lots of businesses think that if they just put up posters, throw up billboards or shout about themselves loud enough then customers will flow - but not only is it hard to analyse the success of branding campaigns, it’s almost futile if your brand isn’t already known.
Direct Response Campaigns
I’ll give you an example of a direct response campaign:
A business incubation company (aw venture copywriting co.) is advertising its services to new businesses that might be the next global brand or product to take the market by storm, the goal of the advertisement is to get visitors to their website. The goal of the website is to get potential business owners to contact them:
Visitors who click through on the ad but don’t get in touch with aw copywriting, or request more information are ultimately worthless.
In a direct response campaign, the results are typically binary: either the desired response is taken by a visitor, or it isn’t.
AW Venture Copywriting launches a PPC advertisement that is linked to keywords about ‘starting a new business’, ‘how to fund your next business idea’. It’s an incredibly well-thought out advertisment because the CEO of AW Venture Copywriting seems to know exactly what words to write (it’s like he’s a copywriter…).
I could talk all day about how to position or write your Google ads for success - but honestly just call me and I’m happy to discuss some strategies with you for free because I love the ingenuity of how specific companys can target just the right people with ‘out-of-the-box-thinking’ about advertisement positioning.
Granted, direct conversions from this advertisement don’t mean anything unless the person contacts AW Venture Copywriting - but here’s the chicken and egg conundrum that amateur advertisers get wrong:
If your advertisement isn’t properly targeted, it might attract a large number of people with low user-intent. You’ll think that the advertisement has been successful but if the conversions aren’t there then it’s either your follow-up action that is out of place, or you’re advertisement has targeted the wrong people.
Get your copywriting perfect.
Get your advertisement perfect.
The rest will follow.
Publishers & Direct Response
There are both positives and negatives to being considered for a direct response campaign. Many advertisers focusing on direct response have very challenging goals to meet. For example, AW Venture Copywriting may have to speak with over 100 potential clients before they meet the right one - that’s a lot of people to hit their venture capital goals each year.
In many cases, these goals are very difficult to reach and most adverts will fail to perform well enough. That will often lead to the advertiser cutting the spend before the entire campaign has been completed - falling short of the right amount of metrics being collected.
However, if you are able to consistently deliver results from each advert, then you can increase your spend in that area to convert more customers or prospects.
It is important to try to maximise advertiser value. Some strategies might include providing bonus material to the reader - where they can directly download a guide to (for example) how to start a business and develop a product). This could be a secondary objective of the advertisement which helps you qualify people later down the line - they might read your pdf and realise that starting a business isn’t for them.
Key elements of direct response marketing
Direct response marketing strategy is intended to drive the audiences to take instant action, that’s why it must trigger instant feedback, otherwise, it fails.
A typical direct response necessarily includes the following elements:
Offer
There are types of offers you can try that’s not limited only to selling a product, such as join a newsletter, trial period, read a blog, and many more. And very often, the aim of the offer is not selling anything.
Information
A direct response must have enough information for customers consideration so they could take immediate action. The content must include the information that brings value to them and solving their problem.
Clear call to action
Every direct response must include a clear call to action, compelling a visitor to do something specific, like :
Contact now
Calling this number
Subscribe
Buy now
Download now
Get it now
Sign up now
Read more
Direct response advertising can be a minefield. As with all aspects of a business, you try and do things yourself for a while before you realise that you need an expert on board.
I’ve seen direct response advertisement generate millions of pounds of profits for businesses. It’s acheivable.
Don’t forget to optimise your website for SEO and write your website copy properly! More about this here.
Want to save yourself a headache and hire a Belfast based advertisement Copywriter with proven results? Just claim your free discovery session here!
Keep hustling,
Keep copywriting!
Thanks for reading,
Adam