Direct Marketing Part-1

Direct Marketing

Overview

• Direct Marketing is identified as an effective communication practice that is carried out between sellers and buyers in a direct fashion. 

• Carrying out of Direct Marketing activities does not require incorporation of any media. Further, direct marketing activities are carried out based on the incorporation of visual and also auditory elements. 

• The communication carried out in a direct manner between sellers and buyers is essentially carried out with a marketing purpose. 

• Content Marketing acts as a subset of Direct Marketing activities associated to the developments of contents along different formats for ideally meeting the intent of the messages for which the same is prepared.

• The Government of Queensland identifies Direct Marketing as an effective form of advertising that ideally targets a community of individuals or business communities for marketing of products or services, creating and enhancing brand awareness and also in generating sales. 

• Direct Marketing activities tend to encompass different types of marketing efforts associated to direct mails, telemarketing and also email marketing activities.

Advantages of ‘Direct Marketing’ Activities

• Direct Marketing activities and campaigns are focused on being carried out by the marketers in that they generate a set of distinct advantages enumerated as follows:

• It helps in building effective relationships with new and prospective customers.

• It contributes in testing the appeal of the customers regards to the product or services promoted and marketed by the company.

• It also helps in identifying the right type of marketing and sales approach for effectively accessing the target market and in meeting the sales and marketing objectives.

• Direct Marketing activities are essentially constituted for enhancing sales.

• It also contributes in the generation and sharing of appealing contents that would help in engaging the prospective customers .

Designing of an effective Direct Marketing Campaign

• The following steps are required to be carried out in a sequential fashion for carrying out an effective Direct Marketing Campaign.

Targeting Prospective Customers

• Direct Marketing involves the designing of tailor-made or customized messages such that the same contributes in generation of quality messages to prospective customers. 

• The messages are needed to be prepared based on an effective understanding of the way the customers would effectively respond to the information available associated to promotions, offers and also new product or service launches.

Developing of ‘Direct Marketing’ Budgets

• Effective marketing budgets are required to be rightly prepared for rightly measuring and monitoring the extent to which the marketing and promotional objectives are met within the stated budgets. 

• The preparation of the budgets is required to be carried out in keeping with tune with the sales and revenue paradigms.

Enhancement of Customer Loyalty

• Direct Marketing campaigns can be effectively carried out in terms of personalising offers and promotions that would help in meeting the needs of both the old and new customers in a customised fashion. 

Customer Loyalty

• Again, emails and newsletters can also be generated by the direct marketing firms for cultivation of relationships with the direct customers such that the interaction carried out by them potentially contributes in understanding the customers’ views and perspectives associated to the brand and the marketing and promotional efforts.

Objectives of Direct Marketing Campaigns

• Direct Marketing activities are essentially constituted for fulfilling the different objectives underlined as follows

• It contributes in boosting sales of a specific product or service category and brand.

• It contributes in enhancing the level of customer contacts.

• It further assists in earning feedback's concerning promotional and marketing activities.

Reasons for which companies carry out Content Marketing

A list of four different reasons can be enlisted for which the business institutions tend to carry out Content Marketing activities.

Enhancing Brand Awareness

• The Content Marketers are required to focus on the generation of reliable and updated contents such that the same enhances the level of trust and dependency of the customers on the published messages for gaining of potential information for deciding on making needed purchases.

Building and Sustaining Reputation

• The use of effective keywords for designing of potential contents and also carrying out keyword bidding ideally contributes in making the marketing and promotional contents designed by the company in achieving top positions along the search result pages. 

• The above strategy ideally contributes in helping the business institutions develop on their brand presence and market leadership in the competitive market.

Ability to Engage Customers

• Customer engagement can be rightly carried out not only through the designing of appealing contents but also in terms of encouraging the customers for sharing the same along different social media networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter. 

• The sharing of the contents can be rightly carried out based on the incorporation of different buttons linked with the social networks.

Augment the Revenue Flow

• The carrying out of ideal Content Marketing Campaigns potentially contributes in enhancing the flow of revenue for the business institutions. 

• The contents generated for marketing and promoting the products and services ideally helps in attracting huge amount of customer flow to the concerned websites and thereby encourages the growth of needed conversions and generation of sales leads.  

• It thus ideally contributes in augmenting of sales revenues.

Strategies for writing effective contents

• The content writing strategies are essentially developed based on the application of the inverted pyramid that essentially focuses on three main aspects like focus on driving increased web traffic, increasing user or visitor engagement to the different sites and finally in terms of generating potential conversions. 

• The inverted pyramid depicted above is illustrated as follows

Inverted Pyramid

• The Inverted Pyramid depicted above effectively reflect the different KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) associated with the different phases associated of the pyramid like Traffic, Engagement and Conversion. 

• For Traffic, flow of web traffic acts as an effective KPI; for Engagement, the KPIs include the total number of videos viewed along with the different types of call-to-actions. 

• while finally for the Conversion phase the KPIs encompass parameters like conducting of purchases by the visitors, installation of apps and software and also signing-ups or registering for newsletters.

The six content generation strategies that would contribute in meeting the objectives of the inverted pyramid are reflected as follows:

Incorporation of an Effective Tone

• The incorporation of an informal tone is needed for the development of effective contents.

• The conversation in the blog posts are needed to be carried out in such a fashion as if the conversation is being carried out in a one-to-one fashion and not with a large target audience. 

• The same would help in development of customised and creative posts that would contribute in meeting the information needs of the target respondents.

Incorporation and expansion of data received from external sources

statistics and facts

• Effective blogs and other articles to be published along the digital media platforms are generated based on the incorporation of data (statistics and facts) that are retrieved from external sources. 

• The data gained from external sources are elaborated along the web pages and articles based on the use of creative and informal writing which then contributes in attracting considerable amount of web traffic to the web contents.

Personalised Contents developed at an Individual Level

• The writing of the blog articles is required in not only being informal and creative in nature but also need to bear a personalised approach in terms of sharing experiences, generating advices and also in terms of suggesting effective recommendations. 

• In that, the usage of the word, ‘You’ needs to replace ‘I’ or any other word indicating the reader. 

• The above tactic ideally earns success in that it contributes in developing as mutual relationship between the author and the reader and thereby enhances the level of trust and dependability of the readers and visitors on the blog or article writer. 

Integration of viewers’ feedback

Feedback Forms Writing

• The feedback of the visitors or the viewers to the blog posts are gained by the author based on the employment of surveys or through the generation of feedback forms. 

• Likewise, application of a tool like that of email outreach through which open and close-ended questionnaires, feedback forms and also quizzes can be mailed directly to the viewers or customers associated to company web pages and also another tool, tracking of customer or visitor activity can be carried out for understanding the response of the site visitors. 

• The feedbacks and suggestions provided by them can be rightly incorporated for enhancing the usability of the web page. 

• Moreover, the understanding of visitor or customer behaviour ideally assists the web marketers in designing appealing web pages and blog posts.

Inclusion of Audio-Visual Contents and Graphics

• Finally, the incorporation of audio-visual elements like videos, podcasts and other graphs and charts along with the textual contents while developing the blogs, articles and other web pages ideally help in attracting target customer sets in considerable numbers rather than generation of mundane data. 

• The following illustration reflects that within a period of two years ranging from 2010-2012 the application of infographics has contributed in increasing the search volumes to rise by around 800 percent.

Significance of use of Infographics

Likewise, the development and generation of effective PowerPoint Presentations along with the digital contents also contributes in attracting significant web traffic.

 Strategies for SEO Writing

The different strategies that are needed to be addressed for developing an effective SEO Article are outlined as follows:

SEO Writing

Exploration of the right set of keywords

• The content marketers are required to focus on both exploring and applying the right set of keywords while developing the SEO article that ideally match the keywords or key phrases used by visitors and users over the web for searching of related content associated with the product and service offerings and also about the brand. 

• The application of right set of keywords for developing the article ideally contributes in generating higher page ranks for the web pages and articles.

Application style of keywords into the SEO Article

• After the creation of a pool encompassing the right set of keywords the content marketer is thereby needed to use the keyword for development of the title along with applying the keyword along both H1 and H2 Tags. 

• The usage of keywords is needed to be made in the SEO Article at a given frequency of 2 to 3 percent. 

• Stuffing of keywords into the article does not help in gaining higher page ranks but rather makes Google to treat the SEO Article as a spam. 

• Keyword frequency is estimated by dividing the total number of keywords by the total number of words where the same is indicated as a percentage. 

Uniqueness and Relevancy of the Article

• The SEO Article that is ought to be developed must be unique in nature or that which is not developed based on copying of contents from third party platforms and also relevant for helping on elaborating on the title of the topic. 

• The information incorporated in the article needs to be updated from time to time in that the same corresponds to the current information needs of the visitor.

The Longer, the Better

• The SEO Articles as a whole is needed to be pretty long for being rendered significance by search tools like Google and Bing. 

• The minimum word count that needs to be incorporated while making an SEO article is figured out to be 500 while it is observed that SEO Articles constituted based on the use of 1500 to 2000 words tend to gain a dominant position along the search engines.

Focusing on Analytics

• An expert SEO Writer is identified as that not only focuses on the development of effective and appealing SEO contents but also aims to analyse the outcomes of potential parameters like bounce rate, exit rate, CTR and the like. 

• The analysis of the above stated parameters among-st others would contribute in helping the SEO writer generate needed changes and alterations in making the contents appealing in nature .