Thursday
28Aug2008
Do Seasoned Direct Marketers Bring Anything to Online Marketing?
Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 10:31AM
Here are some wise words from an unnamed direct marketer as a response to one of Bob Bly's posts dealing with whether "old school" direct marketers know how to use direct marketing techniques successfully online.
I believe direct marketing skills take years of testing and hands on experience to learn. I also believe that such knowledge transcends the medium used. Media expertise does not equate direct response know-how.
Many young direct marketers are not receiving the mentoring or education today they need to master the direct marketing strategy.
In the absence of direct response knowledge, they rely upon their misguided instincts and platitudes about what motivates people to respond.
We've seen terms like Web 2, Web 3 and will probably read about Web version 9 soon. Then we also hear new terms for old tactics like "squeeze pages" that traditional marketers know how to do better than inexperienced marketers.
A "squeeze page" is nothing more than a way to filter out hot prospects from the mass of visitors to qualify them for the next commitment step. Seasoned direct marketers call this "lead qualification" and it encompasses far more than rudimentary "squeeze pages."
Some people would have us believe that this is something new! Give me a break.
These new terms may work for suppliers trying to differentiate themselves in an ocean of competitors. Some of them even claim that their particular brand or ideas will revolutionize the marketing world.
In my view, these new terms display an ignorance or disregard of the hard earned body of learning that already exists in the direct marketing community.
This is not to say that the Internet has not written a new chapter in direct marketing.
I see online marketing as an extension of our capability to engage new markets and reinforce existing relationships rather than a replacement to the rich body of pertinent direct marketing knowledge that already exists. New marketers need to study direct marketing principles now if they want to do great things with new media.
Successful direct marketing strategies essentially leverage a tested body of knowledge about what people respond to.
In my opinion, the environment changes continually, but people have not changed for thousands of years. What held true in 3000 BC does so in 2008. People’s need for security, hope, fairness and desire to be treated as someone special always remain.
Great offers will always drive response. And so long as we understand this by testing offers and learning more about our target audiences, then we will continue to make money for our companies and clients.
Getting too wrapped up in the technology is a big part of what happened in the dot.com bust. The technologist ran the show rather than experienced marketers. (Admittedly, there were some additional things at play to cause this bust).
But note how even today, web site design agencies build web sites that look good to the client and those few visitors that manage to find it. They do so without any thought about how the search engines “read” and rank websites. This demonstrates not only poor direct marketing, but a lack of general marketing knowledge.
Strong direct marketers do not fear the Internet age, they thrive on it. The challenge for them has always been the wide held belief that the Internet changed people’s behaviors so much that past testing and experiences bear no value.
The truth is that people created the Internet for themselves. This new medium is Nirvana for direct marketers. Interactivity and CRM can now attain it’s full potential.
I view the Internet as yet another medium that adds a “new” tool to my portfolio. It compliments traditional media rather than replaces it.
“I don't believe that ‘old school Direct Response’ has lost touch with the new world. It's the other way around.”Many younger marketers today cut their teeth on new media without the benefit of the rigorous testing that defined best practices for direct marketers. What impact will our direct marketing ideas have on these individuals when it comes to leveraging social media, twitter or even spam weary email environments?
I believe direct marketing skills take years of testing and hands on experience to learn. I also believe that such knowledge transcends the medium used. Media expertise does not equate direct response know-how.
Young online marketers often not well grounded
Many young direct marketers are not receiving the mentoring or education today they need to master the direct marketing strategy.
In the absence of direct response knowledge, they rely upon their misguided instincts and platitudes about what motivates people to respond.
We've seen terms like Web 2, Web 3 and will probably read about Web version 9 soon. Then we also hear new terms for old tactics like "squeeze pages" that traditional marketers know how to do better than inexperienced marketers.
A "squeeze page" is nothing more than a way to filter out hot prospects from the mass of visitors to qualify them for the next commitment step. Seasoned direct marketers call this "lead qualification" and it encompasses far more than rudimentary "squeeze pages."
Some people would have us believe that this is something new! Give me a break.
New terms do not mean new thinking
These new terms may work for suppliers trying to differentiate themselves in an ocean of competitors. Some of them even claim that their particular brand or ideas will revolutionize the marketing world.
In my view, these new terms display an ignorance or disregard of the hard earned body of learning that already exists in the direct marketing community.
This is not to say that the Internet has not written a new chapter in direct marketing.
I see online marketing as an extension of our capability to engage new markets and reinforce existing relationships rather than a replacement to the rich body of pertinent direct marketing knowledge that already exists. New marketers need to study direct marketing principles now if they want to do great things with new media.
Successful direct marketing strategies essentially leverage a tested body of knowledge about what people respond to.
Environments change, people don't
In my opinion, the environment changes continually, but people have not changed for thousands of years. What held true in 3000 BC does so in 2008. People’s need for security, hope, fairness and desire to be treated as someone special always remain.
Great offers will always drive response. And so long as we understand this by testing offers and learning more about our target audiences, then we will continue to make money for our companies and clients.
Getting too wrapped up in the technology is a big part of what happened in the dot.com bust. The technologist ran the show rather than experienced marketers. (Admittedly, there were some additional things at play to cause this bust).
But note how even today, web site design agencies build web sites that look good to the client and those few visitors that manage to find it. They do so without any thought about how the search engines “read” and rank websites. This demonstrates not only poor direct marketing, but a lack of general marketing knowledge.
Strong direct marketers do not fear the Internet age, they thrive on it. The challenge for them has always been the wide held belief that the Internet changed people’s behaviors so much that past testing and experiences bear no value.
The truth is that people created the Internet for themselves. This new medium is Nirvana for direct marketers. Interactivity and CRM can now attain it’s full potential.
I view the Internet as yet another medium that adds a “new” tool to my portfolio. It compliments traditional media rather than replaces it.
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Reader Comments (4)
Ted,
I couldn't agree more! What's very interesting is that traditional direct marketers consider new media (interactive, mobile marketing, social media) to simply be additional channels or technology to explore when developing sales and marketing strategies. The converse isn't true. Interactive marketers do not generally consider themselves direct marketers, nor do they want to be associated with an industry that they may consider 'old-school'.
The DMA has been struggling with this, and has a hard time gaining participation from interactive practitioners.
Isn't this odd?
Suzanne
In the final analysis, successful interactive media activities rely on human behavior. And great direct marketers are masters of human purchase behavior.
DMers also know how to analyze data and leverage relational databases.
Online marketers are awash in data. And many don't know how to setup or manage their databases to maximize profits.
I'm not sure interactive marketers realize that they are applying direct marketing skills to their tasks without knowing it. If they aren't, then they will make poor interactive marketers.
I think it stems from the stress of a very steep learning curve.
Direct marketing strategies now pervade so many marketing activities that companies have not been able to keep up with the direct marketing training of their younger marketers.
And let's be honest.
Many marketing hiring managers know little about what direct marketing can do for their businesses. So how can they find both interactive tacticians who also know direct marketing if they do not realize that is what they need?
Did anyone see these numbers out of the CTIA this morning? 75 Billion text messages for the month of June alone. Unreal. When we introduced Interlinked Media to the United States market in July of 2006, we (the USA) were only doing about 12 billion text messages per month. When we convinced the Hillary Clinton campaign that they should be using text messages as a primary means of connecting with their voters, that number had "swollen" to nearly 18 billion messages per month. Now we have these numbers 75 billion messages for June…a 6 fold increase over when we started.
Is there any doubt that this medium is going to be around for a while? From 28.8 to 75 billion or a 160% increase in 1 year ….the fastest growing communication technology in history doesn’t look it’s going out of style any time soon.
Have people considered doing tests with SMS marketing? Our average response rates are 30%, and communicating via a cell phone allows the marketers to include context, i.e. make it a morning or evening message, as we know what time people will be receiving their messages.
Mike Anderson
www.interlinkedmedia.com
Interesting information Mike.
In my view, SMS marketing extends the reach and power of online media (and traditional media as well). There is no doubt that it is here to stay.
But... as my blog proposes, direct marketing strategies still impact this medium as it does any other.
It's not enough to provide pertinent and interesting information. Readers must respond to this information. The more messages consumers see and the more a medium saturates the marketing atmosphere, the lower the response rate per impression.
Testing, tracking, personalization, database marketing -- these still make the difference between success and failure when you must count the sales versus the cost to validate the marketing effort.