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Direct response marketing explained
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While flashy branding campaigns often get most of the limelight, the bread and butter of marketers’ campaign calendars is usually made up of direct response marketing (DRM) campaigns, designed to convert consumers or acquire leads. It is therefore vital that marketers understand how to influence their target audience into taking desired actions, as well as how to build their brand identity—if they want to hit their targets and drive growth.
What is direct response marketing?
Direct response marketing is a type of marketing strategy where the goal is to encourage an immediate response from consumers in order to quickly generate new leads. It is also referred to as “direct response advertising”. The consumer response can be any action, such as visiting a website, making a purchase, or even just sharing a post on social media. Direct response marketing contrasts with marketing activities that have long-term goals such as building or raising awareness of a brand identity (this marketing approach is known as “brand response marketing” or “brand marketing”), and are instead designed to prompt a specific desired action. Because of this, it is much easier to track the return on investment (ROI) of direct response marketing campaigns.
Four essential tips for impactful direct response marketing campaigns
When building your direct response marketing campaigns, it is important to build your strategy around your specific goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Whether you want your users to click on a link, subscribe to a newsletter, or make a purchase, you’ll need to consider the following factors for all your DRM campaigns, if you want to successfully direct your target audience to perform a specific action.
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- Design the campaign around your customers’ needs: For DRM campaigns, the focus should not be on your brand identity but on your target audience. In order to elicit the desired response, it is important to highlight how the offer in question is beneficial to them, whether your latest product solves a common customer problem or you’re simply promoting a sale. In order to build a successful direct response marketing campaign, you need to concentrate on creating a compelling case that can convince your target audience to carry out the campaign’s desired action.
- Personalize your campaign or target specific segments: While branding campaigns are often promoted to reach as many people as possible with the same message, strategic DRM campaigns work best when they are highly personalized and targeted at specific segments of your audience. By doing this, you can ensure that your campaign’s offer closely fits the needs of every user who interacts with it. With nearly 80% of customers preferring personalized brand experiences, this is a vital step in improving the ROI of your DRM campaign. Learn more about hyper-personalization and its impact on your marketing.
- Use clear calls to action: With direct response advertising, the call to action (CTA) is the most crucial part of an ad, since this is where you direct your users to perform a specific action. For direct response marketers this can be complicated by where or when your message is displayed. For some mediums like rewarded video, you only have the user’s attention for a limited period of time, making it even more important that you have prioritized your direct response copywriting to ensure that your CTA is clear and bold. Remember that those interested in your campaign message need to know exactly what to do next.
- Create a sense of urgency: Direct response marketing campaigns that successfully create a sense of urgency around their offer can encourage their target audience to act immediately, increasing the campaign’s conversion rate. In order to create urgency, your campaign creative should highlight elements such as offer deadlines, limited stock supplies, or simply outline why your proposition is important right here and now.
Direct response marketing examples
Just as any marketing channel can be used for branding campaigns, so too can marketers employ any channel for their direct response advertising campaigns. This includes social media, digital, email, radio, print, TV, and even influencer marketing. The only requirement of a direct response marketing campaign is that consumers are presented with a CTA that directs them toward your campaign goals.
In the days before widespread internet access, direct response television (DRTV) was a powerful advertising mechanism, centering on the use of infomercials that encouraged viewers to call telephone numbers or send SMS messages. While any medium can be used for direct response advertising in modern marketing, TV continues to drive strong direct response campaigns—increasingly converting viewers via new technologies such as scannable QR codes and connected TV.
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Social media advertising
Nearly a third of internet users say they use social media to find out about new products, which makes social media platforms an essential channel for direct response marketers to find and engage with their target audience. When it comes to direct response marketing campaigns, the key benefit of social media advertising is that it offers lots of possibilities when it comes to audience segmentation, allowing you to build more personalized ads. In 2023, 4.9 billion people around the world used social media, with apps like Facebook and TikTok offering a myriad of ways to advertise to them.
Referral programs
Word of mouth marketing (WOMM) can be a vital part of a brand’s growth strategy, as consumers overwhelmingly trust recommendations from friends and family more than any other source. While some of your customers may independently promote your brand within their social circle, you can also encourage your customers to become advocates of your brand with a referral program. A strategic direct response marketing campaign aimed at promoting such a program could take the form of an email or “thank you” page following on from a purchase, including a gift or discount to incentivize your users into referring a friend or family member.
Contests and giveaways
Direct response marketing campaigns don’t always have to be sales focused—they can also be used to encourage your users to simply engage with your brand. Contests and giveaways are a great example of these types of DRM campaigns, which can be delivered through email, on social media, or even through out-of-home (OOH) campaigns. For both, consumers have a strong incentive to engage, and your campaign creative simply needs to give clear directions on how they can participate. Contests can also be a great way of creating user-generated content that can be employed in future DRM campaigns, while giveaways can help spread the word about a new product or service.
Chatbots and push notifications
Sometimes the best tactic for a DRM campaign is to deliver your campaign message while your target audience is already engaging with your brand. Whether they’re in your app or on your website, a chatbot can be used to direct your users to desired outcomes.
Push notifications on the other hand are a great tool for re-engaging your users who may have installed your app but haven’t opened it for a while. Push notifications can simply prompt users to engage again, or offer incentives such as in-app tokens or bonuses for jumping back into the app.
Read more about how to define and reach your mobile app target audience, or request a demo to discover how Adjust can accelerate your app’s growth.
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