Direct Marketing – Just About The Numbers?

Old school marketers have been in transition for a number of years now, after all the days of direct mail in the 1980’s is long gone. I mean really it’s over 30 years ago. Keep in mind the Internet boom & bust or the Internet bubble is now almost 15 years ago.

So when we speak of Direct Marketing (DM), we need to ensure that we know who our audience is, don’t we? Catalogues, mailings, household flyers have mostly been replaced with online strategies that include email, social posting, content curation and a variety other hard-edged digital metrics.

There has always been a wide variety of opinion regarding direct marketing and brand marketing. It’s interesting that these programs are beginning to look much the same in approach and measurement due to the ability of measurement on most online activities.

What we are now finding in our campaigns is that in most cases you can’t have one without the other. Winning campaigns are generally not just a “one hit wonder” but more like a game of baseball. Simple steps, single, single, single add in a stolen base once in a while. Doing the simple things well leads to wins, one hit at a time.

As such, you have to do your batting practice, you need to arrive to the game early, take a few balls, swing the bat and warm up. Your marketing program needs to be the same, drive an email, make a social post, prepare a blog, maybe run a contest (use the hit and run analogy). All these exercises or programs develop your brand, engage your audience, and drive your message home, just like baseball.

Marketers need to appreciate that effective programs are a culmination of a great deal of work by the whole. It’s about finding the right message, then delivering that message to the right prospect at the right time. Just as in baseball, do your research, know what to expect, do the simple things, do them consistently, don’t forget research and evaluate your status in an ongoing basis.

The net result is that impactful programs are not like home runs at all. Impactful programs are like the grand old game itself and prosper in its simplicity, one hit at time.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5 Ltd, Oakville, Ontario, January 2014

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