The goal of direct marketing is to market your product or services to the people that are the most likely to buy from you. So how do you go about this and where do you start?
1. Use social media to market your business
Facebook in particular, is a good lead generation platform for many businesses. You can categorise your target market by age, geographical location, occupation, etc., and only target those relevant to your business offerings.
The more accurately you can profile your ideal customer, the more successful this strategy will be for your business. Social media marketing can be a very cost-effective form of direct marketing.
2. Advertise with Google Adwords
Google Adwords is a pay per click service which is ad-based. When someone types a search query, a selection of Google Adwords appears on the page.
If you’ve tried Google Ads it may seem like a lucky dip as to who appears first on the list, however there is a strategy behind it. There are numerous metrics available within Google Adwords to improve your “quality score” which will help you climb the ad list. By excluding certain market segments and specifying “negative keywords”, you can improve your quality score and at the same time, lower your ad spend.
3. Build strategic alliances
Approach other businesses that offer complimentary services to yours and look to partner with them. What value ‘add-on’ can they offer their clients by partnering with you?
You may be able to help each other grow leads and you could benefit at the outset by being introduced to their customers.
Next steps
In all the cases above, ensure you put a “call to action” in place whereby interested parties click on a link that takes them to your website.
Your website ‘landing page’ needs to be strategically built to entice your visitors to leave their name, email address and perhaps phone number. If you ask for more than this, people will be far less likely to sign up. You need to offer these visitors something irresistible for them to leave their details, like an e-book, brochure, invitation to a webinar or such.
The strategic goal of direct marketing is to build up a database of people interested in your business (stage one of your sales funnel). Once you have a database to work with, you can begin to think about the next step which might be an email marketing campaign.
Direct marketing is one of the most cost-effective methods of expanding your sales. It is a means whereby you can focus maximum effort onto the right people.
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