Human nature dictates that people always want to make the best buying decision possible, and therefore… marketing’s job is not to yak incessantly about how great you are or how low your prices are.

Marketing’s job is to position your prospective buyer’s so they have total control over the decision-making process… based on them having enough quantity and quality of information to determine that they’re receiving the most value for the price they pay.

When most people think of advertising, they think of massive, expensive campaigns they see every day. Brand advertising is the norm with the large corporations like Coke, Chevrolet or Geico. They focus on creativity, emotional response and attention-grabbing. They attempt to pull customers in and their goal is to leave a lasting impression.

If you own a small business, that can seem completely overwhelming. If you’re like the vast majority of online businesses that don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on brand and image-based advertising, you should be using, if you’re not already, a direct-response marketing approach. Instead of trying to play with the big boys, you need a different approach. You need to create marketing that drives action today. And that’s direct response marketing.

Direct response marketing is a marketing strategy that demands a direct response from your potential customers. The purpose of it is to send customers targeted messages that drive specific actions such as buy a product, read your latest article, join your membership site, refer-a-friend or any other business goal or objective.

Direct response marketing is targeted to a specific audience who are likely to be customers, and the specific call to action is intended to drive measurable results. Customers love this as they’re offered the opportunity to respond, whether that be in the way of signing up for a newsletter, posting a comment on your site or blog or purchasing a product from you.

So, what does direct response marketing look like?

Well, it comes in many forms, including

• Direct mail
• Print ads
• Radio and TV ads
• Coupons or other incentives
• Telemarketing
• Virtually any medium can be used for direct response marketing

Some of the advantages of direct marketing are

• A great way to use free time during lulls in business
• Productive way to communicate and empower you to create more relationships
• Great way to up-sell and cross-sell to current customers
• Low cost way to generate new business
• Used as leverage to turn small sales into large sales
• Supplement your current marketing program
• Cost-effective way to reach target markets
• Offers measurable results
• Reach outside your local area for new business
• Increase the effectiveness of your sales force

These are all great things that can come from just taking a few simple steps to putting together a direct response marketing plan and executing it.

“I honestly don’t think you’ll ever find a safer, lower-risk, higher-profit method of increasing your business or profession than direct-response marketing.” Jay Abraham

Direct response marketing is one of the best ways to launch your business on a large scale and reach out to everyone in your target market whether they’re in your local area or not.