Developing the Direct Marketing Mind-Set

Mention the word marekting to most people, and immediately they think of sales or exotic advertising. Mention direct marketing and most people are unsure as to the distinction or what it really is.



Direct marketing, a subset of all marketing, requires different thinking, different ideas, and different approaches. Having this "fixed mental attitude" is as important as having the right offer, the right marketing piece, and the right target for your marekting. A direct marketing mind-set is different than a general advertiser's or traditional marketer's mind-set:

• As a direct marketer, you know that your product or service is your identity. Fancy ads, entertaining commercials, and graphics-intensive marketing are not what you think about.
• As a direct mareketer, you have the mind-set that you will market to interested prospects. this goes beyond permission or opt-in marketing. Interest is researched, defined, and ultimately targeted by the direct marketer. With this mind-set, you know that your best prospects are current customers, past customers, or prospects like them.
• As a direct marketer, you play the numbers game. This is an important component of the direct marketing mind-set because a large percentage of the marketing does not produce results. If the response rate is 2 percent, which isn't bad in the direct-mail world, 98 percent represents a "no response" rate. It takes a certain mind-set to accept this.
• With the emphasis on numbers, percentages, and data, as a direct marketer you will use the power of technology to organize and manage information. A database to a direct marketer is like gold. As a direct marketer, you would rather lock up your database or mailing list at night than protect your expensive wares and merchandise. As you talk like a direct mareketer (with the proper mind-set), you will start saying things like compilation, segmenting, and sorting, as if databases are your whole life. Direct marketers are passionate about databases, and that's the mind-set you should work within.
• As a direct marketer, you have in your mind the three-step formula to marketing success: test, test, test! Armed with quantitative databases and playing the respective numbers game, measurement and testing are easilty at hand. Testing one variable vs. a control will become a game with you. As a direct marketer, you're always trying to "beat" past performance, making changes to things like headlines, offers, and copy, to find the optimum marketing formula to meet your marketing objectives.
• As a direct marketer, you will also know that if, through all this testing, something is proven to be ineffective, you will fix it or scrap it and move on to the next campaign or idea.
• As a direct marketing, you will possess a mind-set that starts with a visualization of what words will be used in a message, not how pretty the pictures and graphics will be. Copy is king. That's what works in direct marketing, and it's the habit and mind-set you will have.
• As a direct marketer, you will have interactivity on your mind. Because response or an actual purchase is the primary objective, interacting with and involving the prospect is key. This has implications for offers, messages, and the related calls to action.

It is clear, then from these mind-sets that direct marketers know how to convert prospects to paying clients. They know how to fulfill responses quickly, and deliver sold goods and services. Direct marketeers know how to collect and use the right data and information in the right way.

What do you think!