Marketing Communication: Direct marketing
How do companies communicate with consumers? Well a source (the company) conveys a message though a channel of communication and the receiver (the consumer) sees or hears it. A company can
communicate in one of five ways: (1) Adverting (2) Personal selling (3) Public
relations (4) Sales promotion (5) Direct marketing. A company may decide to use
a few, just one or all of these methods. However, I will focus solely on number
5, direct marketing. Following, I will give an example of direct marketing, offer some of its positive/negative attributes and lastly, recognize some challenges it is experiencing.
What is Direct marketing? It uses direct communication with a consumer.
The different forms may vary and take on any one of the following forms:
face-to- face selling, direct mail, catalogs, telephone solicitations and
online marketing. Direct marketing is one of the fastest growing forms of
promotion. Today, online marketing is very popular and many of us encounter it
on a daily basis.
In this video there are a few different examples of direct marketing done by car companies. The most interesting example I found in this video was used by Porsche. Porsche used a very personal technique of
direct marketing. They took their newest
Porsche model car and parked it in different driveways of some of the most exclusive
homes in a Toronto neighborhood. Then employees of Porsche took pictures of
the car placed in the driveways and printed out the pictures. Each picture was personalized
and placed in the mailbox of each driveway/home used. The campaign slogan
was “It’s Closer Than You Think.” Obviously, this is an extreme example of
personalization that was very time consuming and surely expensive. However, Porsche
did record an impressive 32% response rate from its direct mail.
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| Here the Porsche car is being photographed in selected driveways |
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| These show the final product of personal/direct mail to the potential customers of Porsche. |
+Positives of direct marketing: The message can be prepared
quickly and it facilitates a relationship with the customer. The ability to
customize customer communication efforts is key.
-Negatives of direct marketing: Declining customer response and
the database management is expensive. Also, there is some concern as to the
privacy invasion of direct marketing as I will explain below.
Challenges to direct marketing:
Although it is fast-growing, direct marketing also faces a
major challenge relation to consumer privacy. There is an increase of ethical
issues as to how much information a business should be able to asses about a
customer. For example, many businesses are matching customer records with Facebook
profiles, twitter following behavior and Google search activity. When going on
the internet, it is likely ads will pop up on the side that relate to you and
your previous purchases or searches. In the United States, there is an
increased concern over privacy and web “tracking.” The Direct Marketing
Association has created an “Ad Choices” icon which allows consumers to opt out
of having their online data collected. Currently, the United States senate is
evaluating the “Do Not Track Online Act.” The outcome of this could have large
effects on marketing, social media and the use of direct marketing.
Citing:
Picture1:http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/guerrilla-marketing/porsche-dealer-puts-your-house-in-direct-marketing-material/ (also Porsche statistic of 32%)
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