Top Three Reasons To Use Direct Response Advertising

Small and large businesses alike need to advertise. Advertising is one of the largest expenses a business will incur; however, with a great response rate the money spent is of little consequence. With an effective advertising campaign the money spent will provide a steady stream of customers or prospects. Businesses should use direct response advertising because traditional advertising is expensive, direct response can be tracked, and it still offers a variety media outlets.

Traditional brand advertising is very expensive. Newspaper reps will tell you that you need to keep running the ad so that people will relate to your business when the need arises for your service or product. This is true; however, unless you have very deep pockets this is not the strategy for you. Also, brand advertising can take years to actually pay off. Again, it can be effective if you’re a company like Budweiser or Coke; however, smaller companies can not last long enough to see actual results.

Direct response advertising is a great alternative because it contains a call to action. This can be a deadline for a special or a “call now for a free gift”. This call to action allows the advertising to be tracked with greater accuracy. This tracking feature allows the advertiser to run several smaller campaigns to see which is more effective. Finally, the call to action induces urgency in the customer and can provide immediate results as opposed to the customer delaying the response and eventually forgetting.

In addition, direct response advertising allows the advertiser to use a variety of media outlets to deliver their message. The most common would be the direct mail piece with a special price with a deadline. Another media that works well with direct response is television. We have all seen the ads for a product that scream “Call now and we will include this extra special bonus”. We see these ads all the time because they work. Radio is another media that utilizes direct response. Radio is great at driving traffic to a memorable website since most people listen to the radio in their car and can not take immediate action to call.

So if you are in the business of advertising it would make sense to focus your advertising dollars on direct response marketing. Remember that brand advertising is expensive and takes a very long time to see results. Also, direct response can save you money through testing small campaigns. Finally, you are never limited with direct response. All forms of media and campaigns can be utilized to create a call to action.