Early Joining Assignment

On
Direct Marketing is the heart and soul of B2B marketing

By
Piyush Ray
A0102209094
Section a, Roll no. 41
MBA (M&S) Class of 2011

Submitted to
Mr. Nawal Gupta
Senior Lecturer
Department of Marketing

In Partial Fulfillment of Award of Master of Business Administration

AMITY BUSINESS SCHOOL

Direct marketing is a communication between seller and buyer directly. No intermediary media
is used. No distractions come between hopefully. Direct marketing is generally visual and
sometimes auditory. It is also, to an extent sensual and olfactory. That is, impressions are
obtained from feel and smell that affect the communication. It is direct communication but with a
marketing purpose. It is most often in text format. Layout and delivery (both the form and the
timing) have an impact on the acceptability of the communication. Research shows that a
combination of brochure and Internet works, persuading people to buy – the Internet needs the
brochure’s reassuring feel and existence, giving an Internet site

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) defines direct marketing as ‘communications where
data are used systematically to achieve quantifiable marketing objectives and where direct
contact is made, or invited, between a company and its customers and prospective customers’.

Direct Marketing Tools

Direct marketing includes a number of different marketing tools that require you to buy now.
These marketing tools may be emails, sales letters, telesales, or other tools.

Direct Marketing Emails

Emails may be a form of direct marketing or they can be e-newsletters. The difference
between direct marketing emails and other emails is that they require an action now that can be
tracked and measured. The email may, for example, be a description of a product and at the end
give the person the call to “buy it now” by visiting your website. You will be able to track how
many people clicked on the link and bought your product using online tracking software. When
writing direct marketing emails though you need to be aware that you cannot write them in the
same way you would write other direct marketing materials as this will probably get them caught
in spam filters so try to disguise your direct marketing message while still giving a powerful call
to action.

Telesales

Who hasn’t received those telephone calls trying to sell you something? This form of direct
marketing is telesales and although many customers don’t like it, it can still bring results and so
businesses still use it. In order to get the best results from telesales you should target your lists
and try a two-call system whereby you first of all call to find out the customer’s needs and then
phone back later for the direct marketing call

.
Sales Letters

Direct marketing sales letters, such as those seen on websites and in magazines are another form
of direct marketing. They have compelling copy that calls people to take action now and usually
repeats this call a number of times throughout the letter. The trick with achieving success at sales
letters is to write compelling copy that appeals to your target market’s perceived needs and
desires and tells them how your product can help them fulfill these.

Infomercials

Infomercials are direct marketing on the television. Notice how many times during an
infomercial you are encouraged to contact the company to purchase their products. Infomercials
need to be professionally done, use celebrities or scientists to create credibility and usually come
with many bonuses or a money back guarantee.

There are a number of different tools that are used in direct marketing but the most important
aim of these tools is to get the person to act immediately and not wait. This is done differently
depending on the tool used and it is important to know how to use each of these tools for direct
marketing.

FITTING DIRECT MARKETING INTO THE INTEGRATED

Direct marketing is no different from other forms of marketing in that it is trying to achieve a
marketing purpose. The marketing purpose is to meet a marketing objective; the direct marketing
activities may be in support of other marketing activities or as one of a sequence of direct
marketing activities – often called a campaign. Direct marketing achieves the purpose directly.
The fact that direct marketing is a one-to-one communication allows the communication to be
special and tailored to the recipient. If you do not use its special characteristics and its individual
capability, you are missing a trick and the true benefit of direct marketing.

The old business-orientated way of operating marketing

In marketing, in the last decades of the 20th century, the basic marketing effort was managed as
a three-part exercise for the benefit of the business, often by separate operations, first trying to
generate leads (the old marketing bit), secondly to process sales (the task of the sales force to
close sales) and finally to retain the customer (the domain of customer service). Separation of the
three parts no longer really works. However carefully people are told to join together as a team to
support a customer, if they belong to different parts of a business they are likely to retain in-
house rivalries. It is a human condition. Integration means working as one, probably achievable
only under one leader.

An integrated marketer is aware of four factors: the recent customer research on consistency of
message (the customer shies away from purchase if the message is inconsistent); the discerning
nature of customers, reflecting a greater maturity; the customer only believing messages that are
supported by reality; finally, the pace of life itself is moving customers to bond with a brand that
delivers what they need because they do not have the time to waste re-examining the
marketplace every time they make a repeat purchase. (Tesco is the consumer model here with 43
per cent of their high value customers 100 per cent bonded to the brand – that is, they do not
shop anywhere else. Viking is an equivalent good example on the business-to-business side.)

The wise marketer now looks at the whole approach from product and service (concept)
awareness to demonstrating relevance and performance, to showing clear advantage of the
concept and finally bonding, that is, from the viewpoint of the customer, creating a seamless
consistent view, which persuades the customer not to even consider or think of buying from
anyone else.

The newer integrated marketing purpose

The marketing purpose for an integrated marketer must be the whole approach of the customer
seen from the customer’s viewpoint.
That is:
 The creation of a sales-conducive environment both real and virtual (that is, in the mind) to
create an environment that is conducive to sales and repeat sales through building a
relationship with a customer
 Taking account of the customer’s particular needs including awareness of the product/service
(the concept) and showing the relevance and performance to the customer of ‘the concept’;
 Educates the customer from whatever level they wish to start
 Communicates messages in ways that match the customer’s understanding;
 Makes it all easy to remember for the customer, by associating everything the customer
needs to know with a brand which is placed in the mind (as a kind of shorthand memory
need-matcher).

The blinding flash of the obvious here is that to achieve this successfully (assuming you are not
going to dedicate a marketing person to each customer, which, of course, happened in the past
and is still done now for really big clients using key account managers) you are going to have to
build up a database for everyone to access, informing ‘on-call’ everything you need to know
about the customer, in your relationship with them. It also means obtaining feedback to build up
the picture of the customer (what used to be called fact finding). The opportunity to determine
whether a sale is likely or not can also is undertaken so time is not wasted on an unlikely
prospect (what used to be called qualifying the customer).

The benefit of direct marketing being used to achieve this sales conducive environment is that
for awareness and education, complex propositions can be put across most easily in print and
considered at a pace that suits the potential customer. For feedback similarly, the completion of a
questionnaire can be carried out at a pace that suits the potential customer. The same applies to a
telemarketing or a call centre call (where the call person can both start to build a relationship and
ensure that the potential customer understands the concept) or receiving information over the
Internet (with extensive Frequently Asked Questions [FAQs] supplied) and completing an e-mail
response. In every case the feedback of information allows subsequently an enhanced capability
to produce bespoke propositions to send back to potential customers. The brand values are fed in
through everything.

 The customer bonding with the brand to increase a customer bond with a brand, by imparting
specific messages that strengthen that bond and building long-term relationships for repeat or
further sales. Customers, if approached correctly, bond in a way that is much stronger than
any loyalty scheme.

It requires continuing confirmation of the excellence of the customer decision to bond and must
continue to demonstrate advantage. The result, if achieved though, is repeat purchase and
ongoing business. This bonding is so effective it is now being used as a measure of future share
value prediction. It is in consequence a CEO deliverable. Again direct marketing is particularly
suited to achieve customer bonding with a brand. It will often require more than one direct
marketing activity – a campaign – over a period of time. The need to build relationships is
important. Building relationships is a marketing activity and direct marketing is the superior
implementation method for this. For relatively small effort, a large number of repeat sales can be
achieved. Direct marketing is good at cementing relationships with customers to achieve sales. In
business-to-business where costs of advertising in the specialist press seem profligate and in any
case marketing budgets are more limited and seeming wastage is unwelcome, direct marketing is
an ideal tool. Indeed customers can be readily persuaded to share in the saving of cost by
ordering online and allowing automated systems to cut out the usual business interfaces –
intermediary persons, firms or organizations. Airline and some rail ticketing can and now do
save on cost for consumers. It is particularly important to make contact with those who have
bought before, both in an appropriate and a timely fashion. It is important to establish re-order
frequency and match a contact call or letter to that period. Some advocate a 90- day period
between contacts. This is no longer subtle enough.

From experience, a buying pattern can be established. Customers can even be asked how
frequently they want to be contacted; for a professional firm seeking new business it is even
possible to ask how frequently contact should be made. It can then be made into a process with a
contact plan for each client. That is, persons in the team are tasked with maintaining contact at
set frequencies and the type of that contact decided. The process can be managed centrally using
a database. For example, the car dealer mentioned before should ascertain the buying period
between car purchases of customers – even asking the customer to say when they had previous
cars and for how long. The period in between purchases should build a relationship – perhaps
seeking assistance with new product development, finding out the customer preference and
demonstrating how the new products will meet those preferences. Then in the pre-purchase
period, really putting forward the sell, based on the knowledge of the customer.
Direct Marketing the Heart and soul of B2B Marketing

Direct marketing is most appropriate in a number of situations. The following paragraphs list
some of these and, of course, the reverse where direct marketing is inappropriate.

First, there is some obvious logic (blinding flash of the obvious): to carry out some direct
marketing activities (e.g. e-mail, direct mail, catalogue) you need to know your customers by
name and address, or e-mail address or telephone number. Only if you have customers can you
carry out those direct marketing activities. But if you do not have those customers, then you do
have the following direct marketing alternatives:

 Advertise for customer: Carry out direct response marketing activities first, to achieve
sufficient numbers of customers’ details to carry out direct marketing as part of a campaign.
Make the ones you want an offer they cannot refuse. Of course, you do not necessarily want
the whole population, so it must be targeted. (For example, Jaguar offering an X-type for the
weekend if you leave your BMW or Mercedes with them, thus targeting the wealthy 30+ age
group.) Non-direct response advertising can produce customers but may well be much
slower, as you require the customer to take action unprompted and unless your advertising
persuades and/or makes an incredible offer that has customers putting in effort to seek out
purchase outlets, a lot of potential customers may not bite.

 Use PR: This is probably riskier than non-direct response advertising as you do not control
the channel. You could use some high profile concept (product/service) launch that captures
sufficient media interest for journalists, commentators and editors to publish and promote
your concept. Beware, they may do so, but not always in ways you can imagine.

 Buy potential customer names: Technically, you hire the names for each time you use the
list, which comes in a database format. The database, the list, needs to match the profile of
your target. Legally, you need to ensure that the database is properly used that the customers
listed have sanctioned your communicating with them on this topic.

 Non-names direct marketing: The direct marketing activities that do not depend on
knowing the customers’ names, addresses, etc, are: direct response (inserts, tip on, pop ups),
piggy back, door-to-door, leaflets and handouts.

 Field marketing: Field marketing encompasses face-to-face direct marketing. Generally this
is a relatively expensive form of direct marketing as you are paying for people’s time to
undertake direct marketing and they are usually only in contact with one or a few customers
at any time.
Start-ups

As a start-up business you do not have any customers, so why not use someone else’s? Piggy
back may offer the perfect solution, providing you select the right partner who has lots of the
right type of customers. So just after you have arrived and set up in an area and do not know the
locals, pick a piggy back partner who has customers with a concept that has an affinity with
yours.

Commodity products

Clearly for an item in general use such as a commodity (cosmetic/personal hygiene, food,
cleaning materials) you do not need a name and address and door-to-door (see Chapter 9) is an
easy and cheap way of delivering a marketing message to households. It is quite possible to
target households fairly accurately by the type of persons living there. A number of organizations
offer profiles of household types by area or street. A commodity cannot yet be sent over TV or
radio or poster, though you can stick on samples to other printed media.

Complex propositions

Direct marketing is comfortable with complex propositions. You cannot deliver the small print
in a TV advertisement or a poster or even really in a press advertisement (where the amount of
reading is less suited to newsprint than in a printed brochure). Also, financial services are a
personal matter suited to direct mail, which is a one-to-one medium, versus a newspaper, which
is impersonal.

The recognized uses for direct marketing, Drayton Bird (2000) considers there are five major
activities that can be applied singly, in stages or over time, which develop a relationship for
direct marketing to persuade the recipient to:

■ buy through the post

■ ask for catalogues

■ Request a demonstration

■ visit a retail establishment

■ take part in some action

 Direct marketing offers the advantage of reaching large number of well-defined target
customers and almost eliminates waste coverage.

 Good quality databases are available from independent suppliers and the marketer can
segment customer groups with considerable precision.

 Direct marketer can personalize the message.

 Direct marketing can deliver almost perfect offers to customers.

 Marketer can build desired frequency level based on media.

 Direct marketing offers creative flexibility in different media.

 Direct marketer can quickly develop a list of specific profiles for direct mail.

 Direct marketing is more effective in building customer relationship.

 It is very cost effective considering the sale generated per contact.

 The results can be measured most accurately.