When we’re asked by clients “what is the definition of direct marketing”, our answer is clear.

In fact, it’s also the answer to the question “What is the difference between direct and indirect marketing?”

We define direct marketing as marketing where you control exactly who receives it, how they receive it, and when they receive it.

In recent years, companies have diverted much of the expenditure they traditionally put aside for direct marketing into inbound marketing and content marketing.

This makes sense because the way in which companies and decision makers interact has changed greatly in the last 20 years.

We now look on the Internet first for answers rather than contact an expert.

For example, you may decide to research “salary dividend split” online before you call an accountant – even if you’re already with an accountant and paying them by direct debit every month.

By investing in inbound marketing and content marketing, you create a pipeline of future strong leads for our companies as future clients find you and your content online.

For many professionals though, this approach is profitable but a little passive.

The customer is a little bit too much in control.

With direct marketing, you choose:

• which decision makers you get in touch with based upon their likely interest in or need for the products and services you offer,
• how you get in touch with these decision makers (email, phone, and/or post),
• when you get in touch with them, and
• what you offer them as an incentive to get in touch with you as quickly as possible.

Rather than waiting for decision makers to enquire, you approach them directly.

By doing this, you not only create awareness of your company and its products and services – the very best direct marketing emails, calls, and mail-outs can actually bring a decision forward and persuade potential customers to switch from their current supplier to your company.

B2B direct marketing is the use of email marketing, telemarketing, and/or postal marketing to contact decision makers within the companies you want to sell your products and services to.

You can also run direct successful marketing campaigns to decision makers within schools and within the wider public sector.

The two main goals of direct marketing are:

• customer identification/contact and
• through that contact, generating a sale or a strong enquiry

The purpose of direct marketing is to generate the types of enquiries and sales you want.

How do you do that?

First, for a direct marketing campaign to be the most successful, you need to be as sure as possible that the recipients of your marketing pieces have a genuine need for or interest in the products and services you sell.

We have over 3,300,000 decision makers on our three main databases.

If you sell a specialist product or service, you should ask your More Than Words accounts manager to find the decision makers with the businesses, schools, or public sector organisations most likely to buy from you.

If you sell generic products or services, it’s better to select from the database the types of company, school, or public sector organisation most likely to place higher value orders with you.

Second, with your direct marketing piece (whether delivered by phone, email, or post), you need to stimulate enough interest in the recipient to provoke a positive reaction.

With our managed email marketing and managed telemarketing services, we create approaches designed to stimulate positive response by appealing to the potential client’s need for your products and services addressing the issues those products and services solve.

When we’re asked by potential clients “what are the advantages of direct marketing?”, the main benefits are that it’s a controllable form of marketing which delivers a predictable and dependable stream of high-quality and closeable leads and new sales for your business.

The returns on your investment in direct marketing are measurable too – just divide the size of your invoice from us by the number of sales and leads generated as a result of our campaigns.

You then use this information to help plan future marketing campaigns and to tweak the offers you make in direct marketing to further lower the cost per lead and cost per sale generated.

More Than Words’ direct marketing team (including planners, designers, copywriters, and more) have over 100 years’ collective experience between them working for nearly 20,000 customers across 400 different business sectors.

We look forward to the opportunity to find out more about you, what you sell, and who you sell it to.

Using that information, we’ll prepare a direct marketing plan for your business which we believe offers your company the greatest chance of making the highest return possible on your investment.

There are three standard direct marketing channels – telephone, email, and postal marketing.

Direct email marketing is the sending of a promotional offer to recipients you want to get in touch with by email.

Across our three databases, we have over 500,000 decision makers’ direct inbox details from which you can select the targets you want to market to.

Direct mail marketing, sometimes called direct letterbox marketing, is the sending of a promotional offer to receipients you choose by post.

Across our three databases, we have over 3,300,000 decision makers’ postal addresses from which you can select the targets you want to market to.

Direct mail marketing is highly effective and response-generating but, along with telemarketing, upfront costs are higher than with email marketing.

If you use third party companies to organise your direct mail marketing campaign (including copywriting, designing, printing, packing, and dispatch), you should budget around £4,000 for every 10,000 mailers.

You can mail in any quantity you wish however it’s more cost-effective to run campaigns with at least 1,000 or preferably 4,000 pieces because you benefit from significant price cuts in the per-envelope postal rate.

To speak with one of our account managers about direct mail marketing and selecting the decision makers you need for your campaign, please call us on 0330 010 3495.

For More Than Words, a successful direct marketing campaign is the promotional activity you undertake over a 12 month period.

Why direct marketing is effective is that, over the course of a year, you communicate multiple times with the decision makers on the database you buy from us or on your managed direct marketing campaign.

The most important factor in direct marketing is to consider the buying journey which we explain in the next FAQ question.

The buying cycle journey describes a potential customer’s readiness to buy

• the products and services you’re offering and
• from your company.

There are four stages your 12 month marketing campaign will go through:

• Early Adopters – months one and two will be the quietest – you should benefit from a few leads and a handful of sales. Our goal as your marketing company is to for you to cover your costs in those first two months.

• Growth Phase – months three, four and five will see your phone ringing a lot more. Your target audience are becoming familiar with you and what you offer. You’ve become a known company to them and that makes a big difference.

• Plateau – you’ve gone from a company they knew nothing of a few months ago to an established presence in the marketplace to them. You should see even more enquiries and new orders coming in. Traditionally, months five, six, seven and eight will be the most profitable of your time with us.

• Decline – from month nine onwards, responses generally will drop and level off. You’re still in a lot better position than you were in month 1 however. Now is the time to refresh your message to the market to provoke new interest.

The buying journey

The most important factor determining direct successful marketing other than the quality and relevance of the data you’re using is to make sure that you only write adverts for people in the right part of the buying journey.

An example of this if you sell public liability insurance. Nearly every company has to have one and most policies last for one year.

For the first 11 months after a business has signed up for public liability insurance, they are firmly out of the buying cycle – all their needs are covered.

They’re signed up for a year and, even if they wanted to get out of it, they couldn’t anyway.

There’s no point writing an advert specifically to appeal to a decision maker with 6 months to go on their public liability insurance because there is no compelling business reason to have a second public liability insurance policy.

Every time you send an email or letter or make a phone call, only between 1 and 4% will be in the right part of the buying journey to consider making a purchase.

The most successful direct marketing campaigns appeal to that 1-4% and no-one else.

In each of the 12 months of your campaign, different companies will be at the point of purchase so it makes commercial sense to design an email advertisement or write a telesales script which introduces urgency to encourage them to contact you.

Few people want to risk buying from an unknown

The three reasons we like to have the opportunity to work on you over the course of a year is to:

• get you over the early adopter phase of the buying cycle,
• show you how successful sustained direct marketing can be,
• why direct marketing should be something you do every month, and
• hopefully, cover the cost of your purchase from us in the first two months so you can spend the next 10 months making profit.

Everyone likes to look around to see if there are better deals and better service out there but decision makers within business, schools, and the public sector get nervous about ordering from a company they don’t know.

Most decision makers get especially nervous about switching away from a company they already know or a company that’s very well-known in a sector.

What if the order goes wrong?

What if it arrives late?

What if it never arrives at all?

What if the quality isn’t as good as they get at the moment?

If it’s a high-ticket purchase or the products and services purchased affect the profitability or the efficiency of a business or organisation, this adds an extra element of risk.

There’s all sorts of reasons why people can be reluctant to move.

There’s a term for people who do switch though. They’re called “early adopters”.

They’re naturally less cautious and generally more responsive to offers.

Our aim is that you can pay for your entire campaign with your first two contacts – again, this is why we like to look after it for you.

Familiarity comes from the third campaign onwards

They recognise your brand, they recognise your colours, they recognise your range of products.

You’ve now moved past the early adopter phase and have become a name to them.

All or most of those doubts and fears they may have had about switching suppliers will mainly have disappeared because:

• they know you’re here for the long haul,
• you’ve demonstrated your company’s credibility and the efficacy of your products and services, and
• they know you want their business because you’ve told them often enough that you do.

We’d really appreciate the opportunity to work with you on your campaigns throughout the full year however it’s particularly important we’re involved in the first two contacts you make.

Companies move in and out of the right part of the buying journey all the time for different products and services.

If a company has a need for a service or a product which has been satisfied, it has no need to buy in that service or product again for now.

There’s nothing you can say to them or offer to them to make them buy from you.

For every 100 companies you contact with our data, the chances are that a maximum of 4 of them will be in the right part of the buying cycle in that particular month.

In the following month, it’ll be a maximum of 4 different companies.

What are the stages of the buying journey?

There are three stages to the buying journey:

• the awareness stage where a potential client has just realised that they have a problem that they need to be solved or that they have a desire that they wish to have satisfied

• the consideration stage at which point a potential customer requires detailed information about the products or service they are considering purchasing and which company might supply it, and

• the decision stage when a purchasing decision is imminent.

As mentioned earlier, approximately 1-4% of the owners and senior managers you contact every month will be at the decision stage.

Many of them will go on to make a decision – others will put it off for a few months essentially returning to the consideration stage.

Direct marketing, when done well, will:

• cause a potential client to consider your proposition at the decision stage and
• persuade a potential client in the later part of the consideration stage to bring their decision forward.

What has to happen for a company to come into the right part of the buying cycle?

With businesses, the important thing is either “actual need” or “perceived need”.

They need to have it to a) make money, b) save money or c) stay compliant with the law.

If it’s insurance, mobile phones, utility contracts or leased vehicles, it’s within a few weeks of the end of a contract or already at an end.

If it’s something a company buys constantly ad hoc (i.e. not on a contract) like stationery, cartridge ink, computer parts and so on, it’s simply when they need to have it.

For more transformational projects or projects which affect how a company operates or their profit margins, the people involved in investigating the project will have:

• been through a lengthy process of fact-finding in the consideration stage and
• resolved themselves to shortlist potential suppliers and their products and services as they get ready to make a choice.

If a company is at the right part of a buying cycle but they’ve never bought this product before, how do they decide which supplier to use?

Generally, a company will take greater care over the choice of a supplier for a product or service they’ve never bought before.

This is especially so if the purchase will cost a lot of money and/or the purchase will affect the operational and financial efficiency of a company.

The role direct marketing plays in these complex sales is to make sure that your company is invited to bid for the project or the order.

It’s then the job of your sales team to work with the prospective client to convince them that your company offers the best solution.

In general, when selling products or services to a company, school, or public sector institution which has never invested in those products and services before, your marketing needs to demonstrate the value that they and your company will add in your marketing materials.

If a company is at the right part of a buying cycle, why would they change supplier?

Most companies will already have existing suppliers for everything they need to purchase.

The good news for our customers is that, in most cases, you’re not trying to create a demand for something the company doesn’t need.

You’re trying to win business at the expense of the existing supplier.

So, why would someone change supplier?

• Their current one could let them down in some way – there is an old saying that companies are only a wrong or late order away from going somewhere else and it is very true.

• Pressure from the top – a company may be trying to increase profits or stem losses by reducing their sales/variable costs. Alternatively, a company may be about to go through a financial stress point. A typical stress point is a period, normally lasting 3 weeks, that all VAT registered companies go through where many different bills (VAT, quarter day, PAYE, wages, etc) become due at one time. At this point for example, a business finance company might find success by offering temporary access to capital.

• Mixing and matching – more than before, companies use one supplier for one thing and another supplier for another – there is a lot less loyalty. Suppliers may be chosen for a variety of different reasons – price, delivery times, payment periods and so on.

• Service levels – some suppliers might offer a 24hr turnaround when the customer wants a 4hr turnaround. The first company to present this option to them may win the business

• Something completely unpredictable – the buyer may have had an argument at home, they may enjoy speaking with the new supplier more than their existing one after the initial phone call. There may be a million different unpredictable reasons.

What might stop someone choosing my company as their supplier?

Simply, the fear of making a mistake.

The fear of getting it wrong in front of other decision-makers.

No-one likes to make a mistake.

Everyone likes to feel good at what they do and competent at their job.

When buying for a business, particularly with some of the sums involved, it’s completely natural to want to take the safest option possible.

From the third campaign onwards, you’ll be much more recognisable to the companies they want to sell to.

Never underestimate this – it’s significantly important. There is one reason why campaign responses jump in month 3 or 4 – and that is the reason.

• There’s no list of companies available on a database ready to buy your products or services now. But, with the database you buy from us, 1-4% on any given month will be.

• If a decision maker is not in the market to buy your product or service now whether from you or one of your competitors, there’s nothing you can do to change that.

• Therefore, you should only design and write your adverts in a way that appeals to that 1-4% – always go for the low-hanging fruit.

• No-one likes to make a mistake in business so the chances of them buying on sight of your first or second advert is small. The people who do become your early adopters and you should try your hardest to make sure they pay for your entire campaign.

• From third exposure onwards, you, your company and its offerings are becoming familiar. Resistance to purchase or enquire will subside because the feeling that it’s a risk to order from you will diminish month by month.

• Make sure you carry out your direct marketing for 12 months to get the maximum advantage from it.

Outsourced direct marketing is when you hand over some or all of the responsibilities for carrying out campaigns to a direct marketing agency.

Direct marketing companies, like More Than Words, either offer:

• database-only services where your company is responsible for carrying out marketing campaigns to your target audiences or
• managed marketing services where your direct marketing agency’s staff design emails, send campaigns, make telephone calls on your behalf, and more.

Database-only services are more suitable for companies which have the staff and infrastructure required to carry out a campaign.

For example, if you have your own telesales team or email servers, it may make more sense for you to expedite and measure the campaigns yourself because you’re in full control of the process and you have the infrastructure available to do it yourself.

If you use managed services, there are additional charges on top of the data for the work your direct marketing agency carries out for you. However, these additional costs are likely to be substantially less than setting up your own infrastructure and employing new staff in the short term.

You may decide that, after investing in outsourced direct marketing, there is financial justification for building your own in-house telesales team or investing in an email marketing team.

Please note that we don’t offer outsourced mailing house services for postal mail campaigns however we will be happy to recommend you to suppliers we trust in the sector.