The rise of Internet marketing in recent years has been phenomenal. Such has been the staggering rate of growth that this industry has enjoyed that the last year has been considered a bad one, with “only” a 26% increase. When you consider that with most industries, a 6% growth rate is perceived as a very healthy number, you realize just how fast Internet marketing is growing.
The main growth area within Internet marketing is direct response marketing: marketing designed with a specific goal in mind, targeted at individuals via a variety of means and with measurable direct responses from potential customers (hence the name).
Direct Response Marketing 101
Direct response marketing has been around for years and has been with us in various forms: newspapers, magazines, television adverts, radio adverts and much more. It has a direct appeal to the customer, a 'call to action', if you will.
This call to action can take a variety of forms, but in the end, the action that companies want the reader/listener to perform is purchasing their product or service. One of the most important parts of direct marketing is the measurement of what works and what doesn't.
This is actually why Internet marketing represents a revolution in the first place. It allows the complete measurement of a huge number of statistics in a manner that makes traditional media seem as something from the business stone age.
The Importance of Statistics
Direct marketing is all about measuring what is working and what is not. Statistics are an important part of the game because based on what they tell you, improvements which ultimately affect the profitability of your campaign in a positive manner can be made.
Long before Internet marketing was around, split testing was developed. Split testing is running two versions of the same advert, only with slight changes, to see what works best. You then take the advert that has generated the best results and run that, along with a version which contains another minor tweak, in order to see which of those produces the best results, ad nauseum.
It is extremely important to know which approach brings more visitors to your website, which approach convinces them to do more than just read a few sentences and especially which approach generates the best conversion rates.
|
