Direct response marketing is changing. Previously, it had been reliant upon traditional media to reach potential customer bases, such as television, radio, magazines and newspapers. But the recent years have seen a significant shift in the attitude of marketers who participate in direct response marketing – they have seen the power that the Internet has when it comes to driving direct response marketing campaigns.
A Maturing Marketplace
The reasons for this shift are numerous. But possibly the major reason why such individuals and companies are bringing their direct response marketing campaigns online is the maturity of the market.
Previously the Internet had been seen as an immature medium. People were unsure as to what worked, the marketplace itself was volatile and many people were worried about buying online. However, commerce over the Internet has grown significantly over the last few years, leading those who run direct response marketing campaigns to become interested in the significant amounts of money that get spend online every day.
Unlimited Viewers
One of the main advantages of the Internet is its ability to reach out to the whole world. Previously, with traditional media, you had to take things one location at a time and that is obviously extremely complicated.
But with the Internet, anyone from anywhere in the world can find your site/advert. This opens up massive markets to those who would have been limited by cost and location when it came to finding potential customers.
Driving Traffic to Direct Response Marketing Campaigns
The viewing figures of those who visit your site are know as 'traffic'. It is traffic that is important to any website, but that goes double for anyone involved in a direct response marketing campaign. The more traffic you have, the better the chance that your website is going to convert visitors into sales. So, traffic is obviously important but how do you drive traffic to your website in the first place?
The opportunities are endless as an advertiser when it comes to the Internet and here are just a few of the most important traffic sources available at this point:
- Search Engines. Search engines such as Google list websites as a result of keyword searches performed by users. Through SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you need to get your direct response marketing website as high on the list as possible: the higher on that list it is, the more people will end up looking at that specific listing and that ultimately leads to more visitors.
There are tools available to show you which 'keywords' get the most searches within your niche and the AdWords keyword research tool offered by Google is your most powerful ally.
- PPC (Pay Per Click). You can purchase ad space on search engines and sites such as Facebook, sites which allow you to place small adverts in the search results and on sidebars, for example. As the name suggests, you will need to pay for each click you receive. How much you pay varies from company to company and, of course, from keyword to keyword.
- Adverts on Other Sites. You can pay to place your advert on other sites, whether a banner, a text link or even a blog post. These adverts then send potential customers to your own direct response marketing site when they are clicked and you usually either pay a fixed monthly fee or pay a certain amount of money for every 1000 impressions (CPM advertising).
These are just some of the ways to drive traffic to your direct response marketing site. Many others exist and the best campaigns, as with traditional marketing, use a mix of standard advertising techniques such as those listed above with more unconventional ones.
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