Direct marketing is a type of advertising that avoids the traditional mediums of television, radio, magazines, newspapers, billboards as such like.
Instead direct marketing, as the name suggest, goes directly to the customer by some sort of mail, be it fliers, leaflets, catalogues or indeed email.
Direct marketing is a sub-type of marketing and its core principle is the same.
The core principle is simply advertising ones goods or services to a hopefully responsive audience.
The idea behind of this is being able to better define that audience according to the product or service you are selling and the type of customer that will be responsive.
There are a whole host of direct marketing companies that you can approach to purchase lists of people, which have been identified as prospective clients, and customers to your businesses particular industry.
They may have been identified as prospective clients by there previous purchases or by their known interest in a certain subject, perhaps by visiting or signing up to websites and promotions etc.
A good direct marketing company will have names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses for a large list of people that are interested in the products and/or services your business is offering and have indicated they are willing to be contacted, or receive promotional material from third party companies.
The strong advantage of this and gone over general advertising such as TV adverts, is the relatively low cost and the much higher conversion rate.
The conversion rate will never be 100% or even close to it, but it go through good lists, will increase your conversion considerably.
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