By Colston Bird

 Direct marketing now draws as a great deal of investment as advertising in numerous markets. There are three rationales, all straightforward.


First, you can measure your results, and as competition becomes fiercer, many businesses like this. Second, it is ideal for keeping customers; and keeping customers is many times more lucrative than acquiring them. Third, all business on the fastest developing channel in the world - the internet - are direct, and the same methods and rules apply.

But there is a further reason; and it is one that, oddly enough, occurred to me on my last visit to India, and which I expressed for the first time ever during a speech in Bangalore.

Direct marketing is the nearest thing yet to flawless marketing. Quite a claim, so allow me to clarify.

What is marketing?

Marketing is described by the British Chartered Institute of Marketing as: "Identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably".

There is another, pithier description I favour. It was given by an American millionaire many years ago who said: "Find out what people want and need, and give it to them - and you'll get rich".

Peter Drucker wrote that the objective of marketing is to "know and understand the customer so well that the product fits him and sells itself." This is, if you agree with him, perfect marketing. And it is what direct marketing achieves better than any other way.

First by means of the use of postal, telephone and internet questionnaires it establishes very cheaply what people say they would like, although as we all recognise, research is very unsound.

But then it ascertains very plainly the answer to a much more important question: will they buy it? And it does so by inviting them to do so. As my old boss
David Ogilvy put it, "General advertisers can only guess. Direct marketers know."

As a consequence of this I can tell you the answers to all types of fascinating queries. Like what happens if you run long copy as opposed to short copy. What occurs if you put someone's face in an advertisement. How long you ought to have a phone number on the screen if you want to get the most enquiries. Where your headline is most liable to get read - and so on.

The perfect advertisement

Peter Drucker also said, "The perfect advertisement is one of which the reader can say, 'This is for me, and me alone.'" By distinction, then, no mass advertisement can be flawless; but one which is focused on to individuals via direct mail or e-mail can be.

Nearly all of you reading this are, I assume, advertising people, and if you are like your colleagues elsewhere, feel you are at the centre of the marketing world. As the saying goes, "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

But advertising is only one element of marketing and, I would advise, not always the most significant. Product development and pricing typically play a much greater part.

Your idea that advertising is the best answer to most marketing problems, allied to a laudable wish to prevent clients wasting money on anything else is a principal reason why they have taken so long to embrace direct marketing.

Of course every major advertising group in the world realizes the value of direct marketing and has a department taking care of it. They occasionally label it other things, like Customer Relationship Management, or Dialogue Marketing, but these are all little more than prettied-up direct marketing.

More to the point, not only customers understand money; the large advertising groups do, too; and direct marketing agencies, no matter what you call them, are far more lucrative than ad agencies.

So it is worth thinking about that the light at the end of the advertising tunnel may well be that of an oncoming train called direct marketing. You can get run over, get out of the way, or get on board: but whatever you do, don't ignore it.

Drayton Bird has long been one of direct marketing's best known teachers and authorities. He has written four books, out in 14 languages and over 1,000 of articles much like this one. He's also worked and lectured in over 50 different countries -- including work with Proctor & Gamble, and Mercedes. David Ogilvy once said, "Drayton Bird knows more about direct marketing than anyone in the world." Find out more at http://www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com
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