Direct Response Consulting

In today’s marketing and advertising world just about everything is related to direct response in some form or another. The name of the game in direct response consulting or direct response media is to test and track. Find out what works, do more of what is working and cut or change what is not working.
We all hear a lot about ROI, but what does ROI really mean in direct response marketing? I’d like to separate the business side from the marketing side of ROI and use what the DRTV industry uses for marketing measurement, MER.

The direct response consulting goal is get to a positive MER or media efficiency ratio. What this means is if we spend $1,000 on advertising we get back more in revenue then we spent on advertising. For example, if we spend $1,000 and we get $4,000 in revenue in return we would call this a 4:1 MER. Ideally, we can keep on improving on these rates and push the MER to a 5:1 and beyond. This takes time and money to accomplish and most importantly impressions, the larger the sample of impressions the better decisions we can make.

In terms of direct response consulting, we like to see what is already working and do more of it for you by instituting better tracking and testing methods. Once we have reached a desired level of success, we can then venture into other media buys that will give us some results back that are positive MER’s.
There are so many different aspects (multivariate) of a marketing campaign(s) that we can track including some of the following, but not limited to:

The Ad Itself

1. Ad Creative
2. The ad copy
3. The offer
4. The graphics (colors, theme, gender etc)

Demographics/List

1. Women, Men, College Kids, Children
2. Time of day
3. Placement of the ad (In New Jersey or California or National)

Media/Message Delivery

1. Online Website and Social Media, Facebook, Twitter etc
2. Print, Newspapers, Magazines
3. TV/DRTV
4. Online PPC and SEO, Online Video, Youtube, Pre-Roll and Post Roll Ads
5. E-mail
6. Direct mail
7. Outdoor
8. IVR/411 Ads
9. Etc, etc….

What we have here in direct response consulting and direct response media is a moving target, with so many variables that we first have to get a baseline or a control that we have to track. From the baseline, we can measure moving forward on how we are doing with changing the different offers and media.

There really is no one size fits all even if there are two exact same businesses in the same city, except for maybe McDonald’s or another similar type of franchise. The fact that they have two different addresses or neighborhoods makes them unique and distinct. The one on Main Street could have a much better reputation than the one on North Main Street. Reputation matters a lot. Having great testimonials creates authority and is something that we as direct response marketers can leverage and it is something we can track.

If you have any questions on how to incorporate your direct response programs, call Jim Peake @ 941-787-3082.

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