Dominion Acquisitions delves into the rise of Direct Marketing and questions the pro’s and con’s of

Added: (Mon Feb 06 2012)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Direct Marketing is growing rapidly in a time of economic turmoil and it’s fair to say that direct marketing is one of the current engines of economic growth; Spending on direct marketing grew at a 5.6 percent clip to £163 billion in 2011 and now accounts for 52.1 percent of total advertising spending in the United Kingdom. This share has increased steadily over the past five years, a trend expected to continue through 2016
Dominion Acquisitions understands that direct marketing is an effective marketing tool which business owners should deploy as part of their everyday marketing activity. It is one of the most effective ways a small business can acquire new customers, retain existing customers and or increase the revenue potential of an existing base of customer.
For Dominion Acquisitions it is essential to explain what direct marketing means?

Direct Marketing is where direct contact is made, initiated or invited between a seller of propositions and services, and its current and potential customers.
From Dominion Acquisitions perspective, it is important that the results of a direct marketing activity could be directly measured to assess the intended or the actual financial return on a direct marketing investment.
In other words, a small business owner or an SME marketer should be able to exploit a relationship between a small business and their prospect or customer as individuals.
One better way to understand the difference in simplistic terms is to see the difference in mass advertising versus direct marketing.
Dominion Acquisitions guides us through the variants:

Key differences between mass advertising vs. direct marketing
 Breadth of coverage versus a depth of relationship building potential
 Communicated to the mass versus a targeted audience
 Attention of all including competitors versus a targeted selective attention of intended customers
 Elicits recall or remembrance versus direct response
 Generates a customer’s functional or emotional impression versus leading to or making a decision
 In mass advertising you pay for the universe of potential customers versus paying for a targeted and segmented cluster of customers
What are the tactics to execute direct marketing activities?
 Direct mail
 Direct response advertising (including infomercials and teleshopping)
 Personal selling
 Telemarketing
Dominion Acquisitions is excited by the potential advantages of direct marketing, and lists the following:

Customer experience
 First and foremost, direct marketing has the capability for small business owners and SME marketers to give customers a better experience than mass marketing.
Deeper customer relationships
 Direct marketing has the capability for small business owners and SME marketers to build deep relationships and segregate their customers as individuals.
 Direct marketing has the potential to build continuing relationship with an existing customer. This is possible because the small business owner or SME marketer would be able to maintain and manage a customer database capturing all relevant information of a customer (For comparison, try to imagine the information or rather the lack of it on “walk in” customers in a retail environment).

Test marketing capability
 Direct marketing enables the small business owner and SME marketer to test market and measure as to what works and what does not work.
Flexibility and predictability
 Direct marketing enables small business owners and SME marketers’ better flexibility to manage and control their costs.
 Direct marketing offers an opportunity for small business owners and SME marketers’ better ability to predict the outcomes of a campaign.
Higher customer motivation to respond
 Direct marketing has a higher preponderance for customers to be motivated to respond
Enables customer segmentation
 Direct marketing enables the small business owner or SME marketer to better segment or cluster their customers.
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Dominion Acquisitions realises like with anything there are always areas of potential negativity, we have listed the following which if avoided will ensure that you use direct sales to your advantage.

What are the disadvantages of direct marketing?
Small business owners and SME marketers should be aware that if their direct marketing strategies are wrongly or poorly executed, then it could have tremendous negative consequences for the small business.
Bad or poor image
 Junk mail, annoying telemarketers and intrusive direct sales folks have given direct marketing tactics a bad image. Inaccurate targeting
 Having the wrong mailing lists that not only becomes a financial disaster for the small business but can increase the annoyance factor of their potential customers.
Emotional stimuli (or rather lack of it)
 Direct marketing is too direct and does not have the potential to create the stimuli to invoke an emotional response from a potential buyer.


After evaluating the positives and negatives of Direct Marketing it is clear to Dominion Acquisition’s that the pro’s far outweigh the Con’s, and that it is obvious why Direct marketing is responsible for the only economic growth in the UK, and so in this difficult financial time will definitely be investing in a cost effective no win no fee return.