- Testing. By testing different marketing and creative approaches in different parts of the country, direct mail advertisers help eliminate the risk in their advertising efforts. They can take the approaches that get the best response and use them to re-do the mailing on a much larger scale, thereby increasing their chances for eventual success.
- With direct mail and direct response advertising, you can measure the success of your advertising program with greater ease than you can with media advertising. If the response vehicle is a coupon, you can tell how successful your efforts were simply by counting the number of coupons returned by consumers. You can't do that with a television commercial.
- You can drastically cut wasted media costs. For ex-ample, when Birds Eye wants to sell beans, they know their market is virtually everyone with teeth. So, they advertise almost exclusively on TV, radio, billboards, and in newspapers and magazines. It's the most intelligent way for them to spend their advertising dollars because those are the media with which most people come in contact every day.
Well, book clubs have different marketing problems. At first glance, you might say their market is everyone who can read. If that were actually the case, they could run their advertising anywhere they wanted. If that were the case, you would be able to sell all kinds of books with a TV commercial, since the majority of people who watch television can read.
Books clubs learned, however, that while most people who watch TV can read, not all people who can read watch TV. And not all people who can read, read books.
They also learned one other very interesting fact: reading is an entertainment alternative to television. This means that a TV spot would reach most of the people who can read, but it wouldn't reach everyone who reads books. And it would certainly reach a lot of people who don't, which means a lot of the money book clubs spend on advertising would be wasted if they spent much of it on TV.
Instead, they use direct response. They send their advertising messages through the mail to the people who make up their market. That way they can select just who gets them. They're reasonably sure those people will at least read their advertising before they throw it in the trash. As a result, they don't waste much of the time and money they spend on advertising. How do direct mail and direct response advertisers select just whom they're going to send their messages to? They get lists of names from companies who specialize in supplying mailing lists. It doesn't matter whether you want a list of all the people living in the Northeast who get a kick out of snowshoes, or a list of all the people in the United States who are professional chinchilla breeders.
Direct mail and direct response advertising are much different from media advertising in their creative approach. The experts in the field use a great deal more repetition than do creators of media advertising. As far as copywriting goes, which the experts feel is the most important aspect of direct mail and direct response, there is usually a great deal more simple, straightforward information, without as much of the fun and games that you find in media advertisements. Undoubtedly, the ability to get right down to the nitty-gritty of a subject is something every copywriter must be able to do. In fact, some people (this writer not included) go so far as to insist that a writer will never reach his maximum potential unless he spends some time working in direct mail or direct response.
If you're interested in getting into direct mail or direct response, you should get in touch with advertisers who use it, or with their agencies. The place to look for them is in the Advertising Redbook.
What if you're interested in retail advertising? This is the advertising which is done by retail outlets such as stores. All those ads in the Thursday Food Sections of the newspapers are retail ads. You're expected to work very quickly in that business and, as a result, retail advertising isn't for everyone. If you would like to look into it, call department stores, and you can even check the Advertising Redbook for agencies that specialize in or have divisions which handle retail advertising.
There is one other specialized theater of advertising that is even more unique than any of those previously mentioned. That area is called sales promotion.
The reason sales promotion is so unique is that it happens in and around all of the popular packaged goods products that you see advertised in all the major media.
Basically, sales promotions are any special offer made by an advertiser to boost the sales of his product. For example, a sales promotion could involve a coupon which saves a consumer money on the purchase of a product. It could also involve something given away for free when that product is bought. Even a good, old-fashioned 2-for-l sale is a sales promotion.
Promotions are extensively used by the major packaged goods advertisers, such as Procter and Gamble. And that shows just how much weight they are given by the people who really know their stuff.
Sophisticated sales promotions are rarely used by small advertisers or their agencies, though. So if you want to get into promotions, be prepared to work for a larger company in or near a big city.
If you're still in school and want to get an educational background for a career in sales promotion, you should try to learn as much as possible about the advertising business in general. Naturally, you should take courses in promotions if you can find any, but augment those courses with merchandising, marketing, business administration and management, and psychology. If you can take a course in advertising concept or graphics, or even creative writing, do it.
When it comes time to join the work force, contact the large packaged goods advertisers and/or their agencies. (See the Advertisers Redbook and Advertising Agency Redbook.) If you want to work on the marketing end, speak to the Director of Sales Promotion. There will usually be someone with that title at both advertisers and agencies. If you want to work on the creative side, speak to the Director of Sales Promotion, or to a creative director.
No matter which special area you're interested in though, you'll find it much different from the advertising you're used to seeing on TV. The creative, marketing, and media approaches to those special theaters of advertising aren't handled the same ways as those used in media advertising. And, chances are, you'd like either one or the other, but not both.
