subject: Direct Mail Marketing- A Marketing Strategy For Local Businesses [print this page] Today the world is not the same as it had been a few years back now the entire world in connected by what is known as the World Wide Web everything that is there today, every business, every service provider is connected to it by the internet. This is the age of the internet and we all have to change so that we can join and grow with the internet or else everyone else will move forward but we will be left behind.
Today almost all the companies which has a dream of growing into something big not only in a town or a city but in the entire world is connected to the internet or is working to connect itself to the internet. As a result of this shit to the internet certain changes have to be made in the way business was used to be done and is being done, these changes especially point towards changes in marketing strategies and marketing techniques .Old marketing techniques are no longer as efficient as effective as they used to be. Techniques like advertisements on news paper , on magazines and printing brochures are a good method of marketing but as said before we have to move on to new methods like SEO- search engine optimizer, PPC , direct mail marketing and other techniques.
Online marketing techniques like SEO and PPC are techniques in which the customer has to come and search for the service provider, and the person or company who has the ability to shell out the maximum money to get the best SEO to put its site or application on the top of the search result is the one which get the most customers.
But there are other techniques of marketing a product in the internet that include direct mail technique in this the service provider goes to the customer rather than the customer coming to the provider. Unlike other marketing techniques there are two main definitional characteristics which distinguish it from other types of marketing. The first is that it attempts to send its messages directly to consumers, without the use of intervening media. This involves commercial communication e-mail with consumers or businesses, usually unsolicited. The second characteristic is that it is focused on driving a specific "call-to-action." This aspect of direct marketing involves an emphasis on track able, measurable positive (but not negative) responses from consumers (known simply as "response" in the industry) regardless of medium.
Like other marketing techniques there are advantages of using this method of marketing and there are disadvantages, the advantages begin the service provider can directly contact the customer and if the customer need that particular service he can approach the provider. Another advantage is that there is almost no cost in this type of method of marketing as the only effort that goes into it is sending the mail and nothing else.
An advantage of direct market is that we can directly catch the required customers by sending mails by using various lists that are available for example a company which provides services to various enterprises and needs only them as customers then these mail can be send using mailing list which have only the enterprises or another example would be if a company provides services only to restaurants and hotels can send the mail addressing to only the restaurants and hotels and not others. Similarly there are mail lists available which are categorised on the basis of speciality, political, ethnicity etc.
So in the new age we have to become like the new age or we will be left behind and all others will get ahead in this race of life and business.
