Direct marketing isn't what it used to be

A little over ten years ago, I was writing direct response letters to business executives, convincing them to show up on a rainy Tuesday in Cleveland for a seminar about business intelligence software--an entire morning or afternoon, mind you. And the seminars would be full. Fifteen to twenty execs would show up for the sales pitch.

Good luck pulling that off today, unless Warren Buffet is speaking. Now we're in the age of the webinar. Nobody goes anywhere, anymore.

And it's not that hard to set up webinars; you can outsource the whole thing through many firms. Then, you can post your collection of webinars on your website, which people can access just by logging in and answering a few questions, like email, firm and phone.

Ironically, this hasn't made direct marketing any easier. In some ways, it's become much harder. Just a few years ago, you could control your prospect contacts completely, doling out the information you wanted to, using offers of white papers to be sent in the mail, in return for talking on the phone. Again, try that today.

All this has changed one of the fundamental pillars of direct marketing, the old adage, "The more you tell, the more you sell." The modern version would be, "The more information you make available, through websites and viral marketing and social marketing and mass media and in-store, the more you sell. Your initial direct marketing contact doesn't have to tell much at all, as long as it gives a URL."

Here's the catch, however. Eventually, you do have to sell. Your audience responds to the initial email blast...they visit your landing page...they view the flash demo. And then what? Well, then they continue through your site if you're lucky, at which point you have to be selling effectively on every page they land on. Or, they don't come back, because the content wasn't good enough.

And that's the same way direct marketing has always worked. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Learn more about my writing and editing services at www.westcopy.com.