Direct Marketing is the most successful when you create a communications piece which
not only captures attention but also creates action.

In the past, this was referred to as AIDA; Awareness – Interest – Desire – Action. Whilst with all theory and specialist practice things become more complex this acronym still works today at a high level.

So, why be Targeted and why be Direct?

Because you want your communications to be relevant (Targeted) to the recipient when
they receive and hopefully open the direct mail (Direct to the reader). By knowing who
you are sending your communications to, understanding what services they buy, or
interested in buying enables you to ‘target’ these customers.  This in effect backs up
the idea of AIDA: your target customer is; Aware of you, they are Interested in what
you sell, they Desire the services you have on offer, they take Action.

To be targeted you have to know or collected information about what your customers or
prospects are buying from you. By knowing what your customers are buying, you can then
look to a variety of ways to increase sales, convert new customers or build loyalty.

Then by being direct, you can achieve a couple of things, which are underestimated
today for effectiveness. By targeting a bespoke group of customers you choose, your
business can create a unique marketing Offer to these people you have selected.

In marketing terms, this is a ‘segment’ from your overall customer data, just like a
segment from an orange as an example.

Now with your chosen segment you can now look at creative ideas you believe or know
will have the greatest impact on these customers. For instance, these customers may
have been with you for a very long time so you may look to running a specific reward or
loyalty offer to them.

By knowing your customers, by creating a unique and enticing creative direct mail, you
are increasing the chances of the letter being opened and read.

This is the biggest battle silently taking place in letterboxes all over Australia. We
are fighting for people’s time to read our messages or offer. The hard part is getting
your customers to open the mail!

Nevertheless, by using great creative, colour and personalisation can all help get your

mail opened. It has been proven that by using information from your customers like,
product preferences, their first name and Offers which match their needs increases
response rates.

Like the best marketing this is all logical – the skill is working with a team that
understands how to apply the logic to your business and knows the in’s and out’s of
Direct Marketing.

So by being having a targeted segment and mailing list you can increase your response
to you campaigns by using direct mail to the customers, this way you are talking
directly to your customer.

Interested in running a Direct Mail campaign to build demand for your business contact us here.

Features and Benefits right?

Marketing has always been a way for business to be able to look at a given market and structure a way to compete whether this is through a mix of product, prices, place, promotion. This works and works pretty well as a general guide and of course there are many examples where the 4 P’s do not give the depth or sophistication to more mature marketing strategies.

The point here though is that a part of the 4 P’s is how the product is positioned in the market with what is known as the Value Proposition. There are a couple of ways to build a Value Proposition but for me I have always looked at:

• Segment
• Target
• Positioning

Then delivered a value statement which is built on these antecedents to creating a relevant Value Proposition for the receiver of the communications, be that face to face, in media or through word of mouth.

So, when we go back to the 4P’s we find at the very beginning Product. Now, in old marketing world 1960′s to the 1990′s Products were pretty much marketed on the Features and Benefits (F&B’s). Inside the product stack of any given market, let’s say cars as they are a good example of F&B’s you also have price/quality.

Car manufacturers understand F&B’s well and for years competition was either looking to match F&B’s or better them with improved this and that which would be a Product Point of Difference… until it was copied and then nearly all other manufactures in their segment (maybe Premium cars like, Volvo, BMW, Mercedes) would copy the Feature, for instance airbags.

Then this feature, which had been unique or a Point of Differentiation would become a Point of Parity. In other words they all had it. In this case it is a safety feature/benefit which is of course a good thing. This also over time cascades down to the lower segments as the technology becomes cheaper and a ‘standard’. But the point is that this happens across most sectors and their product offering.

Now in most markets there is broad positioning of products and now are what Michael Porter’s thesis called for in his Competitive Strategy of three distinct positioning statements:

1. Product differentiator
2. Low cost leader
3. The nicher

Now this still makes sense and you can see this in the market place today, think about cameras and your there. You can see all three of these positions in action.

But what is of note is something new, or old, but reinvented and recently commented on by Robert Capps over at Wired Magazine which he calls the “The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine”.

Robert has written an excellent article about the idea that we are in a point in time when some products and services have risen to the point that the ‘quality’ of these products value is not in the ‘quality of the video, image’ but in the accessibility, inexpensiveness, simplicity, wide distribution and open or interoperability (it can be used on the web, with other things).

Think about some really fast growing areas in technology:

Laptop to Netbook

Vinyl to MP3

TV to YouTube

This is all pretty much known, but we have made some trade off’s here and this is the point. In the market today people have happily reduced their expectations of quality as long as they have accessibility.

So, people do not mind watching a low fi version of TV as long as they can watch it on their netbook on the tram, train, bus to work or at home on-demand. The standard is Good Enough. They don’t need it in High Definition, Blu Ray etc. because they want it now where they choose. Importantly though, the number of users by Netbooks using Youtube and other low-fi versions of products like Gmail, Google Doc’s, are very very large indeed. In fact this is a new mass movement which is clearly getting bigger.

This means, that ways of positioning which in old marketing terms via mass marketing by using, the latest and greatest features may not have the mass appeal it once had. Companies have relied on certain things beating the competition such as having the best R&D, technological advancements like Blu Ray from DVD,  or FLAC over MP3. But it may well be now that it is about looking at ways to mesh together existing products and known technologies, which interlink and enable, with accessibility, ubiquitous distribution and simplicity. Which use existing technology without the need for it to be the latest and greatest.

Now, I am not saying that R&D, innovation or product development should be stopped. Not at all, it is what humans are all about improving on what has been done before and creating the new. But, I also think what we are seeing is a huge opportunity of what is known and being able to re-invent it with great access, faster and wider distribution due to technology like the WWW. Because we will reduce our expectation of quality (Value) for accessibility when I want it.

So is it still about Features and Benefits? well yes of course it is. As I would suggest that whilst I have not given this positioning a name it has clear features and benefits.

Kotler probably identified it as one of his five Value Positions from the book Kotler on Marketing as the Value Position of More for Less.

The success of this new wave of low-fi products comes from more; accessability, on-demand, easy to use, wide distribution and of course low cost, inexpensive and in some cases free!

If you would like to read Robert Capps article “The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine” it is here for you and also a podcast on the ABC here as well.

Till next time, The Integrati team.

Connect or Die, what will your business choose?

Well, we have all seen the rise and rise of Google and the importance of being able to find ‘stuff’ on the world wide web. Many of you may not remember the WWW before Google when you had to go to portals and lists of links like boards to find ‘stuff’ you were interested in.

Today we search sites like Bing and Google and we use these site to serve up paid links/ads on these sites to drive targeted traffic to our own sites. This model is what has made Google billions of dollars. It works, I am not denying this at all and I happily use Adwords and love all the reporting which you receive as part of the service on the dashboard.

So, this is all known and works, so what is this new term The Network Service? Well, it is a new term coined by an analyst of web 2.0 Sean Parker. In many ways I think it actually sounds like an outdated ‘network’ term but what Sean is actually referring to is  Social Networking.

Web 2.0 logos

Sean Parker, has created a thesis that he believes that the power of search is limited in that:

1. Companies that Harness the power of networks will dominate the internet
2. Collecting data is less valuable than connecting people

Well, let’s have a look at point one, in effect what Sean is saying is that whilst being able to find stuff on the WWW is still important (and will remain so) what is really important is being able to be leverage your connections to find ‘stuff’ faster and well with Trust. I think that is something which people have left out of the argument. In essence you trust a search engine to search that is it. But with a social network, the power of the search is in the TRUSTED reference. In other words the people you link to on MySpace, Facebook and professionally on Linkedin. So these Social Networking companies are all in line for being more valuable than Google and Bing and even poor old Yahoo.

Because… well because as Sean has stated collecting, aggregating , filtering and presenting data to a single user via search will be less important than collecting people!

That is what Social Networking is all about, it is the ability to tap into your known networks of trusted groups and individuals. This is not new, in fact it has been around since humans have been, what is different is that on the WWW it is able to connect you anywhere, any time on a device of your choosing. The Anthropologists and Sociologists have studied this and it is a cause celeb for them, they call it Tribal!

Tribal networks are the ability to use your trusted network or tribe for reference, reassurance and acceptance, except this is different to the periods of mass consumerism to the late 1990′s. In that geographically you can be linked into a ‘tribe’ anywhere in the WWW and share the same values and traits.

Now, I know you are thinking, “yeah but I am a small business owner what has this got to do with my business?” Well in my opinion it is simple, the saying was “Change or Die” (in other words innovate your business before your competitors do) now I believe it is Connect or Die. And, this is where the small business has a massive opportunity, not only does your business have excellent customer service and great products but you KNOW the Customer!

In marketing one of the biggest advantages is knowing your ‘target market’ your customers, If you use Social Networking as a business tool now to connect and foster a ‘tribe’ of your customers you will be building a sustainable competitive advantage – You will sell more to your customers than ever before.

Now, I have written enough about Sean’s basic premise and I won’t make your eyes bleed with anymore discussion here, in fact I you can read Sean’s presentation here from Scribd.com or directly from the Integrati.com.au Public Dropbox here in MS PowerPoint.

Now, Sean also talk’s about the Network Effect, I will cover this off in my next post, I will be interested to hear your thoughts as well.

Till next time,

The Integrati team.