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Gone are the days when if you needed a direct marketing campaign, you would have to hunt for a (usually overpriced) marketing or advertising agency. Today, many print service providers across the globe are spiraling through an identity crisis and are re-inventing themselves as marketing service providers. Armed with ideas, a designer, some software, technical skills and a printer, they can cut out the agency 'middle-man' and move directly to the client. And they are.
But unfortunately, not all printers understand direct marketing, or more specifically, how to sell it. They often miss the core objective of direct marketing which is (surprise surprise) revenue growth. I've spoken to several printers recently and they've told me "yeah, we've tried DM and it doesn't work", when the reality is they often don't know how to make it work.
DM really isn't not rocket science. You just need to understand how to leverage DM effectively and trigger revenue growth. Douglas Nicol provides a nice summary in Marketing Magazine (July 07) explaining the concept of DM levers:
"Direct marketing has three strategic levers, each of which contributes to revenue growth:
1. acquire new customers
2. increase the frequency of purchase of your product by existing customers, and
3. increase the value of each transaction with existing customers.If you can get your head around this, it is liberating, as the strategy is not up for review. You can knuckle down and pick the appropriate permutation of the three levers and then get incentive, even have some fun with your tactics."
Michael Frieri, Director of Business Development at Trekk Cross-Media has just published a podcast explaining Trekk's "blueprint" process and approach to client engagement. Their model is a simple but apparently effective one—they always start with the end in mind. Through evaluation of appropriate channels, results and campaign strategy, Trekk can identify the best of tactics for the campaign (they typically uses 7-10 different tactics for each campaign) and refine the campaign along the way through the flexibility of cross-media. I'd really recommend that you download the brief podcast and listen to what Michael has to share.
So, if you're a print service provider and are looking at effectively engaging marketers, you need to start thinking with the end in mind, then start yanking on the right levers.
Posted on Wednesday, 11 June 2008 at 2:17 PM | TrackBack: http://www.veedeepee.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/150