22 Feb 2008 05:52:04 | Dave Felts
General Marketing is often referred to as 'Brand Marketing';
it's a marketing effort intended to increase awareness of the
company and the services or products that company offers. A
Budweiser commercial with the stomping Clydesdales is Brand
Marketing. Most primetime TV commercials are brand marketing.
Direct Marketing is marketing undertaken with the intent of
provoking a response, that response usually being to call in and
order, or go to the web site and order, or to sign up for
something.
Late night infomercials are Direct Marketing. They fall into the
genre of advertising referred to as DRTV - Direct Response
Television. These commerical usually promote a product and
present an phone number to call. That phone number is a special
number used for that particular commercial for that particular
television station for that particular time slot. By tracking
responses through that phone number, the advertiser can
determine if the ad was effective.
Most online marketing is direct response. Emails are sent with
the message Click here and buy now! Banners are designed to
entice the web surfer to click through and view the offer.
Almost all Pay Per Click advertising is Direct Response. As the
advertiser, you are respondig to a specifc query by the
searcher, returning a marketing message with intent of
initiating a click through to your web site.
Have you ever heard that Dell radio commercial where it says to
go to dellradio.com? That's direct response too, because they
are sending you to a specific URL. When you go there, they know
you came from their radio advertising campaign. With that
information, they can judge the effectiveness of the campaign in
terms of dollars spent versus revenue generated.
What distinguishes Direct Response from Brand or General
Marketing is that there exists a method to directly link
the ad to the response, which then allows a financial assessment
of the marketing communication. That assessment can then be used
to determine the success (or failure) of the campaign in terms
of meeting the cost per action goal.
About Author :
Dave Felts is a Search Engine Marketing Manager who recently
launched SyteSurge, a resource for search engine marketing
information and services. 
