"That's like saying, 'Go buy a car,'" objected owner. "We need to get people to think about what they want."

Not necessarily. They can set up new customers well in less time by offering a line-up of package deals. Packages of services or products provide a combination of options at a set price, instead of forcing people to identify ideal mixture for their needs.

Barbara Leff, founder of Legal Web Works, created special packages for her target market, law firms with up to five attorneys. "Some are behind technology curve," she says, "and they prefer to spend their time practicing law and adding billable hours."

Leff's all-inclusive Web site package deals greatly simplify lawyers' design decisions and ensure that they're not sucked into a black hole of unlimited charges. They can mix and match design elements freely, and add extras to package for an extra fee.

"For lawyers who are tempted to say, 'I need a Web site,' I demystify process," Leff says. "The package deals make getting small law firms onto Web as painless and as cost-effective as can be."

Advertising

Direct Response marketing is accountable. It is advertising you can justify and track. Not only is direct response marketing measurable but it can easily be adapted to fit your advertising budget.

The heart of direct response advertising is in planning, organizing and pricing of marketing campaign. Small business entrepreneurs must match mailing list selection to prospect profiles and design a campaign that targets customer. Most importantly, providing follow up service with back-end analysis, fulfillment of orders and inquiries this allows a small business to test and measure campaigns quickly and inexpensively.

A small business financial planner can than focus on most profitable segments of a campaign. Direct response marketing is efficient its small target groups made up of most interested prospects for a product or service.

Direct mail and direct marketing are sometimes used interchangeably. Direct marketing can be used effectively in many different media's and is not limited to direct mail advertising. Direct marketing goes far beyond sending self contained mailers. This reality is truer online since, accumulating opt-in permission based names for e-mail promotions can be done at a fraction of cost of bulk mail marketing campaigns. I can help you during critical planning stages e-mail me at timlit7@nethawk.com for more information.

Direct response advertising can be used in variations to support marketing and promotional activities for driving traffic to your Web site or inquiries for a product or service

A study recently published in Marketing section of Wall Street Journal (December 2002.) Indicates that media spending will shift away from traditional media advertising and switch towards Internet marketing and direct mail since they appear to be more promising. "E-mail marketing is more measurable and is seen as a good value for money as people get better customer targeting". The growth of direct response marketing online and off has grown tremendously over last few years. The benefits and profit potential online has been recognized worldwide and will be number one advertising vehicle both online and off for following reasons.

*Patrick Barwise - London Business School management and marketing.

Benefits drive direct marketing. If you don’t already think of your marketing in terms of benefits, now is a good time to start. Direct marketing is like no other form of advertising since you have control over your message and you control everything color, design, list, and your budget and payment options.

The flexibility of direct response marketing helps you to broaden your thinking. Precise targeting allows you to search for specific products. The more precise your message is less money and time you spend on people who are not interested or qualified to use your product. Direct response marketing is an equalizer for a small business. Finally you are able to compete with larger competitors with targeted messages and react quickly to changes in market because of your small size.

Direct Marketing is immediate and personal. What is more immediate and personal than a letter? New opt-in email technologies allow you to reach thousands of prospects in minutes with a personalized message including name and personal interests.

Direct marketing is a more testable form of advertising. Every mailing campaign you run is an opportunity for you to test something and gain information that can help you improve your marketing. You always have opportunity to test different lists, offers and packages. You need to have a good tracking program in place to do this effectively.

Part 2: The money is in list

You can use direct response marketing to build a database. Whenever a prospect buys from you simply add their name and purchase information to your database. The quickest way to build a database is to offer a free electronic brochure embedded on your Web site for example (9 ways to retire 10 years early or free quotes and 30 days of free life insurance.)

The reason for your database is to re-sell to your prospects again and again and test cross selling techniques for free. This brochure can be plugged in to your web site for download or you can personally make an appointment with your prospect and hand them a brochure in person.

There is no doubt that these techniques will help you to achieve success in your marketing efforts. It is important that you plot destination of your marketing campaigns with a marketing or business plan. Direct marketing results are almost immediate and these results will not help you unless you plan your business objectives. Many companies falter and lose sight of overall goals without a marketing plan to guide them.

Improved Computer capabilities and more recently internet has made both direct marketing and direct mail more efficient and more effective with database marketing. The way to make direct mail more efficient especially with rising costs of postal rates and print media is to target prospects with database collections.

The database is a collection of information on customers and perspective customers including their names, addresses, titles and companies. Lists selections can be further segmented by geography or zip-codes, gender, income and commission levels.

Prospects are grouped together with common characteristics to increase marketing effectiveness. The database is used to fit customers with products or services and to aim a precisely written message to a special group of people.

Successful sales professionals know that more they know about their customers and prospects better they will be able to sell to them. The same is true in direct marketing and list is key resource.

Close list selection and analysis is first step to ensuring a successful direct response program both online and off. The money is in list and in this sense internet has not changed this fact. Today, it is much less expensive to collect and test different offers with speed of Internet. This is same way publishers have sold magazine subscriptions and books since beginning of century. The only difference today is that Internet has made it much faster and cheaper to compile permission based opt-in lists online.