The 7 Commandments of Direct Response Marketing
You’re an entrepreneur. You need more customers. You want to sell more of your products.
Being a business owner means marketing is one of the biggest things competing for your attention every week.
What are we posting? What should we promote?
Should we run an ad? How do we get more people to notice us?
These are some of the questions that will naturally occupy your mind week in, week out. And they’re not unique to Nigerian businesses alone.
Business owners everywhere face the same fundamental challenge: How do you turn limited attention into meaningful business action?
People need to notice you. They need to understand what you offer. They need a reason to care. They need a reason to trust you. And eventually, they need to know what to do next.
That is where direct response marketing becomes important. In this post, we will be sharing with you 7 key things that will help your next marketing efforts. The 6th point is a game changer, ensure you read till the end.
What Is Direct Response Marketing?
Direct response marketing is a type of marketing to make an audience take some action NOW. In short, it is designed to trigger a specific, measurable response from the audience.
That response could be buying a product, booking a service, requesting a quote, signing up for a course, sending a message or registering for an event.
The goal is not simply to create awareness. The goal is to get a response.
As a small business owner, this is the kind of marketing that you should focus on. Getting people to take action towards purchasing your product or requesting your service is important if you would ever increase your margins and make more sales.
So, what makes direct response marketing work? Through our research and experience, we developed seven commandments that we believe are very important.
Commandment #1. Win Their Attention
If you can't get someone's attention, you won't be able to sell to them.
Your audience is surrounded by content every day. They are scrolling through social media, checking emails, searching Google, watching videos and comparing businesses.
You have a very small window to make them stop. And you can do this by catching their attention. Open your video content with a powerful opening hook, use a strong headline in your graphics or a compelling visual in your ad.
This means you must understand the people you are selling to and be able to craft a message that speaks directly to them.
You can't catch everyone's attention. But you need to catch the attention of the of the right people.
Commandment #2: Make an Offer
Now you've captured the attention of your target audience. But the thing in direct response marketing is that attention alone does not translate into action.
You need something to make them stay long enough to understand what you're trying to say. This what we call an offer. Your offer gives people a reason to respond.
Don't just tell people what you sell. Make the value clear. Tell them something unbelievable that makes them adjust their sit and give you more attention.
Your customers are not always buying your product or using your service. They are buying an outcome and a solution.
A restaurant sells food, but the customers are buying convenience. A consultant sells expertise, but the customers are buying clarity. A real estate company sells property, but the customers are buying investment.
Make the value clear. Make it relevant. Give people a reason to care.
Commandment #3: Create a Call to Action
Now, your audience understand what you sell and what you offer. But you should never assume they know what to do next. This is why you must create a call to action.
Tell them what to do. Tell them where to go. Tell them how they can enjoy this offer you're proposing.
Call them to action. Based on your marketing content, you can use CTAs like this:
Call us on +234 XXXXXXXX
Send a DM today
Book your consultation
Request a quote
Click the link attached
Sign up now
Get started at www.yourwebsite.com
A clear call to action removes guesswork.
Imagine someone saw your content, likes your offer and is genuinely interested. But they have to search through your profile to figure out how to contact you, you've created unnecessary friction.
The prospect will likely move on to your competitors. Because you're stressing them unnecessarily.
A good marketing content makes the next step obvious. If you want a response to your advert, ask for one.
Commandment #4: Create a Sense of Urgency
We are all lazy procrastinators. One moment you're trying to sign up for a course or pay for a subscription. Then something else calls for your attention. Before you know it, you've moved on to something else without finishing up.
In the same vein, someone can be interested in your offer today and still decide to wait. Then tomorrow comes. Then next week. Then they forget. Then you lose a prospect.
To avoid procrastination from your audience, it is important that you create a sense of urgency in your marketing copy. Urgency gives people a legitimate reason to act now.
For example, you can say:
"Early-bird pricing ends Sunday."
"Registration closes Friday."
"Available to the first 50 signups."
"Offer valid until 20th September"
The important word is genuine. Create a real and reasonable urgency that gives them a feeling of "I can't want to miss this juicy offer"
Don't manufacture fake scarcity. If the offer ends Friday, say so. If you genuinely have 50 spaces, communicate that. Urgency should help people make a decision, not manipulate them into one.
Commandment #5. Track and Test
In direct response marketing, your opinion does not decide what works. The results do. The numbers do.
Don't just spend money doing marketing, spend time measuring marketing. It was Peter Ducker, Austrian-American business consultant who said "whatever gets measured, gets managed"
You need to track whether your marketing is growing or not. Test different contents, headlines, offers, creatives and messages. Run different versions of a campaign and compare the response.
Then use what you learn to make better decisions.
This is especially important for businesses working with limited marketing budgets.
You do not necessarily need to spend more.
You need to understand where your marketing is actually working.
A business in Lagos can face the same fundamental problem as a business in London, Nairobi or New York: spending money on marketing without knowing what is producing a meaningful response.
Let the numbers tell you what to keep, improve or stop.
Commandment #6: Establish Credibility
Your audience probably don't know you. They don't know what you do. And they're probably getting to know you for the first time.
You're just a business owner trying to sell your product or services, so why should they trust you? Why should they believe that you will truly deliver what you promised in your marketing content?
The answer is simple: give them a reason to believe you. And how do you do that? Very simple too!
You can do the following:
Use testimonials and customer reviews
Show your portfolio or previous work
Publish case studies of your projects
Leverage though leader or influencer opinions
Highlight relevant partnerships
The goal is don't just tell people you are good. Show them why they should believe you. Talk is cheap. So you need to "show workings"
Credibility becomes particularly important when customers are comparing several businesses offering similar products or services. And this is not manufactured through marketing copy. It is built through consistent delivery.
Commandment #7: Take the Risk Away
Every buying decision is like a gamble. It comes with an amount of uncertainty and probability. Your prospect may be thinking: "What if I regret this?".
Your marketing should reduce unnecessary fear and uncertainty. You don't want to give your customers a "what I ordered vs what I got" experience.
You want them to have a great experience at your salon or using your perfume. You need to mitigate the risk(s) involved in doing business with you.
Depending on your business, reducing risk could mean that you offer thing such as:
A money-back guarantee
Product replacement
A 14-days free trial
A consultation before purchase
Clear terms and expectations
A clearly defined service scope
Not every business needs the same type of guarantee. The important thing is to make the decision easier and give people confidence in what happens after they say yes.
Reduce the risk. Increase the confidence. You will soon understand that most of the guarantee you offer won't be claimed. But offer it anyways.
Strategy Before Spending
There is a temptation to believe that poor marketing can be fixed by spending more. More contents. More posts. More content. More platforms.
But more activity does not automatically create better results. Before spending more, ask yourseld:
Who are we trying to reach?
What problem are we solving?
What exactly are we offering?
What do we want people to do?
How will we know if it worked?
If you cannot answer those questions, increasing your marketing budget may simply make the problem more expensive. Strategy comes first. And that is really what direct response marketing teaches.
Stop treating marketing as something your business simply needs to "do." Start treating it as something your business needs to make work.
Your Next Marketing Outlook
The truth is you may not use all these seven commandments in every campaign. The audience, offer, objective and stage of the customer journey will determine what matters most.
If you're a new business may need to focus heavily on credibility. If you're pushing a new product, you may need to focus on customer acquisition. If you offer a service, you may need a stronger offer and clearer call to action.
But if you remember to always use these three things in all your marketing engagements:
WIN THEIR ATTENTION.
MAKE AN OFFER.
CREATE A CALL TO ACTION.
Give your audience a reason to stop, a reason to care and a clear next step. Then measure what happens. That is where marketing stops being guesswork.
Stop Guessing. Start Growing.
You don't necessarily need to spend more on marketing. You just need to understand what you are trying to achieve and build your marketing around it.
Every single day your business goes without the right digital strategy and better visibility is another day someone else is getting the attention, customers, and sales that should be yours. Don't leave your next level to chance. Start now.
Start now. Start with Rexta.
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Being in the business for a while and working with different business owners across different industries, we've learnt a lot about what works, what doesn’t, and what businesses can do better.
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