Most business owners rely on just one or two ways of getting new business. In other words, they have no marketing mix to speak of. But a robust direct response marketing mix is essential if you want to be successful and secure in your business.
Because while taking the easy way is tempting, it's also a big mistake: not only are you wide open to having these vital streams cut off (and it does happen, with changes in trends, fads, technology and evenlaws of the land), but you're also leaving huge sources of potential income, revenue and profit untapped.
What's more your marketing mix isn't just about having many different channels of marketing in your overall marketing strategy - for example print advertising, email marketing and direct mail - but it's also about using different media within those marketing channels. I'll come back to this in a second.
What Goes in Your Marketing Mix
Let's look first at what we might call your true marketing mix - the different media you can use.
Most business owners pick and then rely on one medium for their marketing - and they mostly stumble across it almost by accident. They discover something that works for them, and they figure that's that - their marketing is all done and they can sit back and relax.
But this is very dangerous thinking. For example, say you're a local electrician and you get most of your work from an ad you run in one of the local rags. And then all of a sudden the paper goes bust. Or you fall out with the owner and he or she won't run your ads any more. Or thyey sell up and the new guy doesn't like your face. Or some other electrician comes along with a better ad and steals all your responses away.
What are you going to do then?
Well, you're up the marketing creek with no paddle, that's what.
More important still, by putting all your energy and time into just one marketing strategy. you're forgetting about the umpty-thousands people who simply don't read that paper!
Now, let's l! ook at e ffective marketing within the channel.
Some people respond best to written words - like ads, postcards and letters. But we also know others might respond better to a CD or a DVD - spoken words and videos, in other words.
The Ideal Marketing Mix
Ideally your marketing mix will comprise many different channels and methods of getting your marketing message in front of your chosen market: direct mail, Internet marketing (from natural search, article marketing and Pay Per Click), print advertising, radio, TV and the rest of it.
And then within each marketing channel, you should be testing multiple media. So, for example, if you're trying direct mail, you might want to send printed letters, audio CDs and maybe some DVDs; if you're using print ads in the local media, then you can send readers to your website and test video, audio and, of course, written copy on the pages.
The only limitation to the power and effeciveness of your direct response marketing mix... is your own imagination.
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