Striking a Balance Between Direct Response and Branding

DIRECT RESPONSE MARKETING IS A GREAT MARKETING TACTIC

Hi. Anthony Manly here from selfmanagedbusiness.com.  Today. What I want to talk to you about is striking just the medium between branding and direct response. Because if you think of it like this, some people are in the camp of like, I’m a marketer, buy, buy my stuff and all I want to do is sell, sell, sell.

Whereas you’ve got the other type that is more focused on the branding, which is more like, Hey, welcome along, they don’t want to push people. It’s more about pulling them towards them and saying, Hey, if you’re interested. So they’re more like patting a dolphin in the middle of the ocean type of person.

Now that’s all good and well.

However, direct response marketing is a great marketing tactic.

To get sales, you do have to ask for the sale at some stage.

Now that said, with regards to direct response marketing, you’re solving problems. 

Problems that people have, whether they’d be a small problem, a large problem, could be a small chunk, you might chunk it down. But where it all begins is it starts.

Steps in creating a great marketing tactic

1. Content that entertains, educates, and inspires

The very first step in the process is creating content that entertains, educates, that also inspires somebody to take some form of action towards their problem.

Now, when we talk about this type of information that educates, we’re talking about content that specifically gets a result for your client or customer, or potential prospect. When I say about this content, it’s not just haphazard content that you’re just going to throw out there.

It’s more about understanding who the market is and what kind of problems you want to solve. And then you need to say to yourself, hang on a minute. What I want to do is I want to say to people, hey, here’s how you do something.

And what a lot of people fail to do is they get hooked on this Why and the What, but they never give the house.

So it’s like, I’ve got all of these problems.

Well, guess what? What? This is what you have and this is what it is, blah, blah, blah.

But no one ever really gives the help.

2. Create a content

Now the second part of this is what you need to do is create some content. Put it on your blog. But you also need some form within that context of how they can opt-in and get more information from you or opt-in and download a small PDF which gives them a solution to that problem then and now that could be in the form of like an opt-in box.

It could also be taken into a page.

It could also mean that you’re going to talk to them via Facebook. Communicator.

That’s the second step that I want you to understand. 

3. Retargeting

The third step is you’ll notice that a lot of people would talk about retargeting these days.

It was an old thing where people just retarget you all the time when it comes to advertising, you click on an ad, and then all of a sudden you cop this flurry of ads.

I’m not talking about retargeting with the same information. I’m talking about helping that person along the journey.

So building that trust.

So when I say building that trust, think of a bank vault.

Now, inside of a bank fault, I’m not thinking of it full of money.

I’m thinking of huge amounts of goodwill. So if you open the door, you’ve got all of this goodwill that you put forward to this particular customer, client, or prospective client, and you’re building up that level of trust. And what I mean by building up that level of trust is by giving them a snippet of information that inspires, educates, that entertains them, you’re building trust.

Now, what you want to do is take advantage of that goodwill. Now, when I say take advantage, I mean leverage it.

So if, for example, I know nothing about running a marathon, I might search on Google for how to run a marathon.

However, if you look on Google, there might be some content there that talks about how to run a marathon. But if you want to outdo that content, you want to create a nice blog post.

Now, people that come to your blog post, what you want to do is you want to pixel them.

Now, when I say pixel them, Facebook still allows it, believe it or not.

And you can retarget these people so you can create audiences of people that have viewed your content. And when I say retarget them, you can show them different ads that also lead them to a sale. So it’s like, oh, hey, guess what? You’re interested in how to run a marathon. Do you know what we’ve also got?

How to eat for a marathon, how you should build up to a marathon. Here is an expert on marathons, and what type of shoes you need. So it’s giving different angles to somebody who wants to learn how to run a marathon, helping them on their journey.

So again, it’s building goodwill.

4. Ad base follow up

Now, the fourth thing is you want to have ad base follow-up.

Now, what I mean by follow-up is you want to be able to follow them up after they’ve come back a second time. You don’t want them to come back to the same content. Preferably you want them to move along the journey.

And what I mean by the journey is the journey of going for the sale of, hey, guess what? I run a coaching business that delivers how to run marathons.

So you’re moving them down that particular pipeline.

The last thing that I want you to understand is that this type of advertising and understanding who’s interested in your content happens every day. And what you need to be aware of and need to understand is the intent of the people that are coming to your website, whether they be at the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, or the bottom of the funnel.

The bottom of the funnel of the people that we want because they’re ready to buy. But it’s the top in the middle that you need to focus on.

And this is a way that you can do this by retargeting these people that have come, viewed your content, that are interested in what you offer.