Direct Response Marketing and Copywriting: Basic Definitions

Today I am starting to post content about direct response marketing and copywriting.

I will start with newbie-friendly basics first. And then, as time goes on, I will dive into deeper and deeper topics.

Marketing

Marketing is, selling to masses of people, using a communication media.

Fundamentals of good marketing skills are based on salesmenship. But instead of talking to one person at a time, you can communicate with many people all at once, using different kids of media.

Depending on what kind of media is used, we can talk about marketing that is specific to that media. We can talk about online vs offline marketing. We can talk about facebook vs youtube marketing.

Target Market

A specific group of people with similar interests and desires, that you customize your marketing message to. You cannot be everything to everyone. Therefore you determine a specific group of people that has similar interestes, demographics, desires, emotional hot buttons etc... And talk as if you are speaking to that kind of person.

Customer Avatar

Therefore it is a good idea to make a profile of your ideal client, and put a name and image on that person, and think of speaking directly to that one specific person. The better you get into the mind and heart of that person, the better results you will get from marketing.

Direct Response Marketing

The kind of marketing that aims to generate some kind of response fromg message. Usually, the response is either "buy now" (sales), or some kind of lead generation (call for details, fill this coupon and send it to this address to get your free information package, enter your email to get a free report).

Nowadays with the rise of social media, we can also add social interactions (like, upvote, share, comment, follow) to the list of action wanted from marketing messages.

This type of marketing is totally different than branding where there is no response to track.

All Direct response marketing messages include some kind of Call To Action (CTA). When the action is taken by a prospect, that is measurable.

With branding, there is nothing to measure.

Conversion

The % of people who see your marketing message, and then respond to your marketing message.

A/B Split Testing

Where you send 2 versions of your marketing message to the same target market, and see which version converts better. A useful method for conversion optimization.

Control

The marketing message that performed best, compared to all the split testing you have done up to now. When you make a new test, with a new message, and it beats your control, it becomes your new control.

Copywriting

The science and art of writing the marketing message that you use.

All kinds of marketing has its own copywriters, in my posts, I will only discuss copywriting for direct response.

List

The collection of people who are interested in your messages. An Opt-in list is a list where they have given you an explicit permission to send them your messages. As in, joining an email list.

But nowadays your list may also be, followers in different kind of social media. As in fb, twitter, youtube or steemit.com followers, those who subscribe to the rss of your blog, or your podcast etc.

Marketing Funnel

A series of marketing messages with different call to actions, to sift people through different interests and different products at different price points. If you have a car dealership, a Ferrari buyer will be much different than a Ford buyer. Also different type of users will need different vehicles. A pickup truck serves different type of people than a minivan or a sports car.

In the online world, this may mean similar products to the same market.

Optin > Free Report > $7-17 "Tripwire" offer > $97 main offer > $997 webinar series > $9997 personal coaching may be one example of a marketing funnel.

Return Over Investment

This is the ratio of how much $1 in marketing spent earns you. Anything above 1 is profitable, the higher the better. A well optimized online campaign may have very high roi. For example, email marketing has a ROI of 43.

Follow me for my future posts about marketing and copywriting. Comment if you want to know more about a specific topic.